The Transience of ManhoodFollow

I'm with Xsarus on this one. Since I've been out of school I've never felt much of a need to "prove I'm a man." Even in college I didn't feel the need; closest was maybe high school, but even then I was arguably one of the "manliest" in my social group without any violence. On the flip side, one of my best friends is 26 now and we actually had a big talk about this recently; namely that he doesn't feel like he's "a man" yet but he's not sure what needs to happen for him to get that feeling. He thinks his dad is a terrible example of manliness because he doesn't have much drive and always defers to his mom.

I told him I'm not sure how he can feel "like a man," but maybe moving out of his parents' house, getting a girlfriend, and securing a full-time job would be a good start

Yeah it's never been an issue for me. At some point I kinda realized "oh, I'm an adult now," but there was never a defining moment of "now I'm a MAN!" I think the closest realization was while reading a police report that a 19 year old "man" had done something and thinking to myself, "Sh*t, I'm years older than that kid. I guess I am a man now!"

Stop the presses!

Yeah, did you expect anything else?

I was thinking "black Friday shopping" as a counter to the idea that only men's status requires regular use of violence to create/maintain, but I can absolutely get behind the jello fight thing too!

I feel the same way Poldy. I'm 28 and I don't feel like an adult most of the time. Living with my parents at the moment probably doesn't help that much, but even before that, I didn't really feel like an adult. I've had a few friends tell me that they didn't really feel like an adult until they started having kids.

It's impossible to emasculate him when I'm around.

I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean by this, but on the face of it, you're dead wrong.

Men cooperate and women compete? What are you smoking?

It's not a concept I think too much about or have much stock. I've always been somewhat youngish looking--to where I could pass for a high school student today--so I've never physically looked extremely post-pubescent, and also consequently not often been placed in that social role.

I think middle-school crushed any reverence I might have developed for the idea of manliness. Like most horny young boys, I wanted to be incredibly attractive to the girls in my class. I thought the key to this was exercising religiously, which I did between 5th and 7th grade. So I was in excellent shape and thought I was making progress towards the girls I like, when one of them gets a boyfriend dweeb who looks even more like a kid than I do. At the time I could imagine how I had failed. I thought I was superior both physically and academically, and yet it didn't matter. HE had beaten me to what I wanted most. And this wouldn't be so bad, except that about a year later it happened again with a different girl and a different guy. Being what I thought was more manly than they were didn't get me any results, and I had worked so hard. After I lost most of my motivation towards physical fitness. Thinking back, what I was doing probably was working, but it was offset by having a fairly repelling personality.

I find Lolgaxe's thoughts on the subject a little strange. While I think the definiton of manliness is highly arbitrary, I believe most people would consider doing things for your family to be a part of it. Watching MLP with your daughter is manly. That you would do so even without her there, not so much.

Even then, I think many people would define it inclusively rather than exclusively. That is, having childish hobbies hobbies doesn't take anything away from your manliness, so long as you get all the manly stuff done.

I think I understand what he's trying to say. I don't really understand what he means by men cooperate, but as far as women competing, I'd say he's pretty accurate. Not all of us are like this of course, but a lot of women are brought up to think that their most important goal in life is to get a man. So subconsciously, these women view all other women as competition, even their so called friends. That's why you get some women who steal their friend's man, or why they talk **** about each other, start drama, etc. This is a large part of why I don't have that many female friends, or I didn't used to anyways. Now that I know more nerdy girls that have the same general view on friendship that I do, it's cool.

I feel like men suffer from this sort of competition quite a bit too though. Not nearly to the extent that women do, at least in terms of finding a "mate" but it's definitely still there.

Stereotypes aside, guys do all these things as well. Frequently.

I guessed Yodabunny was a dude, but if she's a chick, color me surprised. I haven't encountered the behavior you speak of since high school. The vast majority of the women I know are all about support and encouragement, but maybe that's because on the far side of thirty, I could care less about trite ******** and tend to surround myself with like-minded folk. The female behavior you both speak of is pretty foreign to me, and I fail to see where it relates to the expression of anger. Because we yank each other's hair out in baby pools filled with jello because someone took our man?

Yeahhh.....

Well it may just be my experience, but I don't think many guys are really as ruthless as they once were for similar reasons. I mean we've kind of gotten through that high hormone, high energy phase, and were on to raising families, having careers etc. Do we still tease a little from time to time? Well sure, but I really don't remember the last time there was malice there. One of those young male things you know?



Why must you squash my dreams?