The Measure Of A Man

I'm a liberal-minded guy when it comes to sketching out the parameters of gender roles. I feel that everyone, XX or XY, deserves an equal shot at whatever they want in society, but even so I cannot shake much of the tradition definition of what makes a man. As I understand the notion, a man is in dereliction of his duties if he does not make a living based on his wits or brawn or both. It's no longer necessarily the case that he carries his wife and family on his back, although it obviously once was and still happens. Men are also understood to be tough, resourceful and resolute. This conventional definition has had some bits stripped away, but is substantially intact if my observations are correct.

I know what I feel, anyway. I feel like more of a man when one or both of two things is happening: firstly, when I am earning a living. When I am engaged in good and honest work and getting paid for it, I swell with some amount of pride at the knowledge that I am pulling my own weight. Be it politically correct or not, I feel like a man when I am entirely self-sufficient. That's not really accurate anymore since for longer than I've been alive women have been managing the same feat with great aplomb, but I can't help feelings. I can only mitigate the unfortunate ones.

Secondly when I am carrying out manual labor, I likewise feel like a man. Whether I'm getting paid or not, it seems as if I am doing just what I am supposed to when attempting repairs in the home or some kind of construction. Other men might boast of their superior size and strength to the woman, but I know far too well that I have no such superiority in that regard. I am about 5 feet, seven inches and weigh perhaps 145 pounds. I'm about as strong as the average person of such dimensions, which is to say that I am prepared to concede that plenty of women are my better in physical pursuits. Even so, a recent experience of aiding my father in some home renovations (which used to be a daily occurrence when I lived there) really made me feel manly.

Be the work paid or unpaid and mental or physical, I know what I have to eat to prove my manliness, and it's spicy food almost exclusively. My whole life, I was told that eating things like jalepeno peppers (then judged to be the hottest, although habeneros now are but easily could be supplanted) would put hair on my chest. I can't tell you how many foods were sold on that basis, or how many activities were sold on the strength of building character (naturally, they were otherwise undesirable activities). I cannot say that the spicy foods did in fact put hair on my chest (and for the sake of the women who also ate them, I hope they did not), but the activities, which included working and manual labor, did in fact build character.

If one excludes the terminology of gender and the baggage which that entails, I guess that leaves the Puritanical, somewhat American viewpoint of the great value that lies in work and pulling one's own weight. We're having a hard time as a whole in this country, and maybe redoubling our efforts along the lines of the concepts I have outlined will lift up both man and woman.