Wed
Jan
6
What manhood means in different countries
From feminist-writer Susan Faludi’s Stiffed: The Betrayl of the American Man:
As anthropologist David D. Gilmore demonstrated in Manhood in the Making, his comprehensive cross-cultural survey of masculine ideals, manliness has been expressed as laboring-class loyalty in Spain, as diligence and discipline in Japan, as dependence on life outside the home in the company of men in Cyprus, as gift-giving among Sikhs, as the restraint of temper and the expression of “creative energy” among the Gisu of Uganda, and as entirely without significance to the Tahitians. “Manliness is a symbolic script,” Gilmore concluded, “a cultural construct, endlessly variable and not always necessary.”
