Masculinity and men

[Buddha1]

Let's take number 7 from the list. Sports. Since Giambattista would want to discuss that.

Sports

In my opinion Sports is directly related with natural masculinity. I think an important part of masculinity is about strength and competitions and power and exploring the world, going out, taking physical risks, etc. (none of this need be negative!), and sports is a good way of expressing that masculinity and to develop masculine strengths. It is also a great way of bonding with other men.

I would say that sports are an essential part of natural masculinity.

If someone genuinely knows of a masculine person who doesn't have an interest in any kind of sports, then I might change my opinion.

Although some aspects of 'sports' associated with masculinity in our societies are clearly not part of natural masculinity, and it can be proven.

E.g. watching sports is not really all that masculine. It is actually participatin in the sports which is part of natural masculinity. You may be totally disinterested in watching others play. You may not like to watch sports on television. Especially, the slow ones like Golf and cricket. (Gold I think is a particularly 'feminine' sports)

One proof of the above assertion is that a lot of women (and feminine gendered women) like to watch sports, even on telly. And a lot of masculine men don't like to watch games on T.V., even if they do so out of pressures of social masculinity.

What do you guys (and girls) think?

 

[Ophiolite]

Science should not have any room for 'assumptions'. If they base their studies on unproved assumptions how can their studies be of any scientific worth?

Your ignorance of the scientific method is consistent and appalling.
Science is continually making assumptions, then testing these assumptions in repeatable experiments, against reality.
You are the only person denying, against massive evidence to the contrary, that homosexuals exist. You appear to be the one making assumptions, yet none of them are then being consistently tested by you. Get real.

 

[Franq]

Surely there is no such thing as 'natural' masculinity.

Ideas such as masculinity and femininity are completely socially constructed. All animals (including humans) may have attributes we associate as being masculine but such traits are only gendered in terms of our biased assumptions. When we come across another species wherein the male takes on 'feminine' tasks we see it as somehow odd or abnormal (think penguins sitting on eggs for months on end as a topical example).

The reason we see such behaviour as odd is because evolution has produced two biological sexes that act in concert to reproduce as succesfully as is possible. A result of this is that females generally invest more effort into the initial (and subsequent) reproductive process. Ova, after all, are thousands of times bigger than sperm and consequently much more costly to produce.

Females of most species are, therefore, understandably more choosy when it comes to getting it on with their male counterparts because they encounter the greater costs (pregnancy, increased mortality in childbirth, decreased mobility,etc.). Males, meanwhile, invest their efforts in boasting, competing, bullying, intimidation, showing off, fighting and doing generally whatever is necessary to convince the other sex that they are a good potential father to the females offspring.

If there is such a thing as 'natural' masculinity it is no doubt based on these attributes. I think that humans do employ these traits - look at our creative arts (music, poetry, flattery, and so on) and competitive sports - and how women react positively to such behaviour: a direct consequence of our biological and psychological evolution.

'Social' masculinity in contrast must only be our adaptations as sentient beings to the pressures and requirements of lives of Homo sapiens sapiens. No woman is going to fall for a man just because he earns 100k a year or can beat the shite out of his competitors or pen a romantic love song. In our socially complex symbolic world a man needs to prove he's a bit of all that and more.

Most of all he has to prove that she is the one and only as far as he is concerned. Monogamy, or more precisely the ability to be able to provide in the long term, is the requirement of human males. 'Social' masculinity needs to be viewed in terms of this. A man needs to be caring, understanding, and (dare we say it) 'feminine', as well as strong, protective and 'masculine' to be a man in our world.

Such an argument holds true for whatever the sexuality. A gay man needs be no less masculine than a straight guy. Masculinity is not a pre-requisite of heterosexual sex. Homosexual men are just as able to have sex with women as are heterosexual guys only they prefer not to.

Sexuality is ambigous; some folk are straight, others are gay, and some are happily indifferent. Masculinity and feminity likewise are concepts that are ambigous and are applicaple to both men and women. Ideas of definite gender can thus be seen in a certain light as nonsense.

Masculinity, therefore, however defined, is best seen as a sliding scale of how to behave in terms of socially defined stereotypes based on a biological blueprint of reproductive strategies.

 

[Satyr]

If masculinity and femininity are “social constructs” then how can they also be “procreative strategies”?
Did procreation arise as a social phenomenon or did it precede the emergence of social behavior?
Did animals fuck before they joined into groups or did they only begin fucking afterwards? If they did afterwards then how did they procreate before?

Are males a cultural phenomenon?
Did the penis arise as a consequence of society?

Did not nature dictate the necessity for genders and their procreative roles, making females different in their procreative strategies than males and so altering their psychology and physicality?
Are females different physically, by accident or as a natural quirk?
Did not the feminine procreative role not force females to sacrifice some independence for dependence, all in the name of reproduction; all in the name of larger brains and the longer gestation period and maturity period it necessitated?

Did not the masculine need to prove itself worthy of feminine sacrifice, not force males into more combative, aggressive and competitive roles? Did this not alter their psychology and physicality?

Do different procreative strategies not create different psychologies, as well as different physical forms?
Why are males more defiant and competitive, why are they driven to prove themselves and show their mallet, why are they always in the forefront of ingenuity and invention, why are they, most often, explorers, inventors and revolutionaries?
Why are females more conciliatory and accepting and tolerant?
Why do females make better compromisers, nurturers and diplomats?

All a social construct?

Did society create the uterus?
Did society make females more round and adolescent looking?
Did society endow males with more muscle or has society made muscle obsolete?

It isn’t that societies have created genders – sexual roles have evolved through time to serve particular procreative roles – it is that society has eventually made genders obsolete, making gender differences obsolete, as well.

Society nurtures the feminine, because it is more malleable and tolerant of social authority. It is, therefore, not surprising that homosexuality raises its head as a new form of femininity or that it has been used as a from of social discipline and cohesion in many social contexts, throughout history.

Masculinity is dangerous to harmony. It challenges and confronts. It clings to individuality and independence.
Societies are based on harmony and tolerance. It relies on cohesion and dependence.

Homosexuals become a genetic mutation with obvious social advantages. It is a form of male castration in a system that cannot tolerate more than one dominant male – in this case institutions take over that male dominant role and all others are forced into effeminate subordinate roles, including females who are forced into exaggerated, prissy, dependant female stereotypes, where all maleness is eradicated and suppressed in both sexes.
Humans are made unable to exist outside a social framework; they are domesticated.

Homosexuals, then, become the new ideal, the new standard of an effeminate human being, with no procreative concerns, using sex as a means to alleviate existential solitude and meaninglessness, bonding with each other for no other purpose than bonding itself – socialization/domestication/feminization.

Gender lines are blurred when males become obsolete, through technology and social ‘progress’ - males become females, females become males, sex is just a method of entertainment, nurture becomes the only way to explain away human diversity and all is leveled into a single, uniform state of ‘averageness’ where nothing that differentiates is tolerated or admitted and all become ‘equal’ and ‘the same’.

Males must be made the same as females and so them being penetrated becomes the new norm. Penetration does not always result in impregnation, anyways, in this modern world, so what’s the difference who or what you fuck?

Sex loses its original purpose - it becomes focused on its secondary purposes – it loses its meaning and its value.

Gender becomes artificial so as to excuse the leveling forces of society and the individual is excused away from his inadequacies and diversities.
In a world where the need exists to level everything into uniformity, nothing nature has created will be tolerated.
Reason supplants natural phenomena with manmade explanations. Memes replace genes.
Nature is to be overcome, warped, diverted, mutated and the consequences of human intervention plague humanity until man needs to invent newer technologies, medications, machines to cure him self from the ailments he himself has brought upon himself.

So, human ingenuity struggles to keep up with the effect of memetic alterations on a being used to the slow process of genetic alteration, and then he wonders why life is so empty for him – he wonders why life is so bland and boring and why he has lost identity and purpose.

Under such environments where superfluous ness makes everything innocuous food and feeding loses its value, human life becomes valueless, sex becomes valueless, everything becomes nothing.

That’s when ideals take hold and new definitions come on to replace old purposes.
That’s when homosexuals can reinterpret sexuality and genders can be made into artificial constructs and the façade of human free-will is preserved.

How pathetic can you people be?

 

[Buddha1]

Your ignorance of the scientific method is consistent and appalling.

By using baseless accusations and insults you don't necessarily become right!

Science is continually making assumptions, then testing these assumptions in repeatable experiments, against reality.

Oh, this is coming from someone who wouldn't take a single statement without asking for scientific proof of it --- even if it is saying that the sun is round?

Is scientitic method that haphazard and biased? No wonder people twist it around to spread lies!

Human sexuality is too complex a subject to base entirely on an unfounded assumption. Neither can it be examined haphazardly by testing out social myths and misconceptions as the basis for 'assumptions'. How is science different from religion then?

And whatever assumptions you make has to have some kind of basis. Popular culture or social belief cannot be such a basis! Science doesn't take that as the basis for assumptions in other fields, why should it make an exemption in the case of so-called 'homosexuality'! Do we smell a rat here!

You are the only person denying, against massive evidence to the contrary, that homosexuals exist. You appear to be the one making assumptions, yet none of them are then being consistently tested by you. Get real.

Who is denying that 'homosexuals' exist? But the fact that whom you call 'homosexuals' exist, doesn't mean that they represent all male-male sexual desire, or that this need (even if exclusive) is restrctied to this group. Or that everyone with what you call same-sex desires can be clubbed together with the homosexuals.

That is not very scientific, is it!

 

[Buddha1]

Surely there is no such thing as 'natural' masculinity.

Ideas such as masculinity and femininity are completely socially constructed. All animals (including humans) may have attributes we associate as being masculine but such traits are only gendered in terms of our biased assumptions. When we come across another species wherein the male takes on 'feminine' tasks we see it as somehow odd or abnormal (think penguins sitting on eggs for months on end as a topical example).

The reason we see such behaviour as odd is because evolution has produced two biological sexes that act in concert to reproduce as succesfully as is possible. A result of this is that females generally invest more effort into the initial (and subsequent) reproductive process. Ova, after all, are thousands of times bigger than sperm and consequently much more costly to produce.

Females of most species are, therefore, understandably more choosy when it comes to getting it on with their male counterparts because they encounter the greater costs (pregnancy, increased mortality in childbirth, decreased mobility,etc.). Males, meanwhile, invest their efforts in boasting, competing, bullying, intimidation, showing off, fighting and doing generally whatever is necessary to convince the other sex that they are a good potential father to the females offspring.

If there is such a thing as 'natural' masculinity it is no doubt based on these attributes. I think that humans do employ these traits - look at our creative arts (music, poetry, flattery, and so on) and competitive sports - and how women react positively to such behaviour: a direct consequence of our biological and psychological evolution.

'Social' masculinity in contrast must only be our adaptations as sentient beings to the pressures and requirements of lives of Homo sapiens sapiens. No woman is going to fall for a man just because he earns 100k a year or can beat the shite out of his competitors or pen a romantic love song. In our socially complex symbolic world a man needs to prove he's a bit of all that and more.

Most of all he has to prove that she is the one and only as far as he is concerned. Monogamy, or more precisely the ability to be able to provide in the long term, is the requirement of human males. 'Social' masculinity needs to be viewed in terms of this. A man needs to be caring, understanding, and (dare we say it) 'feminine', as well as strong, protective and 'masculine' to be a man in our world.

Such an argument holds true for whatever the sexuality. A gay man needs be no less masculine than a straight guy. Masculinity is not a pre-requisite of heterosexual sex. Homosexual men are just as able to have sex with women as are heterosexual guys only they prefer not to.

Sexuality is ambigous; some folk are straight, others are gay, and some are happily indifferent. Masculinity and feminity likewise are concepts that are ambigous and are applicaple to both men and women. Ideas of definite gender can thus be seen in a certain light as nonsense.

Masculinity, therefore, however defined, is best seen as a sliding scale of how to behave in terms of socially defined stereotypes based on a biological blueprint of reproductive strategies.

Frang, we have discussed the issue whether Gender orientation is biological or not in detail in the thread "Is Gender orientation biological?"! You have not added anything here that would refute the fact that Gender is basically biological.

We have of course acknowledged that there is a strong concept of 'social gender', especially of masculinity which has a great influence on men. But that social masculinity exists is no proof that natural masculinity does not exist.

You are making the same mistake as Ophiollite --- that of taking a part truth and then projecting it as the ultimate and the complete picture. That's wrong, unscientific and unethical!

As for sexual selection or reproduction guiding being the primary goal of life or of males and females --- that is a Darwinian rubbish that many modern scientists have begun to question! We are also discussing this issue in the thread: "Darwin was wrong about sexuality".

I would like to comment on the stereotypical view of female's preference for men that you have given.

There are enough evidences amongst the animals as well as humans that females --- when they are interested in just taking in the man's sperm go for the masculine types. But if she has to settle down with a male who she wants to be a good father to her children she always, always instinctively rejects macho men and goes for the feminine, soft, and caring kind.

A heterosexual society, likewise, (as it promotes emotional bonds between men and women) trains and encourages it men to be 'meterosexuals'.

 

[Buddha1]

For the benefit of Ophiolite and Frang, let me narrate the story of the four blind men and the elephant. When asked to describe what an elephant is, one blind man touched its tail and said the elephant is like a rope, the other touched its leg and said no its like a pillar, the other touched its ear and said its the shape of a fan, and the one who touched its stomach said, its like a mountain.

So there!

 

[Buddha1]

You are the only person denying, against massive evidence to the contrary, that homosexuals exist. You appear to be the one making assumptions, yet none of them are then being consistently tested by you. Get real.

Let me give an example to show you how irrational the concept of 'homosexuality' is:

Some Britishers like oranges. Some Britishers like apples. Some Britishers like both.

There are some Arabs who like oranges.

To say masculine gendered men who like men are homosexuals is like saying that Britishers who like oranges are Arabs.

 

[Buddha1]

Did not the masculine need to prove itself worthy of feminine sacrifice, not force males into more combative, aggressive and competitive roles? Did this not alter their psychology and physicality?

No!

I've no patience to go through the rest of your post, because I only expect to see more of your opinions and frustrations, nothing else. If you can give evidences (and they don't have to have external links) and separate them from your opinions and insults I'll listen to you!

Of course I agree that Gender is also biological! But then it is also social.

 

[Buddha1]

Did the penis arise as a consequence of society?

Are you saying that reproduction was the only need that penis developed? That it has no other functions? Or the vagina was only meant to take in sperm and give out babies?

What about defecation, to start with!

 

[Giambattista]

I thought you weren't going to respond to trolls, Buddha!

 

[Giambattista]

For the benefit of Ophiolite and Frang, let me narrate the story of the four blind men and the elephant. When asked to describe what an elephant is, one blind man touched its tail and said the elephant is like a rope, the other touched its leg and said no its like a pillar, the other touched its ear and said its the shape of a fan, and the one who touched its stomach said, its like a mountain.

So there!

Ah! Now THIS is wisdom! And truth. Amen.

 

[Buddha1]

There are enough evidences amongst the animals as well as humans that females --- when they are interested in just taking in the man's sperm go for the masculine types. But if she has to settle down with a male who she wants to be a good father to her children she always, always instinctively rejects macho men and goes for the feminine, soft, and caring kind.

The same principle works the other way round.

It is not surprising that masculine men tend to have periodical, short term, primarily physical interest in women --- and they tend to be less choosey about who they copulate with.

Feminine gendered males on the other hand tend to be overly interested in women, for long term (they'd often be seen eager to get married!) and their interest being more emotional than physical. And they tend to be very choosey about women --- because they see them as life-long partners.

That is where the stereotype of men who get mushy with women being 'wimps' has come from!

 

[Buddha1]

Macho men often either exhibit a keen (although disguised) interest in sex with other (masculine) men or show utter hostility.

But in both the cases they have a strong basic sexual need for other men. In the latter case due to extreme social pressures the need is mutilated and becomes extremely negative and self-destructive. They may get hostile about 'homos', but are at constant war with their own sexual need for men. The first thing that they do when they get a chance is to 'rape' a vulnerable man --- in situations where they can psychologically get away with becoming a 'homosexual' in their own eyes, because there is a social excuse.

It's funny how policemen in my country round up 'homosexuals', rape them in police stations and then lecture them about morality and 'heterosexuality' after taking money from them.

 

[Giambattista]

Oh! Like that ONE guy!

Is this really describing 95% of all men, though? Or more like 40 or 50? Just wondering?

 

[Buddha1]

Oh! Like that ONE guy!


Is this really describing 95% of all men, though? Or more like 40 or 50? Just wondering?

95% of men are not macho. 95% are not even masculine.

Let me add that when I use the word 'true' heterosexual, I don't mean that the person is exclusively into women, but that they are wired to seek emotional tie ups with women.

 

[Buddha1]

I've added the following to the list of 'social masculinity':

- Self control, i.e. the 'ability' to exert control over oneself.

 

[Giambattista]

95% of men are not macho. 95% are not even masculine.

Let me add that when I use the word 'true' heterosexual, I don't mean that the person is exclusively into women, but that they are wired to seek emotional tie ups with women.

And the rest of them... force themselves to make something unworkable work?

Does that in part, explain why approximately 50% of all marriages complete their cycle in divorce?

Or is this simply men wanting to sow their seeds elsewhere?

 

[Giambattista]

It's funny how policemen in my country round up 'homosexuals', rape them in police stations and then lecture them about morality and 'heterosexuality' after taking money from them.

That could probably be many countries in both the middle east and the surrounding area. Africa, even.

 

[Buddha1]

Does that in part, explain why approximately 50% of all marriages complete their cycle in divorce?

That almost fully explains it --- barring a few cases you can count on your finger tips.

By the way, you are ignoring the high percentage of men that never commit themselves to marriage in the first place, but have a series of 'relationships' with women! (I'm talking about the (so-called) 'free' west; in my country everyone marries!)