What is you Definition of a REAL man????

[Sim54]

Your post makes my head hurt badhabits, but i will try to respond. It was hinted to by Bulletproof that my tittle is flawed and should probably be "What is your definition of a man" ommitting "REAL" because of the stereotypes it might conjure. Thx 4 the wordy/"platonic" way to say my thread is useless, even tho it got 10 pages of responses.

 

Aw, don't be all hurt and upset just coz someone doesn't agree with you...

[hrtlsngl7]

If you are secure in yourself, strong and authentic, then what does it matter if you conform to some external ideal, or set of attributes that are culturally defined?

 

Authenticity is hugely attractive!

 

I wanted to disagree with you on principle of your previous post Simbad, but I got to give it to you 4 being REAL about your beliefs.

[hrtlsngl7]

Aw, don't be all hurt and upset just coz someone doesn't agree with you...

She's not disagreeing w/me. She's saying my thread is useless. And as it says in the tittle this was meant to be a sounding board thread....not feminist vs. "masculinist".

[Sim54]

She said the question wasn't necessarily useful. She didn't mention your thread.

[90_hour_sleep]

She's not disagreeing w/me. She's saying my thread is useless.

 

nah...she just said the question is useless. the thread is great.

[hrtlsngl7]

She said the question wasn't necessarily useful. She didn't mention your thread.

 

And therefore useless. You're a very nitpicky guy Simbad54.

[hrtlsngl7]

nah...she just said the question is useless. the thread is great. Yeah, I ought to had -JOHN-my balls. It's beautiful how he defended masculinity for mankind, but I never intended for this thread to degenerate into that at all. Oh well.

[mad rabbits]

Your post makes my head hurt badhabits, but i will try to respond. It was hinted to by Bulletproof that my tittle is flawed and should probably be "What is your definition of a man" ommitting "REAL" because of the stereotypes it might conjure. Thx 4 the wordy/"platonic" way to say my thread is useless, even tho it got 10 pages of responses.

 

No I'm not saying the thread is useless, it has inspired some very interesting discussion. I think I have a problem with the question - not that it is useless per se but the construction of the question, I am critiquing. And I'm not sure I mean the same thing as bullet, although I get where she is coming from. I would go one further and say that not only is the concept of a "real" man an abstraction, but the concept of a "man" in itself is an abstraction.

 

How's that for queery femmo university crap for ya?

[hrtlsngl7]

*How's that for queery femmo university crap for ya?*

 

Makes my myopic mysogynistic head hurt badhabits...just like time-travel. Yah, I steered clear of anything resembling a women's studies class. Closest I've gotten was low-level Philosphy classes. It was enlightening even though I only took it cuz it was required.

[John Cage]

This is a great discussion

 

I noticed that a lot of the discussion are about "phenotypes" and not the underlying attributes. People talked about assertive males vs males who are interested in romance and family; these two are not exclusive categories. Assertive alpha males CAN cry at sad movies. He's not afraid of being seen as weak. Also, people are forgetting that due to the massive amount of people on our planet, certain attributes OVERLAP between males and females. I will explain this further.

 

In a class room, you have tallest, second tallest, third tallest student... etc... In a general 20 years old group of students, the average male will be taller, correct? But is this the same as saying none of the males are shorter than the females? No, of course not. There's a range. In statistics there's a normal curve that forms around the mean (average). Usually MOST people falls within a certain degree of deviation from the mean, that is to say instead of ALL males are taller than ALL females, a random male is more likely to be taller than a random female from the population.

 

To say that there exist males who are not assertive and not protective is not the same as saying they are not men; they are merely further away from the mean. Assertive is just a word in English but in the real world, it's a sliding scale. No one is "not assertive", but everyone has a certain degree of "assertiveness". You take an average "assertive male" and ask him to choose which one of his parents will die right now, he's going to have a hard time making up his mind. However, there must certainly exist even MORE assertive, decisive males (or females but less likely) who could make that decision easier using logic (for example, if dad dies, mom will must likely to too sad to live her life but if mom dies, dad has a slightly better chance at survival alone). The point is that there's always someone who's "more assertive" or "more manly" because manliness is not a word, but a scale. I can safely say that, I believe that the LEAST manly man on the planet is probably more "manly" than the least manly female.

 

Understanding this point, one can see that a man can still be "manly" (more manly than the average human) and "cry at movies". It's possible. One can also see that just because males like "BrokenSmile" exist, it doesn't mean that men are not assertive in general. In fact, the dumbest person on earth is probably dumber than the smartest non-human primate. Thus, just because BrokenSmile is not as "manly" as some of the other males, it doesn't conclude that he is not manly compared to the human population in general.

 

---===---

 

Another part of the discussion is what women prefer... Some women here stated what they like seemingly in opposition of "manly" man; but the qualities that they want is not necessarily unmanly. A manly man can be caring, respectful and loving; in fact, that's the whole point. That's why the protective nature of men come from... To protect. To compare "manly" men to cavemen are simply retarded. We are not in the cavemen times anymore and the manly men evolved and they are manly in other ways. Instead of hunting mammals they are engineering, building, investing... etc... Men are built to provide and protect, but that doesn't always mean hunting or punching.

[John Cage]

But you have to understand that humans are not perfect. If someone testified in court that "The man touched me."... Would the man's lawyer be able to argue that "No, he did not. Because human cannot physically touch each other since our electrons will repel each other and we can never truly touch."

 

Would that be a valid argument in a physics lab? Maybe. But we don't expect people to say everything Precisely and Exactly. Use layman's vocabulary when you are trying to understand someone in a non-technically discussion board. What he meant by "real men" is obviously "What is your opinion of the kind of attributes an average desirable male should have". After all, everything we ever say is an "opinion" unless backed by universal proven facts of the era.

[mad rabbits]

Would that be a valid argument in a physics lab? Maybe. But we don't expect people to say everything Precisely and Exactly. Use layman's vocabulary when you are trying to understand someone in a non-technically discussion board. What he meant by "real men" is obviously "What is your opinion of the kind of attributes an average desirable male should have". After all, everything we ever say is an "opinion" unless backed by universal proven facts of the era.

 

well, I actually wasn't sure how to explain what I was trying to say without the wordy words I ended up using...

 

And no I didn't actually take that meaning from the question he asked. If it had been phrased the way you suggested, that is soliciting individual opinions and responses, but the question - the way he phrased it anyway - asks something else IMO.