In the contemporary Western world, the concept of Manhood has fallen upon hard times.<\/p>\n
It would appear that young males generally, and, in particular, young white males (who have been relentlessly bombarded all of their lives with the message that they are \u201cthe cancer\u201d of humanity, to paraphrase Susan Sontag), are in a real jam.<\/p>\n
Males<\/em> can\u2019t be expected to evolve into men<\/em> when the only ideal types of Manhood supplied by their culture are limited to \u201cThe Toxic,\u201d \u201cThe Tough Guy,\u201d and \u201cThe Intellectual.\u201d<\/p>\n The Toxic <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cToxic masculinity\u201d is a toxic fiction invented by Feminist ideologues in their ongoing campaign to achieve both political domination and, thus, the fundamental transformation of Western civilization into something that promises to be unrecognizable to itself.\u00a0 There are indeed challenges facing the concept of Manhood.\u00a0 But Feminist activists and their fellow travelers on the political left substitute for sober analysis a question-begging, sophomoric term designed for a place on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt.<\/p>\n The Toxic<\/em>, I suppose, is a model of Manhood according to which any and all exhibitions on the part of males of those characteristics that are thought to be traditionally associated with men are rejected.\u00a0 Yet they are not<\/em> rejected for being \u201cunmanly.\u201d\u00a0 The Toxic, you see, regards the very idea of the unmanly as itself the function of Toxic Masculinity, for the latter is, in effect, nothing more or less than an unequivocal repudiation of the very notion of manliness itself.<\/p>\n \u201cToxic Masculinity,\u201d in other words, is meaningless by reason of redundancy: Masculinity is intrinsically<\/em> toxic, toxic by definition<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Toxic is not opposed to unmanliness.\u00a0 It affirms anti-manliness.<\/p>\n It does not affirm femininity. It opposes masculinity.<\/p>\n As such, it is no option at all for any male embarked upon his quest to become a man.<\/p>\n It is, in essence, a model of, not Manhood, but Anti-Manhood.<\/p>\n The Tough Guy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This model of manhood, despite its appeal, is fundamentally wrongheaded.<\/p>\n The Tough Guy is a type that encompasses a variety of tokens:<\/p>\n John Wayne, Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, and Tony Soprano are any number of pop-cultural characters that in one way or another embody it.<\/p>\n Weight-lifters; football players; wrestlers; boxers; martial artists; construction workers; bouncers; law enforcement officers; and soldiers are invariably associated with the archetype of The Tough Guy.\u00a0 But so too are gangsters, street brawlers, and maybe terrorists thought to express it.<\/p>\n Though there are numerous exceptions at the individual level, considered as a type, The Tough Guy is not noted for his intellectual acuity.\u00a0 In fact, he isn\u2019t even particularly wise\u2014an intellectual deficiency that accounts for his penchant for confusing the vice <\/em>of recklessness with the virtue<\/em> of courage.<\/p>\n Nor is gentlemanliness, <\/em>comprised as it is of the ideas of politeness, education, chivalry, <\/em>and respect for social propriety, <\/em>an attribute of The Tough Guy.<\/p>\n For the aforementioned reasons, The Tough Guy is an inadequate conception of manhood, for it provides a fragmented picture that, in alienating the physicality of men from their intellectuality, their bodies from their minds, has a disintegrating effect on their characters.<\/p>\n The Tough Guy type denies men opportunities to realize all of their potentialities as men.\u00a0 It prevents them, in other words, from becoming whole, full, thus, real <\/em>men.<\/p>\n The Intellectual<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Intellectual, it is crucial to realize, doesn\u2019t refer to just academics and\/or scholars.\u00a0 Actors, playwrights, artists, writers, journalists, political commentators, and teachers are among those that embody this ideal.<\/p>\n Within this framework, The Intellectual is virtually synonymous with \u201cThe Nerd\u201d or \u201cThe Bookworm.\u201d<\/p>\n If John Wayne could be said to be the epitome of The Tough Guy, then Woody Allen, perhaps, could be that of The Intellectual.<\/p>\n Here, it is assumed that an intellectual orientation in a man is incompatible with physical prowess.<\/p>\n This model of Manhood is essentially the mirror image of The Tough Guy.\u00a0 As such, it suffers from the same basic defect, the same mind-body dualism that undermines the integrity<\/em>\u2014the oneness or wholeness\u2014of the man by precluding from the start his self-actualization as a man<\/em>.<\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n The Toxic, The Tough Guy, and The Intellectual\u2014these are the three dominant types of Manhood in contemporary Western cultures.\u00a0 Since the first is actually an Anti-Man type, it\u2019s not a genuine model of Manhood at all.<\/p>\n This leaves but The Tough Guy and The Intellectual\u2014neither of which is adequate. Both, inasmuch as they rely upon a mind-body dualism that, as such, splits man in half, encourages the production of incomplete men, Half-Men, as it were.<\/p>\n Does all of this mean, then, that there is to be found no sustainable normative models to which males can turn for guidance so as to become men?<\/p>\n The answer, thankfully, is a resounding, unequivocal no.<\/em><\/p>\n But it is to history that we must turn to unearth this model, an ideal of manhood that appears in cultures all over the world\u2014not just within the West.<\/p>\n It is the model of the Warrior.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not uncommon to encounter this type being characterized by some contemporary commentators as \u201cthe Warrior-Scholar.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 This nomenclature, though, while accurate as far as it goes, is nevertheless tautological, for it was always understood that warriors were<\/em> scholars.<\/p>\n Before the ideal of manhood became broken into pieces, it was understood that a true<\/em> man, a real <\/em>man, would possess both intellectual and martial excellences. The Warrior represented the highest type of man.<\/p>\n In the next installment of this series, it is the ideal of the Warrior that we will explore.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the contemporary Western world, the concept of Manhood has fallen upon hard times. It would appear that young males generally, and, in particular, young white males (who have been relentlessly bombarded all of their lives with the message that they are \u201cthe cancer\u201d of humanity, to paraphrase Susan Sontag), are in a real jam.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n