People are inconsistent about masculine traits and behaviors

procrast1natrix · 2026-04-24T16:02:18+00:00

I'm super invested in encouraging the men and boys in my life to have positive masculine experiences.

From my dad, who is 78, and has carefully cultivated a men's only space with a backyard horseshoes club. They call themselves "men of iron" and they eat lots of snacks while playing. It's an excuse over the past twenty years to have friends. So, hosting a regular party is now a masculine trait.

To my husband, 55, who is better than anyone I know about calling his old high school buddies on their birthday, and keeping up with cousins that live abroad. He will travel a thousand miles in a few weeks to meet up at Trail Days with some thruhiking friends, mostly men, in order to look at new gear as he carefully plans for a 200 mile hike this summer. So keeping up social connections and planning trips is now a masculine trait.

To our son, 15, who is in competitive sport that practices five times weekly, and they have "pasta parties" to carb load and whip up the spirit before meets. So he knows how to cook several pasta dishes to bring. Because cooking and sharing food and cheering on your buddies even if you're injured, those are masculine traits.

None of those are exclusively masculine but they are attractively masculine.

And yes, it has been very important to us as parents of a boy (he still has the sweet high voice of a child, our family does puberty later than average) to always sponsor sport. As in, you can change every season, but you need to be out there being active and involved.

Otjahe · 2026-04-24T17:37:41+00:00

My style is and always has been - be super masculine just without all the toxic parts. Boom easy and everyone wins

TopShelfSnipes · 2026-04-24T15:32:48+00:00

Yes, they are. BUT, let's look at the causes:

You have a bunch of non-Western cultures pushing outdated, fake, performative versions of masculinity on men, thanks to the globalism provided by the Internet.

Being masculine is about deciding who you are, making your own decisions, and being confident about it. Little boys seek approval and consensus before acting. Grown men do not. Little boys whine about not getting their way. Grown men figure out what it takes to get what they want (legally) and put in the work. Little boys look to Mommy to solve all their problems. Grown men figure it out themselves, or with the assistance of trusted friends/family (and not relying on strangers on the Internet).

We have a masculinity crisis right now precisely because a growing number of men can't do these basic things for themselves, can't socialize IRL, have no hobbies outside of gaming, maybe the gym, going to work, and don't put effort into their friendships so they don't have social circles and don't meet women. They suck at texting, and then their heads are being filled with blackpilled bullshit and foreign narratives around men as "providers" when most households have been two-income in the West for over 50 years.

Add to that the rise in single parent households spurred on by toxic socioeconomic trends that affect the hood and trailer park, mass migration from third world countries that hold vastly different views on lifestyles/freedoms/women's rights, and the toxic incentives created by social media for edgy "content" and you have a lot of clueless men getting shitty advice from shitty sources, and parroting it to their friends, while the men with strong father figures or strong bullshit detectors are doing just fine.

Individually, people are not being inconsistent about this...but on a societal level they are, and it's because the Internet is giving inexperienced losers a voice and a platform they never had before, and because young men aren't yet worldly or experienced enough to know the difference since we allow them to increasingly stay inside and interact with people through screens.

If you have sons, FFS, put them in sports, some kind of group music, or something else that's going to get them interacting IRL with peers instead of playing Roblox on the Internet with groomers and cultists.

EugeneCezanne · 2026-04-24T17:49:15+00:00

I see so much commentary online about what men are “primed” to do. Men are primed to provide. Men are primed to seek out younger women and/or multiple women or etc. Men are primed to lead and conquer. Men are primed to control their woman.

That sort of pop-evo-bio stuff is completely inane.

Like it seems other men are purposefully choosing to embrace the traits and behaviors that benefit them now, while forgoing everything that they used to be responsible for before.

That, however, sounds intelligent. It's just adapting to the times you're in. Does anyone think men used to do all of that stuff because they wanted to, not because they had to? Moreover, the conditions under which they had to were, in fact, social conditions—inherently fixed to specific times, places, and norms, just like now. There is no pure state-of-nature where human activity is concerned.

When people talk about how men used to be like this, it's hard to know if they're imagining, say, the times of pioneering North America, or if they're vaguely alluding to some semi-mythical prehistory.

MonochromaticPrism · 2026-04-24T21:28:15+00:00

People are inconsistent about masculine traits and behaviors

This is a good take, but where you went with it in the body of your post is odd.

There is a strong argument, for example, that positive vs toxic male traits are almost always the same trait, but affected by different motives or to expressed to different extents. For example, it's viewed as a good thing for a young man to prove himself as a provider by working hard to pursue the best job his skillset and talents would enable (positive masculinity), but when that pursuit of wealth goes to the point where the only way he can have value is possessing a 6+ figure salary it has gone too far.

Alternatively, you could point to how being "a rock of support and pillar of strength, unbreakable by the changing circumstances of life, consistent and levelheaded" is regularly upheld as a positive masculine expression, and yet it is also common for "male unwillingness to be emotionally open and honest" to be held up as an example of toxic masculinity. In most circumstances both of these are the same baseline condition, but viewed from different perspectives, resulting in men being both lauded and punished for the same trait with great inconsistency. While extremely pessimistic, if you want to emphasize the unfairness of this dichotomy you could then point out how, taking both sides together, it sure does look an awful lot like "men holding their emotions in" is only valuable so long as those men are providing value by doing so, but as soon as that source of value also comes with a cost the male becomes toxic.

From either of these point much interesting back-and-forth debate could arise. However, the angle of "what men should do based on their 'instincts'" doesn't really have much to do with masculinity, as what masculinity itself looks like is something that is decided by society.

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KayRay1994 · 2026-04-24T19:18:53+00:00

You do you, and really do what vibes with you. For some it is traditional gender roles, for others it is going the opposite route. As long as you’re not trying to push for a ‘default’ and aren’t trying to push your way onto others, it truly shouldn’t matter beyond one’s own personal dating preferences and how they act on them (even then, don’t use your dating preference as an excuse to be hateful to a group or to shame others… which many sadly do)

I mean… I’m a masc trans woman, so I had to deconstruct gender roles twice lol

harmonica2 · 2026-04-24T19:38:39+00:00

I'm probably more masculine than some guys, but it has paid off in my favor.

If women are attracted to masculine guys then just be masculine and its a win win therefore?

Lift_and_Lurk · 2026-04-24T21:59:48+00:00

Primed? Primed how? Maybe I’m just confused by the word Primed, but what about HS classes primed us to do anything other than maybe getting into college, or just “passing high school”?

AwardLimp2736 · 2026-04-25T01:02:04+00:00

Men do have instinctual inclinations, but as humans, we never have to be slaves to our instincts

ofcourse, ideally your instincts align with society, but often it's not the case, or at least not completely. You do the best with what you can and act accordingly

UnarmedRespite · 2026-04-25T06:07:59+00:00

Can we call this benevolent misandry?

esdebah · 2026-04-26T06:19:18+00:00

It's almost like gender is a performative social construct or something.

SandBrilliant2675 · 2026-04-26T18:31:49+00:00

Preface: given the binary gendered society, your reasoning is not flawed, but the whole concept of identifying traits as “masculine” and “feminine” is an outdated and flawed social construct. By gender labeling traits, we box people in to a prescribed and limited set of, again outdated norms, such being expected to build the family home, perform back breaking physical labor, and fight for their land.

The application of the label “masculine” to traits is inconsistent is because it is, there is no logical reason, especially in this day in age, to brand traits like “strong”, “logical”, “decisive”, “leader”, etc as male traits, or “empathetic”, “nurturing”, “soft”, etc as female traits, they are just traits that a person of any gender can have.

The “Priming” you are talking about is actually ‘gender conditioning’ and it occurs at every level of socialization (home, school, social, work, society, etc) from birth onward. If the entire world is being told that girls do this and boys do that from day one, that is the reality the world is trying to push into existence.

Genuinely, Idk if anyone has ever told you this in a way that has actually resonated with you, but you do not need to conquer, or lead, or be strong, or be decisive, or be logical if you do not want to be. You do not have to force yourself into some prescribed box if some or all of those things do not come naturally to you, and certainly not because you were born with a penis instead of a vagina.

MarioWilson122 · 2026-04-25T01:11:12+00:00

Men can try to live only by today’s rules, but that is not really how expectations work in practice. Men are still judged by a lot of old standards: provide, protect, lead, approach, be useful, be strong, handle pressure, and take responsibility. Those expectations did not disappear just because the world modernized.

The difference is that women are much more allowed to reject their old roles while still expecting men to keep large parts of theirs. So the issue is not men selectively choosing tradition. The issue is that tradition gets applied unevenly. Men are told to adapt to modern equality when it benefits women, then still perform old masculine duties when women want security, protection, initiative, or provision.

Outside_Memory5703 · 2026-04-24T15:26:23+00:00

That is to be expected when the purpose isn’t the truth

Title	People are inconsistent about masculine traits and behaviors
Author	No_Design_465
Upvotes	16
Comments	43
Date	April 24, 2026 3:22 PM UTC (2 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1suisug/people_are_inconsistent_about_masculine_traits/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/people-are-inconsistent-about-masculine-traits-and.1578786 https://theredarchive.com/post/1578786

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