Advanced Essay #2: Masculinity is a Myth

Introduction
The purpose of my essay is to question what masculinity truly is and it's validity as a measure of a man.
I'm most proud of my conclusion about masculinity it took me a while but I hope I did the topic justice.
I think looking for outside sources more early and often because they gave me different perspectives that helped me reach my conclusion.

I’ve been masculine my whole life. I’ve never really struggled with that part of my identity. But when thinking about this essay I realized that it's never been something I thought about. I just was. Everyone I hung out with was. Since I was a kid I’ve always loved basketball and a lot of my closest friends are ones I met while on various different teams. All of us trying to look like our heroes, the ones that do what we do on Tv. Men, who are strong, dedicated and completely masculine. Star athletes who never have their masculinity questioned in any way. And isn’t that funny? Athletes get accused of thievery, rape, murder, but never of having wavering masculinity. Never of falling short of what a man “should” be.

In an article written by Steve Almond for The New York Times, he questions if “watching sports, and later attempting to fashion [himself] into an athlete, also served as a kind of inoculation against the more elemental fear that [he] was insufficiently masculine” (9/11/15). There are a lot of different ways to to interpret this quote. Does being an athlete in our society automatically make you more masculine? And why? How can something such as the essence of your manhood even be quantified? Those are really tough questions and yet in our society they are made simple. Workout so your body looks good. Date a lot of girls, that’ll improve your status. Degrade other men to show your superiority over them. Read a book? Why would you ever do that? These are some of the ways that masculinity is approached and seen in America. Being a boy who’s grown up in the public school system of course of I’ve seen this in my own life as well.

Earlier this year I got into a shouting match with my friend. We had gotten into it about something but it had devolved into who could say the words that cut deepest and the topic of basketball was his weapon of choice.

“I heard you don’t play. You don’t get no minutes. What happened you were supposed to be on the best on the team?”

A lot of the things he was saying weren’t true but the perception of them had manifested itself in his mind and made me less of a man in his mind. For the the first time in my life, my masculinity had been questioned.

In the dictionary masculinity is defined as “qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of men,” but what does that truly mean? The Washington Post covered an “intimate panel discussion” regarding that same question of “what does it really mean to be a man?” and during it Mark Greene, the Senior Editor of The Good Men Project said that “the rules of being a man… aren’t just handed to us on a piece of paper. They’re pounded into us daily. Until we open up our definition of manhood much broader to include as many versions of manhood as there are manhood as there are men, men are going to continue to confront this question of ‘Am I man enough?” (Date N/A).

This is the quote that really clicked for me. Masculinity as defined, are the traits and attributes that are deemed as characteristics of men. In our society, this is taken too far in many cases and the definition can be misinterpreted as to meaning that masculinity makes up traits and attributes that to be a real man you must have. That’s why not having the best season made me less of a man to my friend. Because as a man if you’re going to be an athlete you should be a good one. And I believe that is where the biggest problem lies. Masculinity shouldn’t exist because it tries to simplify and minimize the essence of so many different types of people, living so many different types of lives that are similar in only one way and that is that they are male. To have a term like masculinity that has become restrictive, being used as a measuring stick as you’re value and status as a human, is toxic really. A universal checklist of what a man should be can’t be applied when the men who are checking the boxes are men who’s individual make-ups are anything but.

Masculinity has become a way to make all boys feel that they have to look and act a certain way to be accepted, when really we should be telling these kids that being themselves is the most important thing. Because if masculinity is a term that doesn’t integrate all men within its boundaries then it contradicts its own definition and shouldn’t be used at all.



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