HOW TO BE A MAN (THIRD EDITION)

Few months ago, I published the first and second editions of HOW TO BE A MAN. This third edition focus on men within the age bracket, 14 to 30.

Dear young men: The old stereotypes of what it is to be a 'man' are a load of rubbish. This contemporary is absolute diametric to what ws obtainable from ancient men.

Boys to men: there’s nothing wrong
with traditional ‘manly’ things, until
masculinity is used to exclude people. Still, if you are male, you will be forced to relate to this increasingly irrelevant
concept of “being a man” in some way or another.
Even though we humans are (thankfully) moving on from seeing ourselves as two distinct kinds of creatures, there’s nothing
wrong with being a man and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with doing traditionally “manly” things. Don’t be embarrassed by them. If you want to watch football on
Sunday, or train in mixed martial arts, or grow a handlebar moustache, or buy a
pickup truck, make no apologies. No, there’s nothing wrong with masculinity – until it’s used as a gauge for measuring and excluding people, whether they’re
women or other men, or people who don’t identify as either.
Regardless of whether masculinity appeals to you, either as something to embody or to simply admire in others, understand that it’s purely a matter of personal taste
and has nothing to do with personal
value.

Don’t worry about how your sexual
experience (or absence of it) stacks up. At about age 14, boys feel like they have to start bullshitting about their sexual exploits in order to survive. The pressure on these kids is just too great for them to
speak frankly about it. Ignore what
everyone says about their sex lives. They are lying, all of them, at least a little. And the kids who are actually doing it in their
tweens probably aren’t doing it very well, and they’re probably not people you’ll want to trade places with in 10 years.

Get good grades and make some
friends, but don’t worry about being
cool.

All young men will encounter the
“seduction community” at some point. Beware. While there is some genuinely well-intentioned dating and self-improvement advice to be found there, so much of the discussion is absolutely
riddled with misogyny. It isn’t always overt, but it’s always there. If you start referring to women as “targets”, you crossed the line a long time ago. Think of
women as being just like you, rather than some other species. You don’t learn to approach women, you learn to talk to people. Those forums are filled with
young men who never learnt how to talk to other people. When you’re 30, come back and read this stuff. It will make you sad.

If there’s a real secret to “seduction”, here it is: always be building a life that turns you on, represent yourself as
honestly and straightforwardly as you can and have conversations with a lot of people. That’s it. Connections will happen. If you’re bad at those things, give
yourself as long as it takes to get good at them. You have time.
On the matter of “sluts” – there is none. Nobody is a slut. The number of sexual partners a person has had, or is rumoured to have had, is a) none of your business
and
b) indicates, by itself, absolutely
nothing about the character of that
person.
If you want to know what kind of
person someone is, talk to them. If you believe in personal freedom you cannot believe in sluts.

Failing to “fit in” at school is a good
thing. Wise and smart people find it appalling to mind wt mediocrity of nowadays youth.

Respect women, but dont allow them to take total control. Just let their opinion count....

This expectation – that power over others is a viable, noble path to happiness – lingers in the way we talk, in the way we define manhood, in the expectations males place on each other. This is especially influential on high-school and
college-age males, because they do not yet feel like men and they believe that they’re supposed to. The forces of civilisation and education are very slowly
discrediting this stone-age approach to life and dismantling the power imbalance that has grown around it. For us to get there, young men need to understand as early in their lives as possible that men have a long history of
getting their way for no good reason. This advantage comes, of course, at the expense of fellow human beings, and we need to learn to be aware of it and
eliminate it wherever we see it.

Is it your fault? No. But whether you want it or not, you’ve inherited the responsibility of creating a new answer to the ancient question of what it means to be a man. The old answers are no good.

AWUCHI, C.N.

FTC