Abigail Collazo — What Does It Mean to be a Real Man

This weekend’s New York Times “Room for Debate” [4] asks whether today’s men are “manly enough”: “A-list actors are getting facials in Mansome, [5] Morgan Spurlock’s newest documentary, and pumping their waxed chests in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, [6] one of the summer’s most popular movies. But is all this exfoliated, chiseled perfection what women really want [3]? And should men really be making it a priority?”
In Charles Mee’s 2001 play Big Love [7], one of the title characters delivers a soliloquy in which he bemoans the difficulty for men in living up to gender stereotypes. On one hand, men are expected to be civilized—calm, gracious, and sophisticated. But when violence is called for, and people—especially women—need defending, they expect men to be the rescuers, “going at the target like a bullet…with rage in his heart…with no breaks to hold it.”
The even bigger challenge is presented when the need for such violence has passed. After the conflict, men are expected to automatically revert back to calm, civilized members of society. Women, he argues, have the luxury of deploring the violence of men (because they can depend on that violence when they need its protection) without having to give in to such impulses themselves.

Read more.. http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2012-07-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-real-man

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