What is a man? That’s a wonderful question that seems difficult to raise without provoking strong reactions. On the one hand, there are polarizing responses whose proponents seem almost to enjoy being maligned, since the hostility they experience enhances their self-image as gutsy truthtellers. On the other hand, there are also anxious responses that compulsively censor or deconstruct every effort to define masculinity, lest they or anyone in their in-group feel lacking and called to grow.
As evidence of the latter, a few years ago a major psychological association in America offered guidelines to psychologists that discourage them from holding anything normative about masculinity. Specifically, they advise psychologists — and through them all parents, teachers, coaches, and religious leaders — to speak about “masculinities” rather than something singular and unifying. They even advise that psychologists help patients “create their own concepts of what it means to be a male” — unless those patients don’t want to, they say, since even the “expression of masculine gender norms may not be seen as essential for those who hold a male gender identity.” In other words, popular wisdom today suggests it is not necessary to have any idea of masculinity, let alone a particular one.
I think that’s bad advice. Now, I don’t claim to have a completely satisfying understanding of masculinity, but I think it’s real, and I think we are all invested in the presence of good men — that is, men who are good at being men.
In a short article like this, let me develop just one thought. I want to offer it humbly, as a man who sees himself as a pilgrim, as someone who wants to grow toward the ideal rather than as someone who claims to have it in his back pocket.
I think strength is essential to masculinity. If we look to the body, to nature, then men generally seem developed for power, focus, and external action. Of course, I am not suggesting that women are not also strong, but I am suggesting that men in a particular way find their identity through rising strength — whether that strength is physical, intellectual, or moral. I think men are at their best when they are attracted to things like training montages, effective tools, competitors who exhaust themselves, underdogs who beat the odds, noble resolutions kept, and difficult challenges met. Men seem healthy to me when they are working to increase their integrity and their effect.
But this desire for strength becomes deviant if it is not ordered toward love. Strength is merely potential. Its value is ultimately revealed by how it is discharged. I think men are at their best when they enjoy things like bearing the heavier burden, leading in self-effacing ways, diverting attention from themselves and onto their noblest goals — especially the life and excellence of others. Men seem healthy to me when they find their strength confirmed not in a mirror but in the happy and holy faces of those they serve.
If strength is essential to masculinity, must a man refuse to acknowledge his weaknesses? Should he pretend not to need others? There is today a popular image of masculinity which reduces strength to physical and mental exhibitionism and dominance, to the power through which a man can leave his mark. Muscular, virtuous, decisive, and effective — these are naturalist ideals, and they are certainly not evil. But if they alone are identified as the center of a man’s strength, he is in trouble.
For such strengths are things that we cannot guarantee. Even if they spring from our efforts, at root they come as gifts from God. Our limited grasp on such strengths reveals a deeper weakness or dependence that must be acknowledged if a man is to become truly an excellent man. We are finite. And death is real. Moreover, sin afflicts us. No account of our strength can ignore these facts. Every effort to ignore them will only lead to anxious, overbearing men inflating their egos to conceal their wounds.
For several years, I have taught young men, and as a monk, I have lived in a community of men of various ages for almost half my life. In my experience, we must help men accept their weaknesses — but without canonizing them. It can be good to “be vulnerable,” as is often said today. To admit we have suffered a wound can be vital, if it is true. But as James Diddams wrote in “Masculinity is Tragic” (First Things, May 14, 2024), “Men do not want to have their feelings of failure and weakness validated if it will not make them less of those things in reality.” We must help men face their weaknesses as men, that is, as a coherent expression of a desire for rising strength and a readiness to depend upon God. It is good for a man to know his weaknesses and to acknowledge them as such; for this helps him to live his masculine desire coherently: to strive, humbly, for the greatness that belongs to him in Christ.