Please could posters be more specific when they talk about "in the olden days" or "in the past"? The known history of the Western world (and I think it's safe to assume we're all talking about that unless someone specifically says otherwise) is REALLY REALLY long and encompasses MANY MANY different ways of living and ways of thinking about gender. Some people seem to be talking about the 1980s, some about the 1950s, some about the Victorians, I'm thinking about high medieval Britain, then there's the Roman Empire... Often I can figure it out, but it would be really helpful to stick some rough dates on "the past". The "proper role of a man" and "proper role of a woman" are very different on a small Tudor farm and in a Victorian London suburb.
Picking up from here:
In fact, toxic masculinity says "I am a man because I am not a woman" rather than "I am a man because I am not a boy". In order for it to be masculinity rather than adulthood we do of course need both, but we do need both, and modern masculinity lacks or distorts the latter and obsesses over the former. It may sometimes use the rhetoric of not being a boy any more, but when you look closer at it, it equates boy with woman - which is ridiculous.
Some people disagree with that, I think. So while I agree that "a message as powerful as 'this is the right way to be a man' needs to be carefully examined from many angles" I think it's important to establish the proper domain of masculinity as a concept before asking what good and bad masculinity looks like. Taking these two questions separately: What makes a boy different from a man? Moral character and sense of responsibility, according to me. Same as a girl and a woman.
What makes a man different from a woman? Well, I think that's actually a tougher one to answer.
I've been thinking more about this, and I think that taking it strictly philosophically, it's important to think about what "masculinity" and "femininity" are.
Are they:
1. Attributes which are true of ALL men and ALL women. (For example, while all women are capable of bearing children, not all women do. That doesn't make them not women, so childbearing in itself would not be "feminine".)
2. Attributes which are true of THE AVERAGE man and THE AVERAGE woman. (So for example, it would be true that greater upper body strength is masculine.)
3. Attributes which bear only a linguistic or social relationship to biological manhood and womanhood, and might as well have been called "blibbleness" and "blobbleness". (So where we are on the masculine-feminine spectrum truly bears no relationship to our biological sex, as opposed to a masculine woman or feminine man being that way in spite of their gender.)
When thinking about how to define positive masculinity (not-boy-ness and not-woman-ness), none of these are problem-free options. I would guess most posters on this thread would go with the social option of #3, but it's hard to argue that it's just some massive coincidence that some traits have been assigned as masculine and some as feminine for pretty much the whole of known Western history. Is there any period of time in which men have generally worn their hair longer than women?
But #1 and #2 return results which are so bland as to be irrelevant.
I have for some time privately theorised that the lack of unskilled physical employment and the lack of simple physical recreation is doing great disservice to teenage boys in modern Western society. They have all these raging hormones and no positive outlet for them. Sure, many things about ye olden tymes were terrible, but it's a shame that a teenage boy used to be able to earn his own money (and therefore a degree of independence and self-respect) hefting bales of hay around (or similar work that just needs youthful vigour and testosterone-fuelled muscles and endurance) and nothing has replaced it. Likewise, it's often hard to access simple physical recreation like playing football on some wasteland, swimming in a river or taking your shotgun out to the woods and firing rage shots at every squirrel you see until you calm the fuck down and go home with a grand plan to make a squirrel tail hat.
It's hard to be a "manly man" these days. It's all so artificial. It's easier to be a non-manly man, which is nice because there have always been people like that, but I don't think anything has replaced the ease with which young men used to be able to let their feelings physically.
You can still play sports, go to a boxing gym, eat well, get a good job, invest and then use the money to buy nice clothes, whatever. There are still outlets if you want that sort of thing.
My theory is that the increase in inequality since the 1970s has led to suppressed men becoming angrier etc. Like all those weirdos who shoot up their schools. You never hear about the popular high-status kid in class becoming a mass murderer.
What you stated is completely contrary to what I stated. Having to join an organised boxing gym you go to in the evenings when you get home from your largely-seated brain-based "good job" which you have as an adult is the exact opposite of being able to earn some beer-and-ego money using your body in an unskilled way as a teenager and then having random physical fun for free. Who gets a "good job" at 13? But that's when adolescent boys start jockeying for perceived adult status and their hormones start building a "man's body" in great surges. Not everyone can ever get a skilled job. There are NOT outlets for the unskilled, physically oriented male, despite the fact that they continued to exist and before the 18th C Agricultural Revolution, they were essential for society to function - which gave them some well-deserved self-esteem.
But now these men have nothing to offer us. Their "masculine" strength is redundant. Anything they can do, a woman can do too. But the thing is, these people will never stop existing.
I wonder if the next sensible move for feminism is to turn its focus to supporting men. Specifically, supporting men to do "women's work" in a positive way, not just griping about how men don't do chores. There's a lot of experience out there in what works to get women into "male" professions - perhaps it's time to take that expertise and get men into "female" professions. The reality is that not everyone can be a welder, engineer, whatever. We need nurses, teachers, etc too. If all the female nurses become welders, someone has to do that job! And if women enter/remain in the workforce, there's a lot of potential space for SAHDs too. I think a lot of perceptual problems with "female" jobs will erode if they become more gender balanced. Yes, how lovely if "women's work" didn't have to become "men's work too" to be valued, but the theory hasn't worked so well on society so far, so why not tackle things from the practical end? It's hard for men in those roles right now. I have a male friend who is a primary school teacher, and people always give him this "What's wrong with you?" vibe. He teaches the really little ones too, and toileting accidents are a minefield for him.
I feel really lucky that so far, our kids haven't had any gendered messages that I'm aware of. It never even crosses my mind that my son "isn't supposed to" like cooking or my daughter "isn't supposed to" like cars. And my son loves trains and my daughter loves dressing up clothes. They both take tender, loving, sometimes brutal care of their stuffed animals. They play "grocery shopping" together (in as much as they play anything together) and it's only when I read someone upthread that I realised that might be odd to some people. But I'm sure it will come up. I feel lucky that we had a boy first because you can dress girls in "boy clothes" no problem but dressing boys in "girls clothes" is a massive problem and there is definitely some stuff I'd feel weird about putting on him. (Unicorn T-shirt fine, frilly dress not fine.)
It's funny to think about where my personal line with this stuff is, and what bothers me and what doesn't, and wonder why. Right now 3yo son has an alter ego called "Mrs Patand". (Nooooo idea where that came from. It used to be just Patand, then the Mrs got added.) And sometimes I catch myself idly wondering if it's weird. I don't think it is, because "Mrs" doesn't mean anything special to him right now. And there is no difference in what he does as Awdry and what he does as Mrs Patand. But the "Is this weird?" thought does still pop up from time to time.