Pretense of Masculinity

“Human life is radical, constituent insecurity,” writes Julian Marias (Metaphysical Anthropology). “It consists in having to do something, in a frequently hostile, always problematical, and largely latent circumstance, and in not knowing what to hold to. This is man’s condition: his insecurity, his neediness, his ignorance, his indecision, his helplessness” (154).

Yet the specific quality of the male is strength: “If he does not have it he feels a ‘lack,’ feels inferior to his condition.” His strength might be physical, but can also consist in “cunning, intelligence, prestige, experience, authority, aplomb, capacity of expression, aptitude for revealing – or feigning – those faculties, by word and facial expression” (155-6).

Marias stresses the paradox: “Man is ignorant . . .weak . . . threatened.” Yet “man’s pretension – the male’s – consists in the exact opposite: knowledge, strength, power, security” (156).

Does this make masculine strength a deception? Marias answers “Yes and no.” If a man “considers his pretension good” and “feigns being what he claims to be, his reality is a fiction, an imposture, a falsehood; the person becomes a mask” (156).

But the pretension might also be “a project, an effort, an attempt,” and in that case “there is no deception.” Rather, “pre-tension is a forward tension, in which the ‘arriving’ person is advancing toward the future, is becoming. . . . The male is not strong, wise, powerful, secure; he is something more seriously and more humanly interesting and delicate: he has to be so.” The issue isn’t ability: Whether he can be or no, “he needs to be so, and the possibility or impossibility are unimportant in the face of human need” (156).

Masculinity is a matter of becoming, which requires honest recognition of fundamental weakness, ignorance, insecurity.