What does it mean to be a man?

Answer 1

Protector of the species, provider for the mate and offspring!

Answer 2

One philosophical method is to answer a question by answering the opposite:

What does it mean to be a woman?

In other words, the world of humanity can also be divided into male/female. If one has a meaning, it differentiates from the other. So, to be a man might mean "not to be a woman" or it means to "be a man in addition to what you are"

Answer 3

To be a man as different woman? hmmm. That question reminds me of the gender war. Where does the love go when there is only judgment. It cuts both ways lady. The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative. Looking from the Will side, it is to know woman. Looking from the Judgment side, it is to know mystery.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phc2aa.htm

The Phenomenology of Mind

C: Free Concrete Mind: (BB) Spirit

A: Objective Spirit — The Ethical World
a: Law, Human & Divine: Man and Woman

'Φ 451. Although the ethical existence of the family has the character of immediacy, it is within itself an ethical entity, but not so far as it is the natural relation of its component members, or so far as their connexion is one immediately holding between individual concrete beings. For the ethical element is intrinsically universal and this relation established by nature is essentially just as much a spiritual fact, and is only ethical by being spiritual. Let us see wherein its peculiar ethical character consists.'


http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slessenc.htm#SL124n

'By this 'in-itself' in these objects, we are meant to understand what they strictly and properly are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the phrase 'thing-in-itself'. For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of an object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, in himself, is the child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of this abstract and undeveloped 'in-himself' and become 'for himself' what he is at first only 'in-himself' — a free and reasonable being. Similarly, the state-in-itself is the yet immature and patriarchal state, where the various political functions, latent in the notion of the state, have not received the full logical constitution which the logic of political principles demands.'

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/li_terms.htm

Answer 4

To be a man means think and act like man. In other words do to think like a child and act like a woman.

Answer 5

Don’t even think after 8 years you can stop givin it to me like we just got together! Give it to me manly! Like you have to have it now!
It’s ok to carry a keg of lite Saturday but never ok to carry a load of light clothes Sunday.
Don’t drink the last Miller if your at your neighbor’s house, or a party!!
Never leave the remote with your wife when you think your watching a dirty movie in private!
Presents wrapped in latex under the tree, should be opened first!
Don’t pull your girls finger in public.
Never drink Miller Lite out of a wine glass, even if it is the only glass left.
Never wear another man’s underwear.
Never remove your Miller Lite from the fridge to put your leftovers in

Answer 6

First I want to say very good questions. I think that in today's society does allow or produce "men" as "men." We all think of men to be the following: strong, brave, unconcerned with appearance or aging, provider of the family, some what unemotional, intelligent, demanding, aggresive, cause and goal oriented, moral, trustworthy. But today this is not the case. Our society is now teaching the "pretty boy" to thrive, not men.

Answer 7

Confidence, decisiveness, perseverence, integrity...
and having wisdom & strength (of will) certainly helps realizing those attributes.

I see them as male characteristics that women can just as rightly own. Yin and Yang creates balance. I'm a human first, man second.

Peace

Answer 8

It can have multiple meanings actually - it can mean either to stand up for yourself and your ethics instead of cowing down to those of others, it can also mean a jolting reminder to you to start showing more of your masculine side and way of thinking, yet another definition of it could be the tried-and-tested slogan for the armed forces recruitment agencies worldwide.

Answer 9

An allegory

I stood upon the hill, in a field of green, the valley quiet below.
Clouds of misery mounted behind the silent, distant hills.
Toward the zenith they swiftly grow
until the over arching sky, it fills
Surly black, with lightening flash, they internally gleam.
Like angry claws they reach to embrace me upon this hill of green.
The wind rose to bluster as the storm descended with a scream.
With a violent cannonade of blinding, flashing light, it breaks
as thunder rumbles and tumbles, the world shakes.
The wind escalates to a howl, delivering its punishing blow.
Against a driving, blinding barrage, I stubbornly strove.
The storm flogged me unrelentingly from head to toe.
Still, I would not yield to this wind driven rain of woe
Upon this hill I stood, in this field of green, a man.
To yield unto the fearful storm of woe was not my plan,
although, the storm crashed and raged, lashing me with its furious flows.
I could not, would not, yield to its mighty blows.
I stand as a rod, unbending before the maelstrom as only I can
I am here, and here I stand. I will not budge, for I am man.
Ere long, the storm slowly relented its fearful mean
I was free to leave this hill, this field of green,
if I chose.
I had survived the this storm of woes.

To live, to exist, to go on breathing that is all one can expect of mother nature if we can endure her storms. To some extent this is also true of the storms of men. Sometimes, survival is an achievement in and of itself.

Answer 10

"Doing whats right when doing whats right is the hardest thing to do" John Wayne
This reminds me of a scene in Kung Fu, with David Carridine where he asks someone if that is the only measure of being a man, that being aggression I think or something.