THE THREE B’s AND DEFINIng MASCULINITY
Hello all,
Join me as I once again attempt to come to terms with what masculinity means to me. And as I try to wrestle it from the toxic misnomer within which it has been so tightly entangled.
Or more strictly speaking, what do I think it means to be masculine without embodying any of the toxic traits it’s often conflated with.
For starters, I’ll state masculinity as good ol’ Mary Webs defines it:
Masculinity : the quality or nature of the male sex : the quality, state, or degree of being masculine or manly.
That’s actually… quite vague, isn’t it?
I can’t say this definition is bringing me any closer to defining what masculinity is or how I would even go about beingmasculine.
So, why don’t I take a crack at the definition?
Masculinity : The embodiment of a specific, and widely accepted social perspective regarding the male gender.
That’s still not as enlightening as I’d like, but it gets me a little closer because now I know that masculinity isn’t this vague, self-defining term.
It exists within a social zeitgeist. From there, the rest is as easy as figuring out which society and which zeitgeist, and I can try to define masculinity.
Or can I?
I’ve always believed what it means to be a man has, for as long as I can remember, been about your purpose.
What it is that you do. The value you provide to your community, either at large or locally. Going all the way back to our nomadic, hunter-gatherer roots.
Farmer. Sheepherder. Mason. Athlete. Whatever.
But I believe because of the natural weeding out process that is technological advancement, many functions previously used to assign meaning were identified for their redundancies- and, for better or worse, are being eliminated or automated.
Following the rise of the Ouroboros-like machine that is industrial capitalism; wage has become just as important as function when it comes to self-actualization and purpose. Or the assigning of value. Which, I learned, is in no way shape or form the same thing as assigning meaning.
I’d even hazard a theory as to when this began, and it’d probably be around the time we started so closely linking the concepts of time with money.
In the not too distant past, many men, and later and to a smaller degree, women, were faced with the reality that is needing to keep up with rising costs via inflation. This put a much sharper emphasis on attaining a higher and higher wage as a means of ascribing not only social function, but social mobility and status.
And as human beings, we love status. Attaining it, discussing it, ascribing it. It is in our nature to be classist. It’s our third favorite thing after- and this is in no particular order-, war and ourselves.
But even though we now have all these new, other markers to denote what qualities a man should embody as a measure of his function- or at least in terms of what his society deems to be the qualities or functions attributed to masculinity ormanhood, the definition of masculinity in discourse today is somehow narrower.
I’ve witnessed (western)male society’s fervent zeal and infatuation for titular strongmen, daredevil, and soldier archetypes. I would guess, that’s more than likely a result of war propaganda… Largely(and often deceptively) aimed at targeting young men into enlisting into military service as a means of fulfilling or proving their society’s definition of masculinity.
Which, if we boil it down, would essentially be:
Be of use.
Usually via a checklist of vague and arbitrary traits. Protector. Provider. And now, earner.
This quickly started to move society into what became our new, and in many ways, current social zeitgeist. At least in the West. But the rest of the world seems to be following suit.
To me, the bones of masculinity’s vague “alpha male” personification screams of the nostalia of yesteryear. And in my time here, I witnessed that personification begin to wear its skin, becoming a little more fleshed out in people’s minds.
Never mind asking who was truly doing the grafting, or why…
Suffice it to say, the shape western masculinity has been molded into is something I like to call:
Photo by Craig McLachlan on Unsplash
THE THREE B’s
Many young men back then, and still today, are heavily encouraged, if not outright told, to adopt a reckless form of brash, boyish bravado.
And many women in turn are heavily encouraged, if not outright told, to find the types of men who exhibit these qualities, attractive. Further incentivizing young men to adopt this form of “masculinity”.
Fast forward to more recent times and you’ll find not much has changed in the national social embodiment of that zeitgeist. And even though pockets of men have started to break free, or have found a voice able to articulate why they never truly subscribed to the embodying of this definition- there are still many men who staunchly believe in it, and will fight tooth and nail to defend it.
Because how could you call yourself a man, otherwise?
I’ve been to a few places across the globe and noticed that this “three b’s” embodiment when it comes to masculinity is certainly not just a western phenomenon, though Europe has a bit more of a simpler, more straightforward take on it. More of the boyish-rebel, less of the wage-driven working man. But everyone seems just as confused about it as we in the West have been.
But media, specifically American media, is anything but simple and straightforward. It is propaganda. Plain and simple. There is no point dancing around it. If you consume media, you are being brought up to speed on the current social atmosphere via whatever narrative is purported or reinforced by the people you’re closest to.
Or an algorithm. And who knows how those things really work?
Because God knows(it is still God, right?) I’ve never been a fan of the way schools teach social sciences here in North America. Leaning far too heavily on statistical inferences rather than explaining what affects and makes up the many components of, you know… A society.
And in such a confused state of being, it is no surprise to me that young men don’t have a very concrete definition of what it means to be masculine.
As a result of that confusion, they can easily be misled into believing that masculinity is solely correlated with the three Bs and their function as it relates to social value and perception.
And when something like masculinity is so loosely defined, and the next generation of young men are expected to adopt this loose definition as a basis for both function and personality, well… As we’re starting to see, things can go very wrong, very fast.
TO(O) EFFEMINATE
Photo by Ismail Salad Osman Hajji dirir on Unsplash
Because I’ve always found the definition of masculinity so vague, it was very easy to fall into the trap of labelling men who don’t fit the socially acceptable definition of masculinity as not masculine…. i.e, as feminine or effeminate.
It seemed to me, that men are beholden to this sort of imagined set of requirements, that can then be used by others, men and women alike, to determine whether or not a man gets to call himself masculine, or be perceived as such by the rest of the world. As those two things often need to align in people’s minds. The checklist shapes the perception.
Anything falling short of that imagined list and perception… and good luck escaping the shackles of the more pervasive and socially accepted aspects of male machismo. Not to mention the more shrewd and superficial aspects of female selection.
As fascinated as the world is with the brash, boyish bravado definition of masculinity- a concept so tightly wrapped up in how many currently choose to view its interpretation.
To speak for myself, I’ve never been a physically imposing man. And even though I’ve retained a fit appearance throughout my life, mostly due to a high metabolism and an active lifestyle; my smaller stature was a great source of insecurity for me, especially during my formative years. As a young man, I recall being very obsessed with muscle. Building a muscular frame, maintaining it, showing it off. I figured if strength could come from muscle, then I would at least have a good musculature and be strong as a form of aesthetic compensation, even if I wasn’t particularly big.
Imagine my relief when I found out that I had grown a few inches past my initial spurt to hit the impressively average height of 5 foot 10 inches. So, back to the gym I went. To be strong.
The reason for that aside is to give a little insight into the mind of a young man who doesn’t necessarily understand or identify with “masculinity” or rather, his society’s current definition of it. But still feels the need to play the part. There’s been somewhat of a war of perspective within me regarding what constitutes masculinity or masculine behavior.
I’ve always believed that being masculine came from having confidence, wit, and courage. And that masculinity was the pursuit and attainment of these traits. And that had almost nothing to do with being male.
But by the time I arrived here, Americans had already fallen so deeply in love with the masculine archetype of the Quarterback, the Firefighter, and the Businessman, that a young boy from a a very different social zeitgeist did not immediately adjust.
And the twisted, bastardized interpretations of confidence, courage, and wit, became what I observed in the boys who now surrounded me- and later sought to emulate. That same brash, boyish bravado.
All bluff and bluster. Full of that empty showboat-y manliness everyone seemed to love and admire so much.
Think Johnny “Drama” from the hit TV showEntourage.
But not all boys embody the three b’s. Some are shy, bookish, more prone to solitude and introspection. I know I was. But I noticed very quickly that these boys were immediately cast out, tortuted, or intentionally excluded themselves for fear of judgement. Not quite fitting the infatuated version of masculinity that their society held, even at an early age.
Fools, why don’t they adapt? I used to think.
Why not follow the playbook? It’s all right there. In movies and shows. In our father’s words.
They literally tell us…
HOW TO BE A MAN
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash
It wasn’t long before I discovered that any overt display of femininity tended to ostracize a male from his peers. And that this treatment would come from women as well, who were just as initiated into the social zeitgeist as the guys. Even more so, I believe, instrumental as they are to perpetuating this idea of masculinity, since one of the major denoting markers of this version of masculinity is desirability from women.
The phenomenon of young men who tend to overemphasize or dramatize what about them attracts women, or young women who cannot(or will not) properly articulate what about these men they find so attractive, is pretty well documented at this point, isn’t it?
When exactly the shift happened… I cannot say. When a calm, quiet confidence became replaced with the brash, boyish bravado. And when it was welcomed by all as the de facto definition of what it means to be a man.
But we can at least admit that it did happen.
Given the strange, almost antagonistic relationship America has with depicting men of intelligence, men of quiet confidence and reserved countenance as masculine. Choosing instead to often depict them as effeminate or weak and undesirable to women. Pushing a very specific idea of what masculinity means and represents to young boys(and girls) everywhere.
Think Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson from the hit tv show, Smackdown Vs. Raw.
I will say this: as instinctive as it may be to look upon your bastard child and claim it is not yours, that knee-jerk reaction is often one of shame.
Masculinity is, like many things, a social creation.
And like many social creations, it’s heavily reliant on social sentiment. I find masculinity running into very much the same struggles as what James Baldwin once called ‘the Negro problem’.
In his observations of it, he said this:
“I don’t think that the the Negro problem in America can even be discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; it’s context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it.”
The sooner we acknowledge that masculinity(and its current toxic interpretation) is a socially engineered construct from which no one can claim complete innocence, the sooner we can start to re-define it for young men everywhere.
God knows many could use the direction.
…It is still God, right?
