#ManhoodNow
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/manhood-now
FiveThirtyEight and Death, Sex & Money (a show I’m newly familiar with!) partnered together to do a show about men. In the wake of #MeToo, in quiet, genuine moments, how are men feeling about their manhood?
The episode captures a wide variety of men’s experiences, which was great to hear. This subject isn’t talked about much in general, and it’s unfortunately a raucous and disjointed reactionary mess when manhood is discussed after yet another predatory man is revealed.
But I have a take that wasn’t explicitly highlighted in the episode. It was hinted at in a rapid-fire series of clips from men interviewed “on the street” about some basic questions, like, “What’s confusing about being a man?” Many men didn’t feel it was confusing at all.
This is perhaps a rough draft of my feelings, but for me, manhood is primarily two things: absent and externally-defined.
On the former: for the most part, I just don’t think of things in terms of my gender or its role. I want to learn, but not because I’m a man. I want to have a stable existence, but not because I’m a man. I want to provide community and support others, but not because I’m a man. When I think of the things that drive me, that I want to accomplish, that I deeply value: barely anything brings in my gender as an essential element.
Every time there’s a conversation about What It Means to be a wo/man, I check out from a large part of it. For everything someone purports to be an essential quality of a gender I simply ask why it couldn’t equally apply to the other (generalizing, erasing the spectrum right now, I know). Women can be strong, men can be nurturing. What are we even doing digging these stereotypical holes deeper with the emphasis on these things?
I won’t deny disparities in gendered priorities and proclivities. I’m going to do more heavy lifting in my life than my woman friends, sure, and that’s a product of my male body (which is highly correlated with manhood). But I don’t find that particularly important or deeply meaningful as a guiding influence in my life.
At the end of the day, humanism is a much less fraught framework in which to ascribe these ideals onto (surprise) people. Who cares what gender is in their brain?
On the latter: when I think about being a man, the most prominent way that manifests is in how other people perceive my manhood. I don’t give a shit about being a man personally, but I know that my manhood matters to others.
I’m aware that when I say I’m a feminist as a man that this breaks norms, stereotypes, and barriers. It opens doors of possibility.
I’m mindful of how I was raised and socialized as a boy and then man such that I need to watch how often I interrupt in conversations or how long I speak compared to not-men.
I cry at “Cat’s In The Cradle” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmhoOp2fUzg) not because of particularly necessary qualities of manhood. I cry at it because of our social structures that have cropped up around gender that create overworked and distant fathers.
These things have everything to do with being a man, but for everything but myself and my own satisfaction.
This is just a quick dump of some thoughts after hearing this interesting show. Not every example for the latter personal aspect of manhood has to be so explicitly feminist or progressive, but it’s what came to mind at the moment.