Say Anything Blog

”>

There is something to be said about the traditional role of the male and masculinity in today’s society.

For one thing, it has been perverted and twisted in the media, which is as good a reason as any other to avoid using that media.  Television, and to a great part, film has been taken over by those foisting homosexuality and if not that, then at least metrosexuality or even thug-dom as role models for today’s kids.

Some here will remember Tom Mix, others Gene Autry, or any number of men depicted in older films, exhibiting a quiet strength, honesty and fortitude.  The modern-day Hollywood has cast those role models aside and even ridiculed what it means to be an American Man.  More specifically, what the character of an American Man ought to be.

I would say that character is best personified by the old Code of the West, or The Cowboy Way.

A man, perhaps so poor in material wealth as to merely own the horse and saddle under him, the guns on his hip and the Winchester in its scabbard, the clothes on his back and the Stetson on his head, carried greater nobility in his person than some effeminate city dweller with soft hands.

It was a nation, comprised of men such as this, that kept us strong for many generations.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

TOUGH GUYS

”The Code of the West was a gentleman’s agreement to certain rules of conduct. It was never written into the statutes, but it was respected everywhere on the range”.
-Ramon F. Adams

This week while looking at some statements by Senator Obama I brought up the fact that he comes across a bit prissy, that he lacks the tough guy image that you want in a leader. A commenter, Lance, pointed out that none of the candidates (other than Senator Clinton) really seem all that tough which got me thinking. What is a tough guy? What makes people seem less that way today? Why have we moved away from the idea of masculinity and toughness being valuable?

The problem with this concept is that the idea of the tough guy has been so damaged in western culture that like machismo it has become a caricature. Being tough today is thought of in terms of being a brute or a thug, it’s a description of what you do to others rather than what you are.

For many, being tough is being prison tough. Never backing down, always looking like you’d kill someone if you weren’t being held back. Always needing to be on top, never showing weakness. This is the phony tough guy that gang bangers exemplify, that’s on the face of every convict. I’m not a victim, I’m dangerous, don’t think you can take advantage of me. This sort of toughness isn’t a character of virtue, but a facade put on to show the world how “bad” you are. It’s strutting like a rooster, treating everyone as victims to be abused and used for your enjoyment, and being afraid of anyone seeing you be anything else.

The phony tough guy is the guy that wants to fight at the drop of a hat, that can’t work out the difference between a meaningless statement and a genuine injurious insult. Someone for whom every time the other guy has to back down. Someone who can’t show a moment’s weakness, then defines weakness as ever being anything but a cartoon of masculinity. Showing affection at a child’s actions? You’re being a bitch. Giving in when the issue is meaningless? You’re weak. Crying when things are really hard? You are nothing.

This is the opposite problem from the Alda-ized metrosexual male of todays culture, the kind of man who carries a man-purse, gets manicures and facials, is worried about wearing the latest fashions, and cries about everything. The fake tough guy is the guy who rejects that but still doesn’t know much about real masculinity, so he becomes a stereotype, a phony tough guy.

There are genuine tough guys out there still, although each generation seems to produce fewer. The real tough guy doesn’t feel any need to prove it to anyone - and yet everyone seems to know. The real tough guy doesn’t have to posture constantly and seem tough, he is. The real tough guy knows that toughness is how you face life, not how you treat others. He can be compassionate, affectionate, gentle, sympathetic, and kind without being weak, easily manipulated, effeminate, or prissy.

As a pattern for what a tough guy is like facing life, I’d like to use something from the past, when men had to be tough just to survive. A primer on facing life as a man without becoming a thug or an unfeeling stone: The Cowboy Way.

There was no official codified list of ways to behave for cowboys, they picked it up from each other, watching what they saw as noble and proper and rejecting what they saw as improper and unmanly. The code is closely related to the code of chivalry, for good reason: cowboys didn’t sprout out of cactus and rocks, they were men from all around the world who came to America to start a new life with only their weaknesses and lack of will to hold them back. A place where a man could make anything of himself if he had the will and the strength to do it. Nobles, scholars, athletes, soldiers, farmer, politicians, all sorts of men came to the west, and their past faded into the vast distances as they became something new.

And they patterned what they thought men ought to be based on what a gentleman was like in more civilized areas. The Cowboy Way took the code of a gentleman and adapted it to the rougher, more dangerous and challenging nature of the old west, which was truly wild at times. From this they maintained a certain decorum and pattern of proper behavior that, while it would not be welcome in any lordly manor, would still be familiar.