Open Man Project

NOTE: this article was written a while ago and does not match my recent tone well, though I have left it largely unedited

The Open Man: A Treatise of MY Masculinity

Bottom-Line:

To be masculine is to take action and vice-versa, action is masculine. There are no other requirements for masculinity. Shortcomings in traditional [though faux] areas of masculinity (e.g. height, strength, aggressiveness, confidence, emotional control, etc.) can be compensated or eliminated via action. Action makes the man. Although those previous examples could help with masculinity, alone they cannot define it. Also, those examples could very well lead to negative (or positive) consequences. Masculinity itself is neutral, but I believe should be used for positivity.

Action creates practice and mistakes from which gives experience. Experience is how competence and confidence can be achieved.

Vision:

As I stated earlier, masculinity [for me] is to take action (and all else is optional though helpful) while being a man has a more concrete meaning. For the purpose of this writing, being a man or being masculine are similar enough to be assumed equivalent. However more concretely, [to me] a man is an adult male who expresses masculinity (and hence action).

I want to open-source my ideas for being a man. This serves a few purposes:

• being open, honest, and vulnerable while working through my ideas and the fear of sharing them
• giving any other person an example (not a philosophy) of how a man can be [while tailoring the example to himself, which is necessary]
• provide a means to backup and write down my ideas in a concrete manner
• serve as a journaling and contemplative process to work through my imperfect or wrong ideas

Background

I grew up in a traditional, semi-religious, modest, and old-school part of the Southern United States with old parents (when I was born, my dad was 57 years old and my mom was 36 years old). I also grew up with a very negative example of masculinity in the form of my dad. He was and still is inactive, angry, emotionally unstable, and lazy while also taking no responsibility for himself. Often times, my mom served a better masculine example than my dad, but she alone could not set a full masculine example for me. Through all this, I was embarrassed and ashamed of being a boy (later man), male, small, weak, nerdy, young, later [hair] bald, and more for almost 30 years of my life. This caused me to act and behave in very unmasculine ways. I was afraid of women, I believed in absolute equality of the sexes (to my detriment), and I was mostly passive in my life outside of academic pursuits.

As of the time of this writing (in my late twenties), I have shifted my viewpoints greatly since my adolescence. I am working to no longer view women as scary, intimidating, bad, or anything else negative. On the other hand, I do not view myself as submissive to another woman (as well as most men). I do not think men should always be masculine or dominant, but for myself and in general, I believe that should be the case. Men should be worthy of that burden however. That burden should not be used as a means to take advantage, manipulate, hurt, or harm others in any way outside of direct self-defense. Without specifying in great detail here, positive and negative examples could easily be thought of on behalf of the reader. I no longer view equality and egalitarianism as a perfect good. I believe that women should have mostly equal treatment under the law and society (as opposed to being property as was roughly the case a century ago), but this generally does not change the man-woman dynamic where the man should be masculine. Passive and submissive men do not benefit from taking an overly egalitarian approach, and most seem to end up unhappy losers – most but obviously not all.

Values

Values can be eternally shifting and changing. Values might not always be universal. But for my own life, I want to commit to the following values. Note that the values need not be absolute. Example: there will be moments of dishonesty and passivity… giving forgiveness to oneself, first and foremost, is key. I will make mistakes, I need to recognize them, and I will not beat myself up over them.

Positive (things to aspire to)

• assertiveness
• openness
• honesty
• action (masculinity)

Negative (things to avoid)

• submissiveness
• closedness
• dishonesty
• passiveness