Writes Long Haired Weirdo:
I don’t like shooting down conservative commentary too often – too many targets, so little time
— and, it turns out, so little ability —
– but there are times when I feel it might be a public service.there’s no checklist, and then list items from what it contains… uh, would contain… uh, if it existed… which it doesn’t.
As soon as you start saying “this is masculine”, sorry, pal, you’re maintaining a checklist. That’s how it goes; if you have a list, and can check items off it as part of your test, it’s a checklist. And you’re a wimp for thinking it matters.
[my emphasis]
More importantly, those activities aren’t all that masculine. Buying guns? Guns are tools, and the masculine men I know appreciate fine tools that do the job they’re supposed to do. But buying them just to buy them? Eh. If you need a wrench, you buy a wrench. Sure, guns can be a hobby as well, but if you think collecting guns because they’re really cool is more manly than collecting stamps because they’re really cool, you don’t quite get the whole manhood thing. Hobbies are hobbies; they’re for fun and entertainment, and only a wimp has to mock someone else’s idea of what’s fun. (I’d say “a boy” instead of “a wimp”, but, you know, I’ve known a lot of mature boys who’d never dream of mocking a person’s hobby as being not masculine.)
Cheering sports teams is masculine? Playing slow pitch softball, or bowling in a sub-100 league, or, hell, anything, is more masculine than cheering. Sorry, that’s just the way life is. Sports are fun to watch… but there’s nothing specifically manly about watching other people do something difficult.
Ogling nubile teens? Eh. Men look at women appreciatively, but specifically teens? Women are beautiful; there ain’t nothing special about teens, and if you think there is something really special about teens, I’d have to wonder if you could handle a real, mature woman.
Motorcycles? They’re fun, agile, and you see and feel *everything*. They’re no more or less manly than any other mode of transportation.
This is the thing that’s so crazy about this. You have these people thinking that they know that they’re real men, because they don’t have to consciously try to measure themselves up to some imaginary standard, but because they do measure up to some imaginary standard.
And I’m sorry. That’s the sign of a man not confident of his masculinity. I’m more masculine wearing a tutu that I’ve consciously chosen to wear, for my own reasons, than some bozo would be wearing military fatigues, “not because I want to look masculine, but because masculine men like the look of military fatigues!”
(I can’t imagine any reasons for wearing a tutu. Not even to prove my claim that I’d still be masculine, because if you don’t understand the truth of it, me proving it isn’t going to improve your understanding. The point still stands.)
There’s more circular reasoning there; more “being a man means conforming to one stereotype or another, because of who you are, but not because of the stereotype, yet the stereotype still determines what being manly is.” It’s ridiculous.
To be a man is to be what you are, powerfully, bravely, and unashamedly, and it’s got nothing to do with stereotypes. Masculine stereotypes are for wimps who need to measure themselves.
Read: real men don’t buy into stereotypical conventions of masculinity. He said. Before immediately offering a new conventional category of behavior — not buying into conventions — to differentiate “real men” from “wimps.”
My, how they do so like to deconstruct themselves!
From a follow-up post to the one Long Haired Weirdo links:
[…] what is clear is that the author of this piece, David from Austin, hasn’t bothered to read my post. Because nowhere in the post do I set about to “prove†my manliness. In fact, I find it ridiculous that one would even need to  though the point of my post was that I find it doubly ridiculous that Neiwert would write a post decrying how “conservatives†obsess upon these things, even as it is he who seems to be doing the obsessing (hence the disquisition, which tracks nicely with a similar piece by another leftist, Ric Caric), while conservatives seem rather amused by his tortured attempts to prove his manliness to himself.
As I noted in a comment somewhere, the only reason Neiwert would even write such a post to begin with is that he has completely bought into conventional notions of masculinity and femininity and so must now set about changing them to account for his own behaviors, which he fears don’t match those conventions. He demands that social perceptions bend to his will.
“Me, I post about doing yoga and wearing bike shorts. And about how I’m hung like a particularly virile bull elk. Because the truth is, I couldn’t care less whether Neiwert or Marcotte or David in Austin or Tbogg find me “masculine†or not  and in fact, I tend to poke fun at the fact that they seem to think “conservatives†like me actually care about such things.”
And now, I suppose, you can add Long Haired Weirdo to that list — though if his thinking remains constant, he’ll likely interpret a response such as this to mean I actually do care what he thinks about my masculinity, when the truth is, I actually care about exposing the kind of tortured logic and intellectual laziness involved in penning long and curiously self-confident screeds like his.
Consider it a “public service.”
First, Long Haired Weirdo, like Dave in Austin before him, would have helped his cause considerably had he understood the argument being made before he went about “shooting it down.”
Because as it stands, I think what he leaves us with is the sense that he really does just feel like going after conservatives, even if they happen to agree with some of the basic premises he (ostensibly, though not really, as it turns out, on which more below) supports.
The “checklist” Long Haired Weirdo cites was employed by Ric Locke in his comment (from which I quoted) to provide a template for a way of thinking that he himself was criticizing, to a large extent. The checklist items were picked in response to Neiwert’s (remember, he’s the LIBERAL here) suggestions that there are certain categories called “masculine” and “feminine.”
For my part — and as I made clear both in the original post and subsequently — I believe in male/female distinctions that are intrinsic or, at least, generalized enough throughout the sexes that those distinctions can fairly said to be more identifiable with one of the sexes than its opposite. Which is not the same as believing there are behaviors that are intrinsically “masculine” or “feminine” — terms that exist in the constructivist (conventional) arena of gender studies.
So not only does Long Haired Weirdo miss completely the argument in my post, but he do so in a way that reveals your OWN conceptions of manliness, which he claims in his post to dismiss. Simultaneously, his argument is really an argument against Neiwert, rather than either Ric or me — making it ironic that he believes himself to be “shooting down” “conservative” ideas about masculinity.
To wit: how could Long Haired Weirdo conclude that I am “unmanly” and “trying to prove [I’m] manly [by] being just like other people who are trying to prove they’re manly” without having a pre-conception of what “manliness” is? Which is to say, he wouldn’t be able to argue that someone is UN-manly without first deciding what IS manly — and he does so, ironically, by appealing to the (corrupt) notion of “masculinity.”
Regardless of what Long Haired Weirdo argues, it is patently untrue (and lazy or specious, his choice) to argue that one “can’t pretend there’s no checklist, and then list items from what it contains… uh, would contain… uh, if it existed… which it doesn’t.” Because acknowledging that there are conventional pointers toward masculinity or femininity operable in society that you didn’t come up with and that you don’t agree with (but which society has long used, and which people like Niewert, Caric, and others are hoping to rehabilitate by re-defining the behaviors acknowledged by the conventions) does not make you a supporter of those conventional views.
— Although Long Haired Weirdo, it should be pointed out, seems to hold the belief that “the maintaining of checklists” is a sign of wimpishness — meaning, necessarily, that he himself has a checklist for “masculinity”, one item on which is “real men claim to adhere to no checklists.” Making Long Haired Weirdo, by his own logic self-ensnaring logic, a “wimp.”
Add to that the fact that his argument is simply silly — and that it misunderstands the points being made by people who have thought through things a bit more than he has — and Long Haired Weirdo is not just a self-proclaimed “wimp,” but a fairly intellectually ordinary one, at that — one who can’t recognize the difference between a description of how others argue from ontological premises disguised as conventional critiques (and the implied argument born in its wake), and a positive dissertation on “masculine” ontology.
Which, were I Long Haired Weirdo, I would conclude makes him unmanly — when all it really makes him is confused, and an example of the very kind of thing he is trying to pin on me.
Meanwhile, the lawn needs to be mowed.Bread doesn’t bake itself, and the little prog wannabe smeared her bubblegum in the seatbelt mechanism.
I’m a man. A manly man, at that. If you don’t like it, you can all just blow me.
Not bad ,from a manly perspective
The nubile trollop in the singles ad? Or the charging grizzly bear mother?
Big deal. I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
Well, in my ontology LHW at least gets credit for directly linking to your post. Giving honest and inquisitive readers easy access to the topic at hand.
Which certainly qualifies as a manly act. For those who happen to be packing the requisite parts, that is.
And an equally feminine act for those who happen to have the other variety of naughty bits.
You realize that all these liberals are arguing over what makes someone “manly” because they have tiny little penises, don’t you?
Amanda’s penis is small? Who knew…
True story. Only it was Michael Vick who killed the mother bear. Except it was a male dog. Who was injured and not attacking. And no knife was used, the dog was drowned. True story, though.
From LHW blog…
“Take a shaman in a world where the shaman’s path is mostly unknown; mix him in a nation that has lost its way; add in a life that would make an ordinary person strange. Beat vigorously with life’s whisk, but note that the result will appear unbowed and unbeaten. Garnish with sharp reasoning, a desire to know the truth, and a sprinkling of human foibles.”
Good Lord, this guy thinks a LOT of himself.
Actually , now that I think of it , a real man wouldn’t need the knife .
A real manly man would have thrown down the knife as a gesture of friendship and opened negotiations with the grizzly to achieve a win-win outcome pleasing to Mother Earth.
“Open negotiations with the grizzly” would be a great name for a blog.
opennegotiationswiththegrizzly.blogspot.ca
….and he’d have picked on a man-bear ….
remember folks…gun control saves lives.
ability to hit a charging bear with a S&W %00mag would have ended his story far faster.
but then, one shan’t protect one’s self in Canukistan
oops
laging fingers
500 S&W magnum was what I was goin fer
got a nice little Bear protection pack they sell with a snubbie x-frame in an orange case for avoding conversion of one’s body to bear scat.
Department of Homeland Manliness webcam footage of
LHW and Neiwert watching a football game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDsHvq6juEY
My little brother is a house-cleaning demon; he is also airborne qualified. My older brother can cook; he is also a police officer. Are they masculine? You bet your sweet bippy they are.
The whole argument about masculinity, in my opinion, boils down to what you do when you have to do something. Are you honest, do you take responsibility, do you protect those who are weaker than you, do you ignore anklebiters? That is the test.
Actually, Rudyard Kipling said it best in “If”. “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.”
As they say, read it all.
Rudyard and his family lived here in Vermont for a time. Betcha didn’t know that.
Let me try this: If, by Rudyard Kipling
http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html
No, Dan – I did not know that.
Nor did I know I was being monitored that closely!
Jeff and I read the comments, you know. Even the ones left by Dr. Ric.
Ah yoga that explains is, the Manly Unmanly Man is neither masculine nor feminine in his mind he is simply divine.
It’s all about the Ohm.
Syn
Ohm’s law states that, in an electrical circuit, the current passing through a conductor between two points is proportional to the potential difference (i.e. voltage drop or voltage) across the two points, and inversely proportional to the resistance between them.
Though what that has to do with Jeff in his yoga-toga I couldn’t say.
That long-haired weirdo needs to get a haircut.
I knew that, especially since he wrote a poem about it: Pan In Vermont
Pan out and . . . cut! That’s a wrap!
A real man is the one who does his job without complaining or
needing supervision,takes a second one because his kids need clothes
or Christmas. He will change diapers and watch HIS kids, although tired, cook supper and do the dishes because his wife is beat after her job all day. A REAL man does whatever needs being done, without
caring what anyone thinks about. A REAL is respect to women, his elders and those around him. A Real man just doesn’t have anything to prove. Nuf said
As a person who has experienced a close encounter with a grizzly [and did I ever shit shake] Mr.McLellan is one lucky dude to still be alive.The speed of an angry moving grizzly is mind boggling and if it’s coming at you your luck time is just about over in less than 10 seconds at 60 yards.Who cares if another man thinks your manly or not for me it’s whether my darling Lili feels my manhood measures up. c.j.g.of eroticalee
#3 I like this one better.
I forget – why did this subject come up?
It was the cockslaps, wasn’t it?
Part of me really wants to agree that manliness is just an arbitrary social construct, but… I can’t help it. There’s just no way in heck I’m gonna get the blue one.
weirdo rights: “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche”. My response? “Real men eat whatever the hell they want, and aren’t intimidated by an amusing book title.”
Actually it is a funny joke to pull. However you have to pronounce quiche as kwish. Then when someone like weirdo corrects you, you reply: Real men don’t know how to pronounce it, and watch him turn redfaced. :)
To be a man is to be what you are, powerfully, bravely, and unashamedly, and it’s got nothing to do with stereotypes.
The sheer idiocy of this statement . . . where to begin?
Many of our fellow citizens (I speak of the becunted ones) are “powerfully, bravely, and unashamedly” female. Does that make them “manly”?
Once again, leftists mistake SELF-CONFIDENCE for VIRTUE. It’s a common mistake. When you’re on the left side of the spectrum, I mean.
All they ever want to do is boost people’s self-esteem, as if changing the way we think is more effective than changing the underlying reality so we have reason to be proud of ourselves. Now they want to change how we think about masculinity to turn it into something you can achieve just by being an angry, self-satisfied lout (i.e., brave, powerful, unashamed). You don’t even have to go to the gym!
This series of posts from the left might best be summarized as: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the manliest man of all?”
These people that claim to be shooting down some conservative rhetoric would be well served by actually reading the rhetoric in question before shooting it down.
But JD, that would risk weakening Teh Narrative™!
Yeah, I know. The Left has this incredible ability to read that shit, and take it for granted that some Long Haired Hippy or some gay VW Beetle convertible driver in Austin took down Jeff’s arguments, when it is clear that the dumb fucks either never read what Jeff said, or were not literate enough to understand what Jeff said. Fuckers.
This is just another toy for the left to use for their petulance.
There are no virtues that men and women do not share. I think some people are describing manhood (as opposed to boyhood) rather than masculinity. The two are not the same. Manhood is adulthood plus masculinity. We all understand that adulthood isn’t achieved just by reaching a certain age. It involves certain qualities of character that have to be developed over time, virtues that men and women alike must attain.
Being male, on the other hand, is something you’re born with, but it also confers certain qualities on those who possess it, in greater or lesser quantities. We call those qualities masculinity. Physical strength, for example, is a typically male quality. Men have it in different degrees, and not all men have more of it than all women, but it is a male quality. So if a man develops it as a trait, then he is increasing his masculinity. Aggressiveness is also a typical male personality trait. Again, it’s present in different degrees, and not unique to males, but on average men are more aggressive than women. So a man who is more aggressive, is thereby more masculine.
Those are the only two traits I can think of offhand, but there might be some others.
If I am right about the above, then it follows that masculinity is not an unmitigated good. There is a point at which those who possess it in very high degrees can become a caricature of manhood, rather than the ideal. For masculinity to be good it must be combined with virtue. In order to be a man, the boy must grow up and acquire virtues which will guide his strength and temper his aggressiveness.
If masculinity is strength and aggression, though, does it follow that femininity is weakness and passivity? I don’t think so. I don’t think that masculinity and femininity are opposites, but rather complements.
There seems to be a foregone conclusion in this dealio which has gone totally unchallenged. The implication being that a desire or willingness to “prove” ones masculinity is some sort of attempt at hiding a lack thereof.
I would submit that some of the most masculine people I know get a real kick out of “proving it”. And it sure as shit ain’t because we are feminine. Its because we are men..
I think that the Leftist obsession with overt masculinity is more in the nature of a preemptive strike than anything else. Most, if not all of these internet based “I’m so masculine I can wear a tutu” bunch fall in line in the face of any real-world manly men when and if there is any static. They just want you to think that when they do, it is a totally masculine thing to do, and that the manly man is “bearding.”
In other words, Alec, you’d say they’re “manning up” to vote for
HillaryMrs. Bill Clinton, and don’t want anyone thinking they’ve pur their testicles in a lockbox?I really can’t see any way to argue against that.
One can’t shake the feeling that the Libs are trying to define “masculinity” with one eye on pleasing their feminist taskmasters.
I still am a big fan of Prof. Caric’s “a thousand masculinities blooming” or whatever drivel that was. Good stuff, that was.
Ardsgaine, I think you’re right about it being adulthood that a lot of people are actually talking about. I disagree, though, that strength and aggression is masculine and therefore masculine is not an unmitigated good, and that the converse, that feminine is weakness and passivity, is not true.
What I find fascinating about all this is precisely that masculinity is generally presented as a criticism rather than a compliment. When it comes down to it, that’s why masculinity needs to be redefined into something else, because it is nearly always meant as an insult. Yet strength and aggression (by whatever other name) are not bad things either in men or in women. Both are survival optimized. Both allow greater benefit to those in cooperative situations (i.e. family, village, tribe) than the opposite. Men are physically stronger than women but female virtue, the feminine, is *also* strength and is *also* aggression. Just as protectiveness (or possessiveness, same coin) is a feminine virtue and a masculine one as well. As is nurturing (husband!) a feminine and masculine virtue both. If nurturing is a feminine trait would it make destruction a masculine one? Of course not, but that’s what saying strength is a masculine trait and weakness a feminine one does.
We are not opposites despite having differences.
I think that Daryl is, in a way, talking about adulthood. Because it’s very true that it’s not confidence or self-esteem that makes someone manly… or that they never worry about being manly or not. Yet when we start getting into it it does seem that what counts as “manly” also counts as “feminine” (unless we’re talking sexual dimorphism instead of behavior in which case manly doesn’t look remotely like feminine and the more different the better… except for hormone related behavior which is generally annoying stuff like becoming more quickly angry or having PMS… and the only thing to say there is that hormones can really suck).
But not confidence, not self-esteem. Adulthood is what we do and how we interact with others, not how we *feel* about ourselves. The opposite of confidence and self-esteem, the feeling of guilt for things one is not personally responsible for, isn’t adult either.
“One can’t shake the feeling that the Libs are trying to define “masculinity†with one eye on pleasing their feminist taskmasters.”
Well, this one never even considered that until you pointed it out.
NOW I agree, kinda hard to shake that creepy/creeping sensation.
Thanks…thanks alot.
Would that “one eye” be the one-eyed trouser snake?
Synova – I asked my wife about this topic, and she thought that masculinity was boyishness writ large, while being a responsible adult. I am trying to get her to explain her thought process to me, but it felt right when she said it, which is highly uncommon ;-)
There is a difference between masculinity, and ‘being a man’ in a social sense.
Personally, I think you are a man when you accept that displaying steadfast courage, honor, and fidelity (loyalty) in even the small things is the scale by which your masculinity is measured.
Alas, our society is awash in males that aren’t men and chivilery is nearly extinct. Soon the barbarians at the gate will find only shrill voices opposing them…and then the silent treatment.
“For masculinity to be good it must be combined with virtue.”
Masculinity combined with virtue would be my definition of true manhood.
Catchy. But I prefer, “able to kill a duck with his bare hands.”
“able to kill a duck with his bare hands.â€Â
Waaaay to close to “chocking one’s chicken”
Sorry, Lee. Would 8 X 10 glossies of Marcotte shaving her boyfriend’s back help you shake off the creeps?
Well, now. Let me see if I understand what you’re saying. Ric said (among other things)
“We all learn, at an early age, the socially constructed expressions of masculinity appropriate for our society, and as we mature we pick and choose from that menu to form our own personas. Those social constructs are, in turn, constructed from what might be termed the congenital forms, the inherent qualities bequeathed to us by our genes; some of the constructs are intended to enhance positive qualities as defined by the specific society, others to suppress destructive ones. The list of available “natural†expressions plus social constructs is long, complex, and sometimes contradictory; there are plenty of ways to express masculinity in ways that differ from others’ expressions. That much is normal and indeed inevitable.”
Now, it sounds to me – feel free to inform me if you realize Ric was unclear – that he’s saying that manly men pick and choose from a menu of genetically and socially constructed expressions to form a persona. Your complaints were about how we awful liberals argue about things like masculinity/manliness. Again, feel free to let me know if you think I missed something essential.
And I say you’re both wrong, in a way that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what manhood is about. Because a man will flout both genetic and socially constructed expressions of manhood in the service of something more important, should it be right, or necessary, for him to do so.
Being manly is not about what you do; it is about a way you live your life. Sure, some manly men will, in fact, follow such cultural constructs. A man who goes into firefighting out of a sense of responsibility and a desire to help protect others is certainly doing a manly thing… but it’s the sense of responsibility and the desire to help others that are manly, not the firefighting per se. Another man, who enters a religious order dedicated to service to mankind, and who takes a vow of chastity, and never does anything so bold and dramatic as charge into a burning building to rescue people, but who does help people in other ways, can be equally manly, without meeting any of the standard cultural images/expressions about what makes a man manly.
Now, please, go ahead, and mock this, or scorn it, or call it idiotic, while insulting my intellectual abilities. I expect nothing less :-).
PS: No, I wouldn’t say you cared about my view of your masculinity; if I were the kind of man who took such shots, I’d be more than “clearly, he’s insecure that his words stand on their own” or some such rot. If you’re going to speculate about me attacking, you might as well get the type of attack I won’t make correct :-).
No. Ric is saying that ALL of us pick and choose from this “menu”, but that the menu, insofar as it encompasses everything, given that it is made up from conventions AND genetics — and given that conventions are naturally malleable, and are only conventions for as long as they are viewed as conventional by the culture — can’t determine who is manly and who is not.
Sure. You missed my point ENTIRELY. My complaint was not that you awful liberals argue about things like masculinity/ manliness. It’s that you argue about it constantly, even while you use OUR supposed “obsession” about it as an occasion to launch into yet another rant about said obsession. Whereas it is YOU ALL who seem to obsess over these things; speaking for myself, I don’t really give it much thought.
And from that very act of flouting, when it is presented in the context of defining manhood against what one is flouting, is born yet another concept of “masculinity,” which either will or will not become a convention. Neiwert is insisting that his attempts to codify this “new” concept of masculinity be accepted by the culture at large. As are you. Whereas what I’m saying is, it was people like Neiwert who, by buying into the categories of masculinity and femininity to begin with, set themselves to be defined out of the “conventional” mainstream by not adhering to cultural conventions.
Me, I never considered myself answerable to them in the first place. What was “masculine” in 1977 — a polyester white jumpsuit and the ability to do the Hustle — would not today be considered “masculine” by most accounting of cultural conventions. “Masculinity” and “femininity” are notoriously faddish — and it is people who are committed to identity politics who feel the need to categorize traits for each.
I have distinguished between such categorizations and the genetic truisms of male/female difference.
If you’d paid attention to what I wrote — and not to what you seem to think I wrote — you’d realize that, just because we “conservatives” acknowledge the existence of conventions regarding “masculinity” doesn’t necessarily mean we allow them to define us. Which is to say, we don’t look at those conventions and choose to follow them in order to consider ourselves “masculine.” So we are therefore untroubled by conventional notions of masculinity.
As Ric notes, the “list”, between conventions and congenital indicators, is long and often contradictory; thus there are innumerable ways to be “masculine.” And if there are innumerable ways, there is no reason to set out looking to ape certain indicators, or to define yourself away from others.
Had you bothered to read through the thread, you’d see that more than a few “conservatives” made a similar point, though I think they, like you, run the danger of conflating “maturity” with “masculinity”. That is, unless you want to say that women who are responsible and care for others are “manly,” the obverse of which commits you to saying that to be “feminine” is to be capricious and selfish.
Me, I don’t buy into the masculine /feminine paradigm other than to acknowledge it exists, and it is operable in society — which, of course, is not the same as buying into it as at all dispositive. Others have, and so I operate within that context while hoping to change it.
How do you know he doesn’t meet those standards? Are you consulting a list?
I wouldn’t call such a person “feminine,” if that’s what you’re going for — nor, do I think, would Ric. So I’m not sure what your point is.
And your last paragraph, I confess, simply confuses me. So I’ll skip it, if you don’t mind.
Had you bothered to read through the thread, you’d see that more than a few “conservatives†made a similar point, though I think they, like you, run the danger of conflating “maturity†with “masculinityâ€Â. That is, unless you want to say that women who are responsible and care for others are “manly,†the obverse of which commits you to saying that to be “feminine†is to be capricious and selfish.
How can you have “manliness” without maturity? Without maturity, you could more appropriately call what you’re seeing “boyishness”.
As for what is womanly, I’m not talking about women or womanliness at this time, and “man” and “women” are (as I saw at least one commenter note) not opposites. Much of what is “manly” will also be “womanly”. To try to capture what is “only manly, not anything else” would be extremely difficult. This is one of the reasons I tend to use the term “manly” over “masculine”.
As for this:
How do you know he doesn’t meet those standards? Are you consulting a list?
Sure; a list of markers that some folks think refer to a quality called “manliness”. Ric mentioned certain items on at least one such list explicitly. He later referred to people picking and choosing from such expressions to form a persona. He also referred to the futility of trying to use those expressions/activities/whatever to be manly, suggesting that they were still markers of manliness, just so long as they weren’t being used to try to create what wasn’t there.
Between those two mentions of lists, he did mention that manly acts are those done by one who is manly, but that was sandwiched between the mentions of lists… and along the way, he praised a woman as manly (suggesting that it *is* a fitting of cultural stereotypes, and not something internal).
And as I said: a manly man will flout cultural stereotypes, if/when it is necessary or important, because manly men will do things that are necessary and important. If there’s any meaningful definition of manliness, it comes from something real, not from conventions.
In this sense, it’s akin to morality… if there’s a meaningful definition of morality, it doesn’t come from what a society comes to expect; it comes from doing what’s right. Sometimes that will be what society expects; sometimes not.