manfulness. hot guy stuff. convening a bro-seph bro-dsky reading group.

last thoughts on the subject of masculinity

(“Last night I dreamt of Manderley” again voice) Two weekends ago I wrote about masculinity again, in response to the Know Your Enemy episode on that subject. At the end of that post I was like “I’ll say more about this later.” It is now later.

My argument there was that, to the extent that there is a “crisis of masculinity,” the only logical, and therefore lasting and satisfying and clarifying solution to that — for the individual and for the culture — is simply to focus on being a grown-up. To live up to, to even fully understand, what you owe to the people around you, and to yourself, is so damn hard that it ought to keep you busy; to the extent that you give it a good try, you have all the grounds for self-respect a person could need. Neither your sex nor your gender can tell you much about how to best do that.