3 Masculinities Every Man Should Know (and Only 1 You Should Follow)

Do you think masculinity is a good thing or a bad thing? In today’s culture, masculinity gets all kinds of labels — from toxic masculinity to woke masculinity, MAGA masculinity, feminist masculinity, and more. It’s no wonder so many men feel lost trying to figure out what it really means to be a strong, reliable man today.

In this episode of The Manhood Tribes Show, we break down the three major categories of masculinity and explain why only one offers a truly fulfilling and meaningful way forward. If you’ve ever wondered where Jesus fits into the conversation about manhood, you’re in the right place — because He is the ultimate example of real masculinity.

We’ll discuss how toxic masculinity misuses strength and honor, why woke masculinity misses the mark, and how biblical masculinity — rooted in the five marks of manhood (strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance) — sets a powerful and inspiring standard for men to follow.

00:00 Introduction: The Masculinity Debate
01:21 Series Overview and Jesus' Relevance
02:34 Toxic Masculinity Explained
08:30 Woke Masculinity: A New Perspective
17:05 Biblical Masculinity: The Ideal Path
19:25 Conclusion and Community Engagement

💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

Do you think masculinity is a good thing or a bad thing? Depending on how you answer that question might reveal a lot about where you're landing in our culture right now in terms of all the different debates about what it means to be a man. We've got everything from toxic masculinity to modern masculinity, to woke masculinity, to MAGA masculinity and progressive masculinity. There's even. Feminist masculinity. There's all kinds of different versions of what it means to be a man. It's no wonder that we guys are having a hard time figuring out what is our pathway towards actually being a quality, strong, reliable man in our culture Right now, it's hard to figure out, but today what I would like to do is break it down into three basically categories. But what I would like to do today is break it down essentially into three big categories that I think all of these definitions can kind of fit under. And then I want to talk about why I think only one of those categories is actually one that we should lean into. So let's do that today here on the Manhood Tribes Show. My name's Don. I'm your host here at Manhood Tribes, and I'm really glad that you're joining us. We are in the midst of a series where we're talking about Jesus as the man who is the most worth following. Now, if you, this is your first episode in the midst of this series, you might be wondering, how does Jesus tie into what I just talked about? Well hang in there. You're gonna see in a little bit, uh, how all of that is relevant, but. This series is so helpful because I think it's doing a few things for us. It's helping us to peel back the layers about what our world thinks about men and what it means to be a man in our world today. But it also is helping us kind of take a second look at Jesus and to really examine him as a man and to say. Was he worth imitating? Was he the kind of man that we actually would want to be? What about him makes him manly? And is that something that I would want to pursue in my life as well? Now, I've argued, as you probably know, for most of the episodes before this one, that yes, I think he is the man who is most worth following, and I do think there are things about him that we need to learn how to imitate as men. But we're gonna talk about why that is. Today and why the versions of masculinity that our culture often presents to us don't really measure up to the kind of masculinity that Jesus is offering. So let's talk about those three big categories of masculinity. The first one that we're gonna talk about is a buzzword that you've probably heard a number of times. Maybe you've understood what it means, or maybe you haven't, but you've probably just repeated it because it's sort of in the culture right now. And that first version is toxic masculinity. Now when most people talk about toxic masculinity, they're usually meaning some kind of form of overly aggressive, macho, kind of ridiculous behavior masculinity. Some guy who's out to prove his ego, he wants to show off how big his biceps are, or how big his dick is, or how many women he can get, or you know, whoever knows what. It's all about stroking his own ego, right? Toxic masculinity is manhood that is done for the benefit of that man. It's really all about getting whatever he can gain, and I think in some ways the culture has been right to critique that version of masculinity. But where this conversation has often gone in our culture today as well, is to label. All of masculinity as toxic to say that anything about being a man ultimately ends in that form of aggressive, egocentric style of manhood. And so therefore, we really should just throw the baby out with the bath water. Like let's just get rid of the whole masculine project. There's really no point in it. It only ends in bad things, and so can't we just do without it? Can't we curtail men into something softer, something different, something very not. Man, for the sake of the betterment of society, this is where the conversation has gone. Now, I don't think this is particularly helpful, right? I mean, men make up half of the population. It's not gonna be to anybody's benefit that we just get rid of men and masculinity in general. To be sure though, there is some good in calling out the things about masculinity that might not be good and trying to say, Hey, these things. Aren't helpful to the world. They aren't helpful for the betterment of society, and can we call men towards something better than that, towards being something better so that they can mature, that we as men can mature, but that the world can benefit from our maturity as well. Toxic masculinities stays stuck in some very young and early forms of what it means to be a man and never really grows up into that kind of maturity. So if you have followed along on this channel before you know that I talk a lot about what I call the five marks of manhood. Those are the, those are the things that I believe every man should possess in order to demonstrate what it means to be a man. So those five marks are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. Now, here's the thing about all of those traits is that as long as you are demonstrating those things, you are showing what it means to be a man. You may not be doing them, you may not be doing them in ways that are good or particularly beneficial for others, but you still can be a man even if you're living those things out in ways that aren't very good. So let's take toxic masculinity as an example. Toxic masculinity, I think is really kind of a combination of strength and honor that has sort of gone off the rails. Okay, so a man who is kind of living out toxic masculinity. Is trying to use his strength for his own gain. He's building up his body probably in some way so that he looks good, he looks attractive, and he can use his body in order to be able to get what he wants. You know, whether that has to do with women or sex or whatever. Uh, maybe it just has to do with intimidation. He can kind of throw his weight around literally and be able to get what he wants from other people. Using his strength for his own benefit is kind of at the core of toxic masculinity. But then it's also in combination with the idea of honor that has gone wrong as well. Honor, as you may remember, is really all about doing right by your peers, and if you're surrounding yourself with a group of men who really value that kind of behavior and are gonna praise you for it, you know, they're counting up. The notches on your bedpost and they're celebrating your body count and maybe even trying to beat yours, and that's kind of the essence of what your relationship looks like, is who can celebrate the most sexual conquest, or who can get the flashiest new car, or who can you know? Develop the biggest social media following by doing the RAST things, you know, whatever it is, like however that behavior exhibits itself. If you are surrounding yourself with a group of men who are praising you for those kinds of things, you're still being worthy of honor. You're getting honored by those group of men. It's just that that group of men has chosen to honor things that aren't particularly good Men crave honor, and we will take it in whatever form we can get it in, and if we're not getting it for particularly good things, but it becomes easy for us to get it for bad things. We'll get it for the bad things because honor is what's important to us. So in toxic masculinity, you've got men who are using their strength for their own benefit, and they're surrounding themselves with other men who are praising them for doing that. And that becomes a lethal combination. It becomes something that really does send men over the edge in doing the wrong kinds of things. In the name of being men, being cool, being popular, being. Masculine or macho, you know, whatever you want to call it. All of that is what toxic masculinity is really wrapped up in. Now, again, that doesn't mean that they're not being men. It just means that they're not being particularly good men. They still qualify for the definition of manhood. They're just using their manhood in ways that aren't very good. Okay? So toxic masculinity is what that looks like. It's taking strength and honor in some directions that I don't think are really good for us as men, and certainly aren't good for society. But now on the other side of the equation, we've got what I'm gonna call woke masculinity. Now woke masculinity is kind of a more recent term, but I think it summarizes pretty well what's going on on the other side of the manhood equation right now, woke masculinity is really based around the idea of trying to belittle yourself as a man. For what aggressive or abusive or oppressive manhood culture has done to just about every other aspect of society. So as a man, you should recognize that you have been an oppressor or an aggressor to multiple other groups of people, whether that's women, whether that's racial minorities, whether that's members of the L-G-B-T-Q community, whether that's religious minorities, doesn't really matter. Pretty much anybody who's not a man and not in the majority of the culture is somebody that majority men have oppressed. At some point in time, this is what the woke culture would really claim, and so woke masculinity is really all about recognizing that I as a man. Am an oppressor. I am an aggressor, and so what I need to do is shame myself. I need to put myself down and get myself out of the way so that all these other people and groups who I have victimized can now be held up and that they can be celebrated and honored for all of the ways that they have been victimized. Now, there are some things about woke culture that actually do sound kind of good. There's things that have happened to every one of those minority groups that have been awful and horrific, and very often those things have come at the hands of men in the majority culture. And there should be a way for our culture to be able to acknowledge and to show compassion and empathy, and even pursue justice for those who have been victimized by a culture that is off balance. All right? Those are things that we can recognize and that we can say should be good. But woke masculinity where this. Where this movement really kind of pushes into manhood is by saying that we're, we're not just doing this for the sake of celebrating these people who have been victimized. We're doing this for the sake of really repressing you as a man. You have been in the lead place for too long and you've used that lead place. For things that haven't been good, and so it's time that you now shift gears from being the oppressor or the aggressor to now being the victim so that other people can take the place that you used to hold. It's really just a rearranging of oppressors and victims and giving power. Taking power from one group and giving it to the other so that they can misuse it as well. This never works well, and the history of human society never has the shifting of power that way actually benefited society. And yet woke culture absolutely wants to see that happen, especially to men. They want to see us as oppressors and aggressors, and that now we need to be repressed or suppressed and victimized ourselves. This is not good. This doesn't benefit anybody. Again, though, I think this is where we can look at the five marks of manhood and kind of see does this even qualify as manhood and you know, if so, how is it going off the rails in some ways that we don't think would actually be beneficial either to us as men or to the culture at large. I do think there are some things about woke masculinity that qualify as manhood. It's just that we're using some of those things in the wrong way. For example, in the area of strength, I think that woke masculinity would kind of say that men need to eliminate strength, especially as it relates to physical strength. It's physical strength in particular that has allowed men to be oppressors and aggressors. And so men need to stop developing their physical strength because they only tend to use it in wrong ways Now. This is entirely wrongheaded. This is where Mo woke masculinity actually kind of falls off the grid a little bit in terms of even being a version of manhood. If you remove strength from manhood, you're eliminating kind of the essence of what it means to be a man. I. So this is more a denial of manhood even than, uh, a, a place where we're saying this is the wrong way to pursue manhood. This is actually almost wrong altogether, but there are some other marks of manhood that, uh, woke masculinity does try to pursue. Just maybe pursues them in the ways that I don't think are very good. Take courage. For example, the woke movement would have men use their courage as a way to say it is brave of me as a man. To shame myself because of the way that men have victimized all kinds of other groups around us. Okay? So the courage that I'm meant to display is the way that I choose to shame and belittle and lower myself. I make myself not only less than, but actually like humiliated in front of all these other groups so that they can be celebrated. I need to get out of the way so that they can be lifted up. Eh, I don't know. I'm not sure that I really buy this one. Right. Okay. I I get the point that like, uh, we, we need to be elevating people who have been held down for too long. All right. I can, I can go along with that, but to say that the way that we have to do that. Is by pressing down another group of people. I, I just think this is where we, we get into wrong ideas of what it means to elevate others. We don't elevate anybody by forcing people downward. That doesn't, that doesn't ever go well. It only creates a. Different kind of imbalance that is eventually going to result in the same kind of switching of the scales that we're trying to experience right now. And it doesn't end up doing long-term good. So I think there's gotta be a better way of doing that. Courage doesn't have to look like shaming yourself in order for it to be courage. But I also think there's a big miss in the area of woke masculinity when it comes to honor. And that's because within woke masculinity, the goal is to honor those who are victims. We are meant to uphold them because of what has happened to them. And now look, that's the really key thing there, is that someone would be deserving of honor, not because of something they've done, but because of something that has been done. To them. Now I can agree that people who have been victimized, who have been on the low end of the totem pole and culture for a long time, there is room for us to be able to show compassion to them, show empathy to them, even pursue justice. For them and at times even to celebrate them, to figure out how we can lift them up. I think all of those things are acceptable, but to honor them because they have been victims is trying to actually celebrate them for something that isn't really part of who they are. It's making their identity. Be about what has been victimized instead of tying it more towards what kind of people they actually are. Honor is meant to be about celebrating someone else for the ways that they are doing right by the culture around them. And just being a victim isn't enough to be said, for doing right by the culture around us. No one needs to be celebrated simply for being a victim. Shown compassion. Yes, given the opportunity for justice, yes, but honored. And celebrated and exalted for being a victim. I think that's pushing it too far. I think that's taking honor to a place that we don't really want it to go to. But that's exactly where Woke Masculinity tries to take it is to say that we should honor people for being victims, and that, I think, becomes a real problem. Honor ought to be tied to. The kind of people that we are and the kinds of things that we do. And so as men, we want to talk about the things that are really worthy of being honored and being a victim is not something that's worthy of being honored. Okay. I think I've made that point. I hope that has been helpful in demonstrating why. Even as we look at our five marks of manhood, we can kind of see that these competing versions of masculinity in our culture right now really don't serve us well. They don't hold up what it means to be a man in a way that any of us should look at and go, yeah, that's what I wanna do. That's what I wanna pursue. But I do think that there is one version of masculinity that we need to try to follow, and that's what I've been calling biblical masculinity as a part of this series. Now, in the last video that I did, I did a whole thing on what biblical masculinity is really all about. And so I want rehash all of that right now. You can go back and watch episode. 50 to get a better idea of biblical masculinity. But the point is that biblical masculinity isn't simply about being a churchgoer, and it isn't about being a good husband and a good father who does all of the right moral kinds of things in life. That's kind of a subverted version of what it means to be a biblical man. A Biblical man really just means that you are living out those five marks of manhood in the same way that Jesus tried to live them out. We put Jesus as our ultimate allegiance, and then he directs our path on how we live out all of those other things. And in doing that, we really begin to get an understanding of what manhood is really all about. We find Manhood's biggest fulfillment in our ability to use our manhood for the sake of others. Our strength is meant for others. The skills that we cultivate and develop are meant to be for others' benefit. We show up with courage to protect and to defend and to lift up others when they really need our help. We honor others because of the ways that they are doing things, the way that Jesus would do those things. And we show our allegiance to Jesus and find that our entire path as a man gets ordered rightly when we've got our allegiance in the right place. So all of this is really what it looks like to be a biblical man. And I think that for all of us, that's the one masculinity that we really do need to pursue. That's what we need to go after because that's where we're going to find our biggest fulfillment and our biggest sense of meaning as we seek to live out what it means to be a man. I. Don't settle for cheap versions of masculinity. Jesus offers something real and something challenging, and something that is absolutely worth your life. So do what you can to follow him and to find that path towards biblical masculinity. All right. If you've enjoyed this content, I would love it if you would like this video and subscribe to the channel down below. It will help me to be able to get this content from men in front of lots of other men as well, and help us to be able to grow as a community. If you would like to find out how you are doing as a man, I've got a free resource for you that I would love for you to check out. It's a quiz that I've put together called How Manly Are You? And it will help you figure out how you're doing in the five marks of manhood. So if you go to manhood tribes.com/manly, you can download that quiz today and find out how you're doing as a man. Now, to wrap up the video, I would love for you to engage with me in the comments down below. Just put something in the comments about. Which version of masculinity do you see being most common around you? How do you see the men around you living out these kinds of things that we've talked about today? I look forward to seeing what you have to say and interacting with you, and I'll see you again next time here on The Manhood Tribe Show.