Once Upon a Time... Man

A discussion on the unquestioned sex

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

We rarely feel the need to define what a man is, what manhood is, or what it means to be a man. In feminist circles the question that animates everything is what is a woman? What does it mean to be a woman? I have definitely contributed to the focus on women, I have written several essays interrogating the aforementioned questions. However, I have never done so with men.

I have certainly talked about men, that is unavoidable in feminist work, however, I have not bothered to examine them I have not asked what they are, how they understand themselves, what their social position is, what their biology means, or how their identity is constructed. Why have I not done so? I think it’s for a number of reasons but the one that sticks out to me the most is that the idea of male seems very stable, concrete and not up for debate nor is it under threat.

This stability is probably also the reason why trans men(trans identified females), barely appear in public discourse. They are not making comments nor demands about manhood, they are not insisting on access to male spaces and they are not trying to reshape the definition of male. They are largely invisible. The cultural and feminist spotlight is on trans women (trans identified males), and the near total neglect of trans identified females is often treated as a mystery. I do not think it is mysterious at all! We do not have an issue with these females because we know they are not a risk. We know they are women, we know women do not have male currency or male power. They do not command fear and they are also not responsible for the overwhelming majority of misogyny and violence.

This is not to say that trans identifying females are incapable of violent and/or toxic behaviour. You will find toxicity everywhere, in men and in women, no matter how they identify. But the contrast between TIFs and TIMs reveals something important: the hierarchy does not shift. Men remain in power. Whether it is a man identifying as a woman violating women’s boundaries, or trans identified females remaining silent because the so called “cisgender” men around them hold more power, the structure is the same. Identification does not change the hierarchy.

Which brings me back to men, the male. If men feel entitled to define womanhood, then it is only fair to turn the lens around! What is a man? Who is he? What is a male experience? What are experiences a female will never have? Is there anything uniquely male?

---

Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

In the most basic and accurate definition, a man is an adult human male, a human being whose body is organised to facilitate male sexual development and capable of producing the smaller gametes, an individual with XY chromosomes. There is no one way a man looks, just as there is no one way a woman looks. Men come in all shapes, colours and sizes, with different mindsets and personalities. So that is a man!

End of the essay.

Bye.

Kidding!

I have a gut feeling that this definition is uncontroversial with most men. I should not write about gut feelings, I am not Helen Andrews, but I do think that even the most pathetic misogynistic men who read my Substack, who think I am a horrible misandrist feminist bitch, would not disagree with this definition. They would not find it reductive or man hating or sexist.

Would some trans identified females or trans identified males disagree? I do not know, because as I said, you do not see them worrying about what it is to be a man. It is all about what it is to be a woman, and how there is no such thing as male socialization or privilege when you’re born trans. Many of these trans identified men reject their “manhood” entirely. They say, believe that their being male is not a thing, I was always a woman. Man does not factor into who they are, even though they literally have a term called male to female to describe their “transition” and also, they are literally men….

Anyways……..

Most non trans identifying men, however, seem perfectly comfortable with the definition I gave. And if any of you reading this piece are not, I would genuinely like to know what your definition is and what you think is wrong with mine.

Which leads naturally to the next question: if the biological definition is straightforward, what about masculinity? What is the social meaning attached to being male? What is the ideology that has grown around the male body? What is the story men tell about themselves, and what is the story society tells about them?

The idea of the man has changed over time, and that is because men have always been the ones defining it. They set the tone for language, norms and the standards by which humanity is measured. Men created the concept of gender, the categories of masculine and feminine, and then used those categories to organise society. Gender became a sorting mechanism: who leads, who follows, who fights, who nurtures, who owns, who serves.

Not every gender role is inherently harmful, but many have been used to justify the subordination of women. Masculinity and femininity were framed as natural opposites, even though they were inventions. Some men insist that masculinity is innate, that men are born with a masculine essence and women with a feminine one. It is a mystical belief pretending to be a rational scientific one. These male thinkers would recoil at being called spiritual or magical, yet their worldview depends on invisible essences guiding behaviour.

Historically, societies leaned on these invented essences to justify power. Men were physically stronger on average, so strength became moralised. Strength meant authority, leadership and ownership. Women were smaller, so smallness became moralised too. Smallness meant gentleness, obedience and being suited to care for others rather than oneself.

These ideas are not biological truths, they were practical arrangements that hardened into ideology. In early agricultural societies, for example, men often controlled ploughing because it required upper body strength, and from that practical division grew the belief that men were naturally suited to public (working) life and women to (child bearing and rearing) domestic life. In ancient Greece, philosophers like Aristotle argued that women were unfinished men, colder, weaker, less rational. Medieval Europe built entire legal systems on the assumption that women were dependents. Victorian England romanticised women as delicate angels of the home, conveniently ignoring the fact that working class women were labouring (“like men”) in factories and fields.

Across cultures and centuries, masculinity has been defined in ways that justify male dominance. Even when men were divided among themselves, the hierarchy still placed men above women. Consider ancient Rome, where elite men ruled over other men, but even the lowest status man still had legal authority over his wife. Or feudal Europe, where serfs had no power, yet a male serf still had more bodily autonomy than a noblewoman. Or colonial societies, where white men dominated everyone, but even colonised men were granted more social legitimacy than colonised women.

This is why masculinity is not just a personal identity, it is a political category and a system that elevates men as a class.

Masculinity also polices men themselves. Throughout history, men who failed to embody the dominant ideal were punished. In ancient Sparta, boys who were not physically strong were shamed. In medieval Europe, men who did not fight were mocked as cowards. In Victorian England, men who showed too much emotion were ridiculed as effeminate. In twentieth century America, the rise of industrial capitalism created the breadwinner ideal, and men who could not provide were treated as failures.

This is the root of homophobia. Straight (homophobic) men despise gay men not because of sexuality but because gay men are seen as embodying “femininity”. And femininity, in their worldview, is weakness. A man who behaves in a way coded as feminine is treated as an aberration. His biology does not matter, his strength does not matter and his humanity does not matter. He is punished for violating the hierarchy.

This is why terms like metrosexual emerged, It was a way to reassure straight men that caring about their appearance did not make them gay. And then came the alpha and beta nonsense, a pseudo scientific hierarchy designed to keep men in line. Men invented these categories to police each other. To say, you are doing masculinity wrong, come back to the role assigned to you.

For women, the policing is different. When a woman violates gender norms, the reaction is not disgust but fear. Why are you trying to be like a man, you will get hurt, you are not built for this. Women are warned, men are mocked.

This is why homophobia and misogyny are inseparable. They are two expressions of the same belief: femininity is inferior, and anything associated with it must be controlled.

This further demonstrates that masculinity is a tool of social control. It ensures society moves in the direction men want. When it benefits men to be tolerant, masculinity shifts. When it benefits men to be violent, masculinity shifts again. It is flexible when it serves power and rigid when it protects it. Sometimes it is fashionable to be gentle, sometimes it is fashionable to be brutal. But the hierarchy remains intact.

None of this changes what a man is biologically. Socially, masculinity may evolve, but fundamentally a man is an adult human male. The social meanings attached to that fact are what shift, expand, contract and contort depending on what maintains male dominance.

---

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

Whilst planning and writing this essay, I became curious about how contemporary men understand themselves. If masculinity has always been a shifting social project, I wanted to know whether men today still believe in it, resist it, or simply perform it out of habit. So I asked a few men in my life how they define “man” and what masculinity meant to them. Their answers were interesting….

Most of them agreed immediately that a man is an adult (biological) human male, a person with XY chromosomes who produces the smaller gamete. They were matter of fact about it. There was no existential crisis, no philosophical spiral, no tortured identity discourse. They stated the definition with the same energy one uses to define a triangle. What surprised me was that they did not attach any metaphysical meaning to masculinity itself. They rejected the idea of a male essence or a female essence. What people romanticise as masculine energy, they said, is really just a description of what men’s ancestors needed to be: predators/ hunters. Men in the wild had to use their size, strength and predisposition to aggression to survive. But in a modern, industrialised, technological society, they said, it makes very little sense for men to walk around with clenched fists and puffed chests as if danger lurks behind every Woolworths aisle.

One man laughed about the men he sees in gyms, often men of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern backgrounds, training like they are preparing for war. He described them as clearly on steroids, doing the most intense routines, eating like lions. You are not in danger, he said. Why do you feel the need to be so intense? Another man pushed back saying that this behaviour is often cultural and historical. Many of the countries these men come from are still at war or have lived through recent conflict. Their fathers, brothers, cousins and ancestors have fought and continue to fight. So even if they are lifting weights in an Australian or American gym, the instinct to be ready for something, to survive something, may still be there. I found this compelling, because it shows how masculinity is shaped not only by biology or social norms but by what some would call collective memory and inherited fear.

We then talked about male experiences. They agreed that every experience a male has is, by definition, a male experience, just as every experience a woman has is a female one. But they acknowledged that some experiences are exclusive to males, such as erections, nocturnal emissions and a breaking voice. They did not treat these as sacred rites of passage. They said they would not care if a woman or a trans identifying one claimed to understand them, because these experiences are not stigmatised, painful or profound. They contrasted this with periods, which they recognised as a significant female biological experience, and they understood why it would be offensive for a man or a trans identifying one to claim to know what it is like.

One man made an observation that gave me pause. He said that even though women are currently having their womanhood threatened and redefined by TIMs and misogynists, women still get to be women. If a woman is a bad mother, even if she kills her child, she will be called a killer and a bad mother, but she still gets to be a mother. A man, however, if he does something bad, even something minor, is told he is not a man, not a real man. If a woman is cheated on, she is pitied. If a man is cheated on, he is a cuck. His maleness is removed. I am not sure I fully agree, but I see where he is coming from and I find their observation interesting because it highlights how masculinity is not only a hierarchy over women but a fragile status among men.

---

Photo by Aldo Hernandez on Unsplash

At the end of I Think, Therefore I Am Woman, I listed the things I love about being a woman and wrote: “To be a woman is to be female and to choose your own path as one. Not one defined or dictated by men, but one claimed and lived by you, and only you.”

I doubt men, especially the ones reading this, need those words of encouragement or empowerment. So I leave them with this instead:

We are not your halves, your missing pieces, your defective versions. We are not roles assigned to orbit you: not wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends, cousins, maids, nymphs, virgins, vessels, saints, or whores.

We are women. We are adult human beings, as complete and self‑determining as you. And we will continue on our own path, defined by us, for us. You need not worry where we go. In the end, we all arrive at the same place.