I define masculinity as that part of a man that equips him to survive as an individual, clan, and species. Without this masculine energy we would have all become extinct eons ago. Masculinity empowers a man to create and produce. It also empowers him provide for and protect those who are important to him.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Additionally, in the United States, we define manliness in terms of aggression. I think it must be because we're frightened. We put on a show of being tough guys, but it's completely unnecessary, you know. If you have what it takes, you don't need to put on an act, and you certainly don't need to beat nature into submission. Why be hostile to nature?

Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other.

Surely we have had enough of confusing maleness with "usefulness" and other human virtues. If men had a more modest view of what their masculinity ought to entail, perhaps they could move on from debilitating feelings of loss to tackling their real economic and political problems.

Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

Because boys lack a biological marker like menstruation, to be man is to be not female. Contemporary feminism called this "misogyny," but it was wrong. Masculine identity is embattled and fragile. In the absence of opportunity for heroic physical action, as in the modern office world, women's goodwill is crucial for preserving the male ego, which requires, alas, daily maintenance. It is in the best interests of the human race, and of women themselves, for men to be strong.

Masculinity is tragic. Masculinity is a lifelong struggle, a gauntlet run against nature ad other men to demonstrate virility and prove one's worthiness as a man in the eyes of other men. Masculinity is a challenge to honor that ends only in death- a challenge to win coupled with a guarantee that, eventually, even the best man will lose.

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and is confirmed only by other men. Feminist fantasies about the ideal “sensitive” male have failed. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

Necessity is what impels men to take action, and once necessity is gone, only rot and decay are left

What the world needs now is liberated men who have the qualities Silverstein cites, men who are 'empathetic and strong, autonomous and connected, responsible to self, to family and friends, to society, and capable of understanding how those responsibilities are, ultimately, inseparable.' Men need feminist thinking. It it the theory that supports their spiritual evolution and their shift away from the patriarchal model. Patriarchy is destroying the well-being of men, taking their lives daily.

The groups of muscles that have become virtually unnecessary in modern life, though still a vital element of a man’s body, are obviously pointless from a practical point of view, and bulging muscles are as unnecessary as a classical education is to the majority of practical men. Muscles have gradually become something akin to classical Greek. To revive the dead language, the discipline of the steel was required; to change the silence of death into the eloquence of life, the aid of steel was essential.

Rather than attempting to define masculinity as an object ( a natural character type, a behavioral average, a norm), we need to focus on the processes and relationships through which men and women conduct gendered lives. 'Masculinity', to the extent the term can be briefly defined at all, is simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in bodily experience, personality and culture.

Arguments that masculinity should change often come to grief, not on counter-against reform, but on the belief that men cannot change, so it is futile or even dangerous to try. Mass culture generally assumes there is a fixed, true masculinity beneath the ebb and flow of daily life. We hereof 'real men' 'natural man', the 'deep masculine'. This idea is now shared across an impressive spectrum including the mythopoetic men's movement, Jungian psychoanalysts, Christian fundamentalists, sociobiologists and the essentialist school of feminism.