The 'masculine mystique' – why men can't ditch the baggage of being a bloke

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/21/the-masculine-mystique-why-men-cant-ditch-the-baggage-of-being-a-bloke

by lentil_soup • 9 years ago

31 18 9 years ago

owebmaster4• 9 years ago

What is the problem with strong, dominant and successful men? Or boys aiming to become one and live an oustanding life?

All my friends since childhood wanted to rule the world if they could, but too much television turned them into spending-machines (and readers of bad articles).

Double_a_922• 9 years ago

They would be more "successful" than women... We can't allow that to happen. So let's cripple anyone instead. /s

owebmaster4• 9 years ago

We men have genetically more drive and NEED to be successful than women. We needed it to survive and we are the genes that survived. Ask a man to not live up for this way is the same as to ask a woman to never conceive a child.

megaman22• 9 years ago

Harrison Bergeron is rapidly becoming reality. Rather than worship success, we're all a big bucket of crabs.

ajurna• 9 years ago

Nothing wrong with being strong, successful and dominant, right up until you cant take the pressure. Then you are too strong, dominant and successful to ask for help.

what does it mean to be strong? is it without weakness? or the strength to acknowledge that weakness. If you're so strong you never cry is that really strength?

being dominant sounds like a good idea but once you think about it, it seems a bit absurd. everything humans do well we do as a team. being dominant only means you can be in charge of a team and not a supporting part.

and lastly success. What is success? is it just money? that's hardly a good measure. is it to be happy? and if that comes at the expense of not being "strong and dominant" then what have you left?

You're describing a fantasy, an archetype and it does you and men in general no favours by striving to be something so ephemeral. In the end you will always fail and then where are you?

owebmaster4• 9 years ago

what does it mean to be strong? is it without weakness? or the strength to acknowledge that weakness. If you're so strong you never cry is that really strength?

To be strong is to know that society will pull you down if you don't react with the same or more strength. I'm talking about men that don't have rich and/or protective parents, which is most of us, afaik.

being dominant sounds like a good idea but once you think about it, it seems a bit absurd. everything humans do well we do as a team. being dominant only means you can be in charge of a team and not a supporting part.

There is so many roles in society still to be fulfilled. Social dynamics are this: dynamic. Someone might be in charge of one interaction but play a supporting part in another. I don't see any incongruence on this.

and lastly success. What is success? is it just money? that's hardly a good measure. is it to be happy? and if that comes at the expense of not being "strong and dominant" then what have you left?

There is no need to fix the discussion around the 3 adjectives used in the article, but does it really make sense to question that men want to be successful? Not even this can be just simple acknowledged?

You're describing a fantasy, an archetype and it does you and men in general no favours by striving to be something so ephemeral.

The article described. I just asked why not?

an_d_rew2• 9 years ago

Well said!

quantumofmalice• 9 years ago

I hate to ruin a good Guardian anecdotal narrative, but male happiness has been trending upward for the last 40 years. Females are the ones becoming less happy, for reasons I will leave to the reader to speculate on:

http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/HAP23...

As far as why men can't ditch "the baggage" of striving to win in dominance & competence hierarchies, it is because it was necessary for hundreds of thousands of years for a male to achieve reproductive success. And, all else equal, it still is.

nickthemagicman• 9 years ago

And no matter what kind of equality we strive for women are attracted to that success.

LeeHwang• 9 years ago

Wow, thanks for this comment. It's hugely enlightening. Its almost like female humans are the ones who desire masculinity in men to be happy more than the men need masculinity to be happy. Really mind boggling.

imh• 9 years ago

That's subjective happiness, aka "Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days — would you say you’re very happy, fairly happy, or not too happy these days?”

In the discussion section of the paper [0] that freakonomics post [1] is about, they talk about limitations and less straightforward interpretations of that measure and that trend. This isn't to say the guardian post is right and you're wrong, but that it isn't impossible both are correct and interesting and worthy of discussion. I don't want your post to shut down or dismiss discussion of OP.

[0] http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2008/08/05/happiness-inequality-2-di...

The 'masculine mystique' – why men can't ditch the baggage of being a bloke

Related Stories