The 'masculine mystique' – why men can't ditch the baggage of being a bloke
The 'masculine mystique' – why men can't ditch the baggage of being a bloke
Far from embracing the school run, most men are still trapped by rigid cultural notions of being strong, dominant and successful. Is it leading to an epidemic of unhappiness similar to the one felt by Betty Friedan’s 50s housewives?
... because that's what most women are shopping for in a partner, or worse they're shopping for that AND the opposite at the same time.
It's the same as men who want q wealthy career driven wife who raises the children and is effeminate and submissive.
Everyone wants a super hero who can give them everything. So yeah, both sides want an irrational fantasy character.
"Everyone wants a super hero who can give them everything. So yeah, both sides want an irrational fantasy character"
This is all part and parcel of a larger social ill. For all of the(often justifiable)griping we indulge in, regarding contemporary "Woke Entertainment", Hollywood has been flooding our societal atmosphere with increasingly dysfunctional messaging, for well over 30 years now https://moviesupclose.com/2019/06/09/avengers-endgame-and-the-childishness-of-the-mcu/
As the article points out, this took root with Disney movies in The 90s
I don't know any men who would choose a career-focused woman over a family-focused one. I don't think this is as much ESH as you make it out to be.
You’re just discounting the entire portion of people who don’t want families. So more people are looking for others who are independent enough to bring in a second income and live their completely self-sufficient financial life (up until the point they join their financial life, that is) next to themselves.
You’re acting like it’s 1950 where men want a woman to stay home and poo out some tykes, have dinner on the table after we leave our office jobs that support an entire family of four—but in 2024. Where none of that can really exist in this economy. Not to mention, people want different things these days. Sure, there are some retrogressive men, maybe you’re one of them, but the majority are looking for an equal partner.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Far from being overrun with gaggles of enlightened men in clothes covered with baby sick and badges saying “World’s greatest dad”, the father quota is, in my own limited experience, disappointing.
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a seminal book by Betty Friedan, helped launch the second wave of feminism by positing that American women faced “a problem that has no name”: they had essentially become typecast as uber-feminine mothers, home-makers, cake bakers and sexual slaves to their husbands.
The question is this: 50 years later, are men facing their own “problem with no name”, a “masculine mystique” which imposes rigid cultural notions of what it is to be male – superior, dominant, hierarchical, sexually assertive to the point of abuse – even though society is screaming out for manhood to be something very different?
Writers, actors and performers, including Robert Webb, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Amstell, will explore the relentless levels of expectation heaped on men and assess whether this is responsible for statistics that suggest it is truly dismal these days to have a Y chromosome.
Then there are our role models: misogynist presidents, groping politicians, narcissistic sports stars, self-satisfied billionaires, airbrushed actors, heroic superheroes, alpha men, all of them.
Thus far “masculinism” has manifested itself principally in niche areas such as custody law or male victims of violence, or simply as strident misogynist voices pushing back at feminism.
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History has been rhyming yet again, from 2016-the present https://reason.com/1994/07/01/man-troubles/ Note the date on that article