As I’m writing this, the entire US is getting excited about the Super Bowl.I’m not a big sports guy. Never have been. I just don’t have whatever internal doohickey that makes me go nuts over the idea of competitive team sports. I can get into boxing and mixed martial arts to a limited extent, because I’ve studied them and participated in tournaments, and I enjoy the artistry of pro-wrestling when I happen to watch it. But team sports like hockey, football, soccer or baseball just leave me cold.
The Performance of Masculinity
Men are taught through culture and society that “manliness” is the highest goal to which they should aspire. While certain aspects of life are desirable – providing for a family, being a leader of men, the number of sexual partners one has access to – they are all seen as being in service to the monolithic definition of “to be a man”. Ron Swanson gets lionized as a man’s man, the epitome of how a man should act, despite being an incredibly arch satire of masculinity. To be a man – having the biggest, clanging-est of brass balls – means to be Billy Bad-Ass, a scotch-swilling, meat-eating ball of testosterone-powered swagger.
And yet, if traditional masculinity is defined by anything, it’s by fear.
Men are taught through culture and society that “manliness” is the highest goal to which they should aspire. While certain aspects of life are desirable – providing for a family, being a leader of men, the number of sexual partners one has access to – they are all seen as being in service to the monolithic definition of “to be a man”. Ron Swanson gets lionized as a man’s man, the epitome of how a man should act, despite being an incredibly arch satire of masculinity. To be a man – having the biggest, clanging-est of brass balls – means to be Billy Bad-Ass, a scotch-swilling, meat-eating ball of testosterone-powered swagger.
And yet, if traditional masculinity is defined by anything, it’s by fear.
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