(Disclaimers: Remember that this article nothing but my own opinion and you are free to have your own. I’ll be covering some fairly strongly entrenched notions about gender-roles and some people may not see things the way I do. If you disagree, feel free to leave a civil comment below. If you cannot find a way to make your comment civil, then go fuck yourself. Also, I’ll be splitting this article into two pieces. Partly because I want to do one a week and I haven’t finished the last half, and partly because who wants to read a four page article about something that most people probably won’t care much about anyways. This week I’ll cover the reasons for what I will call “machoness”)
So, masculinity. I can hear all of your complaints now. “Dude, what’s wrong with masculinity? Men should be strong and emotionally distant because women are weak, frail little things and we have to protect them from bears and their own emotions! If I don’t think and just punch every problem that comes my way, my girl will be safe, my dad will accept me, and I won’t catch the gay!” and conversely, “Thank you for taking down these muscle headed assholes. These people just ruin everything, are way too violent and dumb to be of any use, and the world would be better without these jackasses that bully me, have more friends than I do, and whose jealousy caused me to develop a superiority complex!” To those of you mature enough to acknowledge the truth in the latter parts of my examples, congratulations, this probably won’t have much effect on you. Everyone else, let’s talk
First, let’s make a distinction between “machoness” and “manliness” in pop culture and, by extension, real culture. For the most part, machoness and manliness are inexorably linked, historically speaking. It isn’t until modern times that the two exist separately due to cultural perceptions of the time. “Machoness” is the notion that a man should treat women like objects because of the “inherent superiority” of men, repress all emotions and hate anything colorful for fear of “catching the gay”, and romanticize the idea of killing their fellow man. Manliness, by contrast, is the notion that men should be respectful toward women, express their emotions without being overwhelmed by them, and work to defend his friends and family with violence as a last resort. Machoness is about being an arrogant tool who wanks off to explosions and gunfire, treats women like sex toys, and is afraid of their own emotions. Manliness is about being chivalrous, emotionally balanced, and selfless. Machoness is from Gears of War and Call of Duty, manliness is from Half-life and Mass Effect. Can you guess which one I’m in favor of?
Allow me to contextualize what I’m about to say by saying that there are times when men being macho is useful and, while not good, wasn’t all that bad. For as long as anyone can accurately guess, mankind has always had to hunt and fight off predators, at least until relatively recently. The origin and need for machoness stems from this life and death struggle with nature. Men couldn’t sit around worrying about emotions or philosophy because the tiger in the bushes doesn’t give a shit about emotions or philosophy. The advent of technology put a stop to tigers and made farming easy enough to sustain decent populations. Unfortunately, once mankind gets complacent from a lack of tigers, he starts eying other people’s property and engaging in war to take said property. And not wars like WW2 or Vietnam, I’m talking manly wars, with swords and chain mail and halberds; wars in which a skilled muscle-head could earn glory and wenches. Even in modern wars in which battles aren’t done with swords or fists or large fish, men are still taught to be violent, emotionally repressed, honor seeking tossers. Of course you want PFC Douche to be a muscular, violent, and emotionless shithead who doesn’t think to question the orders being given or about the lives he’s ending.
And so machoness persisted throughout the years, albeit becoming less and less necessary outside of the military. For a long time, the idea that men could be something other than that was downright foreign. Of course men should get strong, what if a war breaks out? Why should men, in general, respect women when women were inferior? The weak or emotional were clearly inferior to the strong and indifferent. Why would men act in any other way? Being an emotionally repressed, violent tool was what the world demanded. But then the world changed. Women became independent and wanted respect, wars no longer had much of a human component, and the “weak” and “emotional” losers that had been looked down upon were developing new technology or working on the arts. The world that needed men to be strong and emotionless and encouraged misogyny and intolerance had disappeared. A man being macho was once thought to be the norm in the same way racism was once just a “given fact,” (hey look, quotation marks. That means I’m being sarcastic when I call racism a “given fact” and am clearly not saying that racism in any form is factual). And now, like racism, people exemplifying it are looked down upon (although for obvious reasons, not as vehemently). Similarly, women were once submissive, vapid sperm repositories, but now any woman acting that way is treated as a thoughtless whore. Machoness, like submission from a woman or collective racism, is just a relic of an older time. A man being macho has become a “bad thing” in modern, more enlightened times.
So what’s the harm of men being macho? What’s the big deal if a man in modern times with a modern perspective thinks women are nothing more than meat to have sex with? Why should we care if some guy fantasizes about killing his coworkers for “not respecting him”? Who cares if he accuses men who don’t look down on women or are capable of expressing emotions gay? Well, because most of the behaviors associated with being macho are as incredibly insensitive, stupid, and tragically out of place as possible. And I’ll go into more detail about all the different facets of “machoness” and the problems it brings next time.