@TheBreadmonkey @adhdeanasl
OK, I have an answer now. A couple of answers. Bear with me.
1. I refuse to accept that the manosphere ding dongs get to decide what masculinity is. I give them zero moral estimation. They are the worst people in the world.
2. I have always been fine with my he/him pronouns regardless of what the culturally received notion of masculinity is. Maybe I'm Kinzingering masculinity. I don't care. I don't need to shoot a machine gun off the back of my testicle truck and live on raw steak to be in the man club. That's idiotic.
3. Unsurprisingly, I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all version of masculinity. It's a big, porous, flexible thing that can be done in lots of right and wrong ways.
4. This is the long, heartfelt answer:
When I think of the admirable men in my life, I think of my dad; my best friend's dad; my friends Chase, Brennen, and Colin; and my brother-in-law. They're all stand-up guys and in different ways, but there are some unifying themes. They all identify with the idea that their role in the world is to support others, create stability, and make room for their friends and family to flourish. They all do this in different ways, and they don't let this orientation totally supplant their sense of self.
Take my dad: he was a union HVAC repair guy for 35 years. He spent twelve years of his life with almost unsurvivably awful cluster headaches. I don't think he ever missed a day of work to them. I am certain that our wacky little family is the reason he lived long enough to get better. He did it for us. And yes, he was a mountaineer and a killer party host and an avid broomball player--it wasn't all toil and drudgery. He had an impish sense of humor and a literary bent the whole time. But for the most part, he was a steady, stable, stabilizing force for my stochastic whirlwind of a mom and my sister and me. He seemed to most relish observing us do our thing, whatever that was. I only ever saw him threaten someone once, and it was one of those backward threats that you never feel bad about making: when our weirdo fundy neighbor who beat his wife chased her to our house; my dad asked him: "Just how much of a fool do you want to make of yourself between now and when the cops get here?" Which is a pretty cool flex for a pacifist.
My best friend's dad has that "I don't sleep" gene. He raised six kids of his own and took in all of the local riffraff (myself included) while working totally superhuman hours as a tax lawyer. He's why I'm a tax lawyer. Fair but demanding, funny, charming, completely committed to doing the right thing. Charitable, contemptuous of status and station, wicked smart. Also kind of a prick because that's what never sleeping and going 120 miles an hour all the time does to a person. His answer to almost every problem was to work smarter and harder. I can think of at least a dozen people (myself included) who are better humans and better off because this guy created time for productive leisure and creative problem solving, and space to be a big dumb teenager.
My meatspace buddies are also really excellent specimens of healthy manhood. Chase quit running a bakery to become a software engineer because he wanted to be a good dad and couldn't imagine doing both things right at the same time; he says he gave up one dream for a better dream. Brennen is a poison pen who tends bar, laughs constantly, and raises his kids as a single dad; he's who I normally want to make laugh when I write as Lrrr. My buddy Colin is an irrepressibly silly goose, a soldier-turned-pilot, and exactly the kind of person you'd trust to rescue your family from a disaster--he is basically an action hero dreamboat who is as comfortable at war as he is showing his kid to ride a bicycle. My BIL is punk as fuck, hardworking to a fault, brave, and maybe the most emotionally intelligent person I know; he has cared for and supported more people and animals than I can count, and even though he probably thinks these people are big babies, he knows to shut the hell up about it and not make it their problem.
I guess I don't need to go into all this detail on people you don't know. My point is, humility, hard work, a sense of obligation and community, and a willingness to support people who have more limitations are core characteristics of everyone I know who practices the good kind of masculinity. I see it in my own life: my wife struggles with anemia, depression, executive dysfunction, long COVID, and arthritis. She is much smarter and more thoughtful than I am. And she cannot open a jar on her own or look after our kids without support. Things that are easy for me are hard or impossible for her. I get frustrated, sure. But I support my wife because that's how I show people I love them. That, and constantly cracking wise (which is less charming in person) and literally saying "I love you" a lot. I see myself as someone who supports others. Sometimes, that's by moving heavy things or being honest about emotions. Other times, it's by working hard to keep my clients happy, my coworkers busy, and my kids pudgy and insulated. It means being tolerably well informed and trying to do good, well.
Tl;dr: good masculinity and good citizenship are, for me, pretty close to the same thing.
End gigantic fucking rant to end all rants. Fuck. Shit. #InternationalMensDay
Ben
Human Ghostwriter
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