Friday, April 18, 2008

Engaging the Text #2 on p. 453. Refer to Eustace in your answer.

2) I don’t think they are incompatible necessarily, but the way that modern culture asks for and defines those qualities makes them much more difficult to piece together. In the past manliness meant being able to care for ones family and defend what you believe in. These days its seems more and more that society sees manliness as an excuse for guys to beat each other senseless and to treat other people in general terribly. Also manliness is often confused these days with being “hard.” Quite a few guys think that they have to act like real hard cases to seem like men.
On the flip side, sensitivity is often requested by females, but isn’t often a quality that men look to show very often anymore. Nowadays, Sensitivity is seen a weakness or is classified as a “gay” attribute. If a guy shows a sensitive side, other males, and to some extent the world in general begins to question whether he is hetero or homosexual.
Eustace Conway is a traditional example of how the two used to be able to coexist. He is the definition of an old school manly-man, and at the same time treats the women in the life with utmost respect so long as they operate by his rules. He is also extremely prone to show a sensitive, mushy side when he falls in love with a woman. This is the kind of person many women are entranced by because he has almost all the characteristics that they think they are looking for. They ignore his downsides because he is such a prefect male on paper.
A connection of Manliness and Sensitivity like Eustace’s is long longer easily possible because of the way we define the two in modern culture, and if girls want that “Prefect” mix of the two, they better go find a teepee.

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