Acting Masculine
A friend sent me this link to an article on the topic of men whose idea of masculinity is a cartoonish caricature.
Cartoon men are gross.
I basically agree that there is a cartoon version of masculinity that is circulating these days. Some of its just for fun, but a lot is folks taking themselves seriously. Gross.
But I sympathize with them.
Why do men act this way?
There are bad reasons. Because its easy. One of the fundamentals of manhood is that it must be acquired. Acquisition is hard. Yelling about your guns and whiskey is a nice cheat code, if it worked.
There are also sympathetic reasons. Its partly because the chain of masculine identity from father to son has been broken. Boys raised by single moms and schoolmarms are groping blindly for something they do not know from personal experience.
Partly because the sources of real masculine status are gone, attenuated, or mocked. It is hard to be a man these days. Lord Whatsit and his pals could sit around with rouged cheeks, lace, and brocade weeping with each other at a poetry reading because they rode to hounds, had fathered 10 kids with devastatingly beautiful wives, and had been out in the duels (yes, another cartoonish exaggeration, but you take my point. A less cartoonish version would be that getting married, affording a family, and having paternal authority by social default was easier back in the day).
Synthesis
Manhood is always and everywhere something that must be acquired. That means it must be acted before it becomes real. Manhood is always partly socially constructed and is meant to be partly socially constructed so it is always partly performative. Boys try on acting like men until the act becomes real. The larp never quite goes away, it just is supposed to become integrated into the adult personality. Posturing is part of manhood.
So, sure, if all you got left is larp, LARP. But the shrill aggressiveness of the cartoon men suggests that they haven’t come to terms of themselves with the fact that something is missing.
Bottom line:
All masculinity is and should be performative. No true masculinity is only performative
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Bookslinger
August 2, 2021
I agree with all this.
My first connecting thought was…. what has happened to the African-American segment of the US (not universally, of course, but enough to destroy whole neighborhoods and communities) over the last 55 years is now happening to white middle-class America.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a white Democrat politician, saw and sounded the alarm about what happened among African-American families. He was shouted down.
It has also already happened to lower-class rural white America with the opioid epidemic, but the masculinity dysfunction long preceded the current opioid crisis. (Think of people like Mama June, Honey Boo-Boo, et. al. IE, the regulars on Oprah, Phil Donahue, Sally Jesse Rafael, ad nauseum.)
There’s a tinge of racisn and classism involved. ( Not with you, G. ) Because it (malformed masculinity, and its related crime, drugs, etc.) has not been generally/widely considered a national emergency as long as it was confined to blacks and poor whites. (Though there have always been a few voices crying in the wilderness.)
The sickness has spread.
Zen
August 3, 2021
The definition and meaning of masculine and feminine has been on my mind lately. When there is a cultural understanding, it is easy to rely on that as a crutch. But that crutch is rapidly disappearing. So… amidst a society that genuinely doesn’t understand what it is, what do we tell them?
My only conclusion, is that masculine and feminine is meaningless without the context of the Family. It is celestial with Family and Priesthood.
So, what is manhood? Just He-man and James Bond? Rather, we should look to the Family: A Proclamation, the doctrine of the Priesthood and Temple, and becoming like our Father in Heaven.
Of course, we have many unique challenges, but this foundation is essential.
And this is another reason we can’t budge on Same-Sex Marriage. It isn’t just about them. It is about all of us.