A Real Man

Chaturvedi Humanities Core Lecture 2

Chivalry is not dead! At least, that is what is sought after when looking for a "real man". I have a post on here that relates to the idea of gender and my interpretation of how it relates now in society. This blog post relates more to the societal "requirements" of what it means to be a man. After reading the Hind Swaraj by Gandhi, I was presented with Gandhi's vision on what it means to be a real man and compared it to what I have formulated for my definition of masculinity.

While Gandhi's main purpose in writing the Hind Swaraj is to offer a solution to India's colonization undertaken by the British. He does this through dialogue in which he has a back and forth with someone who has differing views on the liberation of India. In this text, Gandhi talks about what it means to be courageous and how that is attributed to man. He is not much of an advocate for those who go through extensive work to get bodily strength. Instead, he sees courage in the ability to be nonviolent and benevolent in the face of violence and malevolence of which he calls soul-force. He also argues that man must be celibate (both in acts and in thinking) and must be religious and adhere to Truth. While this also outlines the way to free India, it essentially is attributed to men to do this job as they are the ones who must hold courage and be willing to die for their convictions.

Then, there is toxic masculinity. As noted in the New York Times toxic masculinity includes the "suppressing of emotions or masking distress, maintaining an appearance of hardness, and violence as an indicator of power." And I would say this is very much true in that men are taught to be tough; however, this has had its toll. For instance, according to the AFSP, men are more than 3 times as likely to commit suicide than women, and this could easily be due to mental health issues caused by this masking of emotions. It should also be noted there are more men in prison than women, and again, this is all tied into toxic masculinity.

And while it may be easy to claim that this toxic masculinity has placed us in the hierarchical patriarch that we are currently in, it is not that simple. I touch more on hierarchy in this post. So while toxic masculinity is to be blamed for the bad side of manhood, the question still stands: what is a man supposed to be? For me at least, a man should be protective in nature. Men tend to be more aggressive than women; however, this aggression should by no means be applied to only negative context as aggression can be used positively in the presence of danger. Similar to how Gandhi views courageousness as being a marker of masculinity, I would extend it to include rationality as Gandhi includes passive resistance to his definition of courageousness, but sometimes, passive resistance leads to the detriment of the man and those he cares for.

Works Cited

Gandhi, and Anthony Parel. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press, 2013.