Lately I have been thinking about masculinity. I used to say that masculinity was dead. But I do not necessarily think that is the case. I think that definitions of masculinity have changed over time.
There is the religious definition of masculinity. The man is the spiritual head of the household. If he stands on that authority his wife will respect him, assuming that God is the head of her life. The man cherishes his woman, respects her, and makes an honest woman out of her as opposed to living in sin. He finds a good things.
Then there is the world’s view of masculinity. A man is the head of the primary bread winner. A woman has her position at home and takes care of domestic matters. A woman raises the kids.
Yet it is never that simple, is it?
In the church you find women that were always the head of their own household, and a man has to struggle for control of that household. You also have men that want to be a man, by the world’s definition, but are not interested in being the spiritual head of the household.
In the world you find women that do not want to submit to a man because doing so means that you are a fool. So they take a masculine role in their relationships. The man becomes the woman and ends up in the friend zone.
At the end of the day men end up coming to their own definition of what it means to be a man. To often definitions about masculinity and femininity are oversimplified. To be a real man, you have to sleep with as many women as possible. To be a real woman, you have to resist sleeping with as many men as possible. Too often, ideas about masculinity and femininity are reflected off of each other and balanced against each other. Too much of one, or not enough of the other, and you must be more masculine or feminine, depending on who those character traits are supposed to be held by.
The problem with using money to determine your masculinity is that in most cases, there will always be some woman, somewhere, with more money than you have. When you meet such a woman, your masculinity will be threatened. For what reason; technically, nothing changed except for the company that you keep.
The problem with using sex to determine your masculinity is that sexuality is a continuum. We try really hard to keep our sex in these nice packages with a bow tied on top of it but sexuality is a messy reality. So we have all of these social constructs that tell us what our sexuality should be and use guilt and shame to force people to fit into one mold. Some people can, and some cannot. There is always more to sexuality than what meets the surface.
Then you have that “grey area” of “feminine behavior”. But what does that mean exactly? Are we talking about men that are in touch with their feelings, or men whose behavior is in response to those feelings? Men that like to talk about their feelings? These are all perfectly acceptable behavior as long as they fit into certain criteria and modes of expression. Once they do not, and are more in line with what we see of the opposite sex they are all suddenly “feminine behavior” and people begin to question your sexuality. Most times sexuality has nothing to do with behavioral characteristics (outside of the actual behaviors and actions of sex itself), but it does with enough homosexuals and lesbians that we are quick to assume that it does with all.
Which brings us back to the question; when is a man not a man? Is it when you feel you have to deal with him in the same manner that you do a woman? Well how do you deal with the opposite sex? When we use derogatory terms to talk about another man’s masculinity is it a reflection of our own discomfort with him from a sexual place? In other words, is an obsession with masculinity a testimony about our own insecurities? Perhaps as we are uncomfortable with our own masculinity, we feel the need to describe and define (and thus demonize and condemn), some other man’s masculinity.
It is one thing when women sit around and get to talking about other women. But I do not want to sit around with a bunch of men talking about other men. This isn’t about sheer t-shirts, or skinny jeans, or manicures or pedicures. At the same time, I am not advocating that men diminish themselves to a life of 200 thread count linens either. That would just be absurd.
You have to find your own comfort level, and be yourself. To be fair, one of the reasons we see so much “feminized” behavior from men is because no one will go against them. Men are indifferent about what the next man is doing, and most women are indifferent about it as well. The same men go to church and those attributes are often reinforced; sometimes the people in leadership are softer, more gentile, or more in touch with their feelings than you are.
Over masculinity, or super masculinity, is also an issue. A lot of men are just compensating for their own insecurities. So they try to make themselves look good by calling out other men they assume are weaker than they are. Sometimes discussions about masculinity are just as frustrating as attempts at being masculine are. Could be that it is just time to take a break and relax and be the best human beings that we know how to be.