Manhood, defining manhood, and proving manhood are different depending on the penis-holder in question’s race and class. So for me as young Black man with professional, college-educated, and married parents who lived in the ‘burbs, defining my manhood meant something different than it did to a young Black man with parents who are divorced, work in blue collar jobs, and lives in a rural area and basically any boy who’s race/class background differed from my own.

WHO you are attempting to prove your manhood to also varies, in my case it was my Father and other men in my family who I felt like I had to prove my manhood to. For boys that don’t grow up with a man (it could be a Father or Step-Father or members of your extended family like uncles, grandfathers, or older male cousins) in their home or a strong connection to their Fathers may be attempting to prove their manhood to other boys or just older males they know. It could be someone with a positive influence on a boy’s life like a sports coach, teacher, or employer or someone less positive like a gang or dopey guys hanging out in front of a bodega.

Here’s an example from my own life about a fucked up conception of manhood. I was about 25 and was living with my folks temporarily when I hooked up with a softball team in the sleepy town of Petersburg, VA. One night we sitting around talking and the topic of who had kids came up, someone asked me if I had any children and I responded that I did not. The response was, “What’s the matter with your nuts?” It was inconceivable to these guys that I considered myself a man and hadn’t produced any offspring. So someone who grows up with that kind of thinking as a social norm will probably feel the need to try and impregnate a woman so that he can “prove his manhood.”

In my particular case, my “manhood” was established when I spent a Summer digging swimming pools. It wasn’t just that I had a manual labor job that bestowed the mantel of manhood on me; it was also the fact that I wasn’t making much money, I got my own ass out of bed at 4:15am to make it to work on time, and I refused to quit even when it became clear the situation was no good. I didn’t complain or whine, I just did what I needed to do until one day when I got home from work at 11pm my Dad told me that it was OK if I quit that particular job.

Dad told me that he was proud of me and I conducted myself as a MAN in the face of difficult circumstances. No one had to tell me to get a job or help me get one, I handled business like a mature young man should. Strangely, as proud a moment as that was for me, one moment in my life that equaled that was one Saturday that Summer when I had got done doing my weekly cleaning of the guest bathroom and my Mom told me that she didn’t need to inspect my work because she knew it was done properly. There was an accumulation of little things that I did that
Summer that I showed that I was past being a little kid and my parents were quick to point them out and also in turn tell me the increased privileges and discretion that I was afforded as an adult/Man were balanced by increasing responsibilities to myself and to my family.

Of course once you leave home there’s a whole ‘nother thing you go through with your peer group of newly minted young men.

But my question remains: what does one actually DO to prove this “real man” stuff? Punch people? Get a job that makes you sweat? Write your name in the snow?

Because “dressing appropriately” isn’t gender specific. If I show up in chic black velvet to a swank Xmas party, that doesn’t make me a Man. That makes me Not an Idiot.

A more sensitive soul than myself might take offense at that, but I choose to believe you’re joking.

how do you prove you’re a REAL MAN? And when can you stop proving it?

I guess I felt like I needed to prove my manhood to my Dad, but he signed off on it pretty early on so the real test was proving it to myself. Once you convince yourself that you’re a real man, making the argument to others becomes simultaneously easier and less important.

However there are still (at least for me) situations where I feel the need to send off signals and markers of manhood. As I think about it, many of those situations and markers are at least as much about class as they are about gender; such as dressing appropriately for job interviews or deciphering the dress code on invitations to social engagements.

“What man? Who’s a man? What makes a man a man? Am I a man? Yes, technically I am.”