Manly Men Used To Openly Weep — A Lot!

And other examples of how there’s no such thing as “traditional” masculinity

When people like Jordan Peterson talk about “a backlash against masculinity” they are implying that this is a static and universal thing — the same in every culture and in every period of time. But what they are essentially describing is a reaction to 1950s masculinity, which frankly, needed to go even back in the 1950s. After all, that was the time that spawned the Women’s Movement of the 60s and 70s. You know the one — where all those supposedly blissful homemakers vacuuming in high heels and pearls were actually high on doctor-prescribed valium to try to cope with the vapidness and the drudgery of their lives.

Women were affirmatively second-class citizens, both by law and by custom in the 1950s. Only men (and really only white men) were “real” people and women were sidekicks, helpmates, secretaries, and waitresses — supporting roles to the real business of the world, conducted by men. A friend recently told me that her boyfriend broke up with her because she wasn’t making him feel good about himself — and that was what women were supposed to do, so this attitude hasn’t exactly gone away — it’s just gone more underground.

The fact that this iteration of masculinity seems “traditional” and therefore “natural” to some people is really just a mirage because in different cultures and at different times in history, what constituted masculinity was often very different than it is in America today. A family made up of a male “provider” and a female homemaker and their children is a very recent (and actually fairly short-lived) dynamic. It appeared in the 1950s but by the late 70s was on its way out.

In reaction to the tumult both at home and abroad during the 1940s, the 1950s marked a swift shift to a new type of domesticity. Insider reports that “the idea of the nuclear, All-American Family was created in the 1950s, and put an emphasis on the family unit and marriage.” This time period saw younger marriages, more kids, and fewer divorces. The average age for women to marry was 20, divorce rates stabilized, and the birth rate doubled. However, the perfect images of family life that appeared on television do not tell the whole story: “Only 60 percent of children spent their childhood in a male-breadwinner, female-homemaker household.” Source

Even the idea of a male breadwinner is a relatively recent one, something that essentially emerged out of the Industrial Revolution, where for the first time men went off to work for wages in large numbers, rather than keeping a farm or small business with the help of their wives. Even in the Middle Ages, women were recognized as contributors to the economic stability of the family.

Women were not necessarily impoverished by divorce in the medieval world. Because no one in the Middle Ages ever claimed that the man was the main breadwinner, a divorced wife was entitled to a percentage of the household estate in line with the labor she had contributed to it.

Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History (p. 105). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In our Paleolithic past, it was more likely that if anyone would have been considered a “provider” it would have been the women. After all, hunting is an important but only sporadically successful endeavor and just as with many forager tribes today, gatherers provide most of the daily calories — which are shared amongst the entire band. There were no autonomous and self-sufficient nuclear families and any ideas about a male hunter being the primary food source for his mate and children is just a projection of 1950s marriage and family ideals.

But even beyond these two bedrocks of so-called “traditional” masculinity, the way that men have been expected to behave in the recent past is also pretty new.

“In the Middle Ages there was a trope of masculine weeping being a mark of religious devotion and knightly chivalry; by the sixteenth century it was well-established that a masculine man was supposed to have deep emotions and to show them — in some cases, through tears.” Source

“The Bible is full of crying men, and tears are plentiful among the Greek heroes such as Achilles in the Iliad. In mediaeval Europe the elite felt little obligation to conceal their emotions and that continued as late as the reign of Henry VIII, when we find his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, repeatedly weeping in public without embarrassment after his fall from power.”

In the 17th and 18th centuries in England, masculine men were expected to be in touch with their “sensibilities” by sharing and expressing their most profound feelings. In fact, weeping men were often the heroes of popular novels. There’s no definite agreement about when greater stoicism began to be required for men, but some historians believe that the Industrial Revolution was perhaps responsible when it is hypothesized that factory managers wanted their workers focused on productivity.

In other cultures around the world, we also see different expressions of masculinity. The Minangkabau of Indonesia are the largest matrilineal culture in the world. They are devoutly Islamic but the culture revolves around mothers and features a belief in the balance between men and women. Homes and land pass from mother to daughter.

More remarkable, this matrilineal inheritance is cherished among the Minangkabau, who are well known within Indonesia but obscure to most westerners. And while Minangkabau women’s roles may seem conventional, their sense of equality with men and their shared power is not. When couples marry, husbands move into their wives’ homes, nearly all decisions require consensus between men and women, and, significantly, girls are treasured. On a recent trip to Indonesia, I had the opportunity to immerse myself among the Minangkabau and observe what one might even call a feminist interpretation of Islam.

Puti Reno Raudha Thaib, a professor of agriculture at Andalas University in Padang, said that one result of this balanced system is that there is little competition between women and men. Thaib is the female head of her clan, known as the bundo kanduang. “Women and men are like two sides of a coin,” she said. Source

Band hunter-gatherer tribes are not necessarily matrilineal, but they do often share power and decision-making in both overt and subtle ways. The more that the tribe hunts big game, the more power men in those tribes seem to have over women. But those who work together, such as the Agta tribes of the Philippines who hunt wild boar using dogs and the Juǀʼhoansi ǃKung, where women generally collect plant foods and water, providing 60%–80% of the group’s sustenance, while men hunt, have fairly egalitarian communities. The gender roles they have are not strict and people do all jobs as needed with little or no shame.

A study done in 2019 with men in Mexico, the UK, and the US reveals that many men do still believe that the sort of masculinity that is expected of them includes:

• Act tough — Real men should be willing to defend their reputation, by violence if necessary. They also should remain stoic when dealing with vulnerable emotions.
• Be self-sufficient — Real men should be self-reliant, particularly with regard to their physical and emotional health
• Aggression and control — Real men use physical violence when necessary, and hold control over household decisions and women’s movements.
• Rigid gender roles — Real men expect to be financial providers but not to do much in the way of child or home care.

Not all men subscribe to this entirely, but of the 1,000 men who were surveyed and who participated in discussion groups, they overwhelmingly felt at least some pressure to adhere to these “Rules of the Man Box” — the norms of what it means to be “a real man” in our culture. Researchers also noted that the men who most adhered to these rules of masculinity were the most likely to be depressed, insecure, and have thoughts of suicide.

So, aside from the fact that “traditional” masculinity is not a universal or a static thing, 40 years of research indicates that it has been really hard on men. This is particularly true in more recent years where fewer men participate in common sources of social bonding such as church communities. Americans are in an epidemic of loneliness, but the most lonely demographic is middle-aged and older white men, who tend to subscribe to the Man Box more than other segments.

Why does our culture of male emotional toughness prohibit men’s emotional expression? The short answer is because, ridiculously, we have gendered emotionally centered capacities like empathy, care giving and nurturing as feminine. And, of course, due to the lower status of the feminine in our culture, exhibiting feminine capacities is a step down for men. Which is a shame, because relational intelligence and capacity for emotional expression are nothing short of interpersonal superpowers. Source

The crisis in masculinity in this culture today stems from the fact that most men have gotten a lot of messaging recently about how not to be (sexually aggressive, condescending to women, etc.) while at the same time still receiving conflicting messages that to some extent still expect and reward these same behaviors. Of course, many men feel confused and adrift. Who are they supposed to be? What are they supposed to do?

The good news is, there are infinite choices available, and at least in some quarters, greater acceptance of that as valid. Restrictive rules that force men into a truncated version of themselves, and that seek to coerce those who resist being boxed — are starting to crack — and that’s a good thing. Masculinity has had different expectations over the years and differs from culture to culture. It is not a universal or a static thing. Sorry JP, but there is no “one true masculinity” that men today are somehow being robbed of.

Allowing individuals to express their version of what it means to be masculine as they see fit would be good for everyone, but most of all, it would be good for men.