This is to be contrasted with (what the culture has coined) toxic masculinity, but which would be better understood as false masculinity. The connotation seems to be that certain toxic behaviors and attitudes - simply by being performed by men - are seen by our culture as masculine behaviors. My Dad linked me to a Washington Post editorial the other day that seemed to make that assertion ("masculinity is always a performance; the more performative it is, the less healthy"; "No presentation of masculinity ... is a salubrious thing. It’s all toxic." [1]).
My suggestion here - and I am hardly alone in making this suggestion - is that authentic masculinity has nothing to do with pride, power, aggression, or emotional repression. That garbage needs to go and has no place. Instead, authentic masculinity is concerned with living a virtuous life. [2]
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With that in mind, I wanted to put together a quick list of male behaviors and attitudes that all can be authentically masculine. I hope the take-away is that there is a huge variety in what it means to be masculine - and none of it is toxic.
- Appreciation for poetry, art, and music
- Love for ballet, dance, and gymnastics
- Love for the outdoors: hiking, mountain climbing, exploring
- Love for the outdoors: gardening and picking flowers
- Joy for competition, but always concern for fairness and being a good sport
- Courage - choosing to do the hard thing, knowing it will cost something
- Strength of any form - interior or exterior, though exterior strength is meaningless without interior
- Weakness and vulnerability
- Friendship and community - a realization that we need the support of others
- Compassion, empathy, and tenderness
- Humility - Not having all the answers, and am not the center of the universe
- Prayer, which goes hand-in-hand with humility - the realization that before God, we all receive life
- All four forms of love - eros, agape, storge, and philios
- Care for the poor
- Concern for the environment
- Love for children
- Cooking, cleaning, and folding laundry
- Having short hair
- Having long hair
- Having no hair
- Having a beard
- Having a mustache
- Having no facial hair
- Being secure enough to not be concerned with fitting the mold
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It's late tonight, but I wanted to try to get this out and stick it out. So this was more of a bullet-point list than an essay. I'm realizing I need to start getting ahead and have some sort of a plan, rather than deciding each day what to write about.
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