Return of Kings Channels Fictional Philosopher Shan Yu*

I was skimming over the home page over at Return of Kings (because I am just that bored at the moment) and I saw an article titled “Every Man Has A Breaking Point.” To be honest, I was expecting it to be a domestic violence apologists piece of victim-blaming. The argument that in the face of an annoying woman, every man has a point at which he can’t take the nagging any more so he lashes out. I was surprised to discover that it was actually an article about men pushing themselves to their limits. Here are the opening lines:

Pressure reveals the man.  Take a man, any man, and subject him to extreme stress.  Subject him to sleep deprivation or fear, exhaustion, and the uncertainties of climate and personal safety, and you will see the soul of the man.  This is what I always liked about extreme stress.  It reveals the true essence.

There is a lot wrong with this sort of philosophy. It conceptualises unnecessarily risky behaviour as somehow transcendental and spiritual, for one thing. The example from the U.S. war in Vietnam that the Return of Kings article uses glorifies being pushed to a state of PTSD. The article twists a tragic story about the way in which war brutally tears people apart, both physically and mentally, into a story about a man heroically reaching and then going past his limit and reaching a level of transcendence.

Because risky behaviour is conceived of as desirable, it encourages men to always take the riskier option, to keep placing themselves in high pressure situations, all so they can better understand who they really are. The converse of this is that if a man isn’t living a risky life, then he may feel as though he isn’t living authentically. Or if a man is feeling the pressure, but so much so that he needs help in dealing with it, this sort of philosophy creates expectation that he will tough it out. And then you end up with all sorts of problems, from nonsense like the Man Games to more serious effects like men who don’t seek psychiatric help when they need it.

If pressure reveals the man, then every time a man is faced with unbearable pressure, his reaction to it is subject to judgement. To simply survive a stressful and dangerous situation is not enough; a man must prove himself in the face of extreme stress in order to prove that he is really a masculine man.

That’s a problem. A culture in which men are asked to prove who they really are is highly problematic. For one thing, it helps create a culture that rewards violent, risky men. More than that, though, the pressure on men to prove their masculinity is real is part of what creates a culture of misogyny, in the first place.

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As an addendum: I’m not arguing that pushing one’s limits is inherently a bad thing, either. Stepping outside your comfort zone, so to speak, is definitely valuable and can certainly reveal aspects of yourself that you might not have otherwise been aware of. But it doesn’t reveal your “true” self, just otherwise hidden pieces of your self. And stepping outside your comfort zone doesn’t have to include extreme physical danger. And tying all of this to masculinity is extremely problematic.

*For anyone wondering who the heck Shan Yu is, click here.