What makes a real man these days? Indulging my uber-human fantasies, I'm reading this right now by one of my favourite authors who also wrote
Market Forces:
Nutshelling it, Carl Marsalis is the Blackman.
Not just because he's a Eurafrican (European of African ancestry) but because he's also a Variant Thirteen.
'Thirteens' are extensively-genetically modified alpha males: artificially bred and groomed for combat from a very young age. Possessing extraordinary speed and strength as well as vast and deep knowledge of armed and unarmed combat and insurrection, Thirteens are the planet's last super-soldiers, designed solely to fight wars and topple governments.
So, what happens during peace time? Well, for starters, it's very difficult to have single-minded trained killers with a strong distaste for empathy running free during peace time right? So like any 'right'-thinking society the world has become distrustful of these guys and decided that they should be rounded up and locked away. Either locked away or sent on to the Mars colony.
Enter this one guy, a renegade Thirteen, who has managed to stow away on a flight from Mars and is now running lose on Earth and predictably, killing lots and lots of people. In very gruesome ways. An example? On the 7-month flight in from Mars, he systematically mutilated and carved the bodies of the crew for meat with the help of some cryogenic technology. It was a long flight after all.
Now, Carl Marsalis, a bounty hunter of renegades for the UN, is the only other Thirteen who may be able to hunt him down and bring him down...
This story posits that after tens of thousands of years of social and biological evolution, human beings no longer needed to rely on the brute force of its male members for enforcing its social structures and hierarchies.
Back when we're still in our hunter-gatherer days, alpha males were the ultimate hot-shit of the day.
The society needed them to defend the village and bring back large meat.
So if you're an alpha male, you were the biggest, fastest and MEANEST one of the pack. Your fellow villagers needed you. And, you were the one leading the other alpha males to hunts and battles.
And, you got the most booty.
Cuz the women would go for the biggest fuck (mostly literally) they could find then, not because of the guy's charm or charisma or that he smells nice. It's because the women knew the biggest muthafucka then had the best chance of fathering strong children with the best potential to be the next alpha male.
Think of it as an early form of humanity's draft pick selection.
Now, in a highly feminised world, there is much lack of a need for brute force from individual human beings because society has in a sense gotten 'soft'.
These days, human males don't duke it out in the streets like in Martin Scorsese's 2002
Gangs of New York, and they don't fight wars in phalanxes and red capes. They do it these days through technology and legal 'discourse'. Today's first wave of the
metrosexual male will not be the last.
But then.
What happens to this society when you insert several 'traditional' alpha males into the mix?
How would these ulti-males think? Or act in such a society that has lost the evolved ability to deal with them? Women on an instinctual level might be attracted to these men because of their innate 'manliness' just like most men are naturally attracted to the nubile young beautiful female.
Will these ulti-males be a threat to society just because of their genetic enhancement and alterations at birth? Thirteens for instance have been designed to act with pure malice and lack-of-empathy when it is needed, because on the battlefield, you'd have no time to think of the consequences of your actions, nor how the other guy
feels. Just like, in the old days.
How would this be suitable in modern and 'civilised' society? The human capacity for paranoia, suspicion and distrust is nigh-unlimited and if the majority knew of these alpha-males walking with the propensity to violent (and worse) unpredictable acts, they wouldn't hesitate for a bit to put them away.
So What ARE the definitions of a 'Real Man' these days?
Looking around the web, I have managed to dig some lists, which can be quite varied.
AskMen.com says a real man is '
strong', doesn't cry, doesn't moan, doesn't complain and get this, doesn't get sick.
On the other hand, eHow.com says showing your more
vulnerable side is acceptable if you're a real man.
"
Show your emotions. Most studies show women think a man who can as easily cry as laugh and is not afraid to show his emotions not only to her but to the world classifies a man as a real man."
In his
article, Tony Thomas says that the notion that 'real men' don't cry, don't show emotions and are not gentle are wrong.
"I guarantee you they had some deep-seated problems and had no idea what a real man is. Whatever the origin, those ideas of a real man were dead wrong."
In fact, the term 'real man' has become so convoluted that it's been made into a joke or a pejorative term.
For further reading:
How feminism destroyed real men.How to be a real man: Tips, guidelines and rules to followDavid Rice on 'What is a real man?'
