Best 200 quotes in «masculinity quotes» category

Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf.

My father learned his disinterest under the guise of masculinity. Boys don’t cry. There are whole disciplines, institutions, rubrics in our culture which serve as categories of denial. Science is such a category. The torture and death that Heinrich Himmler found disturbing to witness became acceptable to him when it fell under this rubric. He liked to watch the scientific experiments in the concentration camps

No matter that information abounds that lets the public know that gay males come from two-parent homes and can be macho and women-hating, misguided assumptions about what makes a male gay still flourish. Every day boys who express feelings are psychologically terrorized, and in extreme cases brutally beaten, by parents who fear that a man of feeling must be homosexual. Gay men share with straight men the same notions about acceptable masculinity.

No one can achieve their dreams, and become the kind of person they were meant to be all at once. It’s a series of little movements, and you can only take the step that’s right in front of you.

Often, when a man encounters a moment of extreme trial, his inner fears come out in the form of a specific kind of excuse. I hate to dismiss those excuses as only that, because they also often reveal a deep truth about that man, and what he believes about himself. I am not strong enough. I am not smart enough. I am not rich enough. I am not young enough. I am not old enough. I am not MAN enough. Men. These are lies. These are weapons fashioned to bring you down.

No one owes you anything. If we live our lives expecting people to hand us anything, we’ll not only alienate all of our friends, but we’ll create a situation where our value is puffed up and manufactured, and not based on our actual value. When something goes wrong, when crisis comes, we are left feeling bankrupt.

No wonder then that men who cared, who were open to change, often just gave up, falling back on the patriarchal masculinity they found so problematic. The individual men who did take on the mantle of a feminist notion of male liberation did so only to find that few women respected this shift. Once the 'new man' that is the man changed by feminism was represented as a wimp, as overcooked broccoli dominated by powerful females who were secretly longing for his macho counterpart, masses of men lost interest.

Of course, thousands of years of traditional masculinity weren't going away without a fight. They lingered in the vestigial memories of men, occasionally challenging a decision to read the directions or wear argyle, hoping for a day when a hurtling piece of space rock will send the world back to a time before the advent of styling gels.

Once upon a time black male “cool” was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a “poor me” victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others.

Our adolescent sons are eager to become heroes in our eyes, and in the eyes of the world.

One of the biggest things that hold men back from being the fathers, husbands, and leaders they are meant to be is that we are often unfit, unhealthy, or otherwise limping along.

On the drive to Paris, Michelle barely drew breath, speaking to her uncle about her holiday and pointing out landmarks to Delta. Secretly, Delta was relieved. She needed time to acclimatize to the potent force that was Édouard Valois. Sitting beside him in the front of the black Mercedes-Benz, she was all too aware of his presence: his sheer size, his stunning profile, his elegant hands upon the steering wheel deftly controlling the luxury machine, his dynamic and intriguing personality. He was living, breathing masculine perfection.

Our American culture paints a picture of masculinity where a man is an island. A lone cowboy on the prairie smoking marlboros. A caped crusader who works better alone. A dad in his den, reading the paper, shooing the kids away so he can unwind. But this lone ranger mentality is dangerous. Even the actual Lone Ranger had Tonto. We are not made to be alone.

Our goal should not be to reshape masculinity but to eliminate it. The goal is liberation from the masculinity trap.

Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside.

Physical development was alleged to assist spiritual and intellectual development, while also helping safeguard boys from the 'solitary and sexual sin' of masturbation.

Our sons are on a Hero’s Journey. They are navigating a transformative passage from boyhood to manhood, which requires them to leave behind the well-known world of childhood and cross a threshold, filled with many challenges, into a new world where much is unknown. Along their journey, our boys need an abundance of real-life, positive role models – everyday heroes and heroines – to look to for guidance and inspiration. They also must begin to see themselves as heroes – the authors of their own lives, armed with the noble qualities and courage needed to complete their journey and arrive at manhood with integrity.

Perhaps I am a rose-picker and a breeze-sniffer.

Policemen always have the idea that they can’t have emotions, that you are as hard as a rock, and that’s not true. You are no different than anyone else.

Purpose answers the question, “Why do I exist?” And as we ask it and explore it, I encourage you to study and look at the purpose statements of others, and of organizations, to fully understand the idea. Remember that your purpose is transcendent, and it is permanent. It doesn’t sway with the seasons of life. It is something that brings you fulfillment at every part of your life, and guides you.

Rather than trying to prove our masculinity, we need to accept who we are in the spirit of the gospel. Instead of trying to live up to some cultural standard of manhood, we need to accept God’s grace, which says, “I accept you just as you are.” It is culture, not God, that alienates those who do not live up to the existing, narrow definition of manhood.

Raising our sons is among the most important social imprints we will leave on the world, for they will become the partners, husbands, fathers, friends, lovers, creators, and leaders of tomorrow.

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others.

Scientists can test only what they do not take for granted. That can make studying familiar phenomena particularly challenging...This may be especially true of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, because certain ideas abut gender and sexuality are so broadly shared in our culture

Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.

Sarah DiMuccio, an American researcher and PhD student at New York University, published a paper in Psychology of Men & Masculinity that offered a simple, cultural definition of that type of manhood that stuck with me. Comparing the Danish idea of masculinity with the American one, she found that the major difference between them was that in Denmark, men said to 'be a man' meant not being a boy. American men said that to 'be a man' was to not be a woman. That is, Niobe Way says, where all the trouble starts. If being 'feminine' is the opposite of being a man, then many qualities that Americans associate with women (such as empathy, which shows up in boys as well as girls) are not just frowned upon, but destroyed in boyhood. 'You're only a man by not being a woman,' Way told me. 'That's basing someone's humanness on someone else's dehumanization.

She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.

Some feminists are really very interesting people. Science cannot unambiguously clarify which one — nature or nurture— fundamentally determines personality traits and human behavior, but some feminist movements already distinguish sex (biological factors) from gender (social factors), insisting that social cultivation can significantly modify social roles and behavior patterns and radically change the perception of traditional masculinity and femininity in the social system. In fact, without reliable scientific verification of the relationship between nature and nurture in the predestination of future human life, they offer a firm ready-made belief in changing this life with education and upbringing. And this is one of the essential differences between science and political ideology, which also includes feminism among others.

Sir, you have a purpose. You are here, breathing, moving, living, for a reason. Part of that reason is the process of discovering it, and discovering yourself.

So many times I have tried to get my life under control, and to make changes. So many times I have tried to conquer my weight, to be a better husband, to get a better job, to manage my business and finances better, and I have often felt like a juggling circus clown with one too many balls (or chainsaws) spinning in the air. I’m learning that we cannot do everything at once.

The confusion boys experience about their identity is heightened during adolescence. In many ways the fact that today's boy often has a wider range of emotional expression in early childhood, but if forced to suppress emotional awareness later on makes adolescence all the more stressful for boys. Tragically, were it not for the extreme violence that has erupted among teenage boys throughout our nation, the emotional life of boys would still be ignored. Although therapists tell us that mass media images of male violence and domination teach boys that violence is alluring and satisfying, when individual boys are violent, especially when they murder randomly, pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent.

Sometimes, we fail at a challenge. That can be a disappointment, but it can also be the thing that helps us learn how to rise above and meet that challenge on the next go round. Failure can build discipline and strength and wisdom. It’s up to us if we choose to let that failure rip our confidence away. We get to choose to keep pressing in and charging forward to meet the challenge.

So, you’re handed a baby and a new name (Daddy) and you now have to choose to accept the challenge. Here’s the thing. I don’t believe that rejecting it’s an option. I mean, people DO reject it. But you shouldn’t. You choose then and there to be a father. And you make that choice, day in and day out to make sure their needs are met, that the example is set for them, that they are loved, cherished, corrected, and challenged. You have to choose it.

Suicide has overtaken car accidents, heart disease and cancer as the biggest killer of British men under the age of 45, and male rates of substance abuse, violence and imprisonment are eye-watering. And yet dysfunctional emotional regulation continues to be aligned with alpha masculinity.

Sweden had paternity-leave policies in place for years but found that few men were taking advantage of the benefit. While women felt comfortable taking time off to be with baby, men worried that they would look less dedicated to their careers if they did the same. So the Swedish government implemented a “use it or lose it” policy, mandating that the country’s thirteen-month parental leave cannot only be used by one parent – the other parent must use at least two months of the leave, or both lose those months entirely. Today 85% of Swedish fathers take paternity leave. The policy has helped redefine notions of masculinity and femininity in the already-egalitarian country.

That's what a man is supposed to do for his wife. Listen, if a nigger didn't get lynched every now and then, well, there's just no telling what they'd do to us." "Who?" Lily asked. "Why, honey, the niggers and our husbands both. I don't care what color they are; men build up steam. And they gotta let it out somewhere. Colored men. White men. They both crazy. Honey, the point is you gotta look at it this way: A whole lotta women can't, "I got a man who'll kill for me."

The answers to today's problems are not to eschew masculinity. We do not need to redefine masculinity. We need to reclaim it. We need to affirm the masculinity, the rough and tumble, the competition, and the discipline needed to teach boys right from wrong. We need to be able to give them safe avenues to express themselves, and to model for them what it means to accept and love people. We need to teach them things like honor, perseverance, integrity, adventure, justice, tenderness, determination, hope, love, peace, and freedom are all masculine virtues, and they are a part of what it means to be a man.

The penis is always depicted as sufficient in itself, the genital equivalent of the Eye of Sauron.

The heart follows wherever it is led. It swings back and forth like a pendulum. Just embrace that, learn to laugh and cry when you should, and don’t expect those emotions to be a roadmap to your destination.

Their feelings were suppressed so carefully in everyday life, forced into smaller and smaller spaces, until seemingly minor events took on insane and frightening significance. It was permissible to touch each other and cry during football matches.

The key to understnading masculinity is Jesus Christ. Jesus was tough with religious blockheads, false teachers, the proud, and bullies. Jesus was tender with women, children, and those who were suffering or humble. Additionally, Jesus took responsability for Himself. He worked a jon for the first thirty years of His life, swinging a hammer as a carpenter. He also took responsability for us on the cross, where He substituted Himself and died in our place for our sins. My sins are my fault, not Jesus'fault, but Jesus has made them His responsability. This is the essence of the gospel, the "good news". If you understand this, it will change how you view masculinity.

The old 'qualities' of masculinity - a narrow focus on life, domestic incompetence signalling a mind on higher things, emotional reserve and acts of endurance - have become absurdities, signs more of incompetence, insensitivity, lack of intelligence than of strength.

our contemporary ideas about manliness, reflected in action movies and westerns, generally prohibit so-called real men from displaying high emotion, with the exception of anger. John Wayne doesn’t cry. By contrast, Achilles, the epitome of manliness in Homer’s Iliad, weeps openly and at length over the loss of his friend Patroclus.

The problem with the 'masculinity crisis' is not that women have excelled too much and therefore created a crisis for men, but that we have such a stein inability to let go of what it has traditionally meant to be a man...As long as we perpetuate the myth that men have inherent qualities that make them more suitable than women for certain types of work, the shifting nature of the economy (and women's attainment of better jobs) is going to continue to be interpreted as a crisis of masculinity.

The prostate might as well have been a mythological creature like a unicorn or Leprechaun only acknowledged through whispery giggles among women brunching with their gay friends.

The term “FTM-Butch Border War” just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine—shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for “lesser than”? Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune." - from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014

There is one question that gnaws away at the heart of every man, and has done so since the beginning. “Why am I here?” I can’t tell you that there is an easy answer. But I can tell you part of the answer to that question, is the journey of discovering it. The other equally pressing question is “Who am I?

There it is, forming behind us: The Fat Blue Phalanx. All the smug self-satisfied maleness you can drink, and free refills at the station house. It's all I can see in cops, that patriarchal bullshit that will never yield to a contract of mutual respect. That grunting fuck-obsessed inability to deobjectify you and treat you as a person, it’s a subclass of male that will never, ever change, no matter what. There they are with their uniforms and their discipline, an abstract and codified representation of all the construction workers who ever whistled at you and there you were, too polite to pee in their toolboxes in retaliation, too polite to challenge them, walking away red-faced because the worst part of it is that you were wondering whether they were really whistling like they’d whistle at Caprice or if they were just being sarcastic and were even now laughing at you with your short skinny legs and flat ass. Besides you’re not supposed to let it get to you. You’re supposed to have a sense of humour: they do. See them waving their cocks at each other and farting? You aren’t allowed to break the rules of their society which say that you are a cold uptight lesbian bitch if you don’t like their hohoho aggressive male ways so just hold your head high from your position of moral superiority and go home and tell your boyfriend (if you have one, which I don’t) who if you’re lucky will offer to go beat them up knowing you won’t take him up on it because you know perfectly well he’d probably get his ass kicked, most of the boys you know are highly ass-kickable because they’ve been brought up nicely. They were brought up in the luxury of knowing the money power of the military-industrial complex would protect them from the dirt and the grime of uneducated testosterone. its thanx to our weak boyfriends that we have cops at all, surrogate cock and balls to maintain ‘order’, whatever that is. Or was. And where does it really leave you as a prisoner of the suburbs? Fuming over some tiny incident that the aggressors have already forgotten about, but you have the sinking feeling you've just sniffed the true underbelly and the aroma was not what you get in Calvin Klein ads. Scratch 'n' sniff, scratch 'n' sniff, peel the onion... will you ever get down to the reality of what this place is about? And I know I shouldn't brand individual cops with the big blue brush but in my mind these guys are a symbol of the whole iron-cage Boy system that makes me always a victim, no matter what I do, it's a cage I can't escape. I'm the little princess. They dominate, they aggress, they protect.

There seems to be a fear that if men are raised to be people of integrity, people who can love, they will be unable to be forceful and act violently if needed.... We see that females that are raised with the traits any person of integrity embodies can act with tenderness, with assertiveness, and with aggression if and when aggression is needed.

There was something aggressively masculine about Toloose . . . perhaps it was the look in his eye. Or the way he was holding his billiard cue. It was amazing the way a man in an embroidered coat could take on the air of a dockworker.