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Is it just me, or is being a man actually pretty cool?
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Yeah, it is, Uberganger. As long as we keep our joy to ourselves, we'll be okay.
I remember my wife complaining to me one time she didn't understand why men got all the cool toys. "Because, my dear, we choose to play with them" was my reply.
Frank H
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Great reply to your wife, Frank. And, hell yes, it's cool being a man.
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Celebrating men may prove to be the most effective way of countering all the anti-male hatred and lies of the last three and a half decades.
Hooray for men and boys!
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday October 09, @11:33AM EST (#5)
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And don't forget guys, we showed up our critics through honour, courage, and dignity. that's how we won this one, and it was one great victory.
Adam H
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday October 09, @12:12PM EST (#6)
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This is all great to see. But I'm cautious of the cheerleader syndrome. This author actually says that men who risk their lives for others as a career are better than other men who don't. I prefer her to those who just want to bash men or ignore the gender of the heroes in this scene. But the things she's saying, when taken too far, amount to the use of masculinity as a tool to manipulate men into being soldier pawns and death job workers in order to prove their manhood. One person in the article is quoted in a way that would support the idea that masculinity is something you have to earn, rather than being inherent in being male. That has been used to enslave men for too long now. I don't mean to be negative in a positive moment. But I think it has to be said.
Marc
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Too true, Marc. Thanks for being the voice of caution and reason.
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I fully agree, Marc. In fact, many months ago, there was an eerily prophetic discussion at this site about the glamorization of war, in which I voiced my thoughts on how the "celebration" of male heroism in WWII and other disasters sends a rather disturbing message to men. Rather than re-word what I said, I'll just provide a link to the original thread. Just scroll down and look for Hawth - although I think the other comments posted would probably be interesting to re-read as well.
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Good point. It's interesting that there is this idea that to be a man you have to go through some kind of horrible experience to test your mettle. I have mixed feelings about this. I hate the idea that you *must* go through horrible experiences to prove your masculinity, but at the same time I think that the way people behave in the direst of circumstances can say a lot about the kind of people they are. In relation to the WTC atrocity, the behaviour of a large number of men was both impressive and humbling, and a reminder that there is so much more to men than the rubbish you tend to find in women's magazines. It's a shame any man had to die to remind us of this.
Perhaps we should invert the argument and ask why it is that we don't require women to prove themselves in this way.
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I wish to contradict the theme of this article. In my opinion, women, at least North American women, have little tolerance for males with any kind of self respect and/or character. Rather, they individually and collectively, in general, will denigrate, discriminate against, and oppress males who demonstrate these same qualities. They seem, in general, only to tolerate males who are weak and/or base.This same view point is valideated by the religious dogma of many faiths (for example the story of Adam and Eve where the female preferred the weak and base Satan over man) and classical pyschiatric theory (the basic envy of women for men because of their gender in psychological terms with the resulting destructive attitude that they take towards men as a result of the same). However, my premises are based on my personal observations not religious dogma nor classical psychological theories. Observe and you will see the same.
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday October 10, @05:40PM EST (#12)
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Learn. Bravado seeketh a place in fundamental organisations as witnessed of late in the Taliban regiegm. A reasonable analysis then would not disclude these observations as well my friend.
Throwback perspectives will seperate us as metaphoricaly as putting our women in covered sacks top to bottom. (This said I do belong to this group being like minded mostly to people here)
In true Islam women have a better chance to attain equality than in our Judeo-Christian model of society. The Bible instructs women to honor men as their superior where the general thrust is procreation biased. I hope, after the backlash sane minds will prevail within our society.
Our American cultural "baptism by fire" at the trade center/pentagon is a phenomenon that has a flag waving nationalist veneer so evident in that many of the very same people (and I "generalize") have political leanings to side away from present day U.S. Isreali foreign policy and think if you observe this casualy too you will find the same.
We are a unique nation who has attained a piece of the planet by a brutal dishonoring of those who lived here first. It's little wonder that the Jews who keep a capitalist organisation operating so well (generalized!) look better to us as far as policy goes than nomadic tribes. We are acustomed to stepping on non Judeo-christian people and it feels familier to us. Gross, I dont like it.
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I think all of goes through a "hazing" of some sort, but I think that a society that structures such a rite of passage does so with the intent of educating boys (and girls, too) as to what that can do that they don't realize they can before the "trials by fire". It doesn't have to be a horrible experience, though it does have to be challenging. Is a fireman more masculine than an accountant? Well, maybe, but not based on his career choice.
One of the difficulties of proving one's masculinity is that right now, in this feminized society, we really don't even know what it is to be masculine. Women claim, justifiably or not, all the traits that men used to associate with the definition of masculinity. But is this really real? If we accept for the moment that firemen are examples of masculine men, we can look at some demographics: in NYC there are 11,000 fireMEN and 45 fireWOMEN, even after the rules were changed by court mandate. Oh, yeah, now we have to call them fireFIGHTERS, but the reality is that those things we thought were masculine, even if we can't objectively measure them, still are, and the women who choose traditionally masculine careers are nothing more than exceptions to the rule.
Therefore, masculinity lives, it is valuable, and despite all the feminists claims to the contrary, it has not changed.
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