Are todays men less masculine?

I disagree. I feel like people are far more respectful today. Whenever I'm called "hon" or "sweetie" in a condescending way, it's never a millennial or gen z guy doing it. When there is resistence to using pronouns, DEI, political cortectness, and things like racial slurs being tossed around under the guise of, "relax, it's just a joke" it's almost always coming from older folks.

Today's men aren't more or less toxic or more or less masculine. They're just different--for better or worse--from our dad's generation.

And that's okay

 

I didn't say it was solely sexism. I just said that the internet amplifies bad behaviors, by giving everyone a bullhorn and a certain degree of anonymity.

I've been to websites where the community is tight-knit, and newcomers are warmly welcomed. Its fairly moderated without feeling stifling, and they're just a wonderful place to be.

I've been to websites where the community does nothing but make people feel hurt, belittled, stupid, and angry and they're bickering constantly.

Most website communities fall in between that. Furthermore, age doesn't automatically guarantee people will be prejudiced or sympathetic.

 

I think the kind of men that each of us knows or sees mostly (and then will judge as masculine or not) has at least a little bit to do with where we hang out and the kinds of people that we are most likely to observe or meet. Maybe that sounds redundant but I mean it as cause and effect. Forget people on TV and movies (and Internet), so many that are nowhere near reality in so many ways, they're actors and they live in bubbles, everything is fake or to look glamourous, even a lot of the news talking heads, politicians, the most visible ones, and so many of those personalities lean a lot toward behavior that they think is supposed to be the most trendy, as they avoid (or even demonize) people that they're supposed to think are 'undesirables' or just not worth thinking about.

A little more on point, I seriously do not like those skinny pants that even many older men are wearing now.... though I see them on my TV screen a lot more often than I see them right in front of me (see above, TV versus reality). But one example is the football talk crew on Fox's Sunday NFL pregame show, not all of them wear traditional pants, just Michael and Terry and maybe a couple others, but the newer guy Gronk does wear those silly skinny pants. I don't think they are masculine at all. I don't even know what to think. That's just one 'symbol' that stands out to me., maybe a comparatively minor one but it's very representative I think.

My 2 favorite older people (60s and 70s) are the most respectful towards women as anyone that I know, because that's how they were taught by their parents, and despite the fact that both of them carry the average levels of testosterone for active men, sportsmen, outdoorsmen, and one of them is a pure country boy who grew up working on a farm. And also several men about my own age and younger who are my friends.... men who wear jeans, men who sweat and sometimes get dirty or greasy doing various kinds of hard work.... men who wear uniforms and know that it doesn't make them different than they are but it does make them special, but they stay humble because they respect the responsibility that the uniform represents.... and as far as I know, everyone of those friends of mine is as respectful to others as anyone can expect them to be.

So are today's men less masculine..... I think that it's far more possible than ever for men to be less masculine than ever. But there are still a lot of masculine men out there if we just know where to look.... and what to look for!!

 

Joke.......woman wanted men to get more in touch with there feelings..............now you have it(zeitgeist).

Male or female or whatever.........everybody is to focused on.............am i this or that(social media)............or whatever.



Mzzls

 

Good rhythm in that one!!

 

Love placebo..........

Mzzls

 

On one side of this, there's still a lot of talk about toxic masculinity and something that goes way back in time and all about how men are supposed to behave and all that stuff. Women rose up against this and, oh, perhaps in the late 1960s and about the time Women's Liberation came to be, the ladies told us guys that we need to get in touch with our feminine side and I kinda laugh at this if those women knew how some men responded to that other than being pretty pissed off and like a lot of macho guys were.

On the other side, there are men who are... less masculine. Not up to that ridiculous standard that I know I was told about growing up and what a lot of men still live by today. It's not how they dress and I agree that Gronk looks ridiculous in skinny jeans but it's all about how a man carries himself and from a sexuality point of view, there are a lot of guys who, um, aren't afraid to let their inner girl out to play with the fellas and embracing the "softer" side and like those women way back in the 1960s were asking us to do but, yeah, being guys, we took what they said to an extreme.

Male toxicity still around and it's being questioned if men are less masculine and it infers that there's a middle ground but is there something between these two extremes? Is there supposed to be? Kinda cray-cray to complain about men being toxic and not being masculine enough or at all? It seems to me - and I could be wrong - that if you remove the toxicity aspect of what some of us were taught about being men, you get men who are... less masculine and as masculinity has been defined. The question is: Is this a problem if men are less masculine?

 

Yes I think there is a problem with less masculine men. Would you want a fireman, a policeman or a soldier to be less than masculine?

 

Personally? I'd want them to do the job they were trained to do and I wouldn't question their masculinity or lack thereof (if present). But I'll ask again: What's between toxic masculinity and men being less masculine? It almost seems to me that men are... extremists in that we're either one way or the other. I don't think that I'm a toxic male because I don't believe in that bullshit I was told growing up... but I'm not less masculine because... I'm just me. Who's really "complaining" about men being less masculine? Is it women - and the same folks who, again, told us to embrace our feminine side and if that's what we've done - even metaphorically - now the complaint is we're not man enough?

Help me out here.

 

I understand exactly what you're talking about but right now I don't know how to help. I just want to mention that when I first met my baby, a very old school kind of guy. it took me several weeks to realize that he isn't even aware of how masculine he is, and what that means is that there is absolutely nothing toxic about him. Of course he can get angry and aggressive if someone pushes him that way but to me that is totally natural. Anyone, even we girls can get aggressive if we're pushed to it.

 

If that you in your avatar, you are absolutely beautiful LenaSilk.

 

My parents raised me to not be an asshole or, as they both said, "Don't be like all those other mother.. uh, fools out there. Do not go hitting on women and you'd better respect them and hold yourself to a high standard of behavior... or else." I did not ever want to know what "or else" meant. Looking back, masculinity was pretty damned toxic in those days or, as I call it, the "Me Tarzan, You Jane Syndrome" where men demand respect from everyone and especially women and with the stupid mindset that women were put on this earth to service us but otherwise have little or no value. The fucked-up part is that you still see this mindset today and it's like I said - men can be extremists and we're either one way or another but, true enough, a lot of us are nowhere near toxic but still masculine. On that personal note, my only brother turned out to be a really toxic dude and... his girlfriend killed him because of his toxicity. He got toxic because he hated our mother for divorcing our father (and for good reason).

The solution is to teach young men to not be toxic and while some parents strive to do this, some are like, "Don't fucking tell me how to raise my kids!" and there you have it, the resistance to up a young man's worldly education so he won't grow up to be "that motherfucker over there" who no one wants to be around because of the powerful stench of his toxicity. Once boys get to be a certain age, oh, from maybe 15-18, the lessons in how not to be toxic can be laid on them and chances are they'll in one ear and out the other since this is the age where teens think their parents are crazy and have no idea what's going on.

There are women who can make a guy toxic by bringing their own toxicity to the party, but he gets all the blame for things being toxic between them. Sighing heavily, you can go on social media and see things written about parents teaching their sons not to be "that motherfucker over there" but daughters should also be taught not to be toxic because toxicity is contagious and can have a devastating effect on people or, very likely, you're always going to find yourself all by yourself because no one will ever want to be around you.

Does or can less toxic equal less masculine? I'd suppose that depends on who you ask and who you're talking about in particular. It would depend on what "masculine" means to you and more so when people are prone to coming up with their own meanings to something that might not be in line with how the dictionary defines that something. It would depend on what context you're putting "less masculine" into. What is a man supposed to do and how is he supposed to be?

 

It looks a little bit like me, black hair and similar facial structure, but no it isn't me. I snitched that image several years ago from somewhere on the Internet

 

Once again I understand, but one thing that I learned after leaving home for college is that one person can have totally different life experiences than another person. Remembering all of the boys that I knew in school and then adult guys that I met later in life, plus my dad who is a saint in my opinion, toxic males have been a minority in my own personal world, though at age 41 I know very well that they exist and I have certainly encountered or observed quite a few in my lifetime. But 'toxic' and 'masculine' are not necessarily twins or even congruent. One can exist without the other.

 

Of course but I think no one has told society that since "toxic" and "masculine" seem to be forever mated. To many, if you're male, you're toxic, plain and simple or, at the least, guilty by association; if one guy is toxic, all guys are toxic and we have to prove that we aren't... which might make us sound like we are. It would help to know in what specific ways men are perceived to be less masculine...

 

Being a older guy, I to think today’s guys are certainly less masculine and less polite and don’t understand decorum at all when dining a lady such as yourself.

 

Certainly do agree with you. Men today don't even know how to dress to take a woman out. Believe me, I know

 

I know growing up I got hit with a long list of do's and don't's associated with girls/women from how to walk with a girl/woman to how to dress for a date, how to behave on a date, the list goes on and on and on. Now, as a guy who was actually a few days away from finding out that girls weren't as yucky as I thought, my father's telling me all of this and he's serious but I ask him why I gotta do all that stuff and he looked at me like I was insane or something and said that if I ever expect to get a girlfriend when I got older, I needed to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it so I had to start now. And I learned it and more so when, again, um, yeah, girls really ain't all that yucky after all. It's stuff that, once you learn it and use it, you never forget it and you never forget to do it even when you might not want to. Or you go to open a door for a woman and she gives you some women's lib shit about being able to open doors for herself and/or instituting some shit that isn't jiving with "How to Be With a Woman" stuff learned earlier but, yeah, you do it, you remind her that your parents raised you to be a gentleman and things go on from there.

Does the lack of guys not doing these things indicate that they're less masculine? Eh, probably more like they decided that they didn't want to do the things I was told and taught that had to be done and without exception or they got to listening to their friends who also has this lack of "home training" but when they go out with a woman, they can't understand why he doesn't know that when you're on the street and walking with a woman, you walk on the curb side and she's away from the curb or if there's a pole bisecting the sidewalk, you both walk on the inside of the pole, never on the outside and do not ever split the pole. I'm almost sure that if a guy shows up for his date with a lady and he's dressed like a thug who just got out of prison, she's gonna let him know about it and he's probably going to take umbrage being told how to dress appropriately and...

Less masculine or a lack of the "old time values" I grew up with?

 

Well your father was a very wise man. Its a pity that more fathers don't do that today. My mother gave me very careful instructions on how to be a lady. How to walk elegantly in heels. how to sit down and how to enter a car, From what I see, thats not being done either

 

My father taught it to me; I taught it to my two sons and had a heart-to-heart talk with my daughter about... guys and how me and her mother expected her to comport herself as a young lady. I'm sure that she taught these values to her children and one of my sons taught them to his children, too. Chivalry isn't dead but sure, some guys don't know about it anymore than some women don't know how to be a woman and not like it was taught back in the day. Things change and not always for the better...