Define: Manhood

[Kishkumen]

I going to open myself up a little bit here. It's self-imposed risky proposition.

How do you define Manhood?

How did you define it as a TBM compared to now? What changed? What stayed the same? What enlightened thinking have you discovered post faith transition?

What are some qualities, some characteristics, some ideals and some measurements of what manhood is?

[Red Ryder]

As a TBM:

Tall, dark, and obedient! Well... not too dark!

The measure of a man consists of three things

1. The depth of his testimony.
2. The purity and whiteness of his garments.
3. His ability to follow the Lord, in all he does.

A real man loves Jesus, Cafe Rio, and the Utah Jazz!

A real man knows when to lead his family, follow his prophet, and conduct sacrament meeting on the fly!

A real man reads his scriptures, sings primary songs, and can stack 1,000 lbs of wheat in his basement straight as an old free mason brick layer!

A real man attends the temple, has the ordinances memorized, and doesn't flinch when the washing and anointing officiator gets within millimeters of his left testicle.

A real man knows Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost by their first names! Yes, all three!

As an unbeliever:

A real man loves football, a cold beer, and to scratch his balls in public!

[Hagoth]

I don't care for the word. It doesn't need defining. It seems to exist as an artificial type-A sort of construct for juvenile and/or condescending behavior.

Now it it's all right with you I'll just get back to playing with my dolls.

[JustHangingOn@57]

My cousin recently related his experience with LDS dating sites. Several of the women specifically stated that "you must be a strong priesthood holder". I told him to reply that he can easily lift 100 pounds over his head!. He said that LDS women are basically looking for men who, in order of importance, hold the priesthood, have a job, and don't spend all of their spare time playing COD in their basement. So that, I guess, is the new yardstick to measure manhood.

[Mad Jax]

My definition of manhood is heavily influenced by the Marine Corps, or at least masculinity is. The NCO MCI has 14 attributes of leadership that I've struggled to live up to, but believe in strongly:

Justice
Judgement
Dependability
Initiative
Decisiveness
Tact
Integrity
Enthusiasm
Bearing
Unselfishness
Courage
Knowledge
Loyalty
Endurance

Also add to that the attribute of discipline and you have my idea of what masculinity, and by extension manhood, is mostly based.

[Just This Guy]

I have always used a modification of the BSA Oath

A man is:
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient*
Cheerful
Thrifty
Clean
Reverent

*This is the one where things have changed for me. Before it was obedient to TSCC. Not it is more someone who thoughtfully considers the moral implications of something and acts upon their evaluation.

[Palerider]

My definition of manhood is heavily influenced by the Marine Corps, or at least masculinity is. The NCO MCI has 14 attributes of leadership that I've struggled to live up to, but believe in strongly:

Justice
Judgement
Dependability
Initiative
Decisiveness
Tact
Integrity
Enthusiasm
Bearing
Unselfishness
Courage
Knowledge
Loyalty
Endurance

Also add to that the attribute of discipline and you have my idea of what masculinity, and by extension manhood, is mostly based.

I would think that all of these would apply to women as well? It's a great list.

I might add "compassion", "forgiveness"?

[Hagoth]

I would think that all of these would apply to women as well? It's a great list.

I might add "compassion", "forgiveness"?

Yes it is a great list. Maybe we should expand the definition to humanhood?

There are a couple of reasons I reacted negatively earlier.

First, when someone you love very much turns out to not fit traditional binary gender assignments you have to step back and reevaluate the importance of such labels.

Second, I grew up in a home where "manly" had mostly to do with how much time you spent hunting and playing sports. For my dad and brother those were the only worthwhile activities for a manly man, and everything else was incidental. I happened not to like either of those things. I spent a lot of time with books, telescopes and paint brushes. I grew up thinking of myself as an embarrassment to the family because I wasn't a manly man. I chose things like hang gliding, paddling, and mountain biking for my sports. Anyone who knows me would never think of me as not "manly" but I will never forget my dad's looks of embarrassment when I didn't measure up on the sports field or when I opted out of the hunting expedition to stay back at camp and read a science book.

I've also seen too much workplace alpha-male sword fighting and I don't care for it. But it does sell a lot of penis enlargement products.

[Red Ryder]

Hagoth you make a great point about changing this to "humanhood" rather than masculinity based manhood.

I'm very privileged to know Kish IRL as we work fairly close enough to have lunch on a regular basis. Based on our lunch conversations I may have some insight into his post to add context.

If I may suggest, sometimes us guys born and raised in the church struggle to find our place in the world when our religious structure falls apart because we don't know any other framework. That leaves us with an identity crisis that we struggle to find an answer for.

It impacts our marriages, our innermost thoughts, our intimate details. It affects the way we rebuild our lives when we recognize that our mormon masculinity was wrong and we see worldly masculinity as an impossible mold to fit. Then we begin see the "normal" behaviors of men with new light and see that these behaviors as you described from your own father as unacceptable.

That leaves us confused, bewildered, and deflated enough that our identity crisis continues.

With nothing left to do, we pull out the old Depeche Mode Cd's, curl up into a fetal ball, and play "Somebody" on repeat for the next 6 hours.

I want somebody to share
Share the rest of my life
Share my innermost thoughts
Know my intimate details
Someone who'll stand by my side
And give me support
And in return
She'll get my support
She will listen to me
When I want to speak
About the world we live in
And life in general
Though my views may be wrong
They may even be perverted
She'll hear me out
And won't easily be converted
To my way of thinking
In fact she'll often disagree
But at the end of it all
She will understand me

[Mormorrisey]

If I may suggest, sometimes us guys born and raised in the church struggle to find our place in the world when our religious structure falls apart because we don't know any other framework. That leaves us with an identity crisis that we struggle to find an answer for.

It impacts our marriages, our innermost thoughts, our intimate details. It affects the way we rebuild our lives when we recognize that our mormon masculinity was wrong and we see worldly masculinity as an impossible mold to fit. Then we begin see the "normal" behaviors of men with new light and see that these behaviors as you described from your own father as unacceptable.

That leaves us confused, bewildered, and deflated enough that our identity crisis continues.

I feel very, very fortunate that my "identity" as a male was forged by lots of reading and hanging around good women throughout my life (other than my narcissistic mother), rather than be strongly influenced by actual males. I don't have many male friends, I never have, as most of the people I hung around with when younger and now tend to be female; and the male friends I do have tend to see the world in a similar way. In that way, I never particularly fit the Mormon male mold, and so I haven't had to wrestle with this challenge as others have. But I understand the wrestle, as my own Dad thought I was gay right up until I got married. For those who actually care about what the males in their lives think, it can be a challenge to fit in to traditional male roles if you're not sure what they are anymore. Y'all have my sympathy.

Perhaps a thought from my own experience could help. In my younger academic days, I had a lot of stimulating conversations with a colleague, who did gender history as her field. She claimed that "gender" was in fact, a social, rather than a biological construct. In other words, societal expectations, rather than genitalia, forged gender roles in society, and tends to still do this. It took me a while to understand this theory, and I'm not entirely sure I buy it completely, but I'm starting to see "gender identity" as a LOT more fluid than I used to, even if I'm not ready to make a full poststructualist leap into the erasing of gender roles. But it sure has helped me personally in my life, to recognize that the kind of male I want to be, is to just be a decent human being, which dovetails nicely into what Hagoth was saying.

[Hagoth]

She claimed that "gender" was in fact, a social, rather than a biological construct. In other words, societal expectations, rather than genitalia, forged gender roles in society, and tends to still do this.

This is borne out by that fact that many cultures around the world in Asia, Africa, Polynesia, Native America... recognize more than 2 genders. Some biologist claim there are as many genders as there are individuals. I'm not sure about that but there are many variations of sex chromosomes beyond XX and XY and some very good neurochemical evidence that peoples' gender is determined in the womb, regardless of how their genitals develop. Also, non-binary variations of genitalia are more common than you would expect, most of which are surgically restructured after birth.

[Red Ryder]

This is borne out by that fact that many cultures around the world in Asia, Africa, Polynesia, Native America... recognize more than 2 genders.

I'm going to admit I've never seen evidence of this in any issue of National Geographic. The photos might be taken through the lens of the photographer though!

Do you think their cognitive bias leans toward traditional masculinity which gets captured in the photos? Im extremely simplifying this based on mainstream photos of warrior tribes where the men hunt and the women breast feed the babies. Perhaps traditional narratives support the magazine sales commercialization requires.

Of course I also haven't seen an issue if National Geographic magazine in about 15 years so maybe I'm just not aware of gender fluidity as photographed in the Serengeti.

[alas]

None of the women have chimed in on this one yet and women do have different concepts of what is important as far as manhood goes. If you think of primitive society, in order to protect the tribe men had to be capable of fighting other tribes and they needed to provide meat for their family. Women provided most of the vegetables and fruit, either from farming or gathering and needed a man to provide meat and help with children if she became incapacitated or during pregnancy and nursing a child.

I think as a result of this primitive way of living, we developed a division of labor that still tends to continue today. So, men tend to push other men into the warrior idea of male gender while women value the fatherhood idea of male gender. So, men value competition, and maybe even violence, hunting, and status in the community. Women value the ability to provide, even if it isn’t hunting and the ability to nurture. They tend not to value the warrior ideal because husbands that make great warriors tend to get killed, leaving them to depend of the larger society for the meat and other essentials. But they DO value status, which is often given to the best warriors, so this tends to cancel out any avoidance of marrying warriors, often leaving them attracted to “men in uniforms” and warriors. But then don’t teach their little boys to be warriors because they instinctively caremore about grandchildren than they do the social status of their son.

Studies have shown that men/fathers do MOST of the gender training. From the minute of birth, fathers are pushing manhood, while mother’s training is more gender neutral, teaching general life skills and leaving the gender training to the men. I have never heard a theory behind WHY men do al ost all of the gender training, but they treat their children differently from birth and punish gender incongruent behavior.

So a Boy who grows up without a “male roll model” = gender roll enforcer tends to have less of the gender stereotype, while a girls who grows up without a father, rather than being more “feminine” because she is around all kinds of women, is more of a tomboy because no one is punishing her for that behavior. These are generalizations, so in case you are thinking of the father who really wanted a boy and got a girl, so he is raising her like a boy, that really does happen.

So, how does a woman define manhood? She wants someone who can provide, has social status, and can also nurture children if necessary. She doesn’t care if you hunt, as long as you can bring home the bacon. She wants a “good healthy specimen” for good genes, so she will look for sports ability, but she is looking more from strength and “good genes” and the social status of being the sports jock, less about the sport itself than about the fringe benefits of being a jock. And she cares less about your fear of war than she does your fear of changing a dirty diaper.

Men bond with each other over activities like sports and hunting and war. But women don’t really care if you are “one of the guys”. They care about what you can giver her children. So, what is manhood to a woman. Daddy.

[Palerider]

I would think that all of these would apply to women as well? It's a great list.

I might add "compassion", "forgiveness"?

Yes it is a great list. Maybe we should expand the definition to humanhood?

"the best way to describe eudaimonia is living a life of “human flourishing,” or excellence."

A little word from Aristotle concerning the human life. Excellent article if anyone is willing to spend the time reading it. I think it would be of help to those here looking to rebuild a framework of manhood post-Mormonism. To me it says, "set your own standards of excellence" and use wisdom when you do.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles ... manliness/

[Hagoth]

This is borne out by that fact that many cultures around the world in Asia, Africa, Polynesia, Native America... recognize more than 2 genders.

I'm going to admit I've never seen evidence of this in any issue of National Geographic.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that 1/3 of the people are non-binary. The percentages are small, but man traditional cultures do carve out a place for people who are recognized as not falling into either of the standard categories. I can give you names and numbers if you want, but that would require me digging out my old anthropology readings. A quick internet search turned up this top ten list: http://listverse.com/2018/10/03/10-soci ... -genders/
You can use it as an appendix to your Nat Geo collection.

[Mad Jax]

I would think that all of these would apply to women as well? It's a great list.

I might add "compassion", "forgiveness"?

I think they do apply to women as well. When I use the term masculinity it's more of a classical definition; there's nothing that implies a woman can't have masculine attributes or that a man can't have feminine attributes. Both elevate a person. But those are somewhat outdated definitions and our society is constantly rethinking these ideas. Compassion, for instance, is seen in the east as a universal attribute, but more of a "feminine" one in the west. I'm inclined to eastern wisdom on this one. This is not to say that the east does not have a view of yin and yang but it isn't a direct comparison to western ideas. Overall though, I agree that no matter what a society defines as positive attributes, they are positive regardless of where somebody falls on a gender spectrum.

[1smartdodog]

My cousin recently related his experience with LDS dating sites. Several of the women specifically stated that "you must be a strong priesthood holder". I told him to reply that he can easily lift 100 pounds over his head!. He said that LDS women are basically looking for men who, in order of importance, hold the priesthood, have a job, and don't spend all of their spare time playing COD in their basement. So that, I guess, is the new yardstick to measure manhood.

Given the inequities that all ready exist between the numbers of women and men in the church that makes for a lot of lonely women.

[Hagoth]

Given the inequities that all ready exist between the numbers of women and men in the church that makes for a lot of lonely women.

If they are stalwart and faithful they will only have to endure loneliness for a (80 or 90 year) the blink of an eye. Afterlife polygamy saves the day!

[crossmyheart]

With nothing left to do, we pull out the old Depeche Mode Cd's, curl up into a fetal ball, and play "Somebody" on repeat for the next 6 hours.

I want somebody to share
Share the rest of my life
Share my innermost thoughts
Know my intimate details
Someone who'll stand by my side
And give me support
And in return
She'll get my support
She will listen to me
When I want to speak
About the world we live in
And life in general
Though my views may be wrong
They may even be perverted
She'll hear me out
And won't easily be converted
To my way of thinking
In fact she'll often disagree
But at the end of it all
She will understand me

non-sequitur:
during the era of mix tapes- I had a boyfriend tell me to record a song that described us/ I picked some 80's song about dancing and partying all night. He picked this one... oops... needless to say the relationship took an abrupt turn towards the friend-zone.

[Linked]

Can I define a virtuous life rather than manhood?

TBM me:
- Strive to do Heavenly Father's will, and adopt it as my own (this was nebulous and prone to changing, a perfect goal to keep me in the boat)
- Read scriptures daily
- Fulfill my calling(s)
- Perform real service
- Seek truth and learn lots
- Don't masturbate
- Work hard
- Take care of my family

Current me:
- Understand people
- Be pro-social
- Seek truth and learn lots
- Work hard
- Take care of my family

I am fortunate to not be in a dire situation, so I can have this definition.