[quote]batman730 wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
But your above posts in this thread do smell of beta-bitch insecurity.[/quote]
LOL. What does that even mean?[/quote]
You obviously play video games, which is why you went straight into defensive mode about my video games post, even taking it out of the context I intended.
The actual content of video games are not a problem but the behaviour of choosing to allocate time to that activity may be taking away from social interaction, which is a partial reason for the described deprecation of masculinity in men.[/quote]
I don’t play video games at all and haven’t owned any game system since the original Nintendo came out, which I grew bored of after about two years, so I’m hardly an expert on this matter. That being said, I have friends who play those fucking first-person shooter games until the early hours of the morning every goddamned weekend. I’m pretty sure that they play with each other all the time, as in they are all playing together in the same room.
Sure, they play with people from all over the planet and they do frequently also play by themselves, but the point is that they hardly play these things in solitary confinement on a regular basis. I’m not sure if three or four guys sitting in a room taking turns with the bong and the video controllers constitutes social interaction, but whatever.
Another thing to consider is that two centuries ago, when most people in this thread would probably argue that men were men and not “beta-bitches” as you have so eloquently stated, people didn’t interact with each other all that often either. They might have interacted with their own families, but people didn’t live in the same sort of clustered society that we live in today. Going to the store was a far less frequent occurrence, if they went at all. Many people lived in places where they rarely interacted with anyone outside their own families except on Sundays at church.
I think that video games definitely are a factor in people being different today than they were back then, but I don’t think those differences extend to the de-masculinization of men. I think the effect that video games is having is probably more in terms of our attention spans and what we need in order to be stimulated, sort of like the porn addiction thing. Are we playing more video games because we need more stimulus, or do we need more stimulus because we play video games more often? I don’t know, but I don’t think you know either.
The more pertinent question here as someone else mentioned, which has been covered ad nauseum and is ENTIRELY subjective, is what exactly makes a man a masculine man. Personally, I don’t really think it has anything to do with anything other than our abilities to take care of our families. I think the declining rate of violence in the United States is a clear sign of an increase in masculinity, but others might argue differently if they think that masculinity entails violence. I don’t think so at all, because violence is almost always in the form of a crime, and it is hard to take care of your family if you are in jail as a violent criminal.
However, that would also mean that being a masculine man would mean that you would have to have a family to take care of in the first place. Many men don’t have children or a wife and their parents aren’t old or infirm enough to need someone else taking care of them. I have no children and neither my parents nor anyone else in my family needs me to care for them. So in that sense, masculinity may simply mean the ability to take care of oneself instead, which isn’t a masculine trait at all. Women are just as capable of doing that as I or any other man is, and I don’t think it’s fair to women to say that they are masculine simply because they can take care of their own shit.
So the reality is that the most all-encompassing definition of what it means to be masculine is more along the lines of what it means to be a good, responsible person in general, regardless of gender or sex. All that other bullshit like “masculine men shoot guns” or “masculine men are physically strong” or “masculine men don’t show emotions” or whatever is a bunch of Hollywood superficiality that has no bearing in reality whatsoever. In my mind, “masculine” men are simply good people, period. So even the most feminine of men can still be more masculine than someone who most people would point to as being masculine. It has nothing to do with sexuality or hobbies or anything else material like that. It’s a very ethereal quality that isn’t absolute by any means.[/quote]
This is a great, well thought out post. I am baffled the same person who wrote this claims a lion would beat a polar bear. >:([/quote]
Yep, and as in the polar bear discussion I’m gonna disagree, well thought out or not.
I believe that the capacity to do violence, when it is appropriate and/or necessary is very close to the core of the male essence. A man who is unwilling or unable to do violence in the protection of that which he holds dear is, in my estimation, inherently less masculine. He may be a better person but he IS less of a man.
The male has an imperative to protect, defend and to exercise authority. Force is at the root of that, force of personality, force of intellect and, in extremity, force of arms and physical force in general. It is in the appropriateness of how that force is employed that we see the difference between a decent man and a criminal (or a tyrant). I believe that the correct use of force is one of the most misunderstood and unjustly maligned concepts in our modern society. Almost all the great achievements in human history have required some application of force to complete and preserve or have been born as a direct result of conflict. Now we see it as a necessary evil at best or an obsolete remnant of some less evolved era at worst. Neither could be further from the truth.
It is, in my estimation, the general moral rejection of direct force as a valid and sometimes essential and admirable response that has castrated us in spirit. It is unseemly to even SPEAK in a manner that is overly forceful for fear of appearing overly pushy or opinionated. Conflict is to be eschewed at all costs in favour of conciliation, consensus and conformity which ultimately degenerates into passivity, apathy and general malaise. We, as men, are trained to divorce ourselves from that within us which is violent, forceful. Instead of owning it, embracing it and using it rightly in our lives for the preservation and betterment of our civilization, we reject it and are only allowed to experience it vicariously as a pail, twisted shadow of its true self in the form the aforementioned video games, movies, porn etc. (which I find entertaining as hell FTR).
By extension, “masculine men don’t show emotions” is a diluted reflection of another truth of masculinity, IMO. A man must be the master of his emotions not the other way round. At times this will mean he must conceal/restrain them through sheer force of will and self discipline. It is necessary for any functioning human to be able to display his or her emotions with passion and authenticity when it is appropriate. However any guy who is ruled by his emotions and wears their heart on his sleeve because they have no choice is, IMO, a child and so by definition not a man.
Similarly, the pursuit of physical strength, prowess and vigour is an inherently masculine impulse. It is an extension of my first point about capacity for violence. Sports are ritualized combat and preparing for sport is a substitute for preparing for war. Being better at sports/a more talented athlete does not make you a better man, but the dedication and intensity with which you practice/train does. Men need to compete. They need to struggle and strive to be living in the fullness of their manhood. They must fight and win and lose and bleed and cry and shout their triumphs and bear their defeats.
So while the old cliches are superficial and distorted, most of them carry a grain of truth in my opinion. That’s why they became cliches in the first place. To abandon them all together is throwing out the baby with the bathwater and we will all be much the poorer for it. In fact I would say our way of life would be doomed. [/quote]
I’m starting to feel like a groupie, but this is another fantastic post. I enjoyed reading it.