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Just change King to also say man.
How to really feel like a man
- Ignore gender wars bait, there are way more important things out there.
- See step 1
Yeah, first time hearing “a man wants to feel like a man”
My first interpretation was a bunch of guys fighting with sticks and everyone having a blast
I mean one of the users literally has misandry in their name.
You:
A patient I dealt with had schizophrenia and dementia, “but I’m a man, not a little girl with panties” was his counterargument to everything.
You can only have one cigarette at a time because otherwise you lose them all and run out. “But I’m a man.”
You know the doctor says your food needs to be cut up. “Do I look like a little girl to you?”
That’s the communal cheese bowl, this is your plate. You can’t eat from the communal cheese bowl with a fork. “Do you see me wearing panties?”
Whenever I hear people making these kind of gender essentialist arguments, they just sound pitiably out of touch with reality to me.
Have you asked him how often he thinks about wearing women’s underwear?
That’s potentially worthwhile with someone who is cognizant but just an asshole. For someone with dementia, there’s no point
In my head I made many cutting remarks. But the reality of this level of cognitive decline is like 90% miserably depressing and only like 10% infuriating. Plus he wouldn’t be capable of understanding the criticism anyway.
I have to feel that “a woman needs to feel like a woman” wouldn’t get a similar reaction.
I’m not so sure. If I went around standing at doors waiting for them to be opened for me, I think it might get laughed at.
I mean it’s right there in the quote. They want to feel like a man. They don’t actually want to be one.
If Men want to feel like Men then they have ways to deal with their insecurity:
Redo their own plumbing, twice. Once to change things and again to fix the problem they caused.
Chop firewood.
Build a furnace that you’re only going to use like 4 times, ever.
50 pushups. If not reaching it makes you sad, start skipping numbers.
If not reaching it makes you sad,
start skipping numbersforgive yourself and repeat tomorrow. You’ll feel awesome when you get there.NO. THATS NOT MANLY ENOUGH. REAL MEN GIVE THEMSELVES THE AUTHORITY TO SKIP NUMBERS.
Redo their own plumbing, twice. Once to change things and again to fix the problem they caused.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
Similarly there is an old adage that a home plumbing repair will take three trips to the hardware store.
This also describes me.
With the plumbing example, the first time was a training exercise and doesn’t count.
I met a marine mechanic once - he fixed Argos afterwards, which is how I met him. His saying:
One [nut] for me, one for the bilge.
Strong people build others up. Weak people knock them down to feel big. You want to feel like a strong man? Protect others and be generous with your spirit.
You want to feel like a strong man? Protect others and be generous with your spirit.
Fucking this. Strong men—strong people—help others. Healthy or not, realistic or not, this is the message that’s been sold to us since time immemorial. The knight that slays the dragon and saves the kingdom. The alien that crash lands and moonlights as a superhero. The sled dog runs 261 miles to bring the medicine to a town beset by an epidemic.
Yes, sure, one can argue some romanticism (or propaganda) with any given example. But the overall message of heroism, of strength, is not one of selfishness or of “me and mine”.
Heroism is something we ought to focus more on as a culture in general. Doing things simply because they are right and protecting others who cannot protect themselves cannot be understated.
I think a challenge with “right” is that it is subjective. For example, there are people today who believe that doing what’s “right” entails doing things that hurt people, or deprive them of happiness, or even a future. Or, that doing what’s “right” means only helping your family or your friends or your church or your Elks club.
Semi-related, as this reminded me of a quote from Cary Grant:
I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me.
This was then repurposed on Star Trek Strange New Worlds by chief engineer Pelia (from a species that lives several centuries):
Most heroes I’ve seen… are just pretending half the time. There’s this one guy I remember, he said to me, ‘I always pretended to be someone I wanted to be, until finally, I became that someone, or he became me.’
I’m stumped at the simple task of trying to imagine what does imply to “feel like a man”.
Imagine you know Rex-Kwan-Do and go home to Starla every night.
A lot of it is centered around achievement and feeling useful, so building or fixing something, physical activity, being seen as a provider etc.
It’s why men with families etc take being made redundant quite badly, not being able to provide for your family can really make you feel like a failure.
That’s also because we teach people that romantic relationships cannot be friendships. If your partner is your best friend then you aren’t redundant, you’re a power team.
Well that and not being able to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.
It’s not about feelings at that point, even if they still exist.
You listen to Shania Twain’s hit Man! I Feel Like A Woman backwards
Women’s shirts and long skirts
One might consider a blouse and kilt at least somewhat manly
When you take your shirt off, you lift something real heavy, open a beer without a bottlecap opener, and high five somebody and it hurts then you should be activating all the correct masculine endorphin triggers. A lot of it comes as a response from high testosterone hormone levels.
I’m stumped at the simple task of trying to imagine what does imply to “feel like a man”.
I feel like a man when I know I’ve met all of my responsibilities to myself and the ones I care about, and that I’ve moved the world even an infinitesimally small way forward to help the others in it. This means lending a hand or an ear to those that need it either with my labor or my mind (or many time both).
I hope others have something close to this definition, but realistically I don’t think its common.
I guess what confuses me about all of this is why these things are in any way manly?
Like being reliable and following through on your commitments. Is it masculine when someone who isn’t a man is like that?
Or if I’m told someone is manly, have I now learned that he is in fact dependable?
I don’t mean to try and excessively pick apart what you’re saying, it’s just something I’ve always really struggled with understanding. People always seem to say things that strike me as being ungendered character traits when they’re asked about their gender.
I guess what confuses me about all of this is why these things are in any way manly?
I don’t mean to try and excessively pick apart what you’re saying, it’s just something I’ve always really struggled with understanding. People always seem to say things that strike me as being ungendered character traits when they’re asked about their gender.
I think I see the issue you’re encountering with the perspective you’re communicating.
You’re looking for things that are exclusively masculine. Besides the role in physical biological reproduction, I don’t think there is anything exclusively masculine by that measure.
The traits I listed could absolutely apply to people that are not men. However, the phrase “manly” is referring to societal measures not biological reproductive process abilities. If we distill that down further for this conversation, “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”. We could dissect why “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”, but that’s a tangent from your question.
Ergo, for a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male, and would like to be seeing as being worthy of respect in society, then they should have favorable societal traits and behaviors, in my opinion, such as those I listed.
We could dissect why “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”, but that’s a tangent from your question.
I think this pretty much gets to the root of the friction I experience when this topic comes up. I wouldn’t mind digging into it.
You likely have already guessed that I would think of it this way, but isn’t it just that “good people are worthy of respect”? Because it seems to me like if you try hard to take care of your family and do right by others, you’re a good person deserving of respect.
You know what I mean? If there’s no need for the trait to be exclusively masculine, then why do we do it? Translate “manly” into “worthy of respect”, that is. Is there some benefit to thinking about it in terms of masculinity rather than just in terms of goodness?
However, the phrase “manly” is referring to societal measures
they should have favorable societal traits and behaviors
Also, I do acknowledge this side of things. I wrote some thoughts about it in a reply to another comment in this thread, if you want to check that out. It’s an important point, and I don’t want you to think i’m just ignoring it. In summary, I think it’s kind of a bummer if in the end, manliness is just a tradition people feel compelled to participate in
I mean yeah, they should probably be ungendered, but in our society they still do get gendered. A lot of expectation is placed on men to be the kind of hard-working person that will work a 50 hour week, put food on the table, be a perfect and present father to their children and a dependable rock for their partner while being perfectly in control of their emotions themselves (and don’t you even think about crying) and still have time to build a furnace and teach the eldest how to change a tire and have an active social life and work out and improve themselves and do all those other things that a normal person needs to do. It’s not good and it’s not right, and it’s not even what the OP was specifically talking about in the post, but that’s why you’ll see words like “strong”, “dependable”, “capable”, etc thrown around in this thread a lot, because men like to feel that way because it feels like they’ve achieved at least some part of the frankly impossible image that’s placed in young boy’s heads of what a man should be.
I appreciate your breakdown. In other words, what you’re saying is that a man’s feeling of manliness is most often rooted in how closely he resembles societal expectations.
I think it’s pretty much the most reasonable explanation. But it still strikes me that men generally do not themselves think about it in those terms, and in fact consider it to be inherently emasculating. Masculinity viewed through this lens in essence becomes an act of submission to an outside force, which stands in contrast to many evident directives of masculinity such as independence and inherent drive.
Indeed the OP touches on this, implying that masculinity simply must be secured from within, with brazen disregard for the way others perceive you.
So if it does really come down to matching expectations, then it seems to be, as you said, frankly impossible
That’s a good question. I think most of the traits described here also apply to women, but as always, we’re talking about overlapping Bell curves here. I think men derive their sense of self worth from things like strength, leadership and independence more so than women do on average. There’s also traditionally feminine traits men derive self worth from, like empathy, affection and devotion. The same is probably true for women; little of column A, little of column B.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, this is just how genders shake out on average, so the implication that a man shouldn’t like feeling like one kind of bothers me.
100% guy here, real man feel is when others can rely on me, when I can help, that kind of stuff. Not “big car hurr durr bbq male superyorr” and the likes.
I agree with you, but there’s no reason bbq needs to catch these strays.
Even trucks are great if you’re using them to help people move stuff. No comment on the pavement princesses with bigger cabs than beds.
Pavement princess is getting added to the lexicon. That’s amazing.
penetrate things
Ask a transmasc person
What’s wrong with wanting to feel like a man? There’s nothing inherently negative about that. I like providing for my wife and I want nothing in return. I like doing typical man stuff with my friends. Why does that make you feel like I’m trying to be superior to anyone? I am comfortable in my masculinity and so should anyone who wants to be, stop treating that as toxic.
edit: Express your opinion by downvoting me if you must, but do me the courtesy of answering the question.
Nothing’s wrong with feeling like a man.
I feel for this post because I’ve been told by bosses that men aren’t used to people like me. They’d get used to it if women weren’t told to dumb themselves down for the poor boys raised on some fabricated ideal of manliness. I don’t like to think of traits or talents being gendered because it’s exclusionary.
When I go in to buy computer parts I still get asked if I’m sure that’s what my boyfriend wants? I never mention a boyfriend, they just assume. I don’t ask for help in hardware stores because nine times out of ten it’s gonna start a whole argument with someone who thinks they know my project better than I do.
I see the same thing happening to guys, saw a dude at a yarn shop get asked if he was gettin supplies for his wife. That sucks, right? It sucks to feel less like who you are because of what you like. That shit keeps up the gender divide because not everyone has the energy to risk feeling a little worse to do the things they enjoy.
So yeah, I’ll never describe an activity as typically male or female.
As it turns out, the things that make a good man are the same things that make a good person.
I won’t bore you with repetition so I’ll just link.
I think we mostly agree, doing the stuff you want to do in life should not be stifled by your gender. But in the OP and in this thread I get the feeling that “a man likes to feel like a man” automatically carries with it the implication that others should accommodate (by for example dumbing themselves down in order not to damage fragile masculinity as you said). I don’t see that implication at all. Is there some cultural context I’m missing here? Is this something you would say in a context where fragile masculinity is in danger of being harmed?
Shhh
Man bad
You doing things for you is fine.
It’s when other people need to change their behaviors that it becomes a problem.
Sure I agree with that, but how is that implied by ‘a man likes to feel like a man’?
The post shows a woman talking about how she was told her strong personality could make men insecure.
No it doesn’t. It shows a woman imagining things that weren’t said, which is then responded to with an anecdote.
edit: Yeah I guess I’m wrong here. The second post does talk about that. Still, I don’t think ‘A man likes to feel like a man’ implies anyone needs to do anything to accommodate.
how is that implied by ‘a man likes to feel like a man’?
What’s the context that you’re imagining this topic coming up? Because from my perspective, as a man, if someone said this to me about someone else I’d assume that I’m being asked to come up with some made up work, so that some junior guy on my team, or some dude in my social group who is feeling down, can feel more useful.
Which I might or might not accommodate, but it’s kinda patronizing and would effectively have the opposite effect in building up my respect for that man.
I’m not imagining any context, I am taking the statement at face value. I am a man, and I like to behave in a way that makes me feel like it. Like mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that means feeling useful, it means being relied upon by others, it means honouring the responsibilities I have towards others.
Op hates men I guess. That’s my take away.
Funny thing: only ever heard women say this
Some women are the most toxic perpetuators a patriarchy in a backwards way
It’s not “patriarchy”, it’s the collective of the social norms and pressures put in place by, perpetrated by, and maintained by, the majority of both sexes. The word implies it’s males’ fault society is the way it is, which is demonstrably bullshit.
because its not only men perpetuating this shit, some just put up with it and guide younger women on how to gently move things along and the flimsy little dude forgets and gets mad about the next dumb thing. Literally my parents…
Normalize feeling like a man as somebody who is given space to feel anything beyond anger or shame. A man needs to feel like he can talk about things on his mind at any given time, to anybody he trusts. A man is somebody who can cry when he is hurting, and it be okay; that he won’t be labeled as weak or a coward.
But maybe you could still pretend I am a strong man every once in a while anyway? As a treat?
no… oh… okay…I need to feel like a man.I need someone to hold me tight for a moment.I need to feel
likea man
I hate dealing with some types of men, it’s exhausting.
Pride come before the fall
Ooooohhhhh…
Thats why pride month is in june
I get it now.
Leo is mostly in August though, so August should be pride month.
My partner calls that Leo season
Oh! They call Autumn Fall in America.
I get it now.
