Top Ten Things Every Man Should Have - IV

8. Mastery over the male sexual impulse.
Male sexual impulse comes with being a man. Which means, first off, that you won't get far with 8. if you don't yet have 7. In other words don't use it as an excuse. But don't deny that it exists either. Admit that it's here and here to stay. Face it head on as a reality of masculinity, learn about it and learn the appropriate ways it's to be used. Second, note the word “master,” which means to conquer or overcome. Master, conquer and overcome - none is a synonym for “repress.” Or for "desexualize" either. This one's hard (pardon the double entendre) because I like the male sexual impulse and I don't want men to turn it off and become eunichs. But neither do I want male sexual desire thrust upon me uninvited (double entendre intended). This one is also har... er, difficult because of my own sexual shame. Which leaves me without any competent advice on how a man can acccomplish this mastery of which I write. All I can say is that if a guy can't look me in the eye when I'm talking to him because his own are locked onto my tits? Or he doesn't know how to say "no" to some tramp who clamps her vagina over his cock even though he loves me and doesn't want to end our loving, monogamous relationship? These men? Instead of having sexuality? Their sexuality has them. And any man who doesn't have mastery over his sexuality is, at the very least, an adolescent, at the very worst, a rapist. Most men, however, fall in the middle and are mere chumps. Adolescents, rapists, chumps - none of them are men.

9. Comfort with vulnerability - both your own and others.
Who's manlier, the guy who's only able to defend his family from attack because he's shut down all of his emotions and feels absolutely nothing, including his fear, or the man who feels his fear and defends his family anyway?

10. A personalized and comfortable definition of masculinity.
Throw all of the above away. Only if you want. Don't do it because I told you to. After all, I'm only a woman. What do I know about being a man? But I'll leave you with two thoughts. If you throw everything above away in favor of the current male model, you're being dictated to by the status quo. In the alternative, if you stretch and contort yourself to try to fit the mold of what you think women might want, again you're being dictated to, only, this time, by women. Ultimately, masculinity, like femininity, is a feeling and whatever it takes you to capture that feeling, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else, is what you need to cultivate in yourself. The fear, in our currently confused age, is that following your feelings will leave you single for many years, if not your entire life. But it's a fear worth overcoming (and is also generally unfounded). Women are given much more freedom to define themselves. Men should simply take the same amount of freedom, whether our culture grants it to them or not. Only by sticking to our individual paths will we ever finally shake out our new gender definitions. Only after our new gender definitions are in place, will the sexes ever find their way back to each other again.