A courageous act today might be speaking up in a meeting in support of a colleague when it would have been easier not to, or to tell someone how you feel about them—how they hurt you or how they made your day. Courage might be saying “I’m sorry”, or perhaps letting go of your self-consciousness long enough to really hear someone else. It could be calling out racism, sexism or homophobia, or it might be stepping in to mediate when an argument gets heated.
These acts are difficult, embarrassing or potentially dangerous but they are courageous, and doing these hard things with consistency will make you feel more like a master of your own will, more of a leader and more masculine, regardless of your gender.
I want my daughter to have this sort of courage, and for any men in her life to have it too (including me).
Earlier in the article you reject the idea of telling men to be more like women, but I don’t see how ‘telling someone how they hurt you’ can possibly be regarded as a distinctively manly virtue—we’re trying to produce a substitute for cavalry charges and fighting wolves and crewing a Ship of the Line here! People wouldn’t regard a women mediating an argument as behaving in a manly way—in fact it seems somewhat feminine to me—so I don’t see how it can be distinctively masculine.
To produce a modern positive conception of manliness, I think you need to start from a place of thinking about awesome things men do and then think about how to make them more accessible and how to stop undermining them. This article feels more like you are trying to take a list of things you like and find a way to call them masculine.
It’s also not clear to me that courage doesn’t also have a dark side—just being courageous doesn’t seem like it has any guarantee that the side you support is the right one. Wars are fought by courageous soldiers on both sides. I do not buy your argument that ‘by definition’ courage is pro-social unless we are going to totally gerrymander what courage is.
To me courage is doing what you’re afraid of doing when you know it’s the right thing to do. It has a two-fold definition that protects it somewhat from abuse. Strength for instance does not have this additional aspect. Now, I agree it can go wrong if someone has a flawed idea of what is right, but that’s an additional issue that’s complicates literally everything—if something had to be immune to a flawed sense of right and wrong then nothing would pass that test. Courage at least requires good intent, and it furthermore requires something difficult, so it guards against convenience too.
To produce a modern positive conception of manliness, I think you need to start from a place of thinking about awesome things men do.
I agree, though in my defence this is exactly what I was trying to do, pointing out men’s risk-seeking nature and their ability to do courageous things, as a major positive and trying to apply it to a world where opportunities for exercising courage are different.
Given the world we live in, courage—doing the hard thing when it’s the right thing to do, does play out in workplaces and homes, it can play out in physical exploits too (perhaps I could have talked about the thriving rock climbing community of which I am a part) but if you try doing the hard thing for the right reasons even in those mundane situations, I can assure you, from experience it does make you feel more masculine. In saying this, of course (and I clarify this 3 times in the post) courage is not the sole purview of men, women do courageous things all the time—but I think all men can agree that if there is such a thing as masculinity, courage is a significant part of it.
I disagree that saying someone hurt you can’t...
...possibly be regarded as a distinctively manly virtue”.
I can only say that, from experience, there is a distinctively masculine experience that a man has when they are honest despite their pride or habits. It is the same act—doing the difficult thing—that running toward enemy fire is, and takes a lot more courage to do than the simulacra of courage we take part in when playing Call of Duty for instance.
Exhibiting genuine courage in a different environment, with different variables is not about re-defining courage, it’s about finding what that very same courage means in a new context.
Earlier in the article you reject the idea of telling men to be more like women, but I don’t see how ‘telling someone how they hurt you’ can possibly be regarded as a distinctively manly virtue—we’re trying to produce a substitute for cavalry charges and fighting wolves and crewing a Ship of the Line here! People wouldn’t regard a women mediating an argument as behaving in a manly way—in fact it seems somewhat feminine to me—so I don’t see how it can be distinctively masculine.
To produce a modern positive conception of manliness, I think you need to start from a place of thinking about awesome things men do and then think about how to make them more accessible and how to stop undermining them. This article feels more like you are trying to take a list of things you like and find a way to call them masculine.
It’s also not clear to me that courage doesn’t also have a dark side—just being courageous doesn’t seem like it has any guarantee that the side you support is the right one. Wars are fought by courageous soldiers on both sides. I do not buy your argument that ‘by definition’ courage is pro-social unless we are going to totally gerrymander what courage is.
Fair points.
To me courage is doing what you’re afraid of doing when you know it’s the right thing to do. It has a two-fold definition that protects it somewhat from abuse. Strength for instance does not have this additional aspect. Now, I agree it can go wrong if someone has a flawed idea of what is right, but that’s an additional issue that’s complicates literally everything—if something had to be immune to a flawed sense of right and wrong then nothing would pass that test. Courage at least requires good intent, and it furthermore requires something difficult, so it guards against convenience too.
I agree, though in my defence this is exactly what I was trying to do, pointing out men’s risk-seeking nature and their ability to do courageous things, as a major positive and trying to apply it to a world where opportunities for exercising courage are different.
Given the world we live in, courage—doing the hard thing when it’s the right thing to do, does play out in workplaces and homes, it can play out in physical exploits too (perhaps I could have talked about the thriving rock climbing community of which I am a part) but if you try doing the hard thing for the right reasons even in those mundane situations, I can assure you, from experience it does make you feel more masculine. In saying this, of course (and I clarify this 3 times in the post) courage is not the sole purview of men, women do courageous things all the time—but I think all men can agree that if there is such a thing as masculinity, courage is a significant part of it.
I disagree that saying someone hurt you can’t...
I can only say that, from experience, there is a distinctively masculine experience that a man has when they are honest despite their pride or habits. It is the same act—doing the difficult thing—that running toward enemy fire is, and takes a lot more courage to do than the simulacra of courage we take part in when playing Call of Duty for instance.
Exhibiting genuine courage in a different environment, with different variables is not about re-defining courage, it’s about finding what that very same courage means in a new context.