Rex Kerr
2 min readAug 9, 2023

--

How many guys? Are we talking about anything beyond street gang culture here, possibly with a dose of incel?

For instance, in a GQ poll of men (and women) in the U.S. (https://www.gq.com/story/state-of-masculinity-survey), the top two traits men wanted others to see in them is that they were honest (a kind of honor) and respectful (a kind of humility). Fully three quarters for each! "Strong" wasn't even close (half). "Gentle" was almost three times more than "Dominant".

Note that unlike the Equimundo survey, the GQ poll was designed with questions that included qualities widely regarded as positive.

And you can find overwhelmingly numerous examples of honor and humility being highly-regarded traits in men almost everywhere, ranging from Christian doctrine (e.g. https://joshuaensley.org/2023/07/26/pillars-of-godly-masculinity-strength-kindness-and-humility/) through to idealized cultural references (e.g. Superman) and the things we wish to remember about men who have made an immensely positive impact (e.g. Isaac Newton's shoulders-of-giants comment was one of very few humble things he ever said--he was cantankerous, prideful, etc.--but we picked out that one as the take-home cultural message to remember for the ages).

Yes, we do need to take seriously the toxic subculture(s), whether it be a susceptibility to authoritarianism (which cuts across genders), a problematic honor culture that only admits violent solutions to perceived slights, condoning abusiveness, and so on--and yes, these are all entangled with dominance hierarchy behavior. But it's not that common (even if you hit them a lot more online than elsewhere because, like a small yapping dog, they are very loud compared to their actual scale).

Maybe honor and integrity aren't key dominance hierarchy attributes, but they are key Man attributes for an awful lot of culture and an awful lot of men. And likewise for the original, non-appropriated-word macho.

So maybe neither of them are the best word to use with "Box".

--

--

Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

Responses (1)