"Be a Man"

I am male.  I am 33 years old.  I am married to a woman, and we have five children.  I am not a "man."  In the live action version of the movie "The Jungle Book" (the 1994 one), Mowgli says, as he flees from a British party in India, "I am not a man.  And I am not an animal."  Having very recently experienced what is the common human cultural ideal of a "man," he was determined that he was not one.  I am not a man in the same way that Mowgli, in the movie, rejected being a man.

In my experience, the phrase "Be a man" is spoken almost exclusively by those do not respect others.  These "men" swear when the don't get what they want, and they constantly try to dominate others.  The last time someone told me to be a man, he had just gone back on his word to my wife (and had lied to both of us a few days before that), he had proceeded to swear at me when I repeated what he had told her, and then he told me to "Be a man."  I hung up the phone.  In my head, I thought to myself, "If this is what I man is, I will never be a man."

Being a man is all about domination.  The "man" in a relationship is the one who dominates it.  The person who "wears the pants" (which is just a veiled way of saying "the man") is the one in control.  The phrase "A man's home is his castle" refers the idea that in his own home, the man dominates.  While some people use the phrase "Be a man" to mean "take responsibility," I have never heard a person use this phrase who was actually a responsible male human.  They are almost exclusively people who are using the phrase to dominate others.  What it really means is, "If you don't do what I want you to do, then you are an inferior human being."  I don't buy that, and I will not be a man, if it means allowing myself to be dominated or to dominate others.  I am a free human being, and I believe in freedom for all human beings (at least, so long as they are not a serious threat to other humans).  As such, I will not be a man, and I will not submit to men.  No social pressure to "Be a man" is going to convince me that it is right to dominate others or allow myself to be dominated.