[socialismisok]

That's certainly one opinion. A common use of language these days separates the concept of manliness from the concept of maleness.

Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male.

I find it useful to separate the concepts, and others do too. You might not find that useful, but you should be aware language is evolving towards those definitions recently.

[jasmer]

The term 'man' infers gender while 'male' refers to sex, and has nothing to do with the term 'manliness' in the context you described.

The language is 'evolving' only among a very small subset of people on earth who happen to believe they are the 'social vanguard', that doesn't make them so.

The response to the linguistic disassociation between the obviously inexorable relationship between gender and sex is, I would guess, considerably bigger and I don't think this argument is going to be won but the language antagonists. I think society is going to accept trans people, which is good ... but I suggest we're never moving away from classical gender terminology.

The rest of the world is coming online very quickly and they want nothing to do with our linguistic wars. They'll change their language when they start using 'Latinx' (a term invented by 'colonialist progressives') in Mexico which is to say, probably never.

And by the way that's perfectly fine. Paradoxically, in many other parts of the world trans people are far more commonly accepted and have been for some time, lo and behold, they use 'men and women' in the common sense, without any problem at all.

In Canada, they fight over whether the stop signs should say 'STOP' or 'ARRET' (aka English or French) because that's how rich and prosperous they are, they can afford to inflate ideological inanities to the level of material concern.

[lotsofpulp]

> Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male.

What does manly mean? Because Bill Gates does not seem to be missing features that I find typical of males in the US. Otherwise, I would say pretty much all male office workers and many other males are as “manly” as Bill Gates”, at which point I figure the word loses utility.

[socialismisok]

Great question.

Compare, say, Brad Pitt to Bill Gates. Or The Rock to Peewee Herman. There are differences between how closely those people fit the archetypal mold of "manly".

I'm comfortable saying that Arnold Schwarzenegger is manlier than I am. He ticks more of the boxes we associate with "man", culturally. He's muscular, successful, attractive, tough, etc. I've got a bit of a spare tire, I'm pretty soft, etc.

He and I both are male, and about the same degree of male. We both have penises, etc.

In this way we can use "man" to describe our features that are culturally associated (ruggedness, toughness, cigars and whiskey, etc.) from the biological features (penis, testicles, body hair, etc.)

[wang_li]

People who read your comment should think on manliness and then see how you're portraying it and then consider what you say accordingly.

[socialismisok]

I'm trying to articulate my understanding of what the typical American considers manly. Do you have a different understanding of what the archetype is? I'm happy to work with that.

[8note]

Bill gates is known for being a ruthless business executive. What's not manly about that?

[socialismisok]

Apologies, I'm happy to work with whatever your icon of unmanliness is. The specific objective was to identify that there are spreads of people who appear to the general public as more or less manly. Please, if you have an alternative, I'm happy to work with that.