A Generation Misguided

The Background

Decades of films and hundreds of literary manuscripts have done their best to decipher the dense question of what it means to be a man. The reason that they're so profitable and widely analyzed is that if some writer had a true answer for what it all means, we'd be better off as a society. Yet, there's no universal outline as per what it is and isn't.

In the past few years, the world has seen a rather drastic attack on any form of socially traditional masculinity to be even narrowly accepted into modern culture. The media portrays us, men, as toxic individuals that have "harmful" components such as competitiveness, dominance urges, and aggressive behaviors as core parts of our personalities. So schools tell doctors to drug us from a young age, saying "young men shouldn't act out like this" and "young men shouldn't encourage that" so here's some Ritalin for your troubles. Households aren't much better as divorce rates skyrocketed these last 30 years, with nearly half of all children belonging to single-parent households, (nearly all single mothers). This gets rid of any form of influence from a father's masculine side as 83% of the time as women hold sole custody of the child, most of the time father's giving up custody because of courts siding with the mothers as primary caregivers.

As I began my own journey to find what masculinity truly is, I looked back through all the great films and books I've read to discover one thing: today's society has been and is creating a group of lost boys. There exist hardly any natural positive influences unless you go out and look for yourself. However, when you spend your whole life living this type of lifestyle, it's hard to believe anything else is out there.

The Big Lebowski

Pre-21st Century movies have some of the richest storytelling and theme explorations that are known to modern cinema. In fact, some of the world's greatest directors had most of their content in the 1900's, such as Kubrick and Chaplin. Yet, what the Coen brothers decided to do with The Big Lebowski's hidden understanding of the meaning of masculinity was not only spot on but also rather thought-provoking.

The concept of Dudeism reflects many theories of Stoicism and its principles of not being worrisome at any time due to the capacity to fix one's current situation. The Dude reflects this in all aspects and times of his life, only stimulating significant negative emotion when his testicles, aka masculinity, are threatened to be stripped from him. He describes to Mr. Lebowski that a man is merely what is between his legs. To that, Mr. Lebowski combines his rather philosophical definition with that "insight" from The Dude. It's not only the ability to act with virtue in doing the right thing no matter the cost, but also the biological appendages that an individual is born with. It's what creates these urges to be competitive, to dominate, to be aggressive that defines a man's individualistic true purpose. As said for many years prior: A man has the burden of performance. 

James Bond and The Red Pill Documentary

As for what young men look up to, ask many boys what their favorite movies are, or at least movie topics. Often times James Bond and his corresponding movies about action, adventure, and heated romance retain strong impressions in the minds of many. His suave, elegant, yet lethal image allows a persona to be created reflecting that which can switch between protecting and charming within a matter of seconds. A gun-toting, shaken not stirred, devilishly handsome man allows one to achieve what other men only dream of. And that is all it is. A dream. An illusion. A falsity in a modern world that deems that all of these aspects of what millions of men look up to and sense within themselves to be perfect harnesses of one's nature to merely just be "toxicity". 

Cassie Jaye was a feminist that cultivated these same ideologies about traditional masculinity but took on a different perspective and had the rational point of view of attempting to understand just why so many men couldn't find themselves. Stemming topics include why millennial men were unproductive with their lives or why there was an increase in "kidults". To learn from the other side of the spectrum, she did a documentary called "The Red Pill" essentially doing a deep dive into the existence of the Men's Rights movement and why it even was necessary since we live in some form of patriarchy. What she found was rather shocking to her. Men have unresolved issues with society just like women. Her movie centers around a lot of the issues that aren't talked about and is certainly worth a watch, however, some of the most prominent issues regard the absence of domestic abuse centers for men, false rape allegation justice, and the lost battle of child custody in the court systems. It's not that women's issues didn't exist, but merely that the MRA wanted to bring forth some issues to the gender debate, yet were constantly downplayed because of the idea that "men have a society made for them". Masculinity was under attack, as she saw. So were its underlying principles, conventions, ideologies, and abilities to function under normal circumstances. There lie little taught in the way of what it means to be a man, but from her view, what is taught to not be a man, which is almost everything conceivable.

It is masculinity that is being challenged and has the necessity to withhold its definition despite a lack of clear widespread meaning. It is masculinity that builds the positive character of men who consistently work to be leaders through the practice of Stoicism and boys who are discovering their inner-James Bonds at the mere age of five. It is masculinity that can be a positive influence in both boys and girls to learn how we can coexist and progress society farther than berating the polar opposite. And it is masculinity that has created a society for thousands of years to be rejoiced, retooled, and redefined towards better harmony between genders and species alike.

I'm writing this in the hopes that we can, as Ms. Jaye says, "stop expecting to be offended". As a man living in the modern age, I can only see the damage this society had done to not only my own image, but also my image of masculinity at hand. The movies from years prior highlight some key principles of being a man and allowed men to explore their own senses of masculinity to find out what works for them, but nowadays we stray so far from the point of utilizing traditional masculinity as a tool. Sure, being a man is a bit more than just having testicles, but it's also important to recognize how these Dudeism/Stoic/Bond-Esque principles contribute to creating a positively masculine man in the face of adversity. Bit by bit men must recreate a positive image of the dominant drives that flow through our brains and how to utilize them for good, even if it is downplayed as just "traditional masculine urges". Power, after all, is merely an entity. It is how one uses it that defines it's good or its evil capabilities. Those that wish to get rid of power are merely scared of it, as when the power is gone so is their feeling of inadequacy.