It’s late April 2022 on planet Earth, and in the United States of America there is plenty of talk about manhood. Way too much talk about manhood. And typically it is about the supposed decline of manhood, and the macho steps necessary for men to win back that manhood we are so lacking. Ugh. This toxic crap makes me wince. The most annoying whiner on Television, Tucker (Brown people are coming to replace you) Carlson is putting out a guide to teach you what you’re missing. And if you laughingly guessed it is full of shirtless men chopping wood and wrestling, and naked men taking ice baths and tanning their testicles, you’ll stop laughing when you find out that you were spot on. Life is stranger (and funnier) than fiction.
Of course I have only seen a promotional clip that is being passed around on Twitter, but it includes exactly those things I mentioned.
The milky white skinned, Karen-voiced Tucker is on a quest to return American men to the manly state he imagines we once were. The inclusion of so many shirtless men jibes easily with his fawning over the Russian President (-cum-Dictator) Vlad Putin, who made shirtless videos on horseback and such. Tucker’s ideal man has no shirt and spends a lot of time outdoors. A place Tucker must surely avoid based on his skin-tone.
And his stance on this issue seems to be driven by the growing acceptance of equality between genders, and notably between races.
Carlson has always seemed obsessed with the idea of an established hierarchy of sex and race, and though he is sort of careful not to admit the overt racism and sexism he displays, nor his clear preference for authoritarian power. (Chiefly, a shirtless white man with authoritarian power. I suspect he imagines Trump without a shirt. Ick.) But it is plainly visible to anyone watching that his efforts are attempts to assuage his own weakness and sense of inferiority. The alarm he responds with at the apparent lack of masculinity and machismo in American society is little more than a display of his own fear of change.
There are men; and then there are “real men.”
The latter are those that Tucker mistakes for the first. They are overtly and intentionally masculine in a way that has come to be called toxic. They assert the right to be in charge of others, and they claim superiority by birthright. And they take steps to force others to cower in their presence, like some great silverback gorilla. The actual comparison to silverbacks is seen in a positive light by them.
And they mistake physical prowess for manhood.
I was raised without a father, and joined the Navy at seventeen. It was there that I selected men (without their knowledge or mine), to be role models to replace the father figure I was missing. And while I picked from authority figures mostly, (I was in the military after all,) I also picked from those who weren’t. And I didn’t pick those who ruled with fear or threat (though I did see how that could be effective), but chose instead those who inspired through confident kindness. Men who ignored shallow insults and asides. Men who earnestly were trying to help us become better men. And though some of these men could fight, and I did learn to fight from them, mostly that was unimportant. Real men, I saw in practice, didn’t need physical strength and violence to inspire others to follow them.
And through my life aboard ship and away from the sea, I saw that the best men paid only modest attention to physical prowess. Keeping fit wasn’t a bad thing and it made participating in sport more fun, but they didn’t spend any time trying to show everyone else how strong they were. They were the fathers and brothers who cared for their friends and families, treated people fairly, and kept their commitments to others.
History is full of these men. Pioneers, farmers, builders of homes and businesses. Men who organized clubs and associations, took their civic duties to heart, and made time to volunteer to help others. Some are legends, some today are nameless.
So who are all these men obsessed with macho attainments? Men who seem to think that rippling muscles and dominating others is necessary for real manhood? This machismo has been called toxic masculinity by some, me included, and is seen as a huge negative influence on humanity.
If it mattered enough to me I could look up some books on psychiatry and psychology to find the likely causes of this behavior. I suspect it would be traced (like so many other things) to the relationship with their fathers. Perhaps they too held warped ideas of what men should be. Perhaps these insecure men-children had cowered in fear of their fathers, and got little defense from their mothers – who were also cowering with good reason.
Maybe their fathers had been absent. Perhaps they were taken under the wing of some toxic creature bent on building a cult of masculinity. I don’t know. Like I said, I’d have to be more interested to undertake that study.
But I know the best men don’t behave like this. Men of genuine confidence don’t announce their prowess with flexing and snarls. These are nature’s signs of fear. A snake rattle and cat hiss aren’t attempts to dominate, they’re warning signs. They’re afraid and threatening to keep you away. Actual manhood welcomes people. It has strength to lift up and carry others, not push them down.
And it is fair to delineate between masculinity and the toxic version. Few would say that Muhammad Ali was not masculine. The greatest boxer in history, who also displayed his courage in the face of racism. But his life was not spent intimidating others, or displaying his physique at every turn. I love the pictures of him downtown New York in morning dress and bowler hat. A refined and gentlemanly look you would never see on the grunting he-men pushing people out of their way on the sidewalk.
The traditional ideal of manhood in America had always been (and I think remains) one of quiet confidence. In movie westerns they’d say he was “tall in the saddle.” Men like Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott were idolized for their manly dignity. I think it was Doris Day who commented that Clark Gable was the most masculine man she had ever seen, and that combined with his boyish charm made him irresistible.
And yes, you would see those men stand up for the weak and powerless. Clark Gable, for example, almost walked off the set and quit his role as Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind unless the production was integrated, after finding out that black actors were forced to use different facilities. He was no coward. But neither was he flexing in tight T-shirts. His attire was elegant and classic.
But the machismo and uber-manliness that Tucker Carlson advocates isn’t strength and power. It is weakness and violence. We don’t avoid that type of men because they are strong, we avoid them because they are dangerous. Dangerous because they live in fear of others. A fear that drives them to project willingness to harm. And I guess that Tucker admires them because they are feared, and he wished he were. He has no chance of being respected, because he does not offer respect to others. And without knowing what that would be, he mistakes the threatening beast for power. He is openly calling for more men like this. He hopes to see legions of men using physical force to get their way.
Well Tucker, you’ll certainly get some. And you might even get them dressed up in brown shirts and jackboots, but they won’t be masculine, and they won’t represent manhood.