Obviously, there's this correct way to "be a man", and men are "doing it wrong".
This needs to be fixed! Someone should send "men" a text and 'splain it to them. In simple language of course...
Again, with the meme speak illiteracy 8-(
I'll go out on a limb here, and assert that there may be some men who are in fact not doing it wrong. And, at great risk to my HN social score, I would also think it's posible that some women actually are doing it wrong.
In my experience, it really boils down more to being human, rather than being any particular subdivision of the species.
This is the sad, racist, misogynistic reality of identityism.
In fact, trying to identify as anything more specific that "human" leads to massive over-generalization, and the emergence of division and conflict.
As humans, trying to view things truly objectively is impossible (since we each live in our subjective conscousness), but striving to view things objectively is essential to making any progress in understanding each other. So let's keep trying...
While I agree, in general, with your point, I think I disagree on this point.
It is entirely natural, and has been for all of human history, for people to make statements about themselves like:
- I am a woman
- I am a physician
- I am a knitting enthusiast
- I am...
In those ways, people sort themselves into categories, very naturally. Among the single most significant self-identifications people separate themselves into is the thing arising from their biology to produce common traits shared by distinctions of gender. If it is natural for us to say "I am a woman" or "I am a man" why would it not also be natural to speak of people in groups as men or women?
What we have people struggling with is "if I am a man, as I believe, what does it mean to be a good one?" And the specificity matters, because there are traits, again driven by biology that produce statistical clusters of people who will behave differently than someone in some other group. Therefore, attempting to erase gender, or pretend that these differences don't exist and treat everyone with a single standard, is also not helpful, and in many cases harmful.
> Men were constantly told to be “better” and less “toxic,” he said, but what that “better” might look like seemed hard to pin down. “You pretty much have to figure it out yourself. But yet society still has the expectation that, you know, you have to be a certain way.”
That rather antithetical to how men function. We like specificity and I am surprise that it's that difficult to understand that you are push young men in the wrong direction when they are being told that they are wrong, but not told what the right answer is. Imagine that behavior in any other aspect of life. Constantly being told that you're wrong, but not help along the right path. That would classify as abuse. Of course some of them are becoming depresses and social withdrawn and of course some of them are going to lash out.
It's a well written article, with a lot of great points and insights. I'm not loving the digs at stoicism or that Jordan Peterson is put in the same broad category as Andrew Tate. It's also a little sad that it doesn't actually provide "a map out", because people like Peterson provides actually tries to provide a map, something that few others attempt. Still a good read, and provides a more nuanced image than we normally see.
You cannot “teach” anyone anything, especially as they grow older, you can model the behaviour you desire, but even then, they have to want to ape their parents behaviour, unlikely for a lot of kids, hence the prevalence of “influencers”.
It’s also a bit flippant to say gender is outdated, boys face different pressures and drivers than girls, see risk appetite for instance.
We do need a discussion about the differences in the genders, and I especially think boys options need to be reviewed as their traditional outlets are eroded more (breadwinner, hunter, gatherer, agression etc..)
Trying to be "gender blind" will result in much the same. The world is complex; we need to account for that complexity, not ignore it.
Modern society has created a vacuum in the definition of positive masculinity, even to the extent of claiming any masculinity at all is negative. This has led to a crisis of young men and boys not knowing how to be men in modern society.
At the moment, the strongest voices attempting to define "how to be a man" range from Jordan Peterson to "BAP" to Andrew Tate. That is they range from fairly ordinary "stand up straight, make your bed, work hard" to misogynist vitriol.
Thesis: There is a need to provide a guide for how to be a good man. Biology points to characteristics that tend to be more pronounced in biological males: protectiveness of others, proactivity, sexuality as driver to achievement. Providing a positive and specific definition for what this means in our society will benefit society and should not be neglected.
There's a lot more to her article, and it's worth reading.