My uncles . . . are farmers in Minooka, Illinois. I grew up with them and their pickup trucks and mustaches, and to me that was masculinity: big, hairy, sweaty guys who could pick up a bus.
We have sports to thank for most of the last century’s advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or, at least, losers that hate themselves.
You’d think true masculinity was just calm and collected happiness. So alpha male that it needs not or worries not. But typically masculine characters are always fighting, and most violence comes from some agitated level of fear and anxiety.
