You raise some good points. Its a shame your first comment seemed to dismiss this video and possibly feminism. Why people feel the need to 1up the other "team" I've no idea. I suspect it might have something to do with implicit sexism and the feeling that your ingroup is threatened... This isn't a competition, there is room for masculinism and feminism, you don't have to shout over the other to get your points across. Sadly masculinist and sexist are synonymous precisely because people who describe themselves as masculinist seem to spend the greater half of their time attack feminism rather than making any constructive points to support their argument. Like I said, its a shame you soured your examples with your initial reaction.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'the mask you live in, masculinity' to 'the mask you live in, masculinity, suicide, be a man, respect, violence, society' - edited by lucky760

To say we haven't hyper masculinized our culture is just plain ignorant. If you look throughout history, you can see the gradual progression towards an ungodly amount of "manliness". Same goes for women too. A lot simply comes down to advertising and commercialization, the segmentation of the have's and have not's and so forth.

You want to have respect? Be a man! Want money? Be a man! But what IS being a man? Is it punching some dude in the face for "disrespecting" you? Or if it laughing it off knowing the other guy is just a loser?

In reality, it comes down to money. To people who are poor, violence is usually the solution. There is no question about that; statistically speaking poorer men are more likely to lash out violently than those with more. Mostly because the poor man only has his respect. The rich man, well, he could get sued, lose his job, get hurt, lose his house and fancy car etc.

Knowing this, how do you advertise to the male with little? You tell him if he wants to be anything, he needs to be a man! Like James Bond or something. 6-pack abs (despite a long history of that not being the ideal form, i.e. early black and white movies or dress makers changing the sizes of their clothes from a size 12 being "average" to a size 6.)

I know we love to say men are being feminized and turning into "wussies." Fox news loves talking about how the NFL is worried about brain injuries (despite all the evidence showing clearly there is a ton of it) and Christian groups claiming bullying is GOOD for society because it weeds out the gays. For a "man" to, I have no idea actually, whatever it is the Fox News thinks men should be . . . Are "men" supposed to always be violent? They should always resort to shooting each other over trivial things?

What exactly is "being a man" all about anyway? Not being gay? Not being like a woman? And why is being a woman, or gay, so terrible? Why is it that high heels and make up were originally a "man" thing? Or frilly clothes . . . Why is it that 100 years ago, little boys and girls wore the same clothes, which were usually dresses? Hell, Ernest Hemmingway (a man's man) wore a dress as a child. There are plenty of pictures of him in it, and it's even on display at his house in Key West. So is he less of a man now?

And if wearing a skirt is so not manly, why are Scot's so manly then? Or is it manly to say fuck society, I'll do what I want? Is it manly to go against the flow? Stand up for what you believe? For instance, the story of the father who wore dresses because his son wanted to wear a dress, and the father didn't want his son to feel ashamed for being who he is? I'm pretty sure that father, as some say, has some pretty big brass balls. Would you do that for your kid? Or would you bow to societal pressure instead?

A worthy topic of discussion . . . I mean, right after ending the pointless wars and stopping the NSA from finding out whether or not you wear your wife's panties . . .

I'm a father, and this rings all too true. Already with my son in middle school, I see many of the boys withdrawing from genuine bonding into carefully crafted fronts and defensive posturing. It's alarming as a dad, but sadly not a surprise. I remember this transition all too well - not much has changed on this topic since I was a kid in the '70s and '80s.

But we can teach emotional sensitivity to our boys - and still demonstrate real masculinity (and strength). Like most dads, I've taught my son that strength of character often means facing fear head-on. Yes, being strong.

But does that mean to just "man up" and act tough? No. Everyday, the single greatest thing most men are afraid of is sharing their true feelings (and not just irritation or rage). For a lot of men, it gets to the point where they themselves don't know what they're feeling anymore - let alone have the ability to tell anyone else.

I've taught my son that real bravery is facing that fear. Express your feelings to someone you trust regularly. Share them with friends, and (especially) reach out for help when you're feeling sad/down. Overcome the fear that buries your inner world, and you're on your way to becoming a real man - the kind of man that's not afraid of the very thing most men cower and retreat from.

If anything we pamper our "little men" too much these days. We have so emasculated males that many have identity crisis issues. All this effeminate to even homosexual tone within society hinders the nature male need to express his masculinity.

Interesting, but like rychan some elements didn't really click for me personally.

I never felt pressure to "be a man". I felt pressure to be a conformist. To NOT be academically engaged (ie. don't be a nerd). Some pressure to be into sports (particularly football), which is as close as I think I ever felt to "masculine" type pressure.

I ended up hating the bullies. A lot of them were jocks, so I decided I hated sports. Eventually I pretty much hated people, in general. I The difference between HS and college was like night and day (it gets better, kids), but it still took me a couple years to lower some of my defensive walls.

The bit about feeling pressure to hide anger didn't ring true for me at all. Some of the few times I felt like I was getting some respect happened when bullies pushed me or my friends far enough for me to snap. Didn't happen often, but in the two "fights" I got into in High School I was rewarded with months of calm / being left alone after them (being left alone / ignored doesn't sound great, but it was about as comfortable as I ever could get in High School).

I "won" both fights, and in both instances had to be dragged away from the bully who had started it by a teacher after causing some moderate damage (bruises up to bloody nose). No punishment for me from the administration in either case because I had zero record of causing trouble vs. the boys I had fought with being in trouble damn near constantly. I suppose that if I had lost / gotten my ass kicked it might have been different, but the (dangerous) lesson I learned was to show anger with a little earlier threshold than I normally would have done. Certainly not that I had to hide my anger. I would argue that feeling encouraged to display or even exaggerate your anger in that way is probably a more common masculine pressure than hiding it.

I definitely agree with rychan that bullying seems like a much larger issue to me, and that it doesn't seem very closely linked to masculine gender role pressure. Still, this is interesting.

I hadn't even noticed that the loathing of this band had become so ubiquitous as to become cliché.

I'm pretty happy about it, though.

Really, I'm just so tired of all these retro-fetishist, nature-romanticist hipsters with their beards and their work boots and their flannel shirts, treating masculinity as an accessory because they honestly just don't know any better. They're all just perpetual adolescents who for the life of them cannot seem to figure out what it means to become an adult. So they try to find shortcuts.

Dylan was pretentious, but he was also a genius lyricist. Seriously, no bandwagon here, and I don't know if I'd call him the greatest songwriter of all time, but... he was good. Dylan was also highly political, and could be fairly incisive, while these confused little boys, all these hipster douchebags who seem to think that honesty can be bought at a thrift store, only ever sing about flowers and trees and broken hearts.

And they're all the same. Always. As a group, they are so homogenous that it becomes offensive to me.

My understanding is that he's a bit off on at least some of his biology. When it comes to the ear, I believe he's referring to otoacoustic emissions.. However, if you note from the abstract I linked, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, homosexual or bisexual females tend to have patterns of otoacoustic emissions with more masculine characteristics, however the same is not true for homosexual or bisexual males. While the results are insignificant, I'm told that the trend is in the opposite direction (that is, homosexual males have slightly "hyper masculinized" cochlea). These changes are often sloppily attributed to "genetic" differences. However, many theories suggest that it may have something to do with testosterone exposure in utero or during early development (though genetic mechanisms are possible in many circumstances).

With regard to the voice box, I dunno. I stick to sensory systems.

In female to male gender transition, transgendered people often have voice changes with testosterone injections if they are younger. Their voice will drop, not unlike during puberty for men, although they may also choose to attend voice therapy to further 'pass' as a man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_therapy_(transgender)

Anyhow, the sound of what is 'feminine' and 'masculine' are to a degree hormonal. It can be hormones delivered artificially, hormones exposed to during development that change the different aspects of the brain, a lot of the details are not well understood.

Theres a lot more to say, but I might be rambling. Jump on the googles if you're interested, maybe stumble on the Kinsey Institutes sex and gender research.

Um, what he's saying is quantified over and over again. Gay guys talking in a higher, more feminine voice, is nothing new and nothing special. It's the same reason straight women do. It's part of biology. Deep voice = masculinity while higher voice = femininity.

If the gay guy has been repressing himself to fit in with what society expects him to, he's probably learned to talk in a higher pitched voice against his natural urges. For instance, go talk to a baby or a little kid. Listen to what you do to your voice. Did someone teach you to do that? No. It's a natural instinct because we naturally find higher pitched voices less intimidating and more feminine.

Now, that's not to say all gay guys are feminine. Some are very masculine and would retain a deeper voice, only they find other guys attractive. Hell, they may still find a higher pitched voice attractive. Nothing strange, unusual or weird about it. It just happens.

Nice reply. Thanks Gwiz.

At the moment I am doing honours in ethics looking at gender reassignment surgery. The science behind it all is extremely subjective and there seems to be a lot of cherry picking of factors and studies where a certain result is desired. There are a few scientific findings that have consensus and they mainly involve how little difference there is between men and women. Lots of the differences we see are at the extreme end of the scale, aka sports analogies. In every capacities men and women are capable of doing pretty much the same thing. Some extreme cases will involve things that only men can do due to the outright strength involved but other things we may think to be too physical women have done and are doing in other 3rd world nations all the time. Women can be conditioned to be very strong and very tough. We just don't value that or pursue that in the West.

The Elevatorgate and other examples should simply be ignored. They are immediately identifiable as being ridiculous and threaten to undermine to the entire project of a meritocracy that seems to be at the core of the liberal tradition (liberal in the post enlightenment sense, not the Fox news "All liberals are evil" sense).

You are right that society is probably not consciously trying to keep women down. THis is one of the major criticisms that feminism brings forth. It is that we do it tacitly and automatically. When we see an all women rock band we say "That's an all womens rock band" but when we see an all male rock band they are simply "A rock band". Simple and largely harmless example but it extends to every facet of society. Look at CEO's. When a women makes CEO of a huge multinational it is noteworthy. There are certain assumptions made that she's a ball breaker or a tough business woman. All things we associate with masculinity. Its as if there is no role for femininity in powerful roles either from women or men.

Ramble ramble too. Running out of stuff to add without writing a HUGE thesis.

Isn't Blacksmithing just one of those archaic tough-guy jobs that screams masculinity? Honestly, I'd put it up there with Crab-fisherman, coal-miner, marine..

I took a class in Behavioral Neroendocrinology and that's precisely what happens. All brain development follows a female path, unless acted on by hormones. If gonadal development occurs, it triggers the brain to become "masculine". But if this doesn't happen, then you have what happens to this girl.

This isn't a choice, or a phase, or a decision that was made by the parents to let it happen or not happen; this already took place in utero. I just hope she remains as happy and spunky as she is now and with luck, can find someone who can accept her for her.

Very good point. I know many females who participate in online gaming or forums who choose neutral or masculine names and avatars so they are treated equally.

I also have many male friends who create female alter egos to get special treatment online - hand holding, gifts and ESPECIALLY an army of White Nights.

Yep, these guys are fools. But dude - trying to reclaim 'faggot' in this way seems less than useless. Unnecessary to make your point, which is that these guys are willing to spend an inordinate amount of money to claim some sort of idealized 'masculinity.' Consider that your use of the word 'faggot' and comment that 'men are dead' does much the same thing. Men are men - there're lots of different types of us. These guys are fools not because they fail to meet an idealized 'masculinity,' but because they are desperately chasing that masculinity in the silliest, most helpless way possible.

Those comments aside - a good find.