Wouldn't it be nice if we could think of ourselves as people first and men and women second? Why this struggle to be male? Why all this talk of crisis? If I had a son, I would advise him to be himself and the devil take what anyone else thought -precisely the same advice I give my daughters. The best men I know (including my husband and my eldest daughter's 22 year old boyfriend - a quite remarkable person, someone fully at ease in his own skin and at such an early age) are not interested in proving anything, particularly not their "masculinity". They is what they is, and are happy to allow others to be whatever they are. They do not make rules about how men and women "should" behave to be "proper" representatives of their gender. They are not threatened, you see, they do not feel that if they do not act in a certain narrow way they somehow are no longer a worthwhile man.
Just relax and be yourself, life will get better, not just for you, but for everyone around you.

ena asks 'Why all this struggle to be male' and coos that 'everything will be alright, just be yourself'.

Is this is same ena who adopts radical feminist positions in other threads? By way of example, here is a recent enaism:
'Women must fight for their rights against their husbands, their brothers, their fathers and, worst of all, their sons.'

Do you really believe that twaddle? Let me assure you that isn’t the experience of mothers of boys and nor is it the experience of sisters and wives.

One of the many deficiencies of the radical feminism promoted by Greer is that it sounds OK to immature students and women with personality problems, but it has no basis in reality. The causality asserted by Greer is ridiculous.

ena, it is a double standard to be opposed to FGM (although thankfully you are because some feminists are not, eg Ms Greer), yet not state the obvious and say that routine circumcision of boys is also a hideous religious ritual.

Women are very short-sighted if they do not see that men and boys are poorly served by the present arrangements and need their own form of liberation. They are socialised into a particular form of masculinity that prevents them achieving closeness with one another, even between father and son, brother and brother and yes, son and mother.

I suppose Western feminists need to be so dog in the manger about excluding men to maintain Greer's foolish notion that all men hate women and are always out to subjugate them. What complete nonsense!

It is so convenient for ena et al to reserve their right to be women first or people first, depending on the situation. It is a little more than suspicious, to the rest of us.

It is claimed by some archaeologists and linguists that most languages share a common background -- Indo-European. The Indo-Europeans originated on the steppes of Eurasia, were warlike, warrior-worshipping, nomadic horse riders. From the IE, came the Greeks, Trojans, Romans, Turks, Iranians, Celts, Normans....

From the IE also came an ideal of manhood in which virtue was defined as the ability to be a warrior i.e. to kill, to plunder, to appropriate females.

If true, then much of Western culture is based on this ideal.

While good for offense and defense, as in defending a nation, or attacking other nations, the ideal of masculinity we may have inherited may not be useful in all circumstances.

Over the eons since the first Kurgans raided, plundered and murdered, we have a legacy of the individual warrior standing alone, strong, decisive, willing to kill, willing to die -- to give to the young men of society. In terms of being part of a violent gang, this definition of masculinity has its limits. In terms of defense of the home, or a nation, still useful. In terms of domestic abuse and rape, no longer useful.

End, Part I

Part II:

Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe -- Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-l350:

Chap.4 The Image of the Conqueror

As the military aristocracy of Western Europe extended its lordship outwards in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, its members created not only conquest states and colonial societies, but also representations of themselves and their enterprises. These images of conqueror and conquest are enshrined in the histories and charters that their clerical brothers and cousins drew up and in the songs and stories that the aristocracy composed and enjoyed. Written memorials of this kind record the words and gestures of famous conquerors. They elaborate a terminology and rhetoric of expansionary violence. Mythic motifs recur: the first coming of the conquerors; the figure of the heroic military pioneer, perhaps a poor knight or noble, who took the gamble of foreign conquest; the superhuman exploits of the new men. What emerges from such records is the self-image of the conqueror.

The conqueror was a man with a special set of drives, certain patterns of emotion. Those classic image-makers, the early chroniclers of the Norman conquest in southern Italy (Geoffrey Malaterra, William of Apulia, Amatus of Monte Cassino), do not ascribe Norman success to numbers or to technical advantages, but to a series of psychological characteristics. The Normals formed a small island of notherners in a sea of Lombards, Greeks and Muslims, but they had mental qualities that gave them an edge. First was their energy...This is a theme particularly prominent in the pages of Malaterra, who writes of the energy of the Hauteville clan, the leaders of the Norman enterprise, of Norman chiefs who are "energetic in arms"; of men who "obtained the favour of all through their energy"; of a pre-battle harangue in which the Normans are urged "be mindful of the much praised energy of our ancestors and our race....Robert Guiscard's invasion of the Byzantine mainland in l081 showed his "great daring and knightly energy."

As well as being vigorous, the Normans are courageous, the "toughest of soldiers"...who always "fight bravely...."