Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

Before you start reading this, I’ll put it out there that I’m sure a lot of people are going to skim two or three sentences of this, extrapolate the rest, and misinterpret my meaning. I encourage people to read the piece in it’s entirety before you start writing me angry letters. Thanks much, I appreciate it.

I was recently linked to a website dedicated to Men’s rights. There are a lot of pretty important causes being championed over there, like the effort to bring attention to domestic abuse towards men and father’s rights in divorce cases. Anyone reading this comic knows that I am as pro-dads-who-want-to-be-there-for-their-kids as it gets, though I will admit to taking issue with some of the posters who seem to be matching extremism with further extremism (if you’re trying to argue with a woman that it’s wrong to portray men in the media as incompetent children without their wives, calling yourself a member of the “Superior Male Race (Female Sexual Re-Education Unit)” doesn’t make your argument seem particularly sympathetic or rational) But I suppose that is to be expected from any internet community that aligns itself with a specific cause.

Ignoring the threads regarding “Women Under 30 Losing ‘Lady Skills’ Like Cooking and Cleaning” I noticed one arguing that women are scoring better than men in school these days because the education system has been feminized. It is an interesting debate, one that I think it really depends on the specific school system you’re brought up in. I, for one, was raised in Manitoba and know that the same man who taught me how to canoe and skin a wolf was on the committee that rewrote the high school chemistry and biology curricula, so take that as you will.

Anyway, this particular passage caught my attention; “Because doing well in school involves no manual or physical activity but requires instead sitting quietly, reading and writing, the most vulnerable boys view learning as feminine and `uncool`. And being feminine is their deepest dread.This is because men’s sense of their masculinity is far more vulnerable than women’s sense of their femininity. Biology reminds girls what they are every month. Boys, by contrast, need to prove their identity and role, particularly among those with poor prospects and few confidence-boosting attributes.”

Presumably because I am writing and drawing a comic called “Manly Guys Doing Manly Things” and am as I’m sure many of you have deduced am not a man myself, I am very frequently asked to give my thoughts on gender equality, feminism, modern masculinity, and all that business. One question that seems to come up a great deal is “what do you consider a manly guy doing manly things”. As a slight tangent before I get to the point, yes the title of the comic did come from a gay club song, it was chosen as something of a nod to men’s adventure pulp magazines of days gone by boasting titles like “TRUE MEN”, and “MAN TO MAN” that were meant to sound macho and intimidating at the time but presently come across as… well, frankly, kind of gay.

But that’s beside the point. What really made me think was the point that a boy’s masculinity is a fragile thing compared to a girl’s femininity. First off, I’m sure people will argue this with me, but I honestly don’t see menstruation as a badge of femininity so much as a biological quirk that rewards me for succeeding to not get pregnant in a given month with excessive bleeding and crippling gut pain. I would argue that having to shill out twenty bucks on a box of tampons and a bottle of tylenol every so often does not define femininity any more than the ability to get boner defines masculinity, but that still doesn’t clear up the question of what makes a person manly and why that state is so fragile for so many people of the dude-ly persuasion out there.

If you hang around the Art of Manliness site (as I recommend you do because it’s awesome), you’ll find articles regarding things like planning out your future, preparing your car for the winter, getting what you want out of life, cooking delicious soup, and a multitude of other useful bits of knowledge. I gotta say, those are pretty cool things. I think a lot of people would be a lot happier it they knew how to plan ahead and not crash their car in winter and make awesome stew. The Library of Random Man Knowledge on the site has given me the quote “The true test of a man doesn’t come down to one moment, anyone can overcome an obstacle if trapped in a corner, a real man is the guy who shows dedication. The long road may be the harder path to take but if followed you are rewarded two fold with both the satisfaction of a job well done and the experiences you have along the way.”

I will concede that there are individuals out there who have told me I’m the “manliest girl they know”. Keep in mind that I like wearing skirts and corsets and I cry at almost every sentimental movie I see and my favourite colour is hot pink. Taking all that into account, it seems like what defines “manliness” is a drive to be capable and self sufficient. I saw this shirt proclaiming that “The World Belongs To Those Who Hustle” and felt momentary disappointment that there were no women’s sizes available to help me show off my pro-hustling attitude (wait, I don’t think that came across the way I wanted it to) until I remembered that I was looking at shirts on a site called “The Art of Manliness” and I guess their intended marketing audience probably doesn’t have a big female presence. What I’m getting at is that big muscles and beards may superficially make a person look manly, but masculine qualities all seem to revolve around being a capable individual who prepares themselves for whatever the world has to throw at them and toughs through the obstacles in life without complaint. Whenever people call me manly, I tell them they’re confusing “hard work and perseverance” with “manliness”.

If we accept that as what defines manliness, what exactly have we decided defines femininity? The opposite of that? I think if you look at qualities that are typically considered “feminine” a good deal of them revolve more around the outer perceptions people have of an individual than how they feel about themselves. If dressing in utilitarian clothing suited to the environment or task at hand is manly, wearing clothes that make you look pretty is girly. If going into the wilderness with the knowledge and preparedness to survive off the land is manly, going into the wilderness with a man who has the knowledge and preparedness to help you survive off the land is girly. It seems the women who are most often accused of being masculine are the ones who try the hardest to be independent self-sufficient individuals who excel at their jobs.

I think this is where a lot of the debate over the portrayal of gender roles in the media comes into play. The studio heads with money know that generally girls will watch shows about boys but boys do not like to watch shows about girls, so any property meant to cater to a gender neutral audience needs to star a male lead. This is not speculation, it is a statistic I have been bluntly made aware of of through my time as a working professional in the entertainment industry. People who argue that women are exaggerated to damaging ideals in things like video games are met by counterpoints that men are just as idealized and stereotyped through characters like Kratos or Duke Nukem or Marcus Fenix. However the exaggerations of the male characters seem to be based on the idea that men should be big strong lone wolves who live life the way they want to while the exaggerated female characters seem to be more based around the idea that they should look nice for men. Both have an equal potential to be damaging, but one is damaging while being patronizing at the same time. It’s similar to the trend in television that portrays men as lazy buffoons who can’t function without their wives, except imagine while they were being incompetent they were also being smoking hot and scantly clad. That is an essay for another day or possibly never, however.

I think the important thing to remember is that a “macho” person is not the same thing as a “manly” person. A macho individual is the type who needs to constantly boast and showboat about their strength or popularity or sexual prowess. A manly person doesn’t need to rub his accomplishments in people’s faces because he knows he’s strong and cool and sexy. It seems a rarity to see people champion any kind of “screw the haters I’m going to live life the way I want it” attitude in regards to femininity without being accused of being too masculine, and I think that’s why telling people they are effeminate will more often come across as an insult than a compliment. I’m sure it has happened out there in the big wide history of the world, but I have never met a man who took offense to being called a manly individual. Macho or butch, maybe, but not manly. Calling someone girly, lady-like, effeminate, however, that’s a whole different can of worms. It seems to me that it’s considered an “effeminate” quality to obsess over looking pretty and pleasing people, but it’s “masculine” to say you don’t care what makes other people happy because you’re going to go out there and take what you want out of life.

To bring this all back around to a convenient little mantra that you could go off and post on twitter or facebook or whatever without losing people’s attention; it’s wrong to tell men that they should act less like “men”, but it isn’t any better to tell women that they should act more like “women”. “Manning up” doesn’t have to be a gender specific thing. Pretend they mean “man” in the “hu-man” sense of the word, I can’t think of a person out there who would be worse off if they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made it their goal to become a confident and self-sufficient adult human being.

Again, just to assure you that I am not trying to be insulting to people in any way with this, This essay is only my attempt to rationalize why calling something “girly”, “feminine”, “Woman-like”, or “effeminite” seems to be more likely to insult someone than calling it “manly” or “masculine”. I do not think that saying women who stand up for themselves and act independently are behaving like men is right, this is just me trying to figure out why that has become the case. I have listened to other women accuse women who prefer video games and comic books to shopping for accessories of having “masculine interests” and “thinking like men”. As well, I have heard women who do like those kind of things proudly boast that they are more masculine than the other women in their lives and act as though their Halo achievements somehow make them superior to girls who are the envy of all their Farmville pals. After I stopped being mildly insulted that such old-fashioned ideas were still being validated and perpetuated by fellow women of all people, I decided I wanted to try to rationalize what might be leading to that kind of thinking. Deduce why manliness is such a respected trait with reasons other than “patriarchal society told us it should be that way”

Wanting to be strong and independent and have adventures is not a y-chromosome specific trait. I believe in equality in the truest sense of the word, everyone out there deserves the same opportunity to be the hero or the villain or the comic relief or the love interest if that’s what they want out of life. Thanks for understanding.

Talking to someone in the comments on the most recent comic I’ve posted up made me realize that the term “Mary Sue” or “Gary Stu” is being thrown around awfully liberally these days. As much as “hipster” seems to mean “young adult who wears clothing”, all it seems to take for a character to rack up accusations of being a wish-fulfillment mouthpiece device is to be the same gender as the writer, be notably talented at anything, or be likeable in any way. In light of this, I went back to the archives and found a blog post I wrote about two years ago for my on-again-off-again dead and reanimated and dead all over again art blog regarding writing interesting protagonists in a fantasy or sci-fi setting. I’ve cannibalized it a bit, but if it seems familiar that may be why.

I know the vast internet collective has coded up plenty of “is your character a Sue” tests that people run to so they can gauge whether or not their characters are ordinary enough to make the grade. I always feel on the fence about these kind of tests because the traits they call out are almost completely irrelevant outside of the context and actual application they receive in the piece. What may seem unacceptably fantastic in theory may be considered mundane when viewed in the actual scope of the world a writer has built. And just because something sounds idealized when you break it down into the individual pieces, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those features manifest in a particularly flattering manner.

For example, let’s say I describe a character to you as a broody, dark skinned man in impeccable physical condition with pointy ears, long white hair, purple eyes, and an aptitude for bladed weapons. Clearly I must be talking about that pretty-boy drow prince, Drizzt, from Forgotten Realms.

Oh wait no, I was actually talking about Sten.

That’s the difference context and application make.

I absolutely hate the question “is the character attractive” because there is such a massive scope of what people are attracted to that you can take just about anything you can think of and someone out there will find downright sexy. Think Marv from Sin City, the driving force behind that character is supposed to be that he is so ugly and horrible, even in a city of prostitutes only one woman has ever agreed to sleep with him. I could probably find you a handful of women who would argue that Marv is more attractive than Mickey Rourke under normal circumstances and even more who would be all over a guy like that in real life.

For that matter, are guys like Steve Buscemi attractive? He’s been married for 23 years, obviously someone digs him.

If I make a Steve Buscemi-inspired character and some fan draws steamy anime-styled porn of them with lots of cherry blossoms and drapey fabric because they think he’s so gawgeous and wonderful, does that mean I’ve just designed an attractive character? From my experience, no matter what a character looks like, if you make them out to be sympathetic or friendly in any way someone out there will assume that they must either be the kind of person you’re attracted to or the kind of person you wish you could be.

My favourite subject to write about basically breaks down to outlandish characters doing mundane things (as you may have noticed from this webcomic here that I assume you’ve been reading). I am of the opinion that there is no character out there so outlandish and out of touch that they couldn’t be recrafted into a relatable person by taking Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs into account.

This pyramid represents the basic concerns of a human being in ascending order of triviality. The lowest levels of the pyramid represent the lowest common denominator that all people can identify with. As you climb the pyramid, problems will generally matter less.

The bottom of the pyramid represents life-or-death needs like food, water, shelter, air. No one in the world will ever question a character’s motivation to not die. And when they say “sex” they mean it in a Children of Men “our species is going to die” way that drives characters in a post apocalyptic setting to muse about how the earth will be repopulated, not the “bawww why can’t I get laid” way. In the context of films like 28 Days Later where they take into account what that drive to preserve the species will do to women’s rights, it’s downright terrifying. Matters of life and death will always interest an audience, so even a character who sits at a high level on the pyramid can be stripped down to a basic need for survival in the climax of a story.

Less important than air, but still of pretty high concern is safety. The feeling of unease walking home alone at night, fear of losing your job, and health issues are all fairly universally accepted as important motivations and can easily turn into life or death struggles in their own rite.

Love or belonging is a fairly light, inoffensive problem for a character to overcome. On it’s own, it’s a status more suited for comedy, as it lacks the drama of life-or-death struggles.

Respect amongst one’s peers is in a similar boat, and is the last really relatable struggle you can put your character through. Self-actualization is more of an abstract idea that can lose your audience, as a character whose only struggle is to be the best at what they do is not terribly entertaining if they can’t be stripped down to a more basic need in the pursuit of that goal.

Conflict is built out of characters gambling their place on the pyramid as they attempt to raise their status, and characters cannot climb to a higher level if the needs below them have not been met. For example, a character will not be worried about getting the girl if they are in the middle of drowning (unless they are possibly Leonardo DiCaprio). The more a character stands to lose, the more an audience will care about them. This is why the first Iron Man is more entertaining in every way compared to that abortion of a sequel it got. Iron Man the first saw Tony Stark as a Millionaire jackass playboy who is humbled to a life or death struggle when his convoy is bombed and he’s left dying in the desert with shrapnel in his heart. He can’t be the life of the party again until he can figure out a way to improve on the car-battery system they rigged up in his chest to give him a few days to live. And his cocky attitude remained dampened until he could escape the terrorists who were planning to execute him after he was finished with their bidding. His security was stripped away when he found that the man who had ostensibly become his father figure was doing shady things with the company behind his back and trying to force him out, and that soon became and all new life-or death struggle of it’s own right.

The second Iron Man hit it’s climax somewhere around the 20 minute mark When Tony fights Vanko at the race because that is the only point where he’s truly caught off guard and seems concerned for his life. We’re told that he’s allegedly dying, but it comes across as more of a tacked on plot device than a legitimate concern because it doesn’t seem to distract from Tony’s illustrious lifestyle. The writers threw away every opportunity they had to strip him down to an interesting conflict. Tony’s got some blood poisoning from his chest reactor and it throws him into a funk. He takes his armour on a drunken joyride through a house party and what could have been an opportunity to have him, say, accidentally harm a guest and end up mired in legal ramifications that threaten his adoration from the public and security in the company while he’s simultaneously dealing with the medical trainwreck he’s becoming turns into an opportunity to show off how nice their CG super suits look when they fight to a catchy soundtrack that I’m sure was very expensive to license. Then before the whole “dying” thing can really bring him down to some base emotions, like a modern day Perseus people start showing up and handing him the solutions to every issue that might have been interesting to watch him overcome.

I guess what I’m getting at is that people can’t be all that concerned about your character if the character doesn’t seem to be concerned about themselves. There are a lot of stories you head into knowing that the Good Guys will win and the Bad Guys will lose, but those stories are still entertaining when you don’t know HOW the Good guy will win. If it’s because the good guy is super smart and rich and sexyfine and gets all the girls and everybody wants to be his best pal and he’s totally confident with himself and the Bad Guys are ugly poor losers and nobody likes them, you just wrote a really boring story. The whole conflict is so one-sided, people are probably going to start feeling more sympathy for the Bad Guys. Things are stacked against them but they still keep fighting so whatever it is they’re after must be pretty important. (Call the story Megamind and expect to see $150 million at the domestic box office)

People are quick to call “Mary Sue” on characters they feel are overpowered, but the problem with these characters is not in their copious volume of powers, it relates back to the pyramid as well. “Mary Sue” characters are generally boring because they’re rich and everyone wants to be their friend and they have a smoking hot significant other and they’re the best at what they do. They’re already at the top, so their story has no room to arc. A protagonist can have rainbow hair, fourteen wings, and laser beams shooting from their purple eyes and still be interesting to read about if they have some kind of real human struggle in their life that the audience can connect with.

My favourite example of this is John Arcudi’s short-run DC comic, Major Bummer. Lou Martin is a tall, handsome, indestructible superhero with inhuman strength, super genius engineering skills, and a chiseled body that makes smoking hot women fight over him. On the other hand, he’s always losing his jobs at fast food restaurants and VCR repair shops when his bosses are angry about having to clean up after his massively destructive battles at work, catty women are constantly trying to manipulate his life to get cozy with him, his massive bulk is too big to fit in the crappy car his unemployed ass can barely afford, the horrible lizard people he brutalizes in the effort to not-get-killed-by take him to court with assault charges, and he can’t sleep in on the weekends because people assume being a hulking demigod means he’s obligated to get up early and save the city from whatever Nazi dinosaur threat has them in peril that week.

I also see it suggested quite frequently that if a character has similar beliefs, ideals, or opinions to the writer, the character is by default a mouthpiece. I don’t think this is necessarily the case. True, if the point of the character is to beat down strawmen in one-sided debates regarding issues near and dear to to the author’s heart, that’s about as soapboxey as it gets. However, I think for a writer to create a character that is even the slightest bit interesting, they have to put at least a little bit of themselves into it. It ties into the old saying that you have to write what you know.

If a writer makes a character that they completely disagree with on every front and cannot empathize with at all, that character is likely going to end up being the aforementioned strawman and the anyone who interacts with them, allowed to have a real human thought process, is going to seem like a mouthpiece by default. I’m not saying that a person has to agree with what a character thinks, but they should relate to them enough to understand why they would think like that. For example, if a story calls for a character to make a racist remark it’s easy enough to invent a one dimensional player who exists solely to say inappropriate things and be put back on the shelf. On the other hand, if you put some effort into figuring out why that particular character would say something like that you add another layer to them. It could be upbringing, or a violent run-in with some people of whatever group they’re prejudiced against, or a high-tension situation that made them say something they’ll regret later, or even just something volatile the character likes to do to watch how it makes other people uncomfortable. The writer can completely disagree with everything their creation just said or did, but they still put enough of themselves into it to rationalize the exchange from a different point of view. I’ve scripted out whole arguments before that were just based on me playing devil’s advocate in my own head. Neither side agreed with what the other was saying even though both were rationalized by the same person.

What it basically comes down to is that writing fantasy stories is like drawing fantasy creatures. Dragons may not exist, but people can tell if a drawing of one is believable or “realistic” based on how well the image seems to relate to what they know actual animals look like in real life. In the exact same way, the stories that stick around are the ones people can relate to real situations.