So you want to be a manly man?

See how you measure up with my checklist

Dear M,

I don't consider watching sports a necessary prerequisite to being a man. Depending on the sport, playing them is more like it.

I consider knowing sports stats and knowing Pokemon stats to be exactly the same level of manly. So for those of you who keep calling my Man Card into question every time the draft comes up and I’d rather take a nap, here are a list of things that make a man really manly — and sometimes even god-like. I fit a good chunk of these, but I'd like to fit as many as I can.

1. Diagnosing and fixing your own car, or building or remodeling a house.

2. Being the leader of an effective, ass-kicking, money-making team, or a military unit.

3. Having muscles.

4. Being an expert in philosophy, history, economics, theology, law, or politics.

5. Being able to take punches, literally and metaphorically, and give them.

6. Running into danger when people need your help.

7. Catching flying objects when they're coming at your face — without flinching.

8. Publicly admitting that 99% of the time the police are useless in an emergency, and opting to be your family's first armed line of defense.

9. Being well-versed in Moses’ laws and Solomon’s proverbs.

10. Keeping a cool head when the public is going hysterical for some cause, and even going against it.

11. Knowing the difference between telling the truth and running your mouth.

12. Admitting when you're wrong.*

An objection might be made here. Can't a woman run a kick-ass business, or be familiar with Plutarch or Schopenhauer, or turn a robber into Swiss cheese? Yes, alongside some others listed here — and I would argue she'd be more of a woman.

The people who misunderstand me here forget that the opposite of a man isn't a woman. A man who fails to be a man doesn't turn into a woman. What happens is he never distinguishes himself from the boys.

The eternal fight of manhood isn’t to distinguish yourself from the does, but to make yourself visibly superior to the fawns and the other young bucks. This is how you get the best does — and also how you make the best fawns.

Yours,
-J

January 8th, 2020

PS: The things listed above are mostly different, i think, from raw, physical masculinity. But raw and physical masculinity isn't something to be left out. Country music is in fact the last scene in these United States, barring some strains of Christian worship, where a baritone sounds right at home — and this I think is a great part of its appeal.

A woman who goes to a country show usually sees a man who sounds like he belongs with the fields or the rivers or the mountains — who has stubble, tights jeans, and makes you feel like he could walk off the stage and immediately get somebody pregnant. Or at the very least change a tire. This puts him in overt superiority to the gay and scrawny eunuch of pop music — usually left-wing men who look like they either smell, or have a disease, or came from the ghetto, or from outer space. Either way you know they can’t save you in a fight.

I theorize a good country singer is to modern, masculinity-starved women like catnip; and his voice and lyrics are so soothing they're willing to overlook the banality of the music. There's no famous drummer like Neil Pert in country, and no guitarist known for his fingerwork like Angus Young. In country there's the singer, the whole singer, and nothing but the singer.

At country shows you won’t see anything revolutionary, but because of this reliance on high testosterone and an overwhelmingly sturdy, almost obvious sound, the kinds of women country attracts are many times top-notch as far as biology is concerned. They tend to be warm and natural and have long hair. I've met plenty of other women who've liked other music and turned out alright; but the ones who love sad lyrics and chest hair are the ones you want on a warm summer night. (It could also be argued, on the other hand, according to country's lyrics, that these women will ruin you).

*One of the finest things about me, I think, is my ability to apologize. Because I have the spark of life in me I'm wrong often and embarrassingly; and when I am I take the initiative — and quickly**. I expect mistakes out of myself and from others. I'm ready to forgive and ready for forgiveness. I have yet to deny anyone who apologizes. My anger is swift and brutal but I can end it in an instant. I know of nobody, except the lost cause and the unrepentant, whom I've left behind for dead.

Thus one of the worst things to me about feminists is their insistence that women shouldn't have to apologize — “like a man doesn’t.” A man who screws up through his own fault and refuses to admit it might be a man, but he's bad at it. He takes no responsibility for himself and his actions, the crucial and obvious foundation of all manhood. He sees the bridge of all trust and progress and he burns it. Thus a woman who refuses to apologize so she can be “equal with men” is much worse than a bad man. She's a halfwit modeling herself blindly after the worst men. She claims all men as her equals, and then makes the jackass her guru.

**A recent example is the other day when Kobe died. Someone at work said it was sad and I said that it wasn't. I made the argument that much better men had died this year, and we shouldn't waste our energy mourning another worthless baller.

The next day I was treated to a slew of evidence that Kobe wasn't just a rando who played sports, but a devout Catholic, a solid family man, and a hard-working, good-exampling all-star American. So I went back to this coworker and told him I'm an assclown. I had judged a great man because he played in the company of ne'er-do-wells and nincompoops and professional jugglers. I was right of course that we put too much stock in sports and sport players. But most of us were never good enough to rub shoulders with Kobe — or with Pat Tillman.