Comments on: Graphing Manliness

By: Pauly

Pauly — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:07:16 +0000

town*

By: Pauly

Pauly — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:06:46 +0000

Out of opinion in my home down this wrong. If you want to know what it looks like in my home town. Get a graphics calculator or even plot the function y=-x. That says it all.

By: Ransom

Ransom — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:32:28 +0000

Brett, I’ve finally got to ask, are you keen on Hillsdale College? Your thoughts on concepts such as manliness are surprisingly reminiscent of the things I’ve learned there, especially in relation to the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. Both this site and the college provide a rare but invaluable education, and I thank you for doing your part.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:35:20 +0000

Great post! Its interesting to see the graphs and a review of the history. I have a few points. The first is about the media. I watched the new show ‘Man Up’ the other night because I was curious about their ideas of ‘manning up’. After watching the show and seeing about a minutes worth of being ‘tough’, I told my wife they should just take articles from your site and base the shows on them. ‘Man Up’ did not do even a fraction of what the movie ‘Courageous’ did in the mindset of being a real man.
I also agree with the values. They are certainly not taught in these shows. Its hard to get a real value lesson off a comedy show. I believe men can stand or fall on their values. In my writing I try to talk about real desire, influences and being a real man from a Christian perspective. Either way it all about being a real man.

By: Carmo

Carmo — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:26:42 +0000

Where have all the good men gone? Ask the feminists. They have either been turned into sniveling beta’s or non committal ass*****.

By: Marlin Kimmel

Marlin Kimmel — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:08:05 +0000

To the author of: Cellar October 18, 2011 at 10:42 am.

I honestly could not have said it better myself!

Great post Brett & Kate! It really got me thinking about why my generation seems to only care about how much fun we can have, and not about how we can help influence the course of history by being more manly. I have always thought being manly really boils down to his integrity (what you chose to do when nobody is watching, or when you think nobody is watching), as well as how trustworthy his word is.

Thank you for the inspiring articles you post!

By: Cellar

Cellar — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:42:19 +0000

Good article. You touched on something that I think is key and that is how we define manliness. One of the reasons I love this website is because it embraces the idea that being a “man” is about fostering certain virtues such as loyalty, honesty, the value of hard work, personal character, etc. As a man in his 30’s I feel that the art of being a gentleman is what has really been lost. All too often in the past I have felt that when someone uses the term “manly” they are conjuring those men I grew up with; the guy who because of his ultra-manliness can’t be bothered take off his badly soiled baseball cap, stand up straight, or put on a clean pair of jeans, let alone care about his personal hygiene or his outfit out of fear of being “unmanly”. At that rate men just become slobs. Men of my grandfather’s generation didn’t think of manliness this way. Sure they reveled in manly activities such as splitting wood and working on the truck, but they were also raised to understand the virtues of being a gentleman. Shooting a rifle is manly but so is caring for a pair of quality dress shoes and carrying a conversation. My grandfather can fully disassemble and clean a Winchester rifle and knows how to bake a mean loaf of wheat bread and in those days perhaps nothing was more valuable than the strength of a man’s word. I think part of reclaiming manliness for our modern world does involve embracing hard work but also encouraging ourselves to relearn the “art” of manliness. Everything from how we speak, do honest business, take care of ourselves physically and intellectually. It’s not just that we don’t work on the farm as much but we are not raising young men to know the virtues and skills of a proper man. I didn’t even learn how to correctly shine a pair of shoes, iron a dress shirt, or shave properly until I was 32! I think the crises of modern man isn’t just loss of physical labor, it is living in a time when manly skills and virtues have been lost in virtually every area of our lives. It’s the small things…time to bring it back.

By: RNJohnny

RNJohnny — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:42:52 +0000

I think the beauty of this resurgence in men being interested in manliness is that we have the benefit of hindsight and the freedom to redefine ourselves however we want. This is something the ladies missed with feminism. They had to out-man us to get the same freedoms that we have and made each other feel bad when one woman’s lifestyle didn’t match the rigid stereotype of feminists. We can be stay at home dads or breadwinners, tough or vulnerable; whatever we want, whenever we want.

By: TubbyMike

TubbyMike — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:32:19 +0000

A lot of food for thought here (aside from the obvious anti-Jewish rant). As an Englishman, I can only echo the theory that WWI did for the idea of noble manliness once the horrors of industrialised slaughter sank in. Also consider that the male populations of whole villages and sometimes small towns were wiped out and that there were in the early 20′s often no men around to speak of manliness and masculinity. It might be interesting to find out if these words also suffered a similar decline in French and German at around the same time, although I’m not sure that there are direct translations in either language? Another angle might be to check Australian English, if the data exists, as hideous numbers of ANZAC’s were also slaughtered in defence of “the Empire” or at least its idealised notion.

Again, as stated by other comments, WWII seems to not have had the same effect; possibly due to the British view that required total war on all fronts (domestic and military). WWI tended to be about the preservation of empires and societal structure, whereas WWII was s**t or bust from the British viewpoint. Perhaps there was less time for debate in 1939? Certainly, other areas of literature seemed less prominent second time around. There seems to be no equivalent of the “War Poets” for WWII.

I have no idea whether any of this is significant, or just a rant from a tired man, but it might be marginally interesting to find out.

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:19:43 +0000

Actually, it just reminds me of the cyclical nature of fashion. While the graph doesn’t have data going back past the early 1800s, the small slice of time certainly seems cyclical. Just like most things in life.

What happens if you put in womanliness or femininity into the search? Just my $.02.