When it's encouraging. Be a man and go talk to that girl you like. Be a man and don't let that dude push you around. Be a man and get a job. Anyone who gets offended by that advice is a stone cold biyotch.

So why can't we just substitute "be adult" or "grow up" in those types of situations?

Then you'd just be discriminating and disenfranchising based on age.

Those are all examples of trying to manipulate someone else's behaviour by belittling them. That's called insulting someone.

And, I'm not saying you're going to make this argument, but in case you do I want to cut it off because I don't want to have it:

Some behaviour is shitty and I don't think people should avoid insulting people to change shitty behaviour. However, saying that you're not insulting someone when you are is just you trying to feel better about your own shitty behaviour, and I can't think of anything more needing of a "man the fuck up" comment than that sort of narcissism.

"...and I can't think of anything more needing of a "man the fuck up" comment than that sort of narcissism." That's fine. Who's in need of a "man the fuck up" comment isn't on trial here. What's on trial is whether or not the expression "man [the fuck] up" is inherently destructive. It would seem you concede that it's not, since you just gave [at the very least, what you consider to be] a legitimate application of it.

No. What's on trial is whether it is an insult. This thread started when I asked when has it ever not been an insult.

Although, I don't understand what you just said, either. Explosives are destructive but I can think of positive applications for it. Those aren't mutually exclusive concepts in the slightest.

I have a vivid memory of asking my dad why I didn't cry as much as I did when I was a kid, I was maybe 9. He told me it was because men don't cry, and as I got older, I wouldn't give in to my emotions anymore. Now, he was a depressive removed from any contact with his emotional life at this time, but the destructiveness of this way of thinking can still be felt. I think it's a common relationship that men have with their fathers. It ends up coming out in violence and in fucked up, possessive relationships with the feminine, in the form of women, that men use for emotional catharsis in all kinds of horrible ways.

You seem to not be discriminating between men being responsible for their actions and the people around them and simply being able to possess feelings and express them like actual human beings.

If you don't do the thing that makes you a man when you're told to man up, what does that make you?

Can you tell a woman to man up, when we all know she's just as capable of doing the same things as men?

I love how the same generation that insisted on giving younger people trophies for everything is now condemning them for receiving trophies for everything.

Come on don't be scerred, you're running from Macho that's what I heard.

Macho Man is only insulted if you offer him chips.

Man Up, Bitches!

Listen here

Every man wants to be a macho man
To have the kind of body always in demand
Joggin' in the mornings, go man go
Workouts in the health spa, muscles grow
You can best believe me
He's a macho man
Glad he took you down with anyone you can
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho man
Macho macho man
I gotta be a macho

Every man ought to be a macho, macho man
To live a life of freedom, machos make a stand
Have your own lifestyles and ideals
Possess the strength of confidence, that's the skill
You can best believe that he's a macho man
He's the special god son in anybody's land
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

More like strawPERSON!

No middle ground, then? Yes, preserving gender roles will certainly devolve our culture into one of guns and rape. You're so enlightened.

shut the fuck up you fucking neckbeard

heaven forbid you just let people live their fucking lives without expecting them to live up to your bullshit expectations & biases

i can smell your fedora from here

Man these comments are EXTREME

wait until some of your friends kill themselves over this shit and see how you feel about it

the damage this does is real, and it affects real people, you smug fucks

Slow down, dickhead. I'm clearly making fun of you and not the issue. My guess is that you don't know anyone on this site personally and therefore have no idea whether this shit has personally affected any of us.

look - I have friends in the fucking ground because of people's inability to let other people live their fucking lives - one from being raped by their "boyfriend" resulting in a total breakdown, then a OD on purpose, another from being bullied/beaten/disowned by their family for being transgender, then suicide. this is real to me.

maybe it hasn't affected you, or maybe it has - but it has affected me. don't expect me to act otherwise. don't expect me to respect a point of view which has utterly annihilated the lives of some of my friends. and if you have truly felt like I have been made to feel - if you had to be one of those carrying a casket - I truly doubt you'd throw out some predictably flippant fucking comment that adds absolutely nothing to the conversation

The less boys that try to man up, the better for the true alphas.

Seeing a looooot of arguments in the extreme. Look, if a lot of douchebag bullies use the expression "be a man" then what's the real problem here: the phrase, or their step dad beating them? Demonizing the concept of "being a man" is treating the symptoms, not the cause. A lot of POSITIVE things come from being a man too, you know. It's not all "LET'S DRINK SOME BEERS AND RAPE!"

there is not a single positive aspect of traditional masculinity that cannot be passed on to another generation outside of the construct of gender

Maybe his stepdad wouldn't have beaten him if it hadn't been drilled into his head that a "man" solves problems with violence and isn't allowed to feel any emotion but anger.

Pete, you keep losing your shit over the prospect of our precious gender roles vanishing, but you have yet to articulate what we stand to gain by keeping them. What we have now is a system that ostracizes millions of kids and adults (of both genders) because their personalities don't match up with an arbitrary group of rules based on their genitals. It's inherently harmful and patently ridiculous. What exactly is so magical about gender roles that we can't move on as a society without them?

My post was a joke, stop being so damned insecure in however you choose to identify yourself. Why do words thrown at you from the outside even matter? It's like we adopt labels for ourselves in defiance of labels from the outside, and then immediately fall apart when those labels are challenged from the outside, as if our reasons for adopting them, even to ourselves, was a hidden farce we didn't believe in.

Be yourself.

Well how did those "arbitrary" ideas come about? Thin air? Ordained by God? Randomly pulled out of a hat?

No one gives a shit.

God, the argument of the tards. People love to do that thing where they take an extreme argument and go "Hey man, so you're telling met hat if a boy is ROBBED BY FOUR GUYS then he should've just 'been a man'??" No. Please kill yourself.

I used to get beat up by 3 or more older guys on a regular basis when I was a kid. That was just my experience.

I had one friend who took karate classes and got tougher and could beat the shit out of those kids.

They stopped bothering him.

So getting tougher actually works. Or, like, in my case, getting really really good at running away or using metal trashcans and rocks and other background items as weapons.

I was small for my age, so much so that many of my fellow students thought I had been skipped ahead a grade or two. I was seldom included in physical play and grew to prefer entertaining myself through books and creative pursuits.

Needless to say, I was an easy target for bullies.

By the time a bully gets to middle school, they've become expert at profiling their targets. They've also learned to gather allies who aren't as smart but love being part of a group and will do anything the leader tells them.

On a daily basis, I was physically assaulted, nothing that would leave marks, of course, but still just as humiliating. The two henchmen would usually hold me while the leader menaced me. I had things taken from me, toys, lunch, money for lunch, comics, etc. There were multiple groups of bullies. There were the bullies in my neighborhood, the bullies in class, the bullies between classes and the bullies in the cafeteria.

I learned early on not to tell an adult what was happening. Even grown-ups seemed to hold tattle-tales in contempt. Even those few who didn't seemed reluctant to get involved. Nearly all adults seem to feel their involvement would somehow "rob" the victim of an important chance to "grow" as a person.

I was also a tiny kid. Like, really tiny. And, not surprisingly, I was picked on quite a bit. That definitely caused me, in turn, to (very occasionally) pick on the one or two kids that somehow managed to be smaller than me.

I did the whole karate thing early on, as I think every child of the 80's did. That did install a lot of confidence in me and it did enable me to stand up to bullies. I wouldn't categorize it as "manning up" or "toughening up", but it allowed me to approach abuse in a far better manner. I never had to actually throw a punch, but just standing up to these kids almost always sent them on their way.

I also found what Binro is saying about "tattle-tales" to be very true. Which is a shame.

stars, this

No. What "being a man" entails isn't the debate so much as whether or not simply the phrase "be a man" is inherently insulting. It has nothing to do with fixing cars or playing sports. The social ethos has acknowledged a lot more to "being a man" than just GUNS AND CUM!!! If some people are dickwipes and want to use the expression as an excuse to beat up a nerd or something then it's because that person is an asshole, not because of society's perception of manliness. And you know where that dude's assholishness begins? His house. Nobody here thinks that BEING A MAN means bullying innocent people and we're all living in North American society, right? You know what we don't share? Our families, That's what's screwing up kids, not superficial retarded fucking bullshit like the expression "be a man".

shut up pussy bitch faggot

Right. I see what you did there.

That's kind of my problem with the whole ethos. If you attack the status quo of a socially common phenomenon, you need to present a means of achieving alternative paths to manhood. How should our young men go about achieving respect? Make a list of things and present them in a realistic way. Starting with mentorship and apprenticeship programs nationwide.

I'm glad you asked, ROUS!

Young man, there's no need to feel down.
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.

Young man, there's a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.
You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time.

It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

They have everything for you men to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the boys ...

Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what do you want to be?
I said, young man, you can make real your dreams.
But you got to know this one thing!

No man does it all by himself.
I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf,
And just go there, to the Y.M.C.A.
I'm sure they can help you today.

It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if I were alive.
I felt the whole world was so jive ...

That's when someone came up to me,
And said, young man, take a walk up the street.
There's a place there called the Y.M.C.A.
They can start you back on your way.

It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.
It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

They have everything for you men to enjoy,
You can hang out with all the boys...

Very good, Mr. Wildcat. You win this round.

Or just don't have any kids. Boom, problem solved.

I don't think you're wrong about how men are only allowed to be one thing, but I don't think the "women can be whatever they want to be" line is really true.

The problem is that women get conflicting messages. They hear they can be anything they want to be, but in practice, they get shit for it no matter what they choose. For example, if she focuses on her career, then she's called a bad person for not prioritizing having kids. If she focuses on her kids, then she's called a sellout who is stuck in the 50's. And so forth.

I also find it interesting how many examples of women being empowered in media involve them taking on traditionally male roles, which is great, but you rarely see the reverse: you rarely see stories where anyone is empowered by choosing and excelling at activities that are considered feminine. "You can do anything" seems to be code for "if you try really hard, you can be sort of masculine, which is of course the greatest thing a woman can be, since it makes you less like a girl. But of course you can't be THAT masculine, because you're a girl."

I think we have a long way to go before either gender is really allowed a full range of social opportunities.

TALKING ABOUT IMPORTANT THINGS ON A WEBSITE.

I agree with Xenocide 100%.

Yes X, as you say, the message for women is conflicted. This is because the message was very clear up until about 40 years ago until the women's rights movement really took off in America. So the old message ( be a lady, be docile, subservient, etc etc ) is still out there. But the new message ( be yourself, be anything you want ) is slowly dominating the field. Give it another few generations. I'm amazed at how much has changed in the span of my lifetime.

No equivalent has occurred for men. The nascent men's rights movement is still stuck in the "who the fuck _are_ these assholes" phase, which makes great fodder for this website but not much more. I see a lot more hope in the Gay rights movement, which may succeed in at least making room in the culture for a broader spectrum of behavior from men, if not championing it.

I think you're right, actually. The bullshit men deal with gets a lot less attention, but that's largely because we still have more overall advantages, and because the concept of men's rights has been co-opted by misogynistic idiots. Gay rights and feminism will probably end up doing much more to help men than the men's rights "movement" ever will.

Hall of Shame, huh?

I thought there was some nice conversation here, when you could sort through the attempts a posturing or being outrageous.

What's wrong, That Guy? Can't discuss your feelings on the subject without your manhood being threatened?

Man the fuck up, Brah.

well played