Men according to men

characteristic features

- machismo manifests itself through the dual play of competitiveness and possessiveness. Life is seen as a permanent battle, fight, war – for survival, territory, resources, females, prestige, status, power or any abstract and artificial motivation – without being able to distinguish between what is (hu)man’s nature and what the cultural imprinting. Machismo conserves itself, replicates and self-confirms its importance. The trophy is won and then owned. Dogged fight is altered by anxious protectiveness. Male honor – approval of the wolfpack – is constantly questioned and needs to be constantly re-earned.

- masculinity perceives any new being in terms of allies and enemies. Our side or their side. With us or against us. This camp or that camp. Winner or loser. My team or the other team. Whether it serves a function or not, fits the situation or not at all, this thinking permeates all life – mating, family, work, economy, politics. Life is a sports match or colorful dresses, banners, abstract labels. My territory, my country, my language, my religion, my nation, my region, my culture, my habits, my mother’s way of cooking lunch.

- war is a male way of life. Valhalla – a place where men fight to death and next day get reborn to fight again – is an idealized male paradise, where a specific male wiring self-perpetuates in a self-serving loop. As in the ancient Sparta – the women submit and the weaklings (queers, un-men) must be wasted to purify the genetics, in cultural imitation of the "natural" selection. Masculinists dream of adventure outdoor, indulge in obstacle races, imitate superheroes.

- men suppress their emotions to be become hardier warriors. It is desirable to endure discomfort and pain, to be able to survive, to hunt, to conquer, to protect. To protect from what? From the same kind of men raised to be aggressive and desensitized. Army, police, militias – harvest and even breed the personalities – that are to guard the community from the fallout of the same personality types elsewhere.

- stunted emotionality deforms manly communication. Sharing diverse and shaded feelings is perceived as awkward, excessive, inappropriate. "Male talk" is brief, practical, logical, transparent, useful. On top of that competitive, rank-confirming and above all objectifying. Lost in courting, conversation and communication as such, they develop technical gadgets that is expected to compensate for lack of capability or content.

- achieving in terms of hunt values the tools. Male mind deals with situations through rational, logical, emotionally detached analysis. Theirs is the technical thinking. Men not only develop machines, but see the reality as one, perceive one-selves as the calculating mechanisms. They evaluate themselves and the others in terms of functionality and use. Masculinity does not appreciate sophisticated poetic beauty, it can win and own things. Their preferred literature, texts and communication is guidelines, handbooks and manuals. Schemes of blocks, bullet points, sequences, instruction codes, how-to-do(s).

- the boys like their toys. The adolescent aspirations to adulthood often break down to the tool envy. Being able to play with serious weapons (guns or dicks) like the other men. They dream of receiving them, winning them and having them – to use and to brag. The adult world (culture, programs, magazines, debates, economy) is a world of machines and things to own. The boys worship tools, horses, cars, transformers, electronic gadgets, castles or other things to have – and indulge in hours of (competitive and yet dryly technical) masculine discussions of parameters, models and brands – often more than appreciating any life, beings or feelings. Not rarely they treat the other people as toys.

- the functional perspective preconditions subject-object relationships. Are you useful to me, or standing in the way. No additional emotions, the empathy (seeing oneself in the place of the suffering, needy or weak) suppressed. If the other human objects refuse to cooperate, they are treated with anger, as the broken tools. "He’s a dick. She’s a cunt." The current project is all that matters, everything else is just circumstances, environment, structured space. It’s a walking ego, "I" with a mile-radius of self-interested will. The objects comply or resist. Men prefer things to humans, building machines to navigating relationships, studying in technical areas than social, artistic or care-taking professions.

- men divided genders into the strong and beautiful one. Not only dominating over the weak, guiding the dependent, manifesting muscular ability for those incapacitated – but completely subordinating and disowning the tender, sublime, pretty from their domain. Their self-perceived homeostasis is to be to be in control. Being evaluated in terms of aesthetics or even erotics – by queers – presents criteria that they do not master, it vexes their cocksure standing, leaves them vulnerable and hapless, attacks their conceptualization of the world (in which they are in charge of everything).

- men are physical beings, they derogate thinking, scorn talking "bullshit" - i.e. sharing loaded with multiple meaning, layers, metaphors, shades and emotions. Their communication is minimalist, practical. They prefer to "talk" through match/fight, constructing, destructing, executing a project. Men are chronic doers. They preferred "being together" is an activity. They live in wolfpacks, they derive courage from the group’s mass and power, they boost their self-confidence through bullying, especially within the cheap safety net of the gang.

- a man is a boy, raised by immature but adult boys, who were preserved in their infantility by other infantile boy-men. What is manly – is what manly is in the eyes of the child – imprinted in further generations. Aggression, arrogance, dumbness, selfishness, swollen head. A pride, attention fixed to the approval of his peers, their hostile sneer, constant preying on his failure, continuous reassessment of ranks, a fictitious honor. Man is a boastful prankster, bloated ego, a superhero fan imitating superhero.

- The rites of passage do not reflect men expecting their boys to profess adult behavior, they show how boys wish to prove their masculinity. Imperiousness beats the responsibility, compassion or empathy. A circumcision or dragon killing - bravery, pain endurance, tear suppression make a man. A man is not born a man, man becomes man.

- manhood must be proven and constantly confirmed – by the watchful wolfpack. Approval of the similarly-wired peers is often more appreciated, than adoration of the lovers. Status takes preference before the sensuality or sexuality. Being labeled as gay is worse than the fact of making out with a man or the acknowledgment of that attraction or pleasure. Labels are the only currency in masculine complex. Compliance with the pack rules takes precedent over one’s comfort of contentment. Rejection from the pack still bears the stigma of being a "death sentence" in the prehistoric times. Shame – as the opposite to masculine self-confidence and pride (that replaced all the stolen emotions) – is worse than death.

- the masculine thinking establishes leaders and followers dynamics wherever it lays hands or eyes. The boy’s club is organized in hierarchy, that is constantly challenged through inner competition. This ensures the most resilient leadership that benefits the group the competition with the other packs. The ranks, labels, nicknames – are source of life-long pride or humiliation. The pack has its alpha and the remaining positions. It struggles with conceptualization of equality, sharing or empathy (that requires ridiculed sensitivity).

- the groups do not enforce the hierarchy and rules just within, but seek to extend them externally as well. The bullying, the totalitarian state oppression or the mafia gangs are all different aspects of the same scheme of masculinity. They involve peer pressure, proving, fear of rejection, punishment, repression, revenge. It’s the same thug personalities, just in different costumes and roles. A loot, a rape, a genocide – are just variations on the identical habit of objectifying human beings (useful/bothering, serving/resisting, submissive/sassy).

- at the end, the man evaluates the world in a value system reflecting himself. The history is his own narrative of insults, pretexts, epic battles, victories, losses, technical gadgets used to win, gains and trophies, territory changes, banners, coalitions, betrayals – and the other stories from the tree-house club or smoker’s room. The women are secondary objects, unless they climb up and display masculine abilities. The men are alternately hostile or blind to anything unlike them. It either attacks their infallibility or it just does not exist. Therefore there are no gays in the history. Not even in the fiction.