Good Men Are Tough

Everyone living on the face of this Earth has heard it at one time or another: men are tough and women are weak. For many generations, this idea has been accepted as being simple truth, but why? Has anyone ever stopped, taken the time, and seriously thought that men are actually not born “tough” but instead try so hard to become something they aren’t because of the pressure society puts upon them? A study to “redefine strength” was recently done by the Good Men Project, and the findings should be truly astounding to anyone who may still believe in this old age nonsense of male toughness. The opening of the article reads that the thing men and women seek more than any other possible form of gratification, such as money or power, “is validation

The idea behind this is to leave an impression on the future, long after the dominant man has left the miracle of life. One surefire way this man can do so is by instilling in his children an absolute need to be “tough” and carry out what the man started. This desire to rule permeates throughout generations without much thought or logic; the children of the powerful man feel that they must conquest throughout the world and have as much power as their father in order to be worthy of anything in life. As a circle of “toughness” fueled by immense insecurity begins; however, the powerful man never realized what this would mean for his sons in the future. As the sons look only for more ways to perpetuate their father’s legacy and their own, they overlook the things in life that they truly yearn for. How can a man who is only looking for conquests and being enthralled in intense rivalries ever have the time to establish a meaningful relationship with his family? In the following excerpt from the essay “Being A Man,” one can see how social and emotional detachment begin to formulate in the mind of a solely power-seeking male, and the ways in which he is set up for failure with potential partners in the future: “The youth who is subverted, as most are, into believing in the masculine ideal is effectively separated from women and he spends the rest of his life finding women a riddle and a nuisance” (Theroux, 124). Basically, the sons of the powerful man who have been duped into the terrifying idea of having to be something they may not naturally be will fail in relationships and family ties and so continue the cycle of male insecurity and confusion amongst women. Another