What Does it Mean to “Be a Man”?

August 25, 2022

What do you think when you hear the phrase “be a man”? What kinds of characteristics, images, or actions come to mind?

How we think about masculinity affects what we expect from ourselves and other men. When you define manhood one way, that becomes the paragon to aspire to. And ideas about manliness are engrained in our minds from a young age.

So how do men think about maleness?

This survey gives us some ideas.

There are also several perspectives on how we define manliness. Here are some quotes from the survey:

“A little more than half of men feel it’s at least somewhat important that others see them as masculine”
“A majority of men, 64 percent, said their father or a father figure was a source of their ideas about what it means to be a good man.”
“Sixty percent of men agreed that society puts pressure on men in a way that is unhealthy or bad.”

Many men feel the pressure to have certain traits, by virtue of their gender. For example: toughness and unshakability. They value these attributes because they’re told so often that these are what they should aspire to.

And oftentimes, masculinity is defined in terms of what it isn’t — “Men don’t do that,” etc. Instead of creating a sense of wholeness and identity, all these messages can leave us confused.

But being a man is more than, for example, assertiveness and detachment. You are an individual, with feelings and relationships and faults. You feel fear, uncertainty, sadness. That doesn’t make you less of a man – it just makes you human. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Matt and Laura Burton’s Men in Fidelity workshop provides adequate support for intimacy and relational trauma that you may need help with.

What common ideas have you heard about what it means to be a man?

By Courtland McPherson