What Is a Man?

From Menletter April 2006

By Tim Baehr

At about seven weeks into your mother's pregnancy, the Y chromosome (of the X and Y pair that determines male sex) triggered the release of testosterone, masculinizing the brain and genitalia of the embryo. Up until then, there was no way to distinguish between a male and a female embryo.

This hormonal phenomenon would make the early release of testosterone a kind of gold standard for answering the question, "What is a man?" But the question remains. If biology were the only determinant, no man would question his manhood, and all men would be essentially alike. (We'll ignore, for this essay, anomalies such as XYY and XXY males.)

We know that men are not all the same, any more than we could say that all humans are the same. While most men are more similar to each other than they are to women, men do look, think, and behave differently from each other. So, what does it mean to be a man? I want to explore men in their social setting, men and hormones, men as partners in reproduction, "male" behavior, "experts" on men, and some descriptions of "real men."

Social Settings

We are all shaped by our families and by the community and society in which we grew up. In some countries, heterosexual men can be seen holding hands and kissing in public; this would be startling in the US. In some eras in the US, men were usually the only wage earner in a family, and the women stayed home to manage the household and raise the kids. Nowadays, many men are much more involved in the daily life of their families. Financial necessity or the desire for a different kind of fulfillment has drawn many women into the workforce, triggering in many cases a renegotiation of domestic chores. And men - in response to the feminist ascendancy or to their own yearnings - are taking much more active roles with their children.

Is the man of the 1950s more of a man than the man of the 2000s? Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard professor of government, theorizes that the 1950s man is closer to the ideal - that housework and childcare are unmanly and that men are at their best showing "confidence in risky situations" (Manliness, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Mansfield doesn't even follow his own paradigm; in a Boston Globe feature on him and his book, he admitted to doing housework. And I suspect he's hardly a risk-taker, at least physically: He's a college professor, not the John Wayne character he sets up as a model.

Social norms change from generation to generation, as we all can see and have experienced. Does this mean that the basic essence of manhood has changed? It's silly to think that our physical, spiritual, and social essence tracks with social norms.

Ranging Hormones?

There is a range of testosterone in men that is considered "normal." A few men have too much, and a few men have too little. Some authors theorize about a kind of male menopause caused by the natural decline of testosterone with age. At least one men's magazine (Men's Health) offers a diet purported to increase testosterone. Does testosterone provide a scale of manliness? Can we determine who is a real man by a simple blood test? While testosterone can be implicated in certain behaviors (optimism, increased energy, sexual drive), would we want it to be the only criterion by which we assess ourselves? Maybe so. But that means half of us will be below-average men.

Serious medical or inherited problems with low testosterone can sometimes be remedied with injections or other medications, with accompanying risks. Sometimes a low reading cannot be remedied because of higher than normal risks (enlarged prostate, for instance). The frustrations, especially about sex drive and overall energy, can be distressing and frustrating. But men with this problem are, in my experience, not seen by other men as lacking in manhood. The internal feelings of frustration may arise from not matching up to their perceptions of society's expectations and norms.

Male-female is not a continuum. Once testosterone has done its work in our mother's womb (in the course of normal development), no one is sort-of male, much less even bordering on female.

Reproductive Criteria

Is a "true" man someone who can, at least potentially, participate in creating new life? Let's see, there seem to be two criteria here: the ability to produce viable sperm and the ability to have an erection. Actually, only the first is biologically necessary.

But what happens when a man is infertile or impotent? Is he less of a man? Some men lacking one or both of these abilities may feel less than manly, especially in a society that emphasizes virility and studliness in every action movie and most TV commercials aimed at men. In my opinion, either or both inabilities take away just one aspect of manhood that in no way take away the whole man.

Some otherwise intact men choose not to father children - monks, celibate priests, or just men who don't want children. It would be ridiculous to label them as something less than true men.

Behave Yourself

Dozens of books have been written about what constitutes "male" versus "female" behavior. We're from Mars, women are from Venus. Men don't communicate much. Men don't or won't show their feelings. Women face each other to talk; men sit side by side. So it goes, round and round. I'm sure some of these observations have some validity. There are, after all, differences in brain chemistry that must have some effect on behavior. And there are the mythologically-based sets of male behaviors, like the quest, that are said to characterize men. But if you go down a list of things that are supposed to be typical of or unique to men, what happens if you don't recognize some of the things in yourself? Are you less of a man?

Some descriptions of typical male behavior are stereotypes. The stereotypes may be based on usual male behavior, or they may be based on the behavior of a small subset of us. We may rankle at the portrayal of men's behavior in TV commercials and sitcoms, and the most useful response to most of it may be to explain to our children, if we have any, that not all men are like the ones on TV, and that some people think it's funny to put down men. We can respond to the really offensive stuff (a Verizon DSL commercial depicting a dad as a possible child molester comes to mind; Verizon pulled the ad after protests), but for the most part I guess we need to lighten up.

Expert Testimony

There are a lot of experts on manhood out there in books and on the Web. They write essays and make lists of what a real man is like. The sources may be sociological, psychological, mythological, or just based on wishful thinking. The problem with all of these, I think without exception, is twofold. First, no one measures up to all of the items in any checklist. Second, many of the items - such as courage, ability to get things done, inventiveness, loyalty, and many more - are not the exclusive province of males.

It can be fun to read some of this expert testimony and measure ourselves against it, as long as we don't take things too seriously. I try to keep a couple of things in mind when I read this stuff, such as whether the observations and pronouncements are culture-bound (read: white, Western or American, middle-class and above; or "traditional," meaning "indigenous" or even "primitive", and so on) or are based on the thinnest of logical foundations.

And I mostly conclude that maybe, just maybe, the philosophers, psychologists, and mythologists haven't found the true keys to the manly kingdom.

I'll tell you where I think the keys are: hidden in the inner recesses of our own being. The Latin word for "being" is esse, from which we get the words "essential" and "essence." We were born as men. Our essence is that of men, whatever the details may be of the accidents and incidents of our existence. The truest men we know are the other men we see every day, and the man we see in the mirror every day, the man inhabiting our skin and blood and bones. Our stories, the complex and kaleidoscopic stories of our lives, are based on those keys, that essence.

Real Men

You and I have met a lot of real men. You may recognize elements of yourself, or men you know, in the following men I have seen or met. All could be seen as quite ordinary, living within the culture into which they were born.

● A real man who served in the Army in Europe, sold insurance, installed bells in towers, and became a poet and mentor.

● A real man who filled a large room with his howling sobs of loss and regret over a lost father.

● A real man who cooked, cleaned, raised toddlers, got a PhD, took care of a wife in crisis - all at once.

● A real man who meditates and prays and takes care of others, even though he is unemployed.

● Two real men who are lovingly raising their adopted son.

● A real man cradling another man as he weeps for joy at a week-long retreat.

● Many real men sober for dozens of years.

● Real men who run a prison curriculum on emotional and personal responsibility for incarcerated men.

● A real man who realized that medication was the only alternative to crippling anger.

● A real man enduring repeated and sometimes painful prostate biopsies, trying to track down an elusive diagnosis - and in the meantime showing up at work, worrying about relationships, and so on.

● A real man who spends several afternoons a week with his grandchildren.

● A real man who arranged for legal help - without recriminations - for a son in trouble with the law.

● A real man who goes to work every day, comes home, plays with the kids, does housework, fixes things, and loves his wife.

● A real man who, tortured by injustice in the world, attends protests and invites others to join him.

● A real man who quietly donates time and considerable money to local causes, without publicity.

● A crew of real men building a dock, almost wordlessly cooperating in carrying, measuring, cutting, placing, fastening.

● A real man who runs a scrupulously honest auto repair shop and makes sure that the whole crew eats lunch together.

● A real man who dons a clown suit and entertains hospitalized children.

● A real man who taught college students practically until the day he died at 86.

● A real man who fled Nazi Germany, served for the US in WWII in the precursor to the CIA, survived blackballing in the McCarthy era, and was writing on international economics in his mid-80s.

● A real man who lived over half his adult life on the road as a salesman, with all its attendant hardships.

● A real man who works with his hands during the week as a craftsman and makes beautiful music on the weekends.

These, and millions more, are the real men who quietly help others, keep their commitments, keep things running. What's the unifying theme here? For me, the ideal is just men of good heart doing the best they can. There's a stunning diversity among real men, something that no list, no book, no guru, no philosopher, no psychologist could hope to delineate.

Each man in the list, aware of it or not, discovered one or more keys to his inner manhood. Each man's search, each man's story, is different.

What's my story? What's your story? We're writing them right now.