This is why I mistrust the intentions of this blog. Hemmingway is not a man worth emulating in any way except his literary abilities. He is in fact, the poster-boy for the negative side of masculinity. He was an angry, wife-beating drunk – and grotesquely unpleasant to any others around him.

While there’s no downside to learning boxing (if you can control your temper) or fishing (if you’re not fishing for endangered species), Hemmingway’s “accomplishments” of killing large animals with powerful weapons, going rogue on the battlefield, catastrophic drinking, and suicide are not the best example of how to be a positive, masculine, man in the 21st C. He represents the reason masculinity had to be re-evaluated.

I suspect what this blog is really about is justifying the old masculinity, not trying to create a new one. Who’s next? Ancient warriors who raped their conquered enemies wives? Mike Tyson? Cecil John Rhodes?

If this blog is really about a new, sympathetic masculinity – maintaining what’s good about masculinity without the associated brutality – then draw a line.

I read this in the comments over at artofmanliness, an while most? Men behaved this way in the early days, doesn’t necessarily make it cool an groovy either, an I cant help to think the site glorifies characters like this more then often an it makes me squirm to read the comments with all the wows an what a man or I never new how great he was, an they couldn’t really be further from the truth. I do like the site, its just at times I think they get it incredibly wrong.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.