We’ve moved past fearing Jews in the neighborhood. We’ve moved past tolerance for beating your wife. We’ve moved past thinking blacks in schools with whites as dangerous. We’ve moved past seeing the red threat around every corner. We’ve moved past black and white TV, and father knows best.
But John Wayne’s ghost still lingers. Men are still expected to throw themselves on the grenades of society to protect the women and children. We are still expected to suffer silently, to do as we are told, to kill and die on command, to act is if our very purpose for being is to live up to a woman’s idea of what a man should be.
Nothing has as much power over a John Wayne type than a socially aligned scolding, a questioning of “manhood” which always boils down to rational risk aversion negation, or sublimation of the individual will for the good of the state.
So clear has this trend become in the modern mind that a phrase like “man up” was coined, which means simply “act as your gender stereotype demands over your personal feelings.” Why do we tolerate this shit?
What if I said to a woman… “Woman up, I need this floor scrubbed?” What would happen then? What if I said “Grow a vag and get me a sandwich?” I’d be a sexist misogynistic pig.
If you see a woman crying, and you walk up to her and say “quit being emo.” What’s the first thought? Insensitivity, callous disregard for the suffering of another? You see a man crying and you say “quit being emo” and people laugh. “Oh cry me a river, quit being all emo butthurt, man up and get to work.” What’s the first thought? I’ll bet it something about trying to understand WHY the man is crying, and instantly making a set of value judgments about the validity of his emotional display.
When men cry, they have to have a reason, and not just any reason mind, you a GOOD reason. Men are expected to hide ALL emotional displays. Unless they are violent, in defense of the status quo, anger, or snide gloating, and perhaps lust, so long as its for a socially sanctioned target.
John Wayne’s emotionally crippled sexist legacy lives on.
