WHAT
IS A REAL MAN?
Men Need a God-Given
Identity if They Are to Fulfill Their True Purpose.
Imagine that you are
watching a television show similar to To Tell the Truth. Several contestants
try to convince you that they are the Real Man. You have to guess which one is
authentic and which ones are the imposters.
Contestant #1
tells you he is the Real Man because he fills the traditional male role: he
supports his family financially while his wife cares for the children and the
home. As long as he provides a roof over their heads and food for them to eat,
he‘s fulfilling his duty as a husband and father. This man doesn‘t consider his
wife to be his true equal.
Contestant #2
says he is the Real Man because he has a culturally progressive role: he shares
household and child- rearing responsibilities with his wife while they both
pursue careers. He thinks of his wife as his equal.
Contestant #3
explains that he is the Real Man because he has been freed from male
stereotypes and has decided to take on the nurturer role of caring for the
children and home while his wife goes to work. He considers his wife equal to
himself—or maybe even better, since she has a more com- passionate, sensitive
nature than he does.
These are some of the images
of manhood that are competing for men‘s acceptance today. Many men feel as if
they‘re being asked to guess what a real man is by determining which
―contestant‖ has the most convincing facial expressions and answers. Yet there
seems to be no clear-cut winner.
In addition, society
keeps mixing and matching these images until men don‘t know what‘s expected of
them anymore. They are confused and frustrated as they try to sort through
their own expectations for manhood while feeling pressure from the various
segments of society that are promoting these images—or an impossible
combination of them. Meanwhile, Hollywood is flooding society with intriguing
icons of masculinity, such as James Bond and Rambo. Even though these images
are superheroes rather than real men, it‘s sometimes hard to escape their
allure. It‘s difficult not to start thinking that a real man should somehow imitate
the power and resourcefulness they exhibit.
A
Crisis of Roles
What makes our current cultural situation
unsettling for men is that males have traditionally defined their manhood by
their roles: the functions they perform for their families and in society.
However, there‘s been a major shift in the roles of both males and females. The
rules of society are changing. This has happened just in the last forty years
or so. We‘re in the middle of a cul- tural transition, and competing ideas of
masculinity are causing perplexing prob- lems for men. They are being pulled in
several directions at once while they try to figure out what it means to be a
real man in today‘s world.
In recent years,
literature focusing on changes in men‘s lives has indicated that the male is in
a state of crisis and internal conflict. An array of studies are telling us
that males aren‘t quite sure who they are or what women expect from them.
Without a clear idea of their identity, men are trying to cope with the
collision of new societal expectations and traditional ideas of what a man should
be, which they have internalized through family, culture, or natural
inclination.
Men‘s basic conceptions of manhood are therefore being
disrupted. They feel displaced. They are either frustrated and struggling to
adapt to a new but vague concept of who they are, or they‘re angry and trying
to reverse the flow of change.
Are traditional roles
to be totally abandoned? If so, what will replace them? Many men have unanswered
questions, such as these:
1.Is a man still
supposed to be the breadwinner and protector?
Today, the woman goes out and makes her own
bread and says she doesn‘t need protection. A man isn‘t sure what he‘s supposed
to do for a woman anymore.
2. Is a man still the
leader and authority in the home?
This isn‘t clear
anymore. The woman says, ―You‘re not my authority. I‘m not a slave. I make my
own money and my own decisions. I do what I want to. I‘ll call you when I‘m
ready for you.‖ A man doesn‘t know how he‘s sup- posed to relate to a woman any
longer.
3.
Should a man still show chivalry? Should he open the door for a woman, escort
her, pay for her meal on a date, and so on?
A man will pull out a chair for a wom- an and
she‘ll say, ―That‘s all right. Thank you very much, but I‘ll pull my own chair
out.‖ Sometimes a man will open a door for a woman and she‘ll be offended. ―Do
you think I‘m crippled?‖ she‘ll demand. If a woman walks into a room and a man
stands up out of respect, she might look at him as if he‘s crazy. A man isn‘t
sure if he should be nice to a woman anymore.
4. Is a man still the defender of
his family, property, and country?
More women are entering law enforcement and
the armed forces and are carrying guns. Some men don‘t know how to react to
these changes. A woman walks into the house with her uniform on and her husband
is scared to say hello to her. He‘ll jump up and say, ―Ser- geant!‖ Many men
are thinking, ―She really doesn‘t re- quire me to protect her.‖ Men don‘t know
if women even need them anymore.
Is there anything now that marks a man as
different from his female counterpart? Based on the above scenarios, that‘s a
difficult question to answer. Males and females are in a state of gender
upheaval and confusion.
So what do you do in
order to be a man in the twenty- first century? Who are men in relation to
women? How are men to sort out the various versions of masculinity that are
being promoted in the world?
If you are a male and feel that your work,
your relation- ships, and your view of the world are being turned upside down,
you‘re not alone. This is the most complex time in the world to be a man. Men
of all ages are grappling with competing views and values of manhood.
