Being a Man in the 21st Century (Part 2)
Earlier this calendar week, I began a discussion of the style that manhood in American society is changing. Today, I want to revisit the topic with some of my own ideas about how these changes could atomic number 82 to a more than enriching and satisfying have on masculinity.
Before I practice that, though, I desire to say how thrilled I was at the response the offset post got – I had never expected such lengthy, thoughtful comments and the depth of insight that you lot, Lifehack'south readers, have shared with u.s.. I had intended to respond directly to some of the comments, but they turned out to be so rich and circuitous that any response I could requite would hardly exercise them justice. If you missed that post, I implore you lot to go dorsum and wait at the comments.
I also want to point out that these changes are not limited to the American scene, though that's the context I know best. Effectually the world, women are emerging every bit major players in the increasingly global economy. One sign of the office women are playing is the success of the microloan motility, many of whose programs lend primarily or solely to women.
I don't claim that I have all the answers, by the way. In fact, despite the fact that I teach women'southward studies for a living and have spent more than a decade abode on the issues I'thou raising in these posts, I am as prone to antipathetic thinking, objectification of women, and but plainly impaired behavior equally the side by side guy. Information technology's the way we've been socially and culturally conditioned — creating unconscious thought processes that aren't ever immediately apparent. The best I think we can hope for is self-sensation and growth, non the instant transformation of every man into a superhero overnight. It volition be the adjacent generation, the kids who abound up in a earth where women are total participants in our public lives, that will show us all-time how to be men that embrace true equality – and I have no doubt that they'll look on me as unkindly as I expect on, say, the anti-Suffragists of the concluding century.
We are all feminists at present.
Aside from a few hard-core traditionalists, just about everyone now accepts as a given that both men and women will have an didactics, a career, and a public life. Each and every i of the states benefits daily from the greater participation of women in our social club: we use medicines developed by women, we use products designed by women, we live by laws written by and voted on by women, and then on. By lowering the barriers that prevented women from developing to their fullest extent in the by, we take effectively doubled the pool of talent that we every bit a order depict on.
The idea that a woman can't be this or that is falsified by the reality that there is almost no job category that women haven't entered and excelled in. Real men encourage those around them, male or female, to realize their fullest potential, regardless of their own or others' preconceptions. That'southward feminism.
In that location is no "men's work" and "women's work", in that location is only work.
Sociologists gauge that there are every bit many as 2 million stay-at-home dads in the U.s.a. right at present. And fathers as a whole – stay-at-domicile dads or otherwise – spend virtually equally much time with their children as mothers practise. Men do laundry, cook dinner, buy groceries, and drop the kids off at soccer exercise. Meanwhile, women write legal briefs, run for function, work structure equipment, and directly corporate mergers. The idea that certain kinds of work are "feminine" or "masculine" is dead in the h2o. Although there are enough of holdouts who are still inclined to fill positions based at least in part on gender, the most successful businesses piece of work hard to focus their hiring on demonstrated talent. Besides, the most successful families have plant that splitting household tasks not according to gender but according to skill and bachelor time. There are plenty of un-handy men around, and plenty of non-domestic women, and we all benefit when they're encouraged to practice the things they're good at instead of the things their gender allegedly suits them for.
Parenting is fundamental.
The reason that so many men are choosing to spend all or a meaning role of their lives elbow-deep in domestic parenting tasks is that we are finally learning how much nosotros've been missing in our traditional 8am-8pm work+commute+overtime workaholic schedules. Whole generations of men have missed not only seeing their kids grow up, only seeing themselves abound upwardly. Parenting is virtually so much more than than financially supporting someone through their childhood years, it'southward well-nigh tending to cuts and scrapes, putting a counterbalanced meal on the tabular array, and dealing with the scores of childhood traumas that marking our growth into personhood. It's most cede, hands-on responsibility, and struggling alongside our kids to make sense of the world. The stereotypical heart-aged man sporting a ponytail and a convertible is, I think, a production of the kind of selfishness that real parenting necessarily eliminates.
Passion is a priority.
Manhood in the 20th century was near financial success – working a job you hate considering it puts food on the table. With both men and women supporting their families, though, some of that pressure is lifted. Of course, nosotros still demand to work, but just as important equally earning a living is the passion that drives us to excel – even at careers that are non especially lucrative. We can see, for instance, the ascension of "lifestyle entrepreneurs", people who start their own businesses not so much in hopes of getting rich simply in gild to support themselves doing something they love, equally an indicator of the way that income is giving way to passion every bit a measure of one's manhood.
Embrace divergence.
Information technology's condign harder and harder to take people who rant about the divergence between men and women seriously. For every generalization, we can point to a m exceptions – men who love shopping and women who hate it, women who whoop and holler over their football team's victory and men who couldn't tell you if the Cleveland Browns play in the American League or the National League*.
Traditional masculinity was about punishing whatever man who stepped out of bounds, whether information technology was considering he was gay, feminine, physically weak, or in some other way short of the masculine standard. That but doesn't fly whatever more – in that location are as many different ways of existence "manly" (or "womanly", for that matter) as there are men (or women). And success doesn't come in spite of those differences, it comes because of it – they create the diverseness that allows businesses, organizations, and other endeavors to be flexible, to adapt to changing circumstances, and to innovate. In curt, difference allows united states of america to thrive, and we need to stop fearing it and embrace it.
And that goes for other kinds of differences, as well – racial, indigenous, sexual orientation, religious, national, linguistic, you name it. Being a confident man these days means not existence threatened by what we don't understand, it means seeking greater understanding.
* Yes, I know. It'due south funny, see?
It's about us.
Though "being one's own man" has long been held upwards as a standard of masculinity, it's rarely been realized in practice. The eras of manhood that we look back to nostalgically as models of "when men were men" – I'm thinking, for example, of the Mad Men era – were times of stunning conformity. We weren't our own men, we were beholden to a particularly narrow model of what men should be, and men who didn't fit that model were punished, oftentimes brutally.
The 21st century offers men a real opportunity to live up to the ideal of being our own men, though. The possibilities for personal development and self-expression accept never been greater. It'south no longer about what women discover attractive – freed from the need to find human being to support and protect them, women are finding themselves attracted to a wide range of types that in the past might have been considered "unmanly". Information technology'southward no longer about being "one of the boys" – that kind of conformity is poison to the modern workplace and to modern communities. No, manhood today is about united states of america, about living our own lives as fully and satisfyingly as we can.
It's about you.
Like I said, I don't have all the answers, and I'm intensely curious about your thoughts. I've left some things out, as well – almost notably sexual activity, but also mode, personality, and matters of gustatory modality or way. These things take get and so various that there's no style I could do them any justice hither. By and big, I recall they fall under the category of embracing difference – of recognizing that in a society where multifariousness is a crucial value, men will find a huge variety of ways to dress, act, relish their leisure time, and make love. But maybe y'all take thoughts on those topics also – the conversation in function one was bright, let's encounter if we can keep information technology up in the comments here!
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/being-a-man-in-the-21st-century-part-2.html
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