Comment by yetihehe
2 days ago
No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior.
[0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/why-ev...
[1] https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/etiquette/how-to-se...
[2] https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/9-way...
[3] https://www.artofmanliness.com/career-wealth/wealth/money-sa...
I think there might be some of that happening on YouTube, James from Speeed[0] (who used to be in Donut Media before) has been mixing the usual car-related content with wholesome masculinity stuff, and I feel that should be the future of making masculinity be seen less as "being tough" to being a resilient, dependable, empathetic person.
I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@SpeeedCo
What's are the differences supposed to be,between male and female? Genuine question
Inherently? I'd say almost none except for the obvious physical ones and their higher order effects.
Culturally there's a lot of differences that won't be patched for generations, social expectations can come from parenting and/or environment, including their society, interactions between genders shaped by those cultural differences from an early age, so on and so forth. Such expectations shape their worldview and place in it, males being told to be tough, not be "a sissy", being shaped into clamming up emotionally. Females being told they can't achieve things solely due to their gender, having to learn to be guarded against potential male aggression, etc.
There's just too much to even start enumerating in a comment but it boils down to cultural expectations from early age, and how those shape people into gendered behaviours as a reaction, not only from the expectations but also the feedbacks happening across gendered higher order effects of those expectations.
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> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves
Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
> Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
For the same reason "Be strong and independent" is a message targeted only at women, even though it can easily double as a universal message.
> Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
What was your goal? What was your argument? I said that we need men to be more manly (strong and able to do things that are historically considered to be done by men) and you said that those can be also done by women? I would consider woman able to change a tire, play cards and start fire without matches to be manly. If she wants to, she can of course.
Currently the problem is that we indirectly say to men that being strong is for women and not for men. We say to women "be more manly" and to men "be more womanly", which just perpetuates old cliches, but in reverse.
> What was your goal?
I think the thread has been a bit derailed in terms of my intention, which was more to point out that I don't feel like the qualities that are mentioned in the original article (mentorship, guidance figures, schoolwork, relationships, future planning) are really represented well by a clickbait website with articles mostly split between 'Top N things you really need to do for X' and things that would be useful to anyone.
I'd even say the 'Get Style', 'Get Strong', 'Get Social' and 'Get Skilled' categories always appear to wander towards (while never approaching) Andrew Tate territory, in terms of their goals.
> Currently the problem is that we indirectly say to men that being strong is for women and not for men. We say to women "be more manly" and to men "be more womanly", which just perpetuates old cliches, but in reverse.
This I agree with, but I don't feel that website is a good example of a role model for the qualities that the original article mentioned were missing.
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