Expressing masculinity
Is there a certain way that we ought to express masculinity? For the sake of the thread, I'd like to focus on men rather than the loving and caring female that tempers the drive to express one's masculinity.
Does masculinity vary from individual to individual and why, if so?
I have grown out a rather nice beard and I feel rather proud of it. I don't own a large house or an expensive car or have mistresses as expressions of my masculinity. Neither do I feel oppressed because I don't have those things unlike other people.
So, what's the deal with expressing masculinity? Do the over-masculine or machos just need some love and care in their lives from women?
Does masculinity vary from individual to individual and why, if so?
I have grown out a rather nice beard and I feel rather proud of it. I don't own a large house or an expensive car or have mistresses as expressions of my masculinity. Neither do I feel oppressed because I don't have those things unlike other people.
So, what's the deal with expressing masculinity? Do the over-masculine or machos just need some love and care in their lives from women?
Comments (117)
The mechanist
The sage
The Prince
The athlete
The Craftsman
The Father
The Warrior
The Good King
There are a few. That men are all about rampant violence and sexual assault (except for me, I'm the white knight to protect all the women from them) brings nothing but stasis. In order to properly criticize something like this, I think that it has to be done in a system of polarities. The shadow, corrupted, immature, borderline, developed, skilled, veteran, master expressions of them, and cannot be denigrated or destroyed entirely, that leaves only stasis, confusion, and aimlessness.
Society expects men to be masculine, just as it expects women to be feminine. It is part of their folkways and mores.
Expression of both varies from country to country, time period to time period and even religion. So it would affect individuals greatly.
Quoting Posty McPostface
You would go down well in muslin countries right now, but a lot of people in the western world look upon them with disfavor. I have a beard and I have it because I like it, don't give a shit whether people think it makes me look masculine or not.
Quoting Posty McPostface
No, most of the time they are just too tied up with themselves trying to please others.
What do you mean by that? I wonder?
Quoting Sir2u
Same here. I don't give two shits about what other people think, so hence my first question to you... Could you be alluding to some sort of neurotic insecurity of the masculine man?
In regards to 'work' as work is the only healthy expression of expressing masculinity in my eyes. The only fields that seem to still entail a healthy sense of masculinity are doctors and engineers to some degree. What I'm saying is that what was once understood as healthy expressions of masculinity or femininity, have lost their meaning due to work only being understood as the process of the accumulation of wealth or money-making. I wish I were wrong on that note though.
I have grown out a rather nice beard and I feel rather proud of it.
[/quote]
Do you like the beard for its own sake (its silky smoothness, the fact that it gives your fingers something new to fiddle with while in business meetings (who needs fidget spinners when one has a nice beard?), or maybe that it keeps your chin warm on icy days), or just because it makes a statement of conformity to certain societal gender expectations?
What's the deal with publicly, loudly, defiantly expressing anything?
Narcissists in need of attention and approval?
Identify politics as a way to obtain and keep resources in a zero-sum game? The wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the oil?
Who says that we are all either masculine or feminine? Who says we can't be neither one?
I don't know what, if anything, I "express", but this "expressing" business sounds like an unneeded burden.
I suppose it is all about how one wants to be known by others.
But what if the way one wants to be known by others cannot be expressed? What if something can be expressed but nobody will notice? it?
Or, if people don't care what other people think, is the "expressing" business really a person coping with an internal conflict? You want one thing, your body wants another thing, so you find a happy medium?
Resolving an internal conflict out loud and publicly rather quietly and privately?
Well, in an inter-subjective world where meanings are derived from one's position or context within society, expressing and justifying beliefs is a never-ending process. Only a few philosophers, psychologists, and other sociologists know better. Although there aren't many of them unfortunately in positions of power.
Will the philosopher king please stand up already?
Not really, more of a Freudian thing. Super-ego - ego - id type of conflict. Most people bend to the external pressures just to have a peaceful life. And external pressure is always changing. There are still people that think having a big car is a sign of masculinity, but others think that having your underwear hanging out of your pants is.
Quoting Posty McPostface
There are many more female doctors and engineers now that there were before, is that because they have become more masculine? Very doubtful.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I think you are wrong. It is probably because they have found that in many cases a women is equal to a man when it comes to getting the job done. How that makes the guys feel any less masculine I have no idea though.
Work nowadays is, for a lot of people, trying to get by not getting rich. That is why so many women are out there instead of being housewives. Not that I think that women are should be stuck with that job.
I used to be the manager of a transport business, and one of the best works I had there was a women. Changing and repairing truck tires, swapping out busted springs, or welding heavy metal never stopped her from proving how capable she was. If only she had learned not to take her shirt off for washing up along side the men, I might have made her my assistant. :-#
Since when are masculinity and femininity "beliefs"?
Quoting Posty McPostface
Well, I have no idea what I "express" other than my personal thoughts, feelings, emotions, imagination, etc.
I have no idea how anybody can "express" anything other than their own subjective experience.
If you are talking about something culturally constructed, I think the word you need is display.
Unless you mean expressing one's personal response to something culturally constructed--one's personal interpretation of, relationship with, feelings about, attitude towards, or ideal manifestation of masculinity, femininity, etc.
I may have used the wrong word. What would you count them as? Social-constructs?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Is there really a difference between expressing a belief masked as a social construct and on the other hand displaying it?
Of course it does. Even if people are pretty much all alike, each of us (male/female) has to work out our way of being in the world, in our case as men. My interpretation and performance of being a gay man was pretty much the same masculinity as my straight peers exhibited, except I was gay and not straight.
The way a lot of men and women behave in their ordinary interactions with other people are largely the same. Hyper masculine men and hyper feminine women are atypical, abnormal types who are sometimes emulated by more ordinary types of people, usually to their own regret.
I grew a beard when I was 24; once it got long enough to call a beard, I recognized that "this is the look that is most me". 47 years later it's white, not brown, but it's still the look that is most me. It's great in the winter.
Men and women both need love and tenderness, caring and respect and they are both capable of giving these things, more or less. I think there are some differences between male and female brains, but we are not dealing with Mars and Venus differences. Men can make bread and women can dig ditches. We all have a fair amount of behavioral flexibility. Some men and women won't display flexibility, and that's just stupid nonsense.
Yeah, but there are some things that symbolize being 'masculine'. Being a bodybuilder with high testosterone levels, or owning a large car, yacht, guns. That's all for display; but, then there's a need to express it too, no?
If our masculinity is not expressing itself, there's not much of it there to express.
Maybe I need to check my hormone levels then? :D
Hey, do you remember the pics I posted on the old forum with my head on different bodies? That's masculine vs non-masculine. I think the solution is to stay away from philosophy. :D
This pure comedy. I do recall some funny pictures of you on bodies of professional bodybuilders. Philosophy gives me sanity, take that away from me, and who knows what will happen. Can one have an excess of sanity?
Yes, that was pre-philosophy masculine stage. The man in us wants to build stuff from trees and rocks and chase people with clubs. Books, not so much. You can't have everything.
I wonder if it's ego driven (justifying certain beliefs even if playing devil's advocate) or in the more pure and noble case rather the pursuit of wisdom and truth?
It's probably personality related. We took those big five personality tests recently, and all scored pretty high in openness, which is related with creativity. Men that score high on openness generally are interested in ideas, whereas women that do are generally interested in aesthetics.
Ehh, that test was 2-3 minutes worth of time. I highly doubt they were comprehensive enough to elucidate our true levels of neuroticism.
Humans can never escape dominance hierarchies and the maneuvering that goes on in them whether that be in a philosophy forum, at a bar, or around the dinner table. The truthy stuff is more or less a sideshow. That's not a value judgement by the way just an observation.
(Think about it, if you were just after the truth, you could just go read some books).
You were clearly too neurotic to answer truthfully. There is a more comprehensive test on the site (300 questions).
Of course that could be a test of masculinity. The more interested we are in bashing each other with our "truths" and the less interested we are in the actual truth (whatever that is) the more masculine we are (and women can be masculine in this respect too).
Maybe, but having high openness does predict that you'd end up somewhere like this.
I doubt that women are good and tempering, and men are violent and domineering. I thought they were capable of the same things, and not that different? That pesky empathy making us partial to things we find attractive, and neglectful or hostile to things we don't is more likely the culprit.
That's why I said women could be masculine in this respect too. Yin/yang, we've all got some of both.
Why is it masculine to be cruel and domineering, and feminine to be loving and tempering though? I prefer to think of both in neutral, rather than such charged ways.
It might take an evolutionary biologist approval for making me agree with the above. I don't think everyone is driven by primitive instincts or levels and responsiveness to testosterone or estrogen.
It's my belief that philosophy kind of requires one to take a more 3'rd person perspective (selfless) than 'I' and 'me' propositional attitudes (what benefits me the most).
I wouldn't put it exactly like that. It's masculine to be assertive and dominating. It's feminine to be flexible and accommodating. Cruelty and love are different things to me. You can be assertive and loving or flexible and loving. And dominating is not necessarily cruel.
Sure and that's a sensible strategy to gain respect, and so a higher placement in the hierarchy in this intellectually orientated environment. You can be conscious of it or unconscious of it. Being unconscious of it helps some because you don't have to think of yourself in ways which could cause cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, you're unlikely to ever fully convince yourself of your own sincerity. Hence doubts and uncertainty. That's the basic idea anyway.
Women are more agreeable, and higher in neuroticism, but only after puberty, and onward. I think this is simply because physical violence is the most extreme, and trumps all other forms of domination in the final analysis, and women are generally always at a disadvantage in this regard.
I think that we have to be careful about how we talk, as women don't have to be more masculine to be more assertive, and men don't have to be more feminine to be tempered.
I think we may have watched the same Jordan Peterson video. :)
Quoting Wosret
Semantics really. Masculinity is not exclusively male and femininity not exclusively female. Neither is either exclusively physical or mental. So, pick your cards and play your game. As long as everyone knows the rules it's fine.
Bravo! What, over 30 posts now and no mention yet of size differences as a true measure of a man’s worth!!! Still, shows how far removed this crowd is from them average people out there in the world. (btw, men and women ... yup, this is all funny to me)
Never liked the sound of “lord” and “lady” … until I checked out the two terms etymology on Wiktionary: “bread guardian” and “bread kneader” … two roles that are equally important, mutually important, and complement the other. As to bread, not only does bread sound very similar to “all” in some Languages (e.g. pane & pan) but there’s this Christian custom of bread representing the body of Christ(/world?). Sometimes makes me think it might have been an easily established code in ancient days, maybe similar to “vine (of life)” and “wine” as regards the spiritual side of reality … at least according to some interpretations.
Anyways, the lord / lady dichotomy is about as good a description of masculinity and femininity as any I’ve heard of so far. And then you can get into how each role contains some of the other in it. Now, I very much doubt that there’s only one way to guard bread, figuratively that is; but, still, some guys could be deemed to better express this role than others. Probably not by hording bread at baker's shops, though OK, it ain’t a perfect description of masculinity, but at least it’s better than pulling out that ruler to confirm size measurements, I say. (I hang out with the commoners often enough, don’t you all know).
I've watched them all, I like facts more than interpretations though.
The point is precisely that it isn't merely semantics, words correlate to the world, and mean things. They also are associated, which is why when people are trying to become something, or like someone they emulate superficial traits and qualities as much as the substantial ones, because they can't tell the difference. Drawing improper associations is as misleading as not drawing proper associations. Saying, basically, that gender has no relation to sex, is wrong, at the very least on must admit statistically wrong.
Yes, but there are some situations where you negotiate terms in order to have a sensible conversation. As in, if by what you mean by masculine is A then I was saying B. Obviously this is going to happen a lot in philosophy. In other cases though where there are political ramifications such as the gender / sex point you mentioned, you can't negotiate the term without ceding something important.
You've watched them all. Really? There are hundreds.
I'm simply saying that we shouldn't be associating positive attributes to one, and negative attributes to the other, on the notion that they have no real basis in reality, because we like one more than the other.
Most of them are the same. He only has so many lectures on his on page, and I've watched those, as well as many interviews that are scattered around, which aren't on his own page. I may not have seen all those. All of the short clips are just segments of his lectures that have been cut out. It also gets pretty repetitive after awhile. He only has some many positions, so many facts, and I've seen him say them all about fifty times.
OK, I don't consider being flexible more negative than being dominating though. Or being aggressive more negative than being accommodating. Both have their place and both are needed. Yin / yang as I said. Maybe assertiveness isn't a good term because the opposite does seem mostly negative.
Hence the need to express one's own masculinity. But, philosophers are above these silly interactions based on a unknown unknown or unknown known for the layman or woman. A good life or some sense of satisfaction can never be achieved for the masses. And so it seems to be true.
Yes, and that is again the right thing to say in this environment. We're at an impasse because you'll just keep making all the right moves and proving me right every time you say something intending to prove me wrong. (And being honest I don't care much about being right about this. Or do I...?)
I'm close to that point. I also think a lot of his philosophy stems from his own super high conscientiousness. I haven't heard him address that. Much does ring true too though.
I don't know what to say to the idea that it's actually the opposite of that... I think we must live in different worlds...
I find him interesting because he thinks a lot of the same things as I do, although I don't think that our personalities are all that similar. I also think that his motivations differ, and think that his artificial regulation of serotonin has kept him largely immune to the effects of competition and status, but my powers are mystical.
Some things symbolize being 'masculine' -- definitely, and some things characterize masculinity. Wearing a tie, white shirt, and a suit with oxfords is symbolic masculine dress. So are hard hats, boots, tool belts, t shirts (in warm weather) and heavy duty trousers. Also symbolic are standing at a urinal, ogling women, or going out alone for a walk at night. Having lots of pockets in one's clothing is a symbolic masculine thing. A lot of women's clothing is pocket free (and women carry purses, symbolically female). Having a hairy body doesn't "symbolize masculinity" it is a characteristic of many men, like having balls and a dick is characteristic of men. Most men. Some men seem to not have any balls, but that's another problem altogether. Testosterone doesn't symbolize masculinity -- it is masculinity (and most men have enough, without it being high).
Men and women body builders can achieve similar results (height, weight, etc. taken into account) but they won't look quite the same when they are done lifting weights. Men more readily develop visible musculature, if the have little body fat.
Athletics are not limited to men, these days, but lots of men like to engage in physical activity in a disciplined, strongly driven way -- whether that is bicycling, weight lifting, swimming, or any number of other sports. Given youth, a healthy diet, and persistence they are going to get good results, and they will not only look healthy and fit, they will be healthy and fit. That's both real and symbolic.
However, the beautiful body with the gorgeous tattoos sometimes comes with a personality that is quite a bit less interesting than chopped liver. I mean, what good are they?
Guns and cars... except that everybody owns a car these days (well, a large percentage do) and guns have various meanings. Hunting is one thing, the machine-gun useful for wiping out concert goers is something else. Yachts? No very many people own yachts. In fact, they say that the two best days for boat owners is the day they bought the boat, and then the day they sell it to somebody else.
Power tools seem like a pretty masculine thing. Most guys like using power tools. We like to build stuff. Guys are supposed to know how to "do stuff" -- fix a car, build a garage, repair plumbing, dig big holes in the ground, pour concrete, forge steel, paint the house, all that good stuff. Most of us don't, but we would like to.
Get some power tools if you can afford it--hand tools if not, some wood, nails, screws, and so on and have yourself an orgy. You'll be able to boost your T-levels in no time at all. Just holding a nail gun gives some guys an erection.
BTW, the power nail gun can serve as a home defense system too. It's just that by the time you hook up the compressor, get the nail gun out of the tool box (you have a tool box, right?) and put a clip of nails in it, the home break in might be all over. Plus, you have to press the barrel of the gun up against the invader's head before the nails will fire off. Clumsy but highly effective. Maybe a regular revolver would be better.
Yes, that seems to be a problem. Do you see some correlation between some pent-up issue related to masculinity and acts of violence? Criminals do it all the time on the streets and inside the jail, where they belong. The even more psychotic types like rapists, gang-bangers, murdering as a sport, and so on seem to take the whole thing to a whole new level, and with that often get labeled as 'lunatics' or 'crazies' or 'nutjobs', which detracts from understanding the complex issue.
Something is obviously being expressed by these 'crazies' (like the Las Vegas shooter who had a squeaky clean criminal record and on face value appeared 'normal' to his family and friends) and such, methinks it has a lot to do with the masculinity of the extreme variety.
This by the way is quoting him when someone said that they had watched all of his videoes to him, but obviously hadnt.
'Masculinity' is a sickness, it is a pathology stemming from a self-defeating desire that mirrors a distorted and imaginative ideal saturated by the influence of fear. Our desires are formed by unconscious or instinctual needs and children initially mirror the stimuli illustrated by their family and then social environment as they relationally develop a language that motivates how they perceive and identify with the external world. Even our emotions are structured and asserted by a relational narrative formed by others - like a child of a racist growing to feel real hatred and anger for this Other; its not actually real - usually starting with one's father and then moving on to their social environment as they begin to form an idealised version of themselves.
Men who take steroids and act tough are no different to women who get plastic surgery and inject shit into their lips; they are both creating an idealised version of themselves based on this self-defeating pathology that stems from the fear of rejection. If, as children, we mirror our parents where our ego is formed by this negative differentiation, the fear of being rejected ensures doubt within us until we reach an age where this is transferred to our social environment; others form the language of our identity and therefore we become socially constructed ourselves.
And yet, they are congratulated for forming this public image that solidifies this identification to their ideal. Why? Think of it like Stockholm syndrome or traumatic bonding, where a hostage begins to defend and sympathise with the captor; women don't find aggressive men attractive, they are afraid of them that they act passive and gentle to save themselves from becoming a victim. A man in a tolerable but unhappy relationship for long enough will eventually think he is happy and in love. We are erroneously responding to the trauma from the potential fear of being a victim that we submit only to end up defending this unidentifiable social aggressor.
So what is the difference between an image of this ideal version of man and an authentic one? Men acting aggressive and macho are actually exposing the same emptiness as a woman who acts sweet and lovely but is actually inadvertently cruel and bitchy [backstabbers with a smile]. There is a lack of moral substance. I don't think anyone has said it better than the Solomon: For the lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is as bitter as poison, as dangerous as a double-edged sword. What makes a beautiful woman? It is the substance, the very 'within' of a person and not an image that is nothing but a mindless display. Those men that desire those women are still attempting to express this ideal version of masculinity because having such women is another part of this display.
They lack moral consciousness, genuine love. They are incapable of giving love because their identity is structured on an image, not on themselves. Only by transcending this social and environmental ideal version of 'masculine' or 'beauty' by forming an idealised version of ourselves based on virtue and morality can one ever identify with who they are independent of this influence. It is no longer an image that articulates their identity, but love. A masculine man is not someone who fights with his fists but one who fights for righteousness and someone who follows other people cannot ever understand what it is to feel despair at injustice, who will see no value nor understand the importance of defending and supporting the vulnerable and weak. They are slaves to their own fears.
Masculinity is a social construct.
Quoting TimeLine
Quoting TimeLine
You can't have it all ways -- that masculinity is a sickness, instinctual, and a social construct -- because the causation is quite different, like social norms vs. biological instinct.
First, that masculinity is a social construct... Style is socially constructed, certainly. The style in which some men present themselves--powerful, woman-abusing, insensitive--is one construction. The troglodyte is another. There are a few dozen other constructions too, like "the one who fights for righteousness". But men and women--humans--have instinctual drives, as well. Instinct produces society which produces culture which constructs style.
Masculinity (and I suppose, femininity) as a sickness is just...species loathing. We aren't all going to be Pope Francis and Dorothy Day, the Deli Lama and Gertrude Stein (or whoever your heroes and heroines, if any, are). Most of us humans are going to be kind of rough, unresolved, unrefined, basically decent people with flaws, sometimes second rate aspirations, and a mess of other stuff -- not because we are rotten to the core, but because it's the best we can do under the circumstances.
Your problem isn't that you are stereotyping; profiling; I have nothing against either stereotyping and profiling. But it's important, if anyone is going to understand people, to have lots of categories, lots of profiles, lots of pigeon holes to put people in. I was in a Whole Foods store the other day -- first time in a couple of years, and I thought the customers looked familiar: Oh sure, this is the Food Coop crowd. Nice people, but a segment of the market populated by more than the usual number of vegetarians and organic snack eaters. People who eat meat, but want assurances that their chicken, pig, cow, and lamb all lived fulfilling lives before they met the axe.
This song in part touches upon male homosexuality, so it likely isn’t for the really true macho men out there (unless, maybe, they’ve spent too much time in prisons). Other than that, it kind of speaks to the underlying issue of masculinity for us male heterosexuals as well.
The version I know of:
Cut and pasted from Google search:
------
Lyrics
Take your mind back- I don't know when-
Sometime when it always seemed to be just us and them.
Girls that wore pink, boys that wore blue,
Boys that always grew up better men than me and you.
What's a man now, what's a man mean?
Is he rough- or is he rugged, cultural and clean?
Now it's all changed- it's got to change more.
We think it's getting better, but nobody's really sure.
And so it goes, go round again,
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
See the nice boys dancing in pairs,
Golden earring, golden tan, blow-wave in the hair-
Sure they're all straight, straight as a line.
All the guys are macho, see their leather shine.
You don't want to sound dumb, don't want to offend,
So don't call me a faggot, not unless you are a friend.
Then if you're tall, handsome and strong,
You can wear the uniform and I could play along.
And so it goes, go round again,
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
Time to get scared, time to change plan,
Don't know how to treat a lady, don't know how to be a man.
Time to admit, what you call defeat,
'Cause there's women running past you now-
And you just drag your feet.
Man makes a gun, man goes to war,
Man can kill, and man can drink, and man can take a whore.
Kill all the blacks, kill all the reds,
If there's war between the sexes then there'll be no people left.
And so it goes, go round again,
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
And so it goes, go round again,
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
And so it goes, go round again,
But now and then we wonder who the real men are
Songwriters: Joe Jackson
Real Men lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
------
(Bread, man, bread ...)
Ribbing (endless teasing, after puberty) is there to continually mediate and check status of others.
Testosterone contextually mediates for status in a group setting, an amplifier of context specific behavior (like ribbing). It can make males who are prone aggression more aggressive but it can also attenuate aggression as a means of maintaining or attaining individual status in a group hierarchy.
Imagine a philosophy forum stripped of its testicles. I can't.
What is the ratio of male responses to female ones in this forum? Secret curious statistic...
No. I take the view that if one is man, then whatever one does is an expression of masculinity. And I am a real man, so you can safely agree.
But, what if you were transgender or gay? Would that detract from what you are saying as a 'real man'? It all seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, no?
What is being expressed here? Very depressing shit to read about.
Here's the article:
https://nypost.com/2017/09/27/sheriff-insists-murder-of-transgender-teen-not-a-hate-crime/
In short, let the images and stereotypes follow you, rather than feeling you ought to follow them, let alone that you ought to oblige another to follow them on pain of being stabbed and burned. That too is masculine behaviour, but more to the point, it is repulsive behaviour.
So, is it a deficiency in some emotion or feeling that causes (predominantly) men the need to express or display their masculinity in such a manner and way or is it an excess of some sort? How does one guide men to tame these animalistic spirits? Heck, I doubt animals are capable of such deeds and actions. The sane and rational me is quite worried about this state of affairs.
Even deeper, is it society to blame for this form of behavior? I can't imagine these events happening in more developed cultures like Germany or the European countries or the UK. Typically the neuroticism doesn't reach psychotic levels there and if one can't-do anything about it, they tend to off themselves or are deprived of the tools to make their desire manifest.
Well yes, I think you have it about right. Shall we say that a perceived deficiency, measured according to a faulty image of masculinity, leads to an exaggerated performance of the image, which is itself already exaggerated, and so to an excessive demand that others also perform to support the image? I think this is the best explanation of homophobia and the like - that even the possibility that another can deviate from the image is a threat to one's whole being. Thus, not to join in with the gauging and burning is to fail the image of masculinity.
It is perhaps in pointing out the weakness, the effeminacy, the sheeplike nature of such behaviour, that one might hope to guide others to have the strength to resist the images that are purveyed by society and the media.
There seems to be more to it than just an image that can't be realized. Not unlike the concept of self-esteem, there is an image that changes due to the variety of people; but, also an issue that the image cannot ever be realized (after all who has learned how to limit their desires apart from the sages and Buddhists, which are in the grand scheme of things, quite a few). So, at some deeper level, one can live with having low-self esteem and be depressed or neurotic; but, with masculinity, it goes to the deeper level of some sense of insecurity about one's self.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, however, you can't reason with such a drive or desire to be masculine if you so happen to be a male. I don't quite understand the process of adapting to not being masculine, it goes against that drive at a very deep level.
Traits.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Masculinity is not a belief.
Saying masculinity is a belief is like saying attached ear lobes are a belief.
Then what is it?
Some unconscious process?
How do you know that?
It's a set of physical and mental traits associated with maleness.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Observe. You want to be a leader, for example, act masculine (to a degree).
Yeah but how do you know when that trait has been expressed to the required or sufficient and adequate amount or degree. It's almost as though it can be expressed forever without knowing some baseline or whether or not it's an inferiority complex manifesting itself or some form of neuroticism or overcompensation.
Do you mean something like you don't know if your beard, for example, is a simple expression of masculinity or based on some form of underlying neuroticism?
From a Lacanian perspective, you certainly can. The desire/sickness is formed by our unconscious ego that mirrors society.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The point I was attempting to convey is that this image that we portray - call it 'style' - is empty, a vacuous expression formed by creating an false image of themselves according to the social attitudes masculinity or femininity represents in their environments. Being physically bulky by taking steroids, wearing certain forms of clothes, having a beard, what are they if this man is a coward? If he thoroughly enjoys hurting or watching someone being hurt who is vulnerable and in need of his support? This is where Kant comes in; a rational, autonomous being - a person who transcends this social bullshit - forms an idealised version of themselves based on moral principles that universalises their conscience to their identity. They can still be strong, still get defensive, but they will do it in favour of those that need their help, they will fight for injustice, for a cause.
No matter how big or small you are, a 'real man' is fearless. Fearless enough to be loving.
Yeah, that could serve as an example. I get the feeling that people may have not evolved, however they can adapt to an ever changing society.
Any Nel Nodding fans here?
I would say that masculinity is a natural acquisitive strategy that is predisposed to be chosen because of the average asymmetry in physical strength between men and women. The mimetic behavior of children quickly leads them into conflict when they imitate the other's acquisitive behavior for the same object (which obviously both can't possess). Men learn that "masculinity" or physical violence (or at least the threat of it) can get them what they want. Women learn that "femininity" or non-physical forms of violence (manipulation, whether through beauty or otherwise) can get them what they want while avoiding their weakness (lack of physical strength).
For example, two men may like the same women, and the more one of them likes her, the more the other will like her (because they imitate each other). If one of them is more masculine than the other (they have bigger muscles, more money, etc.) then they will use violence to get the woman for themselves. And the violence in our day is mostly invisible - only the unspoken threat of it is sufficient. Simply being bulkier, having more money, etc. is enough to convince the double.
Thus, violence is paradoxically the means through which the escalation of violence is brought to a halt. That is the fundamental trait of all human culture, society, and religion - the resolution of conflict and the establishment of order through violence, which is then effaced and projected unto a victim - oh it was her who didn't like him, she liked me. Or the other becomes sacralized - he's such a great guy, he backed down himself. And so the violence at the foundation of culture remains hidden, which is exactly what is required for it to play its founding role.
Only Christ unearths the violence and sides with the victim.
Bah. When you say 'leader', I think you mean 'figurehead' - an image stuck at the prow of the boat - rather than the guy in the stern with his hand on the tiller. You want to be a leader, start steering the right course.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Yes it's a very deep root of identity. The self is made of such images, and being imaginary at root, is always insecure. This insecurity is intolerable, and 'un-masculine'. And so one acts masculine.
But one only has to act (as if) one was something, to the extent one is not that thing. If men are masculine, they do not have to act; if some men are more masculine than others, neither have to act. Folks act to escape what they are, which is futile, painful and self-destructive. Have a dick by all means, be a dick if that's what you are, but for God's sake don't feel obliged to act like a dick.
Yeah, but we already know how that ends up. Jog your mind back to 1939. Fascinating and horrible times.
*On a side note, this is why Europe is considered the most culturally and educated place on the world. They learned what rampant violence leads to. So, does Russia know that violence abroad or at home is a cause for concern and are seemingly more rational than who won the Cold War? I can't but help but shake the belief that acts of tremendous violence on people or an ethnic group or an entire nation are a prerequisite for desiring peace. One can only understand a decision or the path taken in retrospect / looking behind. Then again, the spoils go to the victor.
I feel the influence of Jung here. I do agree that images are worth more than what words can say, therefore are we doomed to be led towards idealized pictures or can these things be rationalized and taught by words alone?
Quoting unenlightened
No, that's the problem here. The desire can never be satisfied once a perceived deficit is conjured up. The image is never attained due to a variety of factors (which I would be interested in exploring more).
Quoting unenlightened
It's a form of self-soothing. We act so we can interact. Diogenes never found a true human being with his lantern after all. Maybe he just needed to take a look at himself in a mirror(?)
Quoting unenlightened
There is something about being a dick that is satisfying. It makes me feel better when you feel bad or down. I justify my happiness by the misery of others.
Source.
I didn't say "good" leader.
Quoting unenlightened
We have to act. Period. In doing so we are necessarily acting as if we are something because we are something, something that is both a result of and a cause of our actions. It may be futile to pretend to be something but it's just as futile to pretend that you can't be more than you are at least to some degree. But that more should not be more dick. Agree with that part.
To attribute physical predispositions to masculinity is a mistake; as mentioned, many men work very hard to convey this physical image and character as 'tough' but the experience of masculinity is entirely subjective. I may be female, feminine and small in stature, but I have 'bigger balls' then most men because masculine attributes are socially constructed ideas that purport 'strength' i.e. being emotionless, being the breadwinner etc., and other pressures that often lead to unhappiness and a lack of satisfaction in life. If I am absolute in my dedication to righteousness that I would turn my back even on the closest of people if they committed evils, if I believe in honour, integrity that has become a part of the fabric of my personality, if I endure in the face of severe hardship and apply methods to strengthen my fearlessness and courage, does that mean - despite the fact that I possess feminine physical attributes and that I am naturally petite and quiet in nature - that I am masculine?
Masculine and feminine are subjective and almost ideological that it presents itself as reality; the value of 'power' and 'achievement' becomes a productive network that enables such stereotypes to efficiently maintain the structure of society but the fact is that any physical 'image' that people categorise as representative of this ideology is false.
Quoting Agustino
As mentioned, just like political ideology can become the impetus that can promote mobilisation and a productive sociopolitical network as it functions in contrast to an Other that ultimately defines power, conformity can also do the same socially. As said by Anderson: "Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.... Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings.”
These social constructs form a bond, a community that in their own imagination develop a sense of belonging. At the moment, this so-called masculine look is very popular where I am from:
The worst part about it is that every guy who now has this look thinks he is original. How exactly is it possible for people to think they are independent and individual when they are doing what everyone else is doing? Is it not a sickness when you see young girls all trying to appear 'original' when they are mimicking the Kardashians?
Quoting Agustino
The girl has nothing to do with it; it is just a display and entirely subjective for want of power. If either one actually loved the girl, it can easily be proven [think Solomon and the baby with two mothers].
Quoting Agustino
:s Such morons, its almost painful.
It isn't entirely subjective. Whether someone is the stronger or weaker party is an objective fact. Say someone has a gun and the other person has a knife, the one with the gun is objectively stronger in most situations, even if he's a coward compared to the other one. Sure there is the extreme situation wherein he is such a coward that he cannot wield the gun well enough, but that's not what I'm talking about here.
Quoting TimeLine
That may be so, but that's only one aspect of masculinity.
Quoting TimeLine
It does mean that you have some masculine traits while lacking others.
And I wouldn't say being dedicated to righteousness is a "masculine" trait any more than it is a feminine one. Or do you mean to claim that women don't generally believe in honor, integrity and the like? I would think that that would be false - women can believe in honor and integrity just as much as men can and that doesn't make them masculine.
Quoting TimeLine
LOL! I would say that that guy looks quite the opposite of masculine :P . You need to differentiate between masculinity as an objective fact and masculinity as a social construct. That guy may be thought of as masculine but the objective facts of the situation betray that he's not. It may be possible that for whatever reason females within a certain culture prefer a guy looking like that, but this cannot change the underlying reality. In this case, the said females would merely be deceived by what constitutes masculinity. And such states are artificial and will not last in the end.
Quoting TimeLine
Because human beings are mimetic animals, meaning that our desires are not really our own but are acquired from others.
I can own this by removing one word - well three, for grammar's sake:
[quote=unenlightened]We have to act. Period. In doing so we are necessarily acting as something because we are something, something that is both a result of and a cause of our actions.[/quote]
I don't have to act as if I'm a logic chopping pedant, it comes naturally.
Quoting Baden
I call that 'learning' or 'applied ignorance', the magic whereby one can do what one cannot do. The pretence is that I am fixed, when it is only that I hold to a fixed image of myself.
The word you're looking for is 'feminine'. What is feminine there is the aesthetic concern with personal image over substance. Real men delight in their physicality without that narcissistic concern for the camera's gaze. Or so recent tradition would have it. We used to call men like that 'dandies'.
That's what I thought. Bloody hell...
I can only hope I can put my own vanity and narcissism to better use than that. Again, ugh.
No >:O
Well, at least you didn't say "Yes". :D
Personally, as an aside, I ain’t no real nothing … and am real with myself in so being (yea, deal with the multiple negatives … hopefully, I counted them properly). Were I to have been birthed in Scotland, I’d be no true Scotsman either. Etc. That said, this song brings up the question: Wouldn’t self-proclaimed real dicks say that this song is for real pussies?
Now, I gather that dicks, pussies, and assholes are not cultural constructs (yes, they are biological givens) … but the symbolic connotations culturally ascribed to all three sure as culture are. People like Cleopatra have no place in our current cultural constructs: Was she feminine? Yes according to what we’re told (Cesar certainly thought so). Was she a pussy? Um, it would be doublethink to assert either “yes” or “no”. I get that this is swimming upstream against the flow of modern culture, so—instead of building up a long justification for this, which won’t make any difference anyways—I’ll skip strait to the intended conclusion: to pigeonhole real men (and thus masculinity) to being a dick and real women (and thus femininity) to being a pussy is to be a real asshole.
I can hear the real men grumbling: the real men hold the positive traits and it can only be a pussy—a sex betraying pussy at that—that will affirm that pussies aren’t defined by negative traits. (This form of culturally ingrained reasoning is why I personally believe feminists as a group have gotten such a bad rap for their desire of equal worth between men and women.)
All I got to say to this is that pussycats can sometimes be found in damn big sizes. Ya know, tigers and such. Other times they’re stated to wear boots. In any case, I wouldn’t mind living in a world where pussies (and femininity) are deemed of equal value to dicks (and masculinity), and in which neither draw blatant attention to also being assholes (a gender-neutral trait).
(I figure my initial question still stands in regard to the issue of masculinity.)
Sorry, what question was that?
this one: Quoting javra
To be clear, the question (and post) was thrown out there in general; not to you in particular. Again, to me, it touches upon what the concept of masculinity is to some (e.g., non-pussy-ness: including lack of attributes such as those of understanding and respectful compromises), and on what it is, or ought to be, to others (e.g., appreciation of things inclusive of the song you've posted).
Edit: just in case this needs clarifying: I’ve always taken for granted that the song “I’m not in love” is about a guy who’s in self-denial about being in love … and that it’s sentimental. Where I’m from, plenty of macho men would presume this song is for wusses. I at least wouldn’t be playing this song loudly while driving through the ghetto thinking that others would view me as masculine for listening to it (unless I felt like proving somethin’ … theoretically).
It is entirely subjective. What you say does not make someone masculine or feminine, it just makes someone stronger or weaker. This woman at my gym who has an arm the size of both my thighs is not masculine, she is just strong.
The identification to these so-called masculine attributes and gender-roles is so powerful that despite its imagined and hybrid status, people will continue to defend its existence as much as a racist would continue defending his position against the Other. The emotional attachment to this imagined masculine-feminine paradigm yields the actual belief that they love the person that personifies the same archetype and that those who conform to the same attitude are their friends and comrades. That is how stupid they are. It is nothing but a relational mode of identification.
Quoting Agustino
Uh, you're not getting it.
Alright, think of it like the gender-neutral harmony between masculine and feminine attributes in Taoism; the Yin Yang solidifies an inseperable bond within that cultivates the dissolution of vicious or cruel behaviour through moral virtue and ethics. This is an individual, subjective challenge and whether physically you are a man or a woman, to find this balance you need to welcome and identify with both. Characteristics that form feminine attributes are soft, modest, non-violent while those of masculinity are firm, honourable and conditional or unforgiving. There is no dominant/subservient when seeking moral consciousness and to be genuinely loving but rather a unity or equality.
A woman that stays with a man because he controls and manipulates her into thinking she loves him and for him to think that she loves him is insanity, it will only last as long as he continues inflicting fear, which is why many men control women by preventing them from work or education because as soon as their partners start growing professionally, they begin to realise that they are not actually happy and end up leaving them. Real love is about two people who genuinely want one another, an equal balance.
Quoting Agustino
You need to understand that how you perceive masculinity is different according to the culture that you come from, hence the subjectivity. It has nothing to do with the objective facts, his physical form. In some cultures, women eating with men is just morally deplorable and it makes those men who witness a woman eating feel less masculine. Or a woman who gets circumcised is more feminine than a woman who doesn't. Just because a large cohort of people practice the same behaviour, does not make it real.
Quoting Agustino
We have the capacity to transcend and form our own identity; it may be that we are inevitably doomed to never escape this epistemic position but we can identify to Forms, to universal moral principals that we define according to our desire to perfect our own character. It is to translate that desire and communicate the best possible outcome for our inescapable condition.
Well the song depicts a man trying to persuade himself that he does not have tender feelings; a man trying to be manly according to a common image of manliness. It expresses the pain of doing that to oneself, and the impossibility of it.
On the one hand, we could argue sociologically about what images of manhood are promoted in a particular culture that men are pressured to conform themselves to. And on the other hand, we could argue biologically about what are the facts of manhood.
If we are arguing about the facts of manhood, then we need to accept the fact that men are very varied in their personalities, inclinations habits and identities. There are, in almost every culture, dandies and scruff-bags, aggressive and unaggressive, feeling and unfeeling, gays and straights, and so on.
If there is an argument about whether it is better to be a pussycat or a tiger, one might want to count the offspring, or one might want to count the populations, or one might want to read the Bible. However one measures it, one is moving from the facts to the images, and not merely describing but advocating. I'm with Bob Dylan on this:
Power involves risk.
Interesting. To me, for example, the image of a father (an image of masculinity) does bring about inherent notions of tenderness, such as toward his kids, this alongside firmness when needed. This to try to say that the experiencing of love is to me as much masculine as it is feminine, though the two will sometimes express and react to it in different ways. Though, yes, being an owner of tender feelings might be viewed as weakness of being, non-masculine, in some notions of masculinity.
Quoting unenlightened
Agreed. I also like and agree with your notion of “image”, btw. I’ll venture that the image of masculinity is furthermore in part made by a) what males, boys included, desire to become (the image of this being potentially termed “a man’s man”) and b) what women desire to someday be around romantically (the image of this being potentially termed “a woman’s man”). The exact opposite could be argued for femininity; though I’ve yet to hear of “a woman’s woman” and of “a man’s woman”--at least not with the semantics here intended.
I find agreement with the rest of your post. In truth, my main interests with this thread can be boiled down to this personal belief: A sense of compassion (alongside others, such as courage and strength) ought to be at the very core of all images we hold of masculinity, else we risk our cultural image of masculinity to become an esteemed image of psychopathy. Other than that, to each their own. (But no, one man’s opinion does not a culture make.)
Yes, yes, all well and good (and very, very nicely stated, too). But how does one answer the rebuttal that, “this is all part of a movement to castrate men’s masculinity by depriving men of our inalienable (God and/or biology-given) rights to subjugate women as we men see fit (else, we’re not true men)”?
No, really; I personally don’t know how to address such a rebuttal effectively. So I’m asking. I see a little too much of this type or reasoning from my own corner of the world, including on the internet (hopefully it’s much better in other parts of the world).
Okay but objectively, because there is a difference in physical strength between men and women, it is physical strength that is associated with masculinity. Physical strength isn't used to denote just the physical aspect though as it seems to, but rather any kind of brute force that overwhelms the other through its very application. That's why control over the army is similar to physical strength - it is masculine, the kind of power that overwhelms by brute strength - by compelling the other will to obey it forcefully, rather than - for example - persuading it or manipulating it.
Persuasion is born out of love, but manipulation and brute strength are forms of violence.
Quoting TimeLine
I would say that that's precisely one thing that makes her more masculine than you in that regard.
Quoting TimeLine
Okay I agree with this, but it doesn't have to do with what I said before.
Quoting TimeLine
Sure, as an individual each has both feminine and masculine traits.
Quoting TimeLine
That depends from what perspective you look. I will demonstrate with the example below.
Quoting TimeLine
Real love does not require the consent of the other, it is purely an individual choice - it only has to do with the individual, unlike violence which always has to do with the other. Nothing, not even rejection, can stop real love from loving. But from the point of view of the wicked party - of the violent party - love is the absolutely most violent and cruel phenomenon.
Many people treat virtue and compassion as weak and ineffective - but the truth is that they are like two swords - the sharpest of swords.
Take your example of the manipulative man. His behavior justifies - in the eyes of the woman - her betrayal of him. Her violence is justified by his violence in her eyes, and therefore she can commit it in good conscience. She can betray her husband, because he has first initiated aggression. And her husband will react the same way she reacts - through an escalation of violence because he is now justified to be more violent, which of course does nothing but cement the woman in her violence towards the husband. She is proven to be correct in her eyes, she has all the right to betray him, she has all the right to be violent. That is, of course, a great lie. She could just forgive him.
But now imagine that the husband always encourages the woman in her career, and always seeks to help her. Now there is great trouble... even if she wants to leave him, she cannot - at least not in good faith. She cannot leave him in good faith without seeing herself for what she is - a traitor. The Socratic irony is that love ends up being the best form of control, and the sharpest sword, even though it looks like it is the weakest of all. To betray her husband she will have to first do great violence to herself and repress the truth of her actions. Such is only possible in bad faith by lying to herself and will never be justified. And so, if she is a wicked, selfish person, she will perceive her husband's love as the absolute worst form of violence, and will probably try to provoke the husband to violence, in order to have a way to justify herself.
This is what Jesus Christ revealed through His Passion. By allowing Himself to be killed by the forces of evil without opposing them, he revealed their true nature. Evil could no longer play the game of its violence being justified - it could no longer pretend that the victim is guilty and deserves death. And so we are reminded of Dante's image from the Divine Comedy of Satan nailed to the Cross.
Clearly you were not brought up to have a stiff upper lip with which to administer The British Empire. That whisper, 'Big boys don't cry' sends a shiver down my spine still. And google sent me to this article about male depression, which is very relevant to the op, and several others on this site.
Yes, I think that psychologically people are different.
As for why, I think it may be because of a combination of upbringing and personality. Nature vs. nurture. The truth is that both contribute to a person's path in life. It's possible something biological could predispose people to certain things, even influencing personality. But nature isn't all to blame, people train children to act a certain way. Parents have their own issues they pass on to their children one way or another, although they manifest in different ways.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I don't think they necessarily need a woman, I think they need ways to relax after long days of toil and work. Any guy with a computer can go to porn when he needs to. Sometimes relationships can be more frustrating than not. Men don't need to be weighted down by more frustration after their already daily frustration. And it kind of bothers me when people think that relationships can solve everything. Relationships are work. Friendships and romantic involvement are not like getting a pet. A man should be able to be happy and care for himself on his own without a woman.
Thus a person without physical strength is not masculine? One of my friends, for instance, is a physically muscular Samoan guy who is a giant marshmallow and wouldn't hurt a fly and squirms at the sight of violence. Is he masculine? Just like how the ideology of nationalism is imagined and yet the depth of this social construct is nevertheless contained within a highly sophisticated and productive network that materialises the unreal, you are transferring this phenomena into an objective reality that does not actually exist neither is it natural. We are attempting to define ourselves within society by adapting to the social construct of masculinity as a way or language to articulate your relationship with your environment and form a bond with it. If we deconstruct the psychological foundations of masculinity in an individual, it exhibits a vulnerable person who has a distorted ego that attempts to adopt this appearance as a way to culturally signal that he epitomises what society has formed as an archetype. It is just an image.
Real masculine/feminine are in Forms, the material or physical is merely symbolic as we communicate to others through body language. "I am a man. I am not weak. I can hurt you so back off." But, without any clarity of what masculinity actually is vis-a-vis forms, i.e. courage and a strength of will, all the physical represents is conformity to the social construct. It is an empty shell. This is why in aggressive, paternalistic cultures that promotes violence as an indication of masculinity, gender-based violence is at epidemic proportions along with suicide rates due to the unwarranted pressure. An army without morals is dangerous.
Quoting Agustino
Mistake. Why? See your own quote next:
Quoting Agustino
This is what the masculinity/femininity paradigm represents; justice, righteousness, loyalty, moral firmness that contains the very solidity and effective prowess that transcends the material form. It is subjective and representative of the choices that you make, the fruits of your labour and not how you appear which only indicates conformity.
Quoting Agustino
Love is not violent, you see when you become capable of transcending the social construct and forming an idealised version of yourself based on moral consciousness, your love becomes universalised. You understand the ebb and flow of giving love that it cannot be violent or cruel; you have moved beyond the need to feel anger or hatred because you become whole and are no longer attempting to communicate or articulate who you are to the material world around you. Just as one imagines and falsely follows social archetypes and constructs and become fixated on continuously trying to prove himself to an insatiable and unsatisfied environment in all its futility, letting that go and embracing who you are is what one would call self-love.
Only two individuals who have transcended social constructs to universalise love by forming an idealised version of themselves based on forms and morality are they capable of being able to "see" and ultimately experience "real" love with someone who has also done the same. It is two individuals of the same nature sharing. If you follow an archetype, you are conformist who follows society and are thus vulnerable to loving the same, which would certainly make it cruel; if you don't know yourself, how can you love others?
In regards to his physical strength and physical size yes. In other regards, no.
Quoting TimeLine
Maybe not in itself, but to the one who is violent, love is also violent. Violence cannot see beyond itself, and will perceive even love to be of its own nature fundamentally.
Really great people there too.
As I see it this is _the_ philosophical question --or at least the central question of amateur or genuine philosophy. I stress "amateur" as opposed to academic philosophy as "genuine" because insisting that philosophy should be an institutionalized expert culture is already to assert implicitly "a certain way that we ought to express masculinity." It _assumes_ a "spirit of seriousness" and IMO is already "scientistic." The medium is the message here. The invisible background is itself already the decision.
I stress masculinity when I ought to stress virtue. The deep question is "how ought we to express virtue?" Arguably we answer this constantly whether we want to or not. If I conflate the expression of masculinity and virtue, I'm just nodding to the fact that (to my knowledge) the vast majority of those (outside of the institutions of expert culture) who invoke the "great philosophers" in their presentations of their own notions of virtue are men. These great philosophers, especially "the old masters," are of course themselves men. They are the "fathers" of profound, transcendent, universal truth. This "profound, transcendent, universal truth" is itself the philosophical "phallus."
I personally read political and epistemological positions as secondary. They are (for me) expressions of personal virtue. If they are presented as "rational," then rationality itself is the personal virtue involved.
From my arguably perverse and boring and irrational perspective, Posty's OP question implies a answer. As he asked it, he implied that seeking after the true way to express masculinity (virtue in men) is itself the true way of expressing masculinity (virtue in men). I agree, but explicitly, and without thinking the question is merely rhetorical.
I'm hoping for any new input and to dispel the bleak and depressing "truth" that a man only is a man if he can realize his full potential as a male.
So, if we assume the above, then we can either choose to reinforce the male dominant stereotype or embrace some other alternative, which surely exists.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/can-human-traits-be-formalized.927606/
Yeah, after a while I just got used to the beatings my father did to me physically and psychologically.
Got ya.
I'm not sure what you're seeking to find out by this. Especially by choosing to reinforce or take up an alternative for male dominant stereotype. Who is to choose that?
The most important trait, in any case, is adaptability. So, even if we reach a conclusion that male/female stereotype is just a thing of our day and age, we still live in the society of those stereotypes (there is a good reason for them anyway).
If you live only for yourself, then you may simply not care about what expressing masculinity is or is not. You simply do whatever you want, which, realistically speaking, is almost impossible. If you, on the other hand, care about what others think of you and your position in our pecking order, then adapting to our current social hierarchy and stereotypes is the only valid option.
No, it was a facade. But, you get the point don't you? This is a special place.
What was the "facade"? And yes, I DO get the point that this is a special place.
Over the past decade I have talked privately to the administration of both PF and TPF and I think all of the moderators individually, letting them know just how much I value their being here.
Remember that the forum, any forum is nothing without it's members and their contributions, so I do try to handle those I meet here carefully and lovingly.
And that is not a facade, it's who I genuinely am and my hope is that it is enough for you.
It is not coincidence that men have invented and discovered the vast majority of things. This is connected to seeing in the visual cortex and processing in the frontal lobe. Women are better at maintaining the social capacitance of culture, as defined by language and traditions. Males are more likely to become criminals or rebels, since the frontal lobe and male front to back pathways are connected to the imagination, which brings up things beyond the limits of the senses.
Being male is connected to fully developing the front to back and back to front pathways of the brain. This can lead to the development and use of sensory expectation. Sensory expectation anticipates what is out there, ahead of time. When this expectation is seen, in the future, it will trigger a gut feeling; eureka.
This based on the male sexual drive. In the male, the happy ending appears first in the imagination. Foreplay is for the women. This sensory expectation motivates him to move within his environment to get reality to overlap, so he can satisfy the expectation. Sometimes, the path in the middle may not conform to social PC and female standards, since the goal, is the goal, not the path. This flexible path approach allows men to be risky and learn to tolerate discomfort during the path, since the goal is the goal. Discovery builds upon this basic schema.
Maternal instinct is more geared to security since the female is vulnerable during pregnancy and has to care for the needs of a vulnerable child after pregnancy. She prefers a secure structuring. This is offered by the side-to side processing of cultural thoughts and feelings.
In the ideal world, men are able to be men and women are able to be women so they can take advantage of natural instincts. Each learns to fully level their key pathways. When they unite as one, in intimate relations, the two different pathways of the brain; front to back and side to side, form a symbolic cross in time and space, so each can help the other learn the way of the other. The team becomes more than the sum of its parts.