Test of manliness
I was happy a friend gave me a listing of blogs that offered ideas about manliness. Our society today seems in urgent need of these ideas. There’s now a growing confusion in this area, made worse by the fact that ideologues are promoting all kinds of doctrines, not all of them certified correct.
Not only are there strong gender-bending influences around now, the line between male and female blurred. In many places, the transition from boyhood to manhood seems to be trapped in a warped understanding of what to be manly is.
The youth are mostly affected by this situation. With today’s communication technologies, they can get exposed to a lot of concepts about manliness and yet can still miss the right one.
Or worse, they can become so skeptical and cynical about the whole issue that they would not mind anymore if what they have is right or wrong.
Many would rationalize that the world is big enough to fit all sorts of cultures of manliness. Besides, there’s a trend toward tolerance, precisely because of the increasing variety of mentalities and lifestyles we have today.
So, not to make a big fuss out of this question seems to be the politically correct attitude to take. To a certain extent, I can understand and accept that attitude. But I think it would be wrong if we leave things simply at that level. There has to be an earnest effort to rediscover what true manliness is.
In fact, across history, cultures and peoples, the search for manliness has always been a prominent feature in social life. Different rites of passage have emerged depending on the community’s consensus on the matter.
That’s a very understandable natural process. The problem with that is that since it is time, place and culture-bound, the idea of manliness is not planted on firm ground. It’s not stable and universal. It can become obsolete after some time or when circumstances change.
In a primitive society always engaged in tribal wars, for example, to be manly means to fight, to be a soldier. But when civilization improved and conflicts were resolved less through battles, its idea of manliness entered into a crisis.
There were other notions and practices that while containing some good elements just could not be given a universal applicability. I learned that among the Spaniards, they were told when still young that it was not manly for boys to cry. That’s cruel. Boys and men sometimes need to cry.
I remember when I was still in kindergarten learning English with American nuns in the city. Whenever I would go to the barrio where my father came from, the people there, rough and tough, would laugh at me because I spoke English and would distinguish the long a from the short a.
I was made to understand that speaking English that way was not manly. It was good that my parents assured me I was on the right track, and told me just to understand the barrio people. Otherwise, I would have been confused.
Several incomplete and even wrong definitions and descriptions of manliness have appeared in history. To be manly was viewed before as being like the Spartans of old, or like the privileged class of society, or an independent artisan or successful businessman.
Sometimes, manliness was attached to having a Hercules-like physique, or being a Casanova or a playboy. Caricatures of manliness proliferated.
We need to cultivate a culture of manliness grounded on the terra firma of the true nature of man. At our present age, we cannot simply remain in having a shallow understanding of manliness, vulnerable to pressure groups with questionable ideologies.
The old Greek and Roman civilizations have already given us a cue, by associating manliness with developing virtues, with the idea that everyone, man or woman, tries to excel and be the best one can be.
Precisely, the word virtue comes from the Latin stem “vir” which means man. To be manly, therefore, is to be virtuous.
What Christianity has done is to even ground this initially correct understanding of manliness by the Greeks and the Romans to its ultimate source. And that is to be like Christ—to be “alter Christus, ipse Christus” (another Christ, if not Christ himself).
Remember what St. John said of Christ: “He had no need that anyone should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (Jn 2,25)
In short, the test of manliness contains a crucial faith element to it. Absent that, everything becomes a mess.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
