To understand the severity of the punishments, you just have to look at what our society has done to the hijras, or how the western society treats transgendered males. Both have broken the basic male roles set by the society and both have been condemned to live a life worse than animals. No wonder men are scared and do not resist their roles.

"The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity" ~ Frank Pitman

Society rewards men who conform to the roles set by it, especially the sexual roles, by giving them enormous social power, status and respect in the society and by acknowledging their manhood. They will put you on a pedestal. The sense of power that is endowed is intoxicating, something that men get addicted to. When you feel extremely powerful and masculine while you date girls, it is this hidden reward doing its work, not nature.

When some boys act superior than others because they feel enormous power by doing things expected of social masculinity roles and they put down others, they are exhibiting this power that they have received as reward for furthering the cause of these roles.

Thus it is clear that even a naturally masculine man can be made to feel less masculine and vulnerable if he lacks social masculinity, while a male naturally deficient in natural masculinity can become powerful and exploitative if he fulfills the sexual roles of men.

Man has been given a lot of outer social power over women, if he follows the critical social masculinity rules. It is a patriarchal society that we live in. A man heads the family. He 'owns' his wife and children. The children are known by his name, not their mother's. They are considered his achievement, his property. They increase his honour tremendously and are the final proof of his manhood as needed by society.

Yet he has done practically nothing to produce the baby, apart from giving his sperm inadvertently. The baby is a woman's feat. She keeps it in her womb for nine months, feeds it with her blood and goes through excruciating pain to give birth. And the man takes the credit for it (especially if it is a boy!), without even lifting a finger.

Enormous social power makes a man feel important and powerful. It increases his ego several fold. Have you ever noticed how proud and important a man feels when he marries? He feels especially superior to those men who are bachelors. And why not? He is going to receive the most important benefits/powers reserved for men who fulfil social masculinity roles.

Notice how big a celebration he is accorded. Marriages are the biggest social celebrations organised by families in our society. The bridegroom is literally made to feel like a king, complete with a horse, crown and sword. As if he is a great warrior, on his way to conquer his most powerful enemy. Indeed, he feels important, for society makes him believe that getting married is a big feat.

Families spend a fortune on weddings. The importance given by society to the institution of marriage can be gauged by the fact that this is the only occasion where almost all the family members, friends and relatives assemble to celebrate.

The life of a man changes tremendously after marriage. He is now treated like an adult and taken seriously, whereas earlier he was a nobody. Now he has a standing in society. He gets invited to important social occasions with 'due' honour as a distinct member of the family/society. His opinion is taken in all important family matters, including those of the extended family.

And yet things were not always like that. Thousands of years ago, societies started to grant these privileges to men when they decided that man and woman will enter into a socially bound 'contract' called marriage to produce and raise children. The idea was to compensate man for giving up his freedom, his natural drive to bond with men and his natural masculinity, in order to bind him into the lifelong responsibility of supporting a family.

However, the man pays a heavy price for all this outer power. Whereas the power granted to him, though often superficial, is 'outer' and obvious, the price extracted from him is not always obvious or visible. It remains hidden from the man himself. Society has taken measures to ensure that the cost remains hidden, and the man can only see the benefits.

In most traditional societies 'marriage' is an important social role expected of a man to qualify for social manhood. When society imparts men such enormous power, in the process it secures some benefits (perceived to be so) for itself. The benefits are: (a) the man's participation in the reproduction process is ensured ----- there is continued supply of children to continue the society, and (b) the man commits himself to bringing up those children, because he owns them.

In modern heterosexual societies, we can see a disconcerting trend. These societies have further intensified the mechanism of reward and punishment and men are granted huge powers when they have relationships with women. However, there is no commitment required to produce or raise children or to get married. Sex (and surprisingly) relationships with women has surprisingly become an end in itself: the 'supreme end'. Procreation is no longer the main goal. It rather becomes an impediment to form carefree male-female bonds. In spite of the hullaballoo about power, men become second class citizens. Men are not given outer power over women, but they are given huge exploitative powers over other men, who are then condemned to be lesser men. The new focus of social masculinity is not on producing children or on marriage, but on forming romantic bonds with women. The 'new' lesser men are those that fail to (or do not want to succumb to the pressure to) have romantic relationships with women. This new social masculinity is called "heterosexuality" --- a new concept devised by the west.

As the marriage institution weakens, and families become nuclear families ----- both a result of heterosexualisation, more and more women end up raising their children alone as single mothers while managing a career at the same time. To nurture and raise children, women neither have the support of other women that she had under natural conditions, nor the support of another man which she had in traditional societies. She, like the man, is also isolated.

This entire social mechanism no longer benefits society, but gives extraordinary and unjust social powers and advantages to a specific group of men and women ----- (which, inspite of what it seems, is actually a minority) ----- over others. Natural masculinity thus becomes totally detached from social manhood.

The rewards granted by society may sound superficial and dispensable, but in reality they are essential for men not only for a better social life including access to better resources, but also for their very survival in the man's world. Without this they will be held in contempt, lose all respect and live on the fringes as disempowered lesser men. Such a social environment has been created by society as part of its mechanism to control men's lives.

The manhood granted by society is artificial. It seeks to indulge only the exaggerated ego of men. The status and respect that follows is unearned and undeserved. You do not need to have any natural masculinity to get the social manhood status and all the power that comes with it.

Society first builds up false ego in men to extreme levels. Then it makes men dependant on these 'rewards' to fulfil their enhanced ego. Men are extremely scared to get their ego hurt and this makes them vulnerable. So they bluff a lot and act stiff.

Men get carried away by the dizzying power that comes from submitting to the key gender and sexual codes. But this superficial power granted by society does not empower them to deal with the real life situations that they have to face. Men who get addicted to this power fail to develop inner strength, real masculinity and character, and remain hollow and weak from inside.

However, it is not really the greed for rewards offered by society that really forces most men to fit into the social masculinity roles. Rather, it is the punishments for disobeying these roles that leave men with no choice.

Previous

Home

Next