Masculinity is an interesting topic for me as a guy and one that I have observed with fascination from afar.
The discussion is rife on social media and there seems to be a resurgence of people taking on more traditional gender roles in relationships while at the same time, various branches of both feminism and the manosphere get more extreme.
Honesty, I try to avoid discourse. And I realize that because I ‘appear’ masculine (facial hair, tall, muscular) I kind of get a hall pass when it comes to any debate about it. I am just assumed to be a manly man.
However, the more I think about it, the more it frustrates me.
I can see that historically, men used to have more muscle and so we did a lot of the hunting and fighting. And given the lack of birth control and biology, women very quickly became involved in giving birth and then looking after the offspring.
As society developed we started to create narratives around what it meant to be a man or a woman, and undoubtedly men took advantage of this to create society in our favor.
And so we get to the modern world, where there is minimal need for muscle, aggression, or brute strength and most of the world is at peace. And yet still, the definition of masculinity is based on stories invented by men, that…
