Tetyana Bykova is Discover Ukraine's leading expert in Japanese language and culture. Tanya enjoys teaching Japanese, Russian and English internationally. Learning and teaching languages has always been her passion. Tanya's articles provide an insight into the specifics of international relationships, the nature of learning, foreign languages learning, and the advantages of online education.
The article "Mens Psychology - What Is It?" was written to introduce chatroom visitors of Discover Ukraine Network into a discussion about relationships and international dating.
What is it – men’s psychology? As a woman I am very curious. When I was a little girl I used to play with the boys in the yard of our house and I enjoyed that so much! I would climb the trees like them and keep telling to all that I should have been born to be a boy really. And I also used to think that to communicate with boys is much easier for me because they are easy-going and say directly what they think. Though, I have my best friends among the girls now and I would never give this friendship away. Anyway, today is not our – girl’s topic. Today we are talking about you, gentlemen.
So, what does it mean to be a man? What are the men’s main roles and what is masculinity, or machismo?
According to the Merriam-Webster online, the English word machismo is derived from Spanish macho, which means "male (animal)" or, when used metaphorically, "virile".
Janet Saltzman Chafetz (1974) describes seven areas of masculinity in general culture:
- Physical – virile, athletic, strong, brave – can be concerned about appearance and aging.
- Functional – breadwinner, provider for family.
- Sexual – sexually aggressive, experienced.
- Emotional – should freely express oneself.
- Intellectual – logical, intellectual, rational, objective, practical.
- Interpersonal
Other personal characteristics – success-oriented, ambitious – must be proud of one’s self and able to think on one’s own.
Camille Paglia has commented that she believes that women are born, but men must “become”. In other words, masculinity is not something that is granted by birth but is something that must be earned in adult life. And when a man becomes a father he teaches his son to be a man, to earn this grant which will help the boy to lead his heroic life.
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung argued that the father is very important to the male child’s development of identity. In his book Absent Fathers, Lost Sons Canadian Jungian analyst Guy Corneau writes that the presence of the father’s body during the son’s developmental phases is integral in the son developing a positive sense of self as a male. Corneau also argues that if the son does not develop positively towards the father’s male body, then the son runs the risk of developing negatively towards all bodies. Sigmund Freud argued that in the son’s mind, the father’s body represents the law, and that the role of the father’s body is to break the attachment the son feels to the mother and by extension his own anima.
Of course, I cannot get into the men’s mind and see how it all works, but it seems to me that being a father makes our dear men feel even more like a man. Does it?
And finally, I came to the point from each all this started. Once I received an E-mail from my friend where she sent me an interesting article titled The Male Psychology. And here I got stuck! I mean, when I read it a lot of questions attacked my mind. And so I decided to ask you for help and know all the truth about men. Well, I want to assure you, dear gentlemen that we are going to hold another chat room about women so that you do not think this unfair.
Unfortunately, I do not know the name of the author and thus cannot place it here.
The Male Psychology
It is common for a man to think that he is always right and strong, independent and self-confident and he must always know the right answers to all questions. Ask a man to tell about himself and he would tell you about his work and career (a woman being asked the same question would first of all tell about her marriage state [family]). A man is sure he costs as much as he is paid. The more successfully his career grows the higher his self-esteem is. Men trip each other up, struggle to hide their weak points and demonstrate advantages, they dream to be “the top dog”. Men reaffirm their domination every time, sometimes even do not realize that: they are stand instead of being sitting while having a business negotiation, yelp when giving orders… And you do not accept such behaviors as a personal action against a coworker. For men the aggression is the key to success. It is brought up in men from the childhood (“You are a boy, you must be brave, determinate and strong!”). Moreover, the aggression is there on the genetic level. Everything that puts the image of a powerful man under doubt, can cause a negative reaction or even stress. Since man tend to keep the emotions inside, all these stresses and failures gather and with time destroy someone’s psychic from inside. The failures at work and the worst among these – the fact of loosing a job, for men may mean a disaster. When they fail men feel as losers, spanked, doomed to plod along after the winners all their life, picking up the crumbs off their plates. It does not matter that he has a bank account, some property or a wife who actually works and earns money as well. All this is not accounted when a man lost his job because he feels as if he were on his own “Titanic”. For men there may only be success or failure but not a case when he can say:”Well, I tried but unfortunately could not do this”. A try that did not work is equal to a failure. Men demand everything or nothing! The majority of men can hardly control their temper and refrain from exposing their anger and that is the reason why the men are in majority among the criminals and mentally ill people. The personal “territory” of a man is not limited by his house, it is also his car, his garage, his seat in the cinema, eventually his wife. That is why men so painfully accept cheating of wife (while they are not perfect themselves). A man considers a wife’s lover as a male-concurrent pretending to capture his territory. And if wife betrays him not in a hotel or somewhere outside but just in their bedroom – that is like a disaster! A concurrent got into the holy of holes and he, the husband, could not defend it and thus he is weak and everybody is going to know about it soon and all his concurrent will bite him to death!
One of the brightest differences between men and women is that the man is mostly interested in result when reaching the goal. A man is interested in life and the truth in it. Men are good at dissolving hard technical and scientific tasks; they quickly make the right decisions in emergencies. The majority of men are much better in facing critical or dangerous situations and finding the way out to the end. The logic of men is based on facts. For convincing they use facts and proofs.
By his nature man thinks of a woman’s body first of all, of how he can get it but not of a romantic relationship. This is a matter of physiology and silly are women should not be offended by such behavior, by the fact that “all men are the same” and their “not being serious to life” and that they meet a woman, get what they want and leave. If men want to leave they do it easily. On the other hand, men get mad towards the women who date around too long. This, first of all, affects the men’s self-esteem and therefore their inferiority complex grows deeper. Men, unlike women, always think about the age and beauty. They prefer young and pretty women. The older and not good-looking women do not attract attention. What attracts men in women most of all is evident femininity. Yet women are more often attracted by the financial side.
What is it that makes men’s and women’s logics different?
Why is that sometimes they can hardly understand each other?
As we know, human brain has two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is responsible for logic. Also for consistency, rationality, love to facts, and it is outside world-oriented. It is rather pragmatic and it’s strong side is speech, language. It is usually called the “masculine” half of brain, for traditionally, men seem to be using the left hemisphere more effectively than women.
On the other hand, there is a right half of brain which is more inventive, a bit irrational, sensitive and tends to visual and comprehensive perception. The beauty and aesthetics are of great interest for it. It is responsible for emotions and the body’s state and it is usually called the “feminine” half of brain.
Women seem to rely more on the work of their right hemisphere; they also tend to use both parts of the brain to another, while men commonly tend to rely mostly on the work of the left part of their brain, but not both of them at the same time.
These facts mean that representatives of different sexes use different strategies in their mind work, which certainly makes their behavior different. These facts do not tell us that someone is better and someone is worse…
To be continued…
Join us in the coming chat room, on the 26th of May, Saturday, and we will hold a discussion about what is true and what is not always the way it is written in the article of unknown author.
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