Masculinity

“ There may be conceived for every cell all conditions, from complete masculinity through all stages of diminishing masculinity to its complete absence and the consequent presence of complete femininity. ”

“ It is surely something more than a coincidence that these are the two essential features of masculinity—Desire and Combat—Love and War.
As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with its major processes; and these—in our stage of human development—are more varied than our fiction would have us believe. ”

“ Our point of vantage includes also those flagrant expressions of masculinity, known as the secondary sex characters: among birds, the resplendent plumage of the cock, the comb and wattles; among mammals, manes, horns and scent glands; in man, the beard and deep voice. All these are the outward signs of maleness, for they come and go with the sexual life, and their development may be stunted or prevented by operation. ”

“ The artistic instinct—the poetic temperament, "sentimentality" in its highest sense—goes hand in hand with a rounding-off of the sharp corners of masculinity. Artistic or poetic decades have been conspicuous because of a semi-slumbering of fundamental masculine traits, that is, the instinctive relish for wrangling and war. ”

“ Further down the male side of the scale, after the man of adventure and sport, come, successively, the stevedore and his like, the manual laborer, and the merchant, and still lower, the scholar, which class possesses in general only a comparatively low degree of masculinity and virility. Partaking largely of the feminine type of mind are the male dress-maker and milliner, and the dilettante.
Those at the extremity of the male side of the scale, as the volunteer soldier and sailor, are the most strongly inclined to venery, as a general rule. ”

“ To shore-up conceptions of manhood many men have turned to archetypal images of masculinity found in New Age neo-Jungian therapeutic and spiritual movements. Men have enthusiastically embraced these movements’ essentialist and depoliticized constructions of gender, examples of which are freely harvested from myths and rituals across cultures and historical epochs. ”

“ With the same thoughtfulness, will the reader think over this or that group of his friends?—analyzing them narrowly, with regard to the outward and inward traits and manners I have set down. We are surprised to discover how continually we have friends and acquaintances that are more or less failures in the way of some plain characteristic that belongs to a manly personality. In fact, true, typical manliness, or, if the reader prefer another term, typical masculinity, seems all at once to be a far more elusive attribute than we had thought it. ”

“ True self-reliance, aggressiveness, moral perspective, self-control, manly silence, the sense of trifles, as trifles, of the important as the important, also the decided sexual instinct mentioned—does the widest circle of our acquaintance offer us many men that conform closely to these specifications? Is the reader of these pages a man? Let him review himself, to decide on his conscience, how far he is normal in the due measure. Is one at all struck by the fact that his Ego, even if he has never remarked it before, is particularly deficient in essential details of psychical masculinity? ”

“ Masculine in intellect, masculine in will, masculine in bodily endurance, masculine in the roughness of her sensibilities, she showed her sex mainly in her dislike of women. She knew herself to be a man, and resented bitterly the freak of nature which had clothed her with a woman’s form. ”

“ The masculine character, the ability to dare and endure, to know and yet not fear reality, to look the world in the face and take it for what it is—a very queer and partly very base mixture—that is what I want to preserve, or rather, as I may say, to recover ”

“ The delicacy of their sex, the vivid perceptibility of their mind, and the soft and engaging virtues of their heart, which weave themselves into the rugged recesses of man's masculine temperament and constitute him a fit member of society, render them entitled to the warmest affections of your heart, and to the generous protection of your arm. ”

“ On the whole, men as a class probably show a preponderance of what may be termed masculine characteristics, as greater egoism, variability, activity; but these masculine characteristics have been modified, lessened, effeminized, so to speak. In the higher [Pg 47] type of man the best and highest feminine characteristics have been fused with the best and highest masculine characteristics. The fighting instinct, for instance, has become moral courage; the tendency to vary expresses itself in great intellectual development ”

“ Watch one man at play, and you can read his character. He is an open book before you. Watch a number of men at play, and you are shown the general masculine traits of human nature. Generosity, decision, alertness, deftness, energy, self-control—meanness, hesitation, slowness, awkwardness, laziness, impatience: you have these characteristics and all the shades between them. The humblest may have admirable and wholesome virtues lacking in the highest, but a balance of them all weighs and marks one Monsieur le Maire or the stonebreaker on the road. ”

“ Possessed of every quality that could most delight in society,—brilliant, beautiful and of a truly masculine understanding, she was accurate in judgment, and at a glance could penetrate the secrets of others ”

“ The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of the male are easily traced. In these studies we must keep clearly in mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat, self-expression—all legitimate and right in proper use; only mischievous when excessive or out of place. Through them the male is led to strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the overflowing ardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an embroidered waistcoat ”

“ Strength of character will be hers, not, perhaps, so much the stern sense of justice that most marks the masculine conscience, as the full and earnest affection that adds mercy to justice and love to duty. ”

“ They would spend hours, for instance, in deciding what they would or would not tolerate in a suitor or a husband, and the frailties of masculine nature were too often a subject of discussion among them. ”

“ So also in each mind, whether of man or woman, there is the masculine and feminine element. The man has his intellectual faculties, and his affectional or sentimental nature. But in him, if he be a true man, the first are in control, and give tone, vigor and character to all else within him. ”

“ This is rather too coarse a compliment, but you are so saucy, I won't blot it out. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems. Although they are in full force, you know they are little more than theory. ”

“ Meanwhile any anthropologist will show you that the line of human development is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator, and toward the measured dignity of the Greek type. The possessor of that kind of jaw may enable male to conquer male, but does not make him of any more service to society; of any better health or higher beauty.
Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influence here of masculine dominance. ”

“ We can see the masculine influence everywhere still dominant and superior. There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Why should I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?" ”

“ In their case the tenderness shown to masculine failings, the desire to save the masculine "face," is usually quite conscious—I myself have heard it frankly discussed, analyzed, and commented upon, time after time, by women whose occupations brought them into daily contact with men. And as the result of such frank discussion, analysis, and comment, I am inclined to believe that on the whole the motives which, in this particular class of women, induce extra consideration for the failings of a male fellow-worker are motives which, in man himself, would probably be described as chivalrous. ”

“ With them I do not much associate; not as deserting, and much less disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it; not hardy nor grave, not knowing enough, nor sufficiently acquainted with the everyday concerns of men. ”

“ A certain reckless dash about him, not common to a refined gentleman, forces us to set him down as one of those individuals who hold an uncertain position in society; and though they may now and then mingle with men of refinement, have their more legitimate sphere in a fashionable world of doubtful character. ”

“ Under such influences they will acquire all the masculine virtues and forces, at the same time, of course, they must also have taken all the masculine weaknesses and vices into the bargain: so much, as has been said, we can command. ”

“ Let us pass now to a much more serious instance of those artificial divisions between masculine and feminine habits of thought and action which have in the past seemed so absolute, and are, in fact, so impossible to maintain. ”

“ With something of wonder, too, was I inspired to see so young a man lead a life so perfectly balanced, so exquisitely sensitive to every fine masculine influence. Possessing to an unusual degree that rare temperament which we call culture, he entered joyously into all that life offered to him, impatient only of hypocrisy and what he called “the copiously pious.” ”

“ Mine is that masculine species of charity which would lead me to inculcate in the minds of the labouring class the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain of being patronized or petted, the desire to accumulate, and the ambition to rise.... ”

“ Sometimes I admire your restraint; but just now I am beginning to wonder if— Well, I’m wondering whether you have any masculine traits at all—if you have any pep in you, which is so necessary to holding one’s own in this world—so necessary to success. ”

“ When we witness political, judicial or financial gatherings, and see no form and hear no voice but those of men—when we urge our way through the busy street, amid the rude trampings and loud greetings of men, it seems as though everything was managed by our own sex. ”

“ They who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. ”

“ I was created as a man perfectly male, save in the one thing which keeps such a 'man' back from possibility of ever becoming integrally male—his terrible, instinctive demand for a psychic and a physical union with a man—not with a woman. ”

“ Except in a few rare instances, where the men unite to the hardier qualities of the masculine intelligence the nicer, finer, most susceptible instincts of the other sex,—the organization that more than any other touches on excellence,—except, I say, in these cases, the women have the best of it. ”

“ There is a fundamental difference, then, between the essentially masculine and the essentially feminine type of character, according as the individual gets his satisfactions—the relaxations of his tensions of desire—via the route of feelings caused in him by the action of others or via the route of feelings caused in him by the true and illusionless perception that he has produced effects in other persons or in other things. ”

“ The masculine character and life are rigid and angular, and the apparel should, or at least may, proclaim the man. But with the soft, rounded nature of woman, her bending flexibility of temper, angles are absolutely incompatible. ”

“ Even those of us who have never known what it was to have a man to lean on, who have had to fight our way through the world as the average male fights his, and (since things are made infinitely easier for him) under disadvantages unknown to the average man—even we find ourselves, unaccountably and at unexpected moments, acting in accordance with the belief in which we were reared, and deferring to the established tradition of inherent masculine superiority; deferring to it after a fashion that, being realized, is amusing to ourselves. ”

“ I have convinced myself, by personal observation and inquiry, that my description of the male attitude in this respect is in no way exaggerated. It has, for instance, fallen to my lot, over and over again, to discuss with men—most of them distinctly above the average in intelligence—questions affecting the welfare and conditions of women. ”

“ We devoted much thought in those days to the subject of masculine attire—possibly with some obscure notion of attracting the weaker sex by the brilliancy of our plumage—and the villain always fascinated while he revolted us. ”

“ Yes, we're boys,—always playing with tongue or with pen, —And I sometimes have asked,—Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? ”

“ Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect, and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. ”

“ Certain masculine qualities, so-called, may be singled out by amateur psychologists and opposed to certain feminine qualities, so-called; but from books about the sphere of man, the rights of man, the intelligence of man, the psychology of man, the soul of man, our shelves are mercifully free. ”

“ The majority differ in no detail of their outward appearance, their physique, or their dress from normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habits, frank in manner, passing through society year after year without arousing a suspicion of their inner temperament. Were it not so, society would long ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted sexuality it harbours. ”