Let’s Hear it for the Boys!

by Andrea Watson | December 22, 2020

First off, I do not claim to know anything about men. I am not a man and I grew up with three sisters and no brothers. But I know that men face their own issues, just like women do. And I appreciate and love men, so this one and every one in this little series is for the men who follow this blog, those who don’t, those who stumble upon it, the men in my own life, and the women who care enough to learn a little more about what it’s like to be a man in our society.

I spent time interviewing the men and mothers of men in my life and the first thing I learned is that men don’t really like answering questions surrounding manly issues. The answers I did get were varied-which is good. These along with my internet research are sufficient for this post.

One thing I was told really stuck out to me. My father said that the greatest hurt that can be dealt to a man is when someone he loves finds fault in him. I would imagine that losing a spouse or a child would hurt worse, but aside from those, I see what he is saying. He told me a story about how once my other laughed so hard at his dancing that he didn’t dance for twenty years after that. Wow. That is a big, fat hurt! How sad! I don’t know if women think of things like that. I know I never really have. I always thought men were able to brush anything off and continue on with what they were doing. But I guess that must have been the portrayal of men through the media that I latched onto or something. I hope I am not just an thoughtless twit.

Another thing I learned in preparing for this is that men are big squishes, meaning that they have all the same emotions that women have, but dealing with those takes a different course for men than women. Unfortunately, because of societal expectations, they are not allowed to reveal these emotions. Often what they display is anger, because it is really the only “acceptable” emotion for a man to display. Not just because of the way women might view them, either. Men relate to each other only under specific unspoken conditions.

A man will expect other men to show a certain level of stability emotionally. In friendships, if one man goes past the point of the acceptable level of emotion, he will stop relating to the “emotional man” and turn his attention elsewhere. Men don’t like dealing with other men’s problems. Men also expect other men to have a certain level of authority over others. If they don’t, then they are ranked lower in masculinity and often value compared to men who do show that level of authority. Another thing that determines a man’s “masculinity ranking” is his size. While it’s true that a smaller man is often just as capable as a large one, the opposite view is expressed socially in both women’s and other men’s eyes.

That is enough for this post. I will cover more in a later post. Please treat men nicely, ladies. They deal with a lot that some of us don’t even know about. They are complicated creatures, although they don’t usually start out that way. What society does to them is no more fair than what it does to women. We just have to remember that. Thank you for reading, until next time,

Andrea xo