"Common to many societies, men must 'impregnate women, protect dependents from danger, and provision kith and kin'."
Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity
David D. Gilmore, 1991
This much seems to be written, as it were, in the male body as its basic syntax, its classic form, in the primal language of testosterone:
- To make and raise children with females
- To protect the group from animal predators and other human males.
- To hunt and thus provide meat/fish.
Or, more alliteratively and less provocatively:
Procreation, protection and protein.
A place to start.
I assume that the evolutionary theory is basically correct and that the hunter-gatherer society is the primal human organization that still fundamentally shapes us as a species. “Reading” the male physically and socially, I am hypothesizing that the male gender is meant for three fundamental purposes:
- procreating,
- protecting the group from animal and human predators,
- and providing protein for them by hunting and fishing.
We no longer live in hunter-gatherer societies but in vastly complex communities. Men’s purposes remain rooted, I maintain, in these three archetypal functions, but how they are enacted has changed as we have created sedentary civilizations based on a combination of agriculture and cities.
It’s all written in the male body: the size, muscle and phallus, the specialization indicated in the male brain, and the attitudes and tendencies of the testosterone-endowed.
I would enlarge the meaning of the triad of fathering, fighting and feeding into power, courage and skill, flowing from the male body, the male heart, and the male brain. No one will accord manhood status to a male who is typically or chronically weak, fearful or inept.
Especially in complex societies, a man can compensate for deficits in the triad by specialization. A man with valued skill need not be especially strong or brave. A man with “heart” will be forgiven physical impairment or lack of skill. And a powerful man need not prove his courage or aptitude. But even now, a “man’s man” will show abundance of all three qualities.
Part of my work as a therapist with men is to keep an eye out for how each man comes into his power, where lies his courage and what are his skills. These vary very much both because of culture and because of the individual. But they are basic elements in manhood, transcending issues of race or sexual orientation* or age.
A man may be a teacher, a soldier or cop, a business guy or a clerk, an artist, a barber, a laborer or tech geek..even a therapist!...and these archetypal themes need and deserve attention.
Power, courage, skill.
*It is an obvious question for a gay man or an unmarried straight man to ask how he fits into this triad, if fathering and raising children with a woman is part of the classic model. I'll take that up in another post.
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