The Thought

If you were to ask a couple of men to give you their own definition of masculinity, what are the odds that you’ll end up with the same answer? You’re guessing right: a good, round zero. Neither you nor anyone else will ever be taught at school, or in a manual, what masculinity precisely means, and that is for a good reason. Because we can be a man in so many different ways, each one of us has to come up with his own definition, see if it holds any value, and these types of variables are exactly what started me on my journey.

I am still unsure which part of my life would be the most appropriate to begin telling my story, but I feel like everything had already started a couple of years before I moved to Europe, which happened in 2015. I was born in a culture and society where they actively try to ensure that boys are made into men, sometimes from a very young age, without really knowing how. During the time when I was traveling around the world (or so to say in order to make it sound cool, which by the way for me it was), I had the opportunity to encounter many men who reminded me of the kind which I had spent most of my life with, back in my homeland, and the obvious conclusion was that finding out what it means to be a man is a struggle that defies time and space. I was then both reassured and saddened by the fact that I was, in the end, no different from any man (thank God, I guess…?).

Moving abroad is an achievement which I am proud of, as it has opened to me the way to the whole world which I’m still highly curious about. There is no counting the myriad of things I learned, and if I have to mention only one of them it would doubtlessly be the benefits of independence. Being on the loose in the outer world is an experience that I wish for everyone to have, because wisdom doesn’t come with age only (if it does at all), but mostly with rich, personal experiences. 

If I were to be extremely cheesy about it (like, really) I would say that leaving my homeland and having to take care of myself was the first step towards becoming a man for me, although there is yet a lot for me to tell about that. Jefferson said that one travels more usefully when alone because he reflects more, and how can you not when left to your own devices, fending for yourself?

There are many things I only started reflecting on after I moved abroad, and what it means to be a man was inevitably one of them. It was only then that I began to realize how much masculinity mattered to me in comparison to what I had first thought, and that it was definitely related to a lot more aspects of my life.

When I was hit hard with the realization that I never had any good models at my disposal (not in my entourage, nor in my people, nor anywhere else) I felt like I had to start from scratch, at an age where many men were no longer asking themselves such profound questions about masculinity - if they ever did, because truth be told it is much easier when it is passed down to you, no matter in which form, as you don’t even have to think about it. For better or for worse, I didn’t have much to work with on my part and was therefore confronted to ask questions I had to answer on my own.

Thus the journey began…

It is perhaps curious to start off by mentioning that there are very few people with whom I shared my questions, as it was only natural for me to sort them out by myself, and that most of whom I brought up this topic with, in a very serious way were only women, those among the ones I have been in a relationship with in the past. But if I have to be perfectly honest about it, I would say that I had yet to find a definition of masculinity (on paper or anywhere else) that hit the spot for me, so resorting to anyone around, men or women was meaningless from the start.

This however caused me to feel profoundly out of place when it came to this matter in particular because there was no model that I knew of in which I could fit, and that certainly didn’t make it any easier even though I’m used to having different ideas from other people in general despite the fair share of challenges that it’s always had (and still has) for me.

I’m still slightly unsure why it mattered so much to me when it came to the question of masculinity, but I nevertheless tend to believe that it’s simply because it was something more related to me rather than people around me – or to be more precise about it, I felt that my masculinity was an aspect of my identity, and this latter notion is for me something that needs to be sorted out at some point in anyone’s life, one way or another.

Therefore it became all the more important (not to say crucial) to come up with my own conception of masculinity since I had none to work with, a challenge that proved (and is still proving) quite hard to take up because whatever I managed to think of felt lacking and unsatisfying. Surely it would’ve been much easier to just fit in a model.

Something that bothers me however is that it seems to be so important for me to find out what it means to be a man, rather than a good person, a respectable individual, a decent human being, which looks to be much more important if we think about it, and above all much more meaningful. That is just how the question of masculinity led me to reflect on yet other aspects of my life, which is a route anyone who goes on this journey will ultimately come to take (exciting, right?), and that is among what makes it so interesting, so instructive. It is a whole reshuffle of our ideas that happens at the deeper levels of our brain.

Such an experience may not be easy for everyone (it wasn’t for me in the slightest) but it is the kind of experience from which you emerge greater and richer, and having it is really worth the mind mess (says the guy who’s still struggling with it).

So in the end, what does it truly mean to be a man, apart from having a tail between the legs as well as the whole package that comes with it?

You’ll be happy (or sad) to know that it may mean absolutely nothing, and that is totally fine. Again, this is my personal, current conception of it, but the question of masculinity is equivalent for me to that of the meaning of life: you never stop pursuing it. Because there exist no manuals to explain any (again for a good reason), we are bound to come up with what makes the most sense to us, just as we have to find our own meaning of life (spoiler alert: life has no meaning, so do whatever you want with it). Be the man you feel like you want to be (super cheesy, I know) and keep in mind that there are no “proper” ways to be so - that is perhaps the only assessment I would allow myself to present as true.

And as a word of ending, know that it may be much more important for both yourself and the rest of the world to know what it means to be a good man rather than to simply be a “man”, because the latter will hardly ever contribute to making you a better person, nor will it contribute to making humanity a better species.

Cheers - Anonymous Guest Writer