How to Play the Man?

In a recent piece in the Boston Globe (Caution-the column includes some off-color language), columnist Mark Peters humorously pointed to a growing dilemma within American culture that is anything but a laughing matter: gender confusion.

Peters examines the proliferation of "man" language that has arisen in popular conversation and in so doing, he points up the confusion surrounding authentic manhood in contemporary culture. For example,"manimony" is alimony paid to a man, and "manogram" is a prostate exam. 

As CBMW board member R. Albert Mohler Jr. recently pointed out on his blog, Peters is an expert observer of linguistics and well understands that perennial change in the language demonstrates the reality of the confusion.

In the present situation, Peters asserts, "most man words are coined to describe men behaving like women, or at least stereotypical women. Men aren't supposed to worry about cancer, receive alimony, or get Brazilian waxes, so manogram, manimony and manzilian are created. In those cases, the prefix is easily translated to ‘Whoa, dude, this man is not acting like a man.'"

Peters gets to the heart of the matter: How is a man to act like a man? In pondering the question he makes a very important point: we have drifted from an objective definition of manhood that was once written somewhere in stone. Once upon a time, defining what makes a man was a much simpler pursuit.

How to act like a man is a humdinger of an issue if you are one. The late Steven L. Nock, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, said in an e-mail to me last year that it doesn't take much for women to prove that they're "real women" in the widely accepted senses, but men are in a more slippery situation, especially with the role of father/protector/provider not considered as necessary or desirable as it once was. "[M]asculinity must be continuously earned and displayed. It is never won," Nock wrote. Without a traditional role to embrace, being a man requires constantly defining yourself in opposition to all things female: "No wonder things like man-purses attract attention.

Mr. Peters is onto something that is deeply rooted in the Gospel: even though the culture attempts to reconfigure manhood, the role of father/protector/provider was once a bedrock descriptor of the true man precisely because it is a clear illustration of the old, old Story: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...Fathers...bring them (your children) up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."

Small wonder that gender confusion runs rampant in society; when God's good blueprint for manhood-the man as father/protector/provider-is set aside, the sinful drive to self-definition fills the vacuum and chaos ensues. I must disagree with professor Nock: masculinity is finally and fully "won" when it is defined by God's revelation.