This was fantastic and a real conversation.
I want to say that as a traditional man that I feel that men have a predisposition to want to be useful. I think it is how God made us.
I will say that, and the discord and the people of this forum knows this first hand, that it took me a long time to be a healthy man and to learn the damaging ways that hurt women.
When you marry a woman, often the man works to help elevate her, make life easier, and works harder for her and his family. He makes choices to make things better, he sacrifices to achieve this.
I think many people are under valuing the notion that many roles are pre-baked into our software. Men are more violent than women but what comes with that is the need to control that violence and learn the responsibility to wield it.
Men are predisposed to want to want to provide. Women seem to be predisposed to want to care for their family and children. I believe things get wonky and oppressive when the roles become super strict, like a man that doesn't want his wife to work when she clearly wants to or when he thinks it's not a man's place to cook or clean or help out or help rear his own damn children.
It is my opinion that these roles aren't bad but natural order, as the majority of straight women still seek men with traditional values (of protecting women, of providing for women) even when they're feminists.
That said, it's good to be flexible.
I reject the notion that men can't be soft or emotional. If that's the case how can a man be a good father? When I felt that men couldn't be emotional it came from a place of nothing but insecurity. How can he know how to love his children and actually show it besides providing? So I think there's a unique mix a man has to inhibit.
I think in order for a man to transcend and be healthy and the way God made him he needs to be willing to self sacrifice, willing to acquiesce and know how to pick his battles, willing to be tough in the face of adversity, but also willing to be good in the face of such a tough world, and willing to be soft and doting and protective to those that need it. How can a man be good if he lets the world beat him down and change his character?
Finally, a man doesn't talk. He does. This sounds contradictory to men needing to know when to be soft but it's really not. When a woman relies on a man for protection talking is just beating your chest. She needs to see actual action and grit to believe in her man. This ties into the self sacrifice and the leadership inherent to manhood.
When Benji was arguing with me about conscription I just feel that self sacrifice is a part of being a man, whether on the battlefield or putting food on the table.
I think our masculinity these days is in search of becoming more of a balanced man. A good man with boundaries so to speak rather than the Fred Flintstone domineering energy of our forefathers or the overt weakness of a man that lets the world trample over him.
