Author’s Note: This is a completely impromptu and stream-of-consciousness article. And since it’s a bit outside the scope of Indonesian and American, I decided not to email it to subscribers. I would put it on Notes, but I feel like it’s something that deserves a “Post Treatment”.
I often hear from right-wing types that women who don’t have kids will find an outlet to channel their “mother instincts”. This is absolutely true, as “cat ladies”, “dog moms”, and other examples of overly-mothering single women will show you. However, what they don’t tell you is that the same also applies to men. Men who don’t have kids will find an outlet to channel their “father instincts”.
To me, this phenomenon is even more self-evident than the first one. This is probably because I myself am a man. Not only that, I am a 31-year old single man who has yet to beget children. I will spare you the details of my personal life. As a man in his thirties with no family to call his own, I found myself channeling this “father instinct” for two things that are very important in my life: my two nephews and my writings1. But as I have said before, I will spare you the details of my personal life. The point is that men also experience this “re-channeled parental instinct”2; granted, they experience it in a different way than women.
The late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said that all women are meant to be mothers, if not physically then spiritually. A corollary can be made for men: all men are meant to be fathers, if not physically then spiritually.
This brings me to a concept I’ve heard bandied around by many, including those I respect: “men do, women are”3. I have come to reject this. Not just, I regard this concept to be harmful. The idea that “you are not a man unless you do these things” is something many a men in this age have internalized, even if they don’t consciously hold it.
Why do I reject this seemingly commonsense view as harmful? Easy, because it opens up men, especially young men, to be prey for a class of people I call “masculinity influencers”. These people like to tell these aimless young men that they have to act and talk a certain way to be a man4.
Well let me tell you something: having sex doesn’t make you a man. Neither does marriage, or beating somebody up, or lifting weights, or whatever LARPy rites-of-passage people make for themselves.
Listen, I get it. We live in an age where society doesn’t know what it means to be a man. Or to be more accurate, we don’t know how a man is supposed to act. It’s completely understandable that we seek a guide to tell us what to do.
That being said, don’t ever let these people tell you that you need to do those things “to be a man”. For all the men reading this, please get this through your thick skull5: you are a man. As author David V. Stewart once said, “your sex is something that you are, not just some sets of behaviors”6.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t things that men should and shouldn’t do. But that’s a completely different topic altogether. A dog that can’t bark isn’t any less of a dog. As for what those behaviors are… it’s beyond the scope of this article; it’s also beyond the scope of my competence to articulate. And to be honest, I don’t want to be a hypocrite by acting like the very masculinity influencers I just excoriated.
But I will give people this advice: be comfortable in your own skin7. And men, if someone questions your manhood because you’re not acting like or doing certain things, side-eye him really hard! Then walk away. I can’t think a more telltale sign of an untrustworthy charlatan than someone who puts people down to sell his product.
I know it sounds strange, but I’ve heard two different authors (both men, incidentally) saying that having to choose which book they have written to be their favorite is like having to choose which of their kids is their favorite.
If anyone has a better name, I’d love to hear it. No sarcasm.
Or something along those lines.
Whether or not they are honest people or are predators-in-disguise, I cannot say. Perhaps some are honest, though misguided, while others are more sinister. In any case, it’s beyond the scope of this article.
Nothing personal. Our skulls tend to be thick like that.
I highly recommend the linked article.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve yourself. But again, this is a different topic altogether.
We have our evolutionary instincts, and we can't deny that. But as humans are getting more civilized we are detouring from them. Maybe I should have used 'moving away' instead of 'detouring', but you got what I'm trying to say. That shall not be considered a bad thing to say. We're creatures who mend and bend nature. We shall embrace that.
Another thing that might be connected to this all is the growth in loneliness. I feel lonely, and I also feel the need to give love. This love doesn't have to be for a child, might also be for someone else.