What does it mean to be a man?

May 25, 2023

Updated Jun 11, 2023

human-experience

Intro

I want to organize this post into two sections:

Trying to create working (fluid, not set in stone) definitions to work with
My personal perspective on the question and in general, masculinity in the USA from my POV

I think I have repeated a cycle of trying to write and stopping because this is so nuanced and complicated. I know I will not be able to encapsulate all viewpoints, but I suppose I still want to express my opinion on the internet ;-)

anyways, just food for thought.

Working on definitions

Starting with pulling stuff out of my ass

Let’s try to break it down into some axioms (just thrown together, think of this as the latent space of discrete options):

Actions/Responsibilities
- Breadwinner, self-sacrifice, competency in pursuit of personal goals
Inner Beliefs
- Ends justify the means, get shit done no matter what
- upholder/symbol of morality/wisdom
- im just a scared little boy in a big bad world
- ima dominate this world and colonize the galaxy
Appearance/Outward Behavior
- Tough, hard, confident, coward
- masc look, fem look (gender is in the eye of the beholder?)
Interpersonal / Extrapersonal behaviors
- brooo, dude, don’t be a pussy
- uwu love me bby

I’m not personally saying that any of these things should be or have to be tied to gender identity. What I’m listing here is possible traits associated with the ideological conception of a man from my personal life observations. Yes, I am making most of this up, you just have to ask, is it entirely from me or from what I’ve seen?

Everyone has many personal influences on themselves, whether it be in-person experiences or digital media exposure, we’ve all developed an internal model of what it means to be either a man or woman or something else if you’re not sure. From my point of view, I think everyone agrees that there is a lot of miscommunication, ignorance, and a lot of hate as well.

Using other sources

While Wikipedia denotes that a man is, and I quote, “an adult male human” ¹, I think it is unfortunate to be using the terms “man” and “male” interchangeably, because they seem to have different underlying definitions. A man is a gender identity that is a human construction, usually assigned at birth to a child of the male sex, while a male denotes the sex or perhaps type of organism that produces the sperm gamete, for organisms that produce sexually needing sperm and egg (unfortunately, we can’t produce asexually, that would’ve been cool maybe). Intersex men, on the other hand, aren’t exactly in the binary of male or female; they have “discrepancies between external genitalia and internal reproductive organs”² and while these conditions aren’t always caused by chromosomal anomalies, some individuals do experience that phenomenon as well where they might have (47, XXY) or (45, X) instead of (46, XX) or (46 XY) but it depends on the case by case. A smaller subset of intersex people may be true hermaphrodites. Whether or not they are hermaphrodites, intersex people, in general, are not that many in society, and may face discrimination, along with other minority groups.

Some people might care about this distinction, but it cannot be denied that individuals and institutions use the terms interchangeably. I can see why people would care more about “man” and “woman”. From here on out, I’ll probably use the terms interchangeably since I am discussing the presentation and expression of “manliness”/“maleness” — that is, the gender role.

So how does a man look? The secondary sex characteristics include, in general/on average, “greater muscle mass, the growth of facial hair and a lower body fat composition…narrower pelvis, narrower hips, and smaller breasts” ¹. Hmmm, ok sure.

All animals have peculiar personalities, and with human societies, it’s even easier to push human men to act in and fill culture-specific traditional gender roles. So what are typical manliness personalities, or masculinity? Influence on behavior comes from both social and biological influence; to what specific extent from each, is still up to debate ¹. Getting married, “triple Ps” of protecting, providing, and procreating ¹. To some extent, how one makes friends is part of a personality right? — “Friendships involving men tend to be based more on shared activities than self-disclosure and personal connection” ¹. I think it would benefit men to be more open and allow the possibility to create occasions to share emotions/feelings. It doesn’t have to be the core thing, but every now and then rather than never. And as always, case by case basis participants in relationships should converge upon their optimal amount of emotion sharing. Or don’t, and see how that goes for you. “In heterosexual romantic relationships, men are typically expected to take a proactive role, initiate the relationship, plan dates, and propose marriage” ¹. Yea, sure I feel that. I am open to living that out but nothing has to be set in stone. Being heterosexual myself, I can’t speak to what expectations are for queer relationships.

Social status skew? Yes, male privilege exists. “In most cultures, male privilege allows men more rights and privileges than women. In societies where men are not given special legal privileges, they typically hold more positions of power, and men are seen as being taken more seriously in society” ¹. Of course, this is unfair and people should be judged by their merits and character — not their maleness.

While I haven’t exactly presented anything radical, I hope saying some things explicitly makes things clear if you haven’t had the chance to.

Do I identify as a man?

Sure, growing up under the idea of a gender binary I’ve shaped myself and accepted the identity of a man, despite not fitting it completely; I consider myself quite lucky to basically never have to question my gender as I understand this is not the case for everyone. This works for me, and I’ve never questioned whether I was or was not a boy. As a kid, I bought into wanting to be a spy, using cool spy tools, saving the world, fighting bad guys, and getting the beautiful girl in the end. I might not have played with that many toy trucks, but Legos were fun. I kind of remember having an interest in my mom’s nail polish at some point and I think I just tried it and well moved on to other stuff I guess. I would say my interest in traditional boy toys was a combination of my personal interests and probably some nudging from my parents towards “boyish” things in the background. I would say I had a somewhat traditional boy upbringing. I accept it and I think I would choose traditional methods of bringing up my future children as the default mode, and adapt if the individual children want something different. I think I have learned a lot about how and how not to raise a single child at least from my parents…and I hope I’ll be a good father one day.

I’m not sure how to describe it, but I feel like I’m just one of many average Chinese American men. I still am my own unique individual, but I also find great relief to know that there are many people out there like me as well. I have my own set of flaws, though that doesn’t stop the indomitable force of the human spirit from bubbling up from within. haha. Sure I get teased for particular behaviors and lack of fashion…but hey we all live and learn. I have come to accept myself and am keen on making sure my life trajectory is upwards and becoming a better person in multiple dimensions. I think all individuals should spend some a little bit of time, if your life permits you to spare the time, to think about the identities you take on. Be it gender, career, family, friends… what’s your role in them all?

Love yourself. Be kind. Live fiercely and remember to focus on what matters most to you in your life. Let your fear guide you to be the best version of yourself.

here’s some other resources that may interest the reader

Update 06/11/2023, I didn’t know VICE is a piece of shit. Just look at what they did to Naomi Wu. Read all three of her articles, please.
https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg
sigh what expectations did i have anyways

First, I’ll start by saying there was a nice VICE video on this question as well, and they got an alright set of people:

There weren’t that many ignorant things said, imo, except when that one guy tried to say that “men are more logical than women”…of course, there’s no scientific backing on that claim. The person who made that statement didn’t seem to have any ill-intent, so I think the other people in the room took it as ignorance. From the video, the participants discussed a variety of ideas of what it means to be a man. Many discuss what kind of character they were in the past and how they have changed to the person they are now in the present. Of course, we can’t exactly get every configuration of a person that identifies as a man in one video, so I suppose it’s sad to not hear some viewpoints from other men such as really old misogynists or transgender men.