Whenever I read an online article describing how a man acted in heroic or selfless fashion, or simply stuck up for old-fashioned masculine values like honour, sacrifice, stoicism or service, I go to the website’s comments section and write “Yay Men!” Often other readers will respond with a puzzled “?” I never answer the question mark. It’s too complicated to fit all my thoughts in a slender comments box.
That feeling hit me again earlier this summer when I learned about the death of Corey Comperatore, a retired township fire chief who instinctively dived in front of his wife and daughter to shield them when shots rang out at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania for presidential candidate Donald Trump. Comperatore died so the women he loved might live. He was not the only man to act in this way. According to journalist Salena Zito, who was at the rally sitting just beneath the stage when the shooting began, Trump campaign official Michel Picard instinctively pushed her to the ground as well and draped himself over her, her daughter and her daughter’s husband. In all likelihood, many other brave men reacted in the same way in those fateful seconds. Yay Men!
Quite simply, I adore the male half of our species. To me, men are the greatest thing on Earth. Better than babies, Mother Earth, race cars or race horses. I don’t agree with the idea that, “Both sexes are great in their own ways, just different.” To me, men possess so many superlative qualities – physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually – that nothing else comes close. I literally get chills when I observe their virtues in action.
Consider Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA). The first time I read about these badass dudes, I wept. BACA is an international non-profit organization that claims to have protected over 10,000 children from abuse. And in the most masculine way possible. When a child is identified as having been abused or at risk of abuse, he or she is made a full-fledged member of the organization, with a jacket and patch just like the grown-ups. This means they receive all the other benefits membership entails, including some very large men to help them out. “We’re a visible force for anyone who thinks they can come by and intimidate the child,” a BACA chapter spokesman called “Grizzly” told the Vancouver Island, B.C. newspaper Campbell River Mirror. (Members use their biker nicknames when speaking to the press.) “We’re not a vigilante organization but we will protect the child if we need to.”
Being a child member of BACA means getting motorcycle rides to school. It means having two-dozen bikers show up for a court hearing all loud and noisy in order to show their support. Sometimes BACA bikers will rumble across the country to be with a frightened child, or scare off an abuser. In the U.S., members once camped out on a child’s front yard for three months to protect him against a former abuser who had escaped from custody and vowed revenge.
The goal, says U.S. spokesman “Duke”, is to “give those children something to hang on to that is bigger than the fear.” As gruff and seemingly intimidating as any Hell’s Angels member, BACA riders (who may have police records, although not for crimes against children and only if they have been successfully rehabilitated) have sworn to lay down their lives if necessary to defend their young charges. And while there are a few women in their ranks, the overwhelming majority are men cut from a very traditional cloth of manhood. For me, that’s an irresistible combination of commitment and tenderness beneath a tough exterior of leather jackets, dark glasses, scraggly beards and the ear-crushing sounds of a revving Harley Davidson. Yay Men!
There is nothing as uplifting as a low male singing voice. Men are also loud, which has a practical use in getting others to listen, like kids for example. Mine always listened to their dad and step-dad, but rarely to me.
I had the same reaction to video evidence posted on X recently about a group of fraternity brothers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who interceded when pro-Hamas demonstrators on campus pulled down an American flag and replaced it with a Palestinian flag. As lead frat bro Guillermo Estrada explained, “It upset me that my country’s flag was disrespected in order to advocate for another.” When the protesters moved to destroy the Stars and Stripes, “my fraternity brothers and other[s] ran to hold it up, in order that it not touch the ground. People began to throw water bottles at us, rocks, sticks, calling us profane names. We stood for an hour defending the flag that so many [others] fight to protect.”
Estrada’s actions were noted by prominent American conservative journalist Heather Mac Donald, who recently observed what she called “an underappreciated aspect of the pro-Hamas campus hysteria”: that the majority of the protesters are women. “The victim ideology that drives much of academia today, with its explicit enmity to objectivity and reason as white male constructs, has a female character,” Mac Donald argued. By contrast, “Males have spearheaded recent efforts to guard the American flag against desecration.” A bunch of frat bros standing up for the flag in the face of intimidation and insults from a group of (mostly female) terrorist sympathizers. Yay Men!
Let’s Get Physical
So many physical aspects of men fill me with adulation and appreciation. First, I love the archetypally deep male voice. In synagogue, I close my eyes and listen to the men sing. I cannot get enough of the clear male tenors and harmony. There is nothing as uplifting as a low male singing voice. Men are also loud, which has a practical use in getting others to listen, like kids for example. Mine always listened to their dad and step-dad, but rarely to me.
Another benefit? Men are doers. All the main men in my life – both my first and current husband, my two daughters’ husbands and my step-son – are natural handymen and helpers. My grandsons are maturing to the same ideal. When we arrive for a visit, my oldest grandchild, aged 15, races out to the car to grab all the suitcases, without being asked. There is something magical about a man who automatically jumps up to work. And who doesn’t love a man with a hammer in his hand and nails in his mouth? My dad on the other hand could not use a screwdriver to impress British royalty, but he was still my hero. Yay Men! applies to any man – rich or poor, smart or dumb, fat or thin, religious or atheist – who lives up to the moniker. It is about character.
I love the way men dress. Specifically, I love ties. A European invention of the mid-1600s, the necktie eventually caught on everywhere as a marker of proper attire in formal settings. Today, sadly, the habit is fading. My dad wore a tie every single day to work. When he got to the hospital or office, he removed his jacket and put on a white physician’s coat, with his tie showing above the open collar. He kept it on even when he came home to eat dinner, only taking it off when CBS News’ Walter Cronkite signed off, before retiring to his den to call his patients. My first husband wore a white shirt, suit and tie every weekday when he worked for the federal government for 20 years, beginning in 1980. Along with the downtown bus he took five days a week, the tie was a physical manifestation of his responsibilities as a male breadwinner. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it was part of the job. The same goes for not complaining.
Men who join the military without being conscripted are equally impressive to me. My late former father-in-law volunteered for Canada’s army to be part of the UN forces sent to defend South Korea against Communist North Korea in the early 1950s. My current husband, at age 18 and after years in the Air Cadets, was recruited into a Royal Canadian Navy program, which quickly led to his becoming a commissioned officer. He was also an award-winning marksman. Was I impressed? Yes, I’ll marry you!
Men, by and large, age so well. My mother used to tell me she was jealous of men. Now, it’s my turn. Without all that expensive womanly fuss over their hair and face, men become more distinguished as the years pass. Wrinkles look great on them, as do thick eyebrows. An aging man is an Adonis.
Baldness is far more attractive on men than women. What I love the most about balding men is that they mostly face it with equanimity. True, some men can’t handle it. Charles the Bald, King of West Francia in the mid-800s, for example, was apparently teased about his hair loss. (Curiously, all contemporary pictures of him show him with a full head of hair. Was this just court flattery?) I am also a sucker for other male physical traits such as facial hair, defined jawlines and beer bellies. If the second of these attributes is missing, the first can cover it up. And while a beer belly can go too far, it is usually nothing a big Western belt buckle can’t fix.
If the men in my life cried as often as I did, they would be no good to me. I want a rock to cling to in a storm.
I am not naïve about the dangers bad men can pose to women and children. The very attributes that make men attractive – size, strength and even their deep voices – can be used to intimidate and harm the weak. My love and admiration for assertive men most certainly does not include violent criminals or terrorists. Just because a man is brave and handsome and knows how to use a gun, can change a flat tire in under 30 minutes in freezing temperatures, and can wield a 60-pound pipe wrench, does not entitle him to neglect or prey on the innocent and vulnerable. And while not every Yay Men! candidate will be blessed with a lifelong marriage, when a relationship ends, he will never miss a child support payment.
Calm Under Pressure
Emotional reserve and the ability to endure hardship – stoicism – are also key masculine qualities. In Murder in the Family, a true crime classic from 2000 that covers a horrifying triple-murder in Alaska, author Burl Barer describes the reactions of Paul and Cheryl Chapman after they arrive at the apartment of Cheryl’s sister and her two daughters. Fearful of what they might find, the couple enter cautiously. While Cheryl waits in the kitchen, Paul goes to the three bedrooms, where he discovers a dead, disfigured body in each one. He closes every door firmly and walks slowly back to his wife. “Don’t go down the hall,” he says to her, “they’re all dead.” As she screams and struggles, he hugs and protects her, ushering her outside where he then calls 911. It is only after the police arrive that he breaks down crying in the back seat of a cruiser. Cheryl, on the other hand, began shrieking hysterically as soon as she saw Paul’s face at the end of the hallway; she never even laid eyes on the bodies. It is a scene that says much about the emotional self-control of men versus women.
I saw my dad cry maybe three times in my life, my first husband maybe twice and my current husband once, though I thought I saw a tear forming during the singing of “Rule, Britannia” when Queen Elizabeth II died. If the men in my life cried as often as I did, they would be no good to me. I want a rock to cling to in a storm.
For centuries – millennia, actually – gaining mastery over one’s emotions was considered among the foremost objectives in a man’s adult life. That is one reason the ancient Spartans exalted battle, so that the men on both sides could be put to the ultimate test of overcoming their primal instinct to flee. “We were a singularly callous and unfeeling group of young men,” D-Day veteran Lindley Higgins once told historian Max Hastings about the June 6, 1944 landings at Normandy. It takes a particular kind of focus to charge ashore in the teeth of a ferocious machine gun and artillery barrage. Men like Higgins may have been callous and brutal, but they got the job done.
But here, too, our era’s radical feminists and the left in general have attempted to turn traditional male reserve and restraint into disorders; as if people who don’t weep, wail, flail their arms and run around at the mildest provocation aren’t emotionally authentic, or perhaps don’t even feel at all. The emotional performance has become all; and here, many women excel. Emotional stability in men is crucial not just for women individually, but for the world-at-large. It means staying calm in the face of violent and traumatic events, when men are inevitably called on to clean up everything from murders, car wrecks, fires and explosions to cats caught in trees. It also means being calm at weddings, funerals and other emotion-laden events.
Plenty of women may be smarter than plenty of men, but the geniuses of the world are almost always men.
Men, as we saw in Part I, are also hard-wired for competition and courage. Such male determination is needed every day by police, firefighters, rescue divers and aviators, mountain and desert search teams, emergency technicians, ambulance drivers, anti-terrorism special forces and so on. Despite widespread institutional efforts to bring about alleged diversity, equity and inclusion, these jobs are still filled by men for the most part – and should be. And while women may make first-rate police detectives, if I was alone and heard an intruder downstairs, my 911 call would include a demand for a male cop. They run faster, yell louder and tackle harder.
As also explained in Part I, men habitually dominate lists of superstars in a variety of occupations and fields, from the greatest scientists and explorers to the titans of business. This has nothing to do with physical characteristics, but is due to their inherent competitiveness plus the fact that men as a group exhibit greater variance in the distribution of intelligence. The average IQ for both men and women is 100, but there are more men than women at either end of the spectrum. This means plenty of women are smarter than plenty of men, but the geniuses of the world are almost always men. My own experience with technology at home backs up this assertion. I have been indebted to both my husbands for their expertise in computers, smartphones, websites and podcasts. Thanks, guys.
Male Leadership
As a religious Jew, I am a regular witness to male spirituality at home and at synagogue. The way observant Jewish men dress, learn and pray is unique and uplifting. A Chabad rabbi once told me that former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau said, “Whenever I see a Chassidic Jew, I know there is a G-d in the world.” Spiritual leaders are virtually always men, and this has been so throughout history, all the way back to Adam and Noah of the Bible’s Book of Genesis, to Abraham the patriarch of the Jewish nation and the first man to answer G-d’s calling about 4,000 years ago; and to Jesus Christ, who preached love and forgiveness and still serenely influences 2.5 billion people worldwide.
The same goes for nearly all the great temporal leaders who demonstrated a spiritual dimension, like Constantine, the 4th century Roman emperor who decriminalized Christianity; the early medieval Frankish King Charlemagne, who spearheaded the West’s cultural and intellectual revival in the late 8th century; and Roman Emperor and noted stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who took the unheard-of step of sharing power with his adopted brother even as he spent most of his time fighting invading Germanic tribes. The list goes on and on and on.
But spirituality is more than organized religion. It can also mean guardianship and leadership, and coming to terms with life and death. Remember 9/11? Remember the strong and steady leadership of U.S. President George W. Bush and New York City Mayor Rudi Guiliani? And don’t forget the 343 male firefighters and paramedics who were killed when the Twin Towers collapsed. How many of the 9/11 rescuers were women? From my research, the number is three. But that didn’t stop National Public Radio from complaining about how women rescuers had been left out of the story on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Being a man also involves self-sacrifice at the highest level. Take the tragic 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine, memorably dramatized in the HBO series Chernobyl. To stop the disaster from spreading, 400 coal miners were recruited to construct an underground relief tunnel towards the reactor. Given the high levels of radioactivity at play, everyone involved knew it was likely a suicide mission; in fact, one in four miners later died of cancer. Yet the men put their lives on the line because it was considered the best chance to save the lives of many others.
“Not that we went there to die, we went there to save lives”: During the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, Vladimir Naumov (left) was among the Ukrainian miners recruited to carve a relief tunnel into the site; one in every four of those miners later died of cancer. Shown at right, images from the 2019 HBO series Chernobyl. (Source of screenshots: Sky)When the HBO series first aired, British TV station Sky News sought out some former miners who survived the ordeal for comment. Asked what he was thinking when he was drafted for the mission, Vladimir Naumov explained, “Who else but us? Me and my fellow workers were brought up that way. Not that we went there to die, we went there to save lives.” Watching the heart-rending scenes that faithfully recreate the actual events (well, nearly faithfully; according to Naumov they never worked naked) brought me to tears.
As for conventional, secular or political leadership, history provides far more instances of outstanding men than we could possibly recount. One standout example of male determination is British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s June 4, 1940 House of Commons speech that rallied the entire British Commonwealth in the darkest days of the Second World War with those enduring, defiant words, “We shall not flag or fail…We shall never surrender.” A stirring example of sincere public contrition – something that takes enormous courage in its own right – was Pope John Paul II’s 2000 apology to every group ever hurt by the Church over the past 2,000 years including Jews, non-Catholic Christians, women, the poor and minorities. And unmatched for its spine-tingling inspiration was U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s demand, as he stood before the Berlin Wall, that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev must “Tear down this wall!”
This is only a tiny sampling of men being men, changing the world, forcing it forward, not perfectly or smoothly, but inexorably, into better and sweeter times, and leaving women to do those things that men cannot. Good, strong, thinking men seek to protect the weak, teach the ignorant, punish evil and to be free, loved and appreciated by women.
Men: A How-To Guide
Throughout this essay, I have offered my personal thoughts on the virtues and benefits of masculinity. This may not be an entirely novel view, but it has unfortunately become rare of late. Given the intrinsic, instinctual and often unspoken nature of masculinity, those seeking timeless wisdom about the meaning of manhood should look to the works of great poets, authors and other artists from earlier times. With that in mind, If by Victorian-era British poet Rudyard Kipling gets to the very heart of what it means to be a man. Published in 1910 and inspired by a failed British military raid prior to the outbreak of South Africa’s Anglo-Boer War, Kipling’s masterpiece takes the form of advice to his son to be strong, self-confident, stoic, honest, modest, courageous, tolerant and calm in a chaotic world filled with decidedly imperfect people. It remains the world’s most succinct and useful guide to being a man. Here is the complete poem:
If by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son.
Yay Men!
End of Part II. “If Women Make Better Surgeons, Do Men Make Better Firefighters? In Praise of Tonic Masculinity, Part III” by Peter Shawn Taylor will examine the evidence on the differentiation of occupations by sex.
Lynne Cohen is a journalist and non-practicing lawyer in Ottawa. She has published four books, including the biography Let Right Be Done: The Life and Times of Bill Simpson.
Source of main image: WisGuard Pics, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
