No, so we can all be schooled in "Why Every Man Should Be Strong"[0], "How to Set a Table"[1], "9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches"[2] or "Win the War on Debt: 80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money"[3]. You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves. That's not a "good" manly behavior.
I think there might be some of that happening on YouTube, James from Speeed[0] (who used to be in Donut Media before) has been mixing the usual car-related content with wholesome masculinity stuff, and I feel that should be the future of making masculinity be seen less as "being tough" to being a resilient, dependable, empathetic person.
I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.
Inherently? I'd say almost none except for the obvious physical ones and their higher order effects.
Culturally there's a lot of differences that won't be patched for generations, social expectations can come from parenting and/or environment, including their society, interactions between genders shaped by those cultural differences from an early age, so on and so forth. Such expectations shape their worldview and place in it, males being told to be tough, not be "a sissy", being shaped into clamming up emotionally. Females being told they can't achieve things solely due to their gender, having to learn to be guarded against potential male aggression, etc.
There's just too much to even start enumerating in a comment but it boils down to cultural expectations from early age, and how those shape people into gendered behaviours as a reaction, not only from the expectations but also the feedbacks happening across gendered higher order effects of those expectations.
Well but the physical difference must account for some natural social differences, my naive thinking is: other animals do act like that.
A simple example is that I can lift my wife's body but she cannot lift mine. Wouldn't that affect our social behavior in some form?
My thinking is going to how other animals have different behavior based on sex
We're entering the treacherous path of determining nature vs nurture, other animals act like that but we're also not like other animals, there might be biological reasons to account for some baseline differences while the exaggeration of those traits can also be mostly cultural.
Reducing the comparison to other animals don't really make sense since our societies are many orders of magnitude more complex than other animals, e.g.: the fact of being physically stronger don't explain why until some 100-150 years ago women were considered less intelligent and unsuitable for intellectual work compared to men.
There will be different behaviours due to biological differences, it's just not possible to reduce the vast range of gendered pigeon holing into that, culture is a much higher drive of those, and is empirically visible in societies that moved away from traditionalist views of genders.
Could it be that at some point the biological sex differences sown the gendered culture? I can see that, doesn't mean the perpetuation of it in modern times is due to physical/biological differences.
> You used probably the weakest reason to discredit the idea of men improving themselves
Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
> Those examples you posted that actually are good would also seem to me to be universally important for everyone across all genders. '80 Ways to Be Frugal and Save Money' seems useful for everyone, and while I doubt a lot of people are going to need '9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches' immediately, what makes that specifically 'manly' and not good for anyone either going seriously outdoors or prepping.
For the same reason "Be strong and independent" is a message targeted only at women, even though it can easily double as a universal message.
> Yes, I picked those examples deliberately, but I don't see why any of the qualitatively good ones are 'manly'.
What was your goal? What was your argument? I said that we need men to be more manly (strong and able to do things that are historically considered to be done by men) and you said that those can be also done by women? I would consider woman able to change a tire, play cards and start fire without matches to be manly. If she wants to, she can of course.
Currently the problem is that we indirectly say to men that being strong is for women and not for men. We say to women "be more manly" and to men "be more womanly", which just perpetuates old cliches, but in reverse.
I think the thread has been a bit derailed in terms of my intention, which was more to point out that I don't feel like the qualities that are mentioned in the original article (mentorship, guidance figures, schoolwork, relationships, future planning) are really represented well by a clickbait website with articles mostly split between 'Top N things you really need to do for X' and things that would be useful to anyone.
I'd even say the 'Get Style', 'Get Strong', 'Get Social' and 'Get Skilled' categories always appear to wander towards (while never approaching) Andrew Tate territory, in terms of their goals.
> Currently the problem is that we indirectly say to men that being strong is for women and not for men. We say to women "be more manly" and to men "be more womanly", which just perpetuates old cliches, but in reverse.
This I agree with, but I don't feel that website is a good example of a role model for the qualities that the original article mentioned were missing.
> I'd even say the 'Get Style', 'Get Strong', 'Get Social' and 'Get Skilled' categories always appear to wander towards (while never approaching) Andrew Tate territory, in terms of their goals.
I agree. Going into "Andrew Tate" territory represents that toxic masculinity for me, it's the far end of spectrum of manliness. But we men don't need to go all the way into absurdity when trying to be more manly. But not all of us are in the same place. Some are too close to unmanly end, some are too close to toxic end. artofmanliness contains articles for both of those people, to move them closer to the center of good manliness (expressed by ideals 'Get Style', 'Get Strong', 'Get Social', 'Get Skilled' and I would add 'Be dependable', 'Be honest').
And being womanly is not an end of spectrum of manliness. Being unmanly (0 of qualities we mentioned, a weak man without style, social or any other skills) is the lowest end of spectrum of manliness.
> This I agree with, but I don't feel that website is a good example of a role model for the qualities that the original article mentioned were missing.
You would have to look more. You have only seen a small sample from each section.
I don't think his channel is the only one, it's the only one I'm exposed to so kinda tells me there should be quite a bit more of those around, hopefully that way of masculinity gets traction instead of Andrew Tate-esque buffoons.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@SpeeedCo