We Need a New Manhood Framework
Because the two we have don't seem to work all that well.
After firing off a whole slew of assumptions last week, many of which were me trying to clarify my own thinking, and enjoying feedback from a few readers, both via comments and more direct communication, I wanted to offer some big picture thoughts on two different frameworks we can use to talk about manhood … both of which seem to fall short.
Manhood vs. Womanhood
This seems to be the most natural place to start because it’s how we tend to function as a society. When asked our sex, until recently where options like non-binary appeared, the option was male or female. But while it only seems natural, I think it’s one that quickly becomes problematic for a number of reasons.
It becomes far to easy to find ourselves in a place where biology becomes destiny. Typically the research focuses on what humanoids did in ancient times (or what animals do even today) and assumes that a one-to-one correlation to life today is possible. This ignores the neuroplasticity of the human brain and the effects of culture, personal experience, and other aspects of our biology on our behavior. We shouldn’t ignore these primal impulses, but there is so much more to us.
It forces us to offer definitive claims about all men and all women when the biggest distinctions are not even in the median sample, but amongst the outliers. And because almost nobody falls into the outlier portion of every trait, this focus also results in the vast majority of humans failing in one respect or another to embody either “hood.” For example, I might be tall but I’m not muscular, or I am intensely competitive in certain environments but not others, or I am deeply empathetic and compassionate. So, what precent of a man am I?
One of the books I started listening to this weekend, “Why Gender Matters” (affiliate), intentionally highlights the differences between boy and girls because, as we get older, the differences beyond physical characteristics dwindle. That means that most of us naturally get further from “pure” manhood as we get older.
As the same book explores, the real value of highlighting the differences in children is so we can help them become healthy well-rounded humans, not so we can put them into potential limiting boxes. One example would be that boys who are allowed to wrestle and engage in play violence are less likely to become violent as adults. This would suggest that by rejecting the difference as children, we create one in adults (and in this case, one that harms all of society). There are a ton of other examples, but I’ll encourage you to read them for yourself.
It all too easily creates an us vs. them mentality. This only fuels gender wars and I’m not seeing much value coming from attacks against patriarchy and talk of toxic masculinity, especially when men often feel undermined and attacked.
Manhood vs. Boyhood
I think this one is far better than the previous option, especially in that it doesn’t pit men against women but focuses on the nurturing of boys into men. There are some great books out there that explore this dynamic, including “King, Warrior, Magician Lover” (affiliate).
But again, there’s a problem with it, namely that it assumes that there is a very clear and transcultural thing that is manhood that we are all supposed to become. To emphasize the problem here, even things that seem like clear attributes of manhood aren’t when we dig a little deeper.
For example, lots of research points to the idea that men are more risk averse than women, but it only focuses on certain behaviors that are broadly perceived as high risk. As Cordelia Fine points out in “Testosterone Rex” (affiliate), walking in a pair of high heals is a truly high risk activity, but not something we see men running to try.
What the research does show is that those who participate in these “high risk” behaviors tend to not find them all that risky. If you don’t see something as risky, then you’re not risk averse, you’re just comfortable in what many others perceive as a risky situation.
Moreover, on many of these behaviors that highlight male risk aversion, when you break out the demographics to include race, those studies done in the United States make it clear that it is only white men who are “risk averse” aka it is only white men (and perhaps every women who is broadly defined as sexy af) who don’t find driving down the highway at 90 mph all that risky because they trust their driving skills and are fairly certain that, even if caught in a speed trap, the punishment won’t be all that severe.
At the same time, I’d say helping boys become something is key to a positive vision for manhood in the 21st Century and beyond, and that distinction might even help us identify this illusive thing called manhood.
I’ll have more of my thoughts on that next time.