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I can't really identify with this. I've never felt a pressure to act like a "real man". Even when in a toxic situation like Middle School, I never felt like "being a man" was the issue. I never felt like I had tons of pent up rage that I couldn't express because I had to "man up". And I certainly can't stand this pseudoscience BS about "if you don't cry you have all of this stuff pent up inside you".

If you want to help boys, help stop bullying. I don't think the two concepts are that closely linked.

Also, I feel like this could shame boys who use bravado and playful roughhousing as a defense mechanism.

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.

Where do you think that bullying comes from though. Kids being told that they have to be tough and physically assault anything perceived as a threat even if that threat is so benign as "that kid made me look dumb so I'm going to beat him up when the teachers aren't looking"

I never had a dad growing up, so I never felt that pressure to "man up" so yeah, I felt that "conformist" pressure more.

It all just links back to income inequality though. Why do parents tell their kids to man up and be tough? probably because they're having a tough time with the job market and it becomes dog eat dog out there. but that mentality can lead to violence.

where does the conformist mentality come from. wealthier kids who have nicer clothes making poorer kids feel like shit. Let's just say I think school uniforms are a great idea to combat that inequality. kids are supposed to be expressing their mind at school, not mommy and daddy's pocketbook.

We're biologically hard wired to be competitive because a long time ago, we had to compete for food. We don't need to do that anymore, but the hard wiring still remains. It's going to take a while for that trait to regress.

Shit's complex. I was always anti-bully but then I had a few bullies in different periods growing up. At one point I lashed out with bully behaviour of my own because when I asked for help I was told to "be a man and stand up for yourself."

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.

jesus fuck, we teach our kids to compete, rather than cooperate. and that's what you get.

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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.

I don't know, but not entirely from pressure to "be a man". Just look at girls. I think they endure even worse bullying and I don't think it's because of the pressure they're under to "be a man".

Will you be my father? Please?

It comes from many things. What is one reason America has such high instances of gun violence? Perhaps it is because we love our guns and to be a man you have to own one, and to be a country you have to have gun freedoms. Does this register with you? I don't know--were you ever shot? If not, obviously gun violence doesn't stem from this problem

But seriously, it is a multi-layered onion, and one of those layers is to be tough. Another is commercialism. Another is emasculation (Ie., tearing men down when society declares they must be men.) Etc.

Um no. We respect women too much. Like the bible says, "Spare the rod, spoil the woman." We let them decide things and in turn they make us into little credit cards to be disposed of....sad...

But the solution is clear. Either get rid of our ape-like concepts of manhood or crush the fuck out of this respect-for-women-and-children-and-others bullshit.

Please don't quote the Bible if you can't get the verse right.

Hmm.....habits I picked up while growing up. I can't say they were gotten from any one source, line, or context...but I had I still struggle to unlearn them.

Extreme independence, this mainly applies to learning in school. If I couldn't learn it in class or own my own, then I failed. I'd say this was a mix of bad teachers, parents who weren't familiar with the material, lack of easy and discrete tutoring options (although I can't say I would have used them), and the attitude that you should be able to do it on your own which was picked up along the way. This goes over into the next point.

Asking for help before you've tried for yourself. Now this is one of those things where it could go either way. Trying on your own might let you figure out a way that works for you, but it might also give you bad habits that don't carry over into other things. Mostly to do with mental tasks, but it also spreads into physical tasks. Like moving something too heavy or too large for one person, end up hurting yourself or breaking something and being chastised for the attempt that was almost implied you should make on your own for YEARS for everything. Or something as simple as trying to fix your bike, and ending up with it done wrong that could go spectacularly bad, like brakes that don't work well enough or a chain that breaks or skips and busting your face on your handle bars when you really stand on it. This is something where I still struggle today as an adult as to when asking for help or expecting help with something is "too soon" and getting varied results back. People who say "Why didn't you come to me sooner?" versus "That's easy! I can't believe you didn't try...." I think it's just so common with men that it's almost overlooked. And it leads into seeing people getting help as seeing them as stupid/weak/etc...then perpetuates the cycle. I don't know it's more of a US culture thing or what. Because I used to see a lot of foreign students in college that would work together on everything...I always viewed it as cheating and in some cases it was cheating by the rules of the college but overlooked in their cases.

So the "help" thing kind of leads into injuries, falling, etc. It's embarrassing to fall of course. But I can remember breaking my arm and having to walk home because my mom didn't believe I'd hurt myself. Or cases where I was having an asthma attack at school and told to just wait it out because I'd already used my rescue inhaler. Partly due to ignorance of the nurse or person involved, but also because there's just a mistrust of kids trying to "game" the system to get out of things. Admittedly some did this, I however did not, and I quickly learned to just tolerate all of the discomfort and distractions of various issues that may come up during the school day. Which led to a day where I was so sick I spent the entire day in the nurses office while they tried to contact a parent and had to ride the bus home flat on my back in a seat trying not to puke. Then with more apparent injuries, "walk it off" was and is the common thing you hear. It's holds some truth, but when your taught to put up with it.. I had a dislocated knee cap for a couple days. It was so bad the night before it popped back into place at school that I was using a crutch to get to the bathroom. Dislocated thumb that popped back into place when I fell trying to play football. I mean it sounds like I had horrible parents, but it was just so ingrained into me that if I could walk...I was fine.


Lots more stuff...but one that I'm not sure how to phrase properly. Anything to do with touching that might be seen as affectionate or showing concern. Pats on the back giving or receiving to or from another guy. Helping someone up could almost be seen as an insult at times. I want to say lots of eastern Euro cultures (which I could be entirely wrong here on the location) express themselves much more than US physically, and it's pretty alien for me to see given how it was and is for me aging. Of course there are times where I feel like I SHOULD do it, but the act of it is ingrained to be wrong.......? I guess that sounds as close to as I'm going to get with it.

But yeah, I see where they are going with the video. I also think that part of it is because opposite sex teacher/nurse/whatever showing above certain levels of care to a male/female student triggers something in the hormone addled brains that creates more problems. So in turn, adults are taught to put the kids in their box and treat them all like that to avoid the issues that might end up with you losing your job because Bobby or Susie thinks you like-like them. And in the past male teachers to male students might have been able to ignore the box, but I think with the public eye focused more on looking as being homosexual as more acceptable...the same sex teachers/etc are going to have adhere to the box thing too if they want to keep their jobs.

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 . . .

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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