A wise man in my life loves the phrase "everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to do the dishes." The point, I think, is that true strength and virtue are not usually found in grand acts of heroism, but in daily, deeply unglamorous acts of sacrifice and service for those around you.
I also think we need a revitalization of the idea of *brotherhood,* which in its truest form, is the antithesis of the everything-is-a-competition and everyone-is-an-enemy sort of masculine dynamic that Christman describes. A true brotherhood directs our expression of strength and power away from each other and towards a common purpose.
This is where I get to brag about my dad! He comes from a dysfunctional --- loving to the best of its ability, but still dysfunctional --- family, and he is the softest man I know. He's had to become that on purpose --- he talks a lot about how he has a terrible temper, and in his youth didn't restrain it at all, but we don't see it. He's become that good at controlling himself. He does dishes, and makes food when our mom is sick (he used to work in a restaurant, too, so it's actual cooking, not microwaved stuff), and has come home from a long day at work to a household of crying women and set down his bag and come immediately to the work of mopping all of us up on *innumerable* occasions, without so much as a sigh. He has a soft spot for our rescue cats: one of them took long naps on the couch atop his chest, and two of them now vie for his lap as he works remotely from our basement. (One of them once fell asleep in his work chair, curled up in the blanket, when he got up to take a break, and when he came back he didn't have the heart to disturb him, and so worked from somewhere else.) He cries at weddings and funerals, and goes pink when anybody says anything nice about him. My sister and I have never not known what it means to love your wife and give yourself up for her, because that is what my dad *lives*; that, and leadership as service. This isn't stuff that gets him publicly recognized, and he's been criticized for not being take-charge enough as a husband, but it takes far more strength and self-discipline than curating the visible accidents of strength or manliness.
The types of educational/formational experiences I'd like for my son include NOLS, team sports, language immersion camp, and something like Deep Springs. I want him to experience challenges, test his limits, and learn about the art form that is leadership.
Right now, at 5, self-formation looks like developing compassion by helping out with our (growing) menagerie. Taking responsibility for his actions ("Mom! I spilled!") and learning the give & take of playing with others, including what to do and say when someone says something mean, and what it means to feel and express his feelings. Trying hard things and stretching limits are just a very real and constant part of growing up at this point, and something I don't think we give babies and kids enough credit for!
I don't code any of this as particularly 'masculine'. I'd want the very same for a daughter.
This is a half-baked thought, but I’ve been watching Under The Banner of Heaven and have been struck by its portrayals of different models of masculinity within the contours of Mormonism. In particular, I’m really drawn to the character of Jeb Pyre, and how he both embodies ideal Mormon masculinity and rejects the temptations of abusing the power granted to him by the culture.
I’m not Mormon but grew up in AZ and had a lot of LDS friends growing up. I’ve always been fascinated by the culture, and in particular how the religion is quite patriarchal but counterbalanced with really, really high moral expectations for men. I grew up evangelical, a lot of my other friends were from very conservative Catholic backgrounds, and we all had experiences of the power dynamics of patriarchy in religious structures, but the Mormons were unique.
It seemed like the Mormons were the only ones who had genuinely equal expectations around chastity, and who genuinely counterbalanced the burdens of motherhood with high expectations around fatherhood. Like, if I had a dollar for every politically connected conservative evangelical/Catholic dude I grew up around who was known to have affairs or mistreat their family, I could buy a pretty decent meal at Chipotle. With guac! I genuinely can’t say that about the Mormons in positions of authority that I knew.
I know that there have been abuses within LDS communities and affairs and other problems, so I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture. UTBOH is literally about how that particular faith could be used for sexist control and literal murder. But still — there’s something really interesting and good about most LDS people’s understanding of the need for balance between power and obligation, even though I can’t buy into the theology more broadly.
"I live out my masculinity most often as a perverse avoidance of comfort: the refusal of good clothes, moisturizer, painkillers; hard physical training, pursued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of physical pain or self-imposed discipline that I owe the universe."
Gotta admit this doesn't sound specifically masculine to me, but like what I thought was expected of teenage girls when I was that age. Sure, clothes should *look* good and your skin should *look* moisturized, but even the moisturizer is about presentation, not comfort.
Like you, Leah, I was a young stoic. It was just the culture in my family, particularly among the women, perhaps for understandable reasons. (We have some heritable health problems in the family that tend to be worse for women.) Looking back, I regret investing so much in an "if you're comfortable, you're doing it wrong" ethos, for reasons similar to what your aikido teacher described. Pain that is sacrifice for some better end makes sense, pain that just *feels* like sacrifice because it's painful, but which doesn't accomplish, and perhaps even undermines, better ends is a waste. And for those with a desire for self-sacrifice, it can be a seductive waste, indeed.
Yeah, this was my thought, too. My mom and grandmother both had major tough-it-out mentalities; my mom suffers from chronic pain issues but refuses to use painkillers. (Part of the problem may be that they don't work, but she's also got various concerns about liver damage.) My grandmother had really bad periods, to the point that (according to family lore) she would faint from blood loss, then get right back up and resume working. She was in horrible pain her last day of life, but she insisted on spending it doing ministry work.
Meanwhile, my grandfather's mother once had an ankle practically crushed as a result of falling through a porch. When the doctors wanted to amputate it, she refused, insisting that she needed the foot to be able to take care of her children. Fortunately for her, the ankle eventually healed, but bone splinters remained. Family lore has it that she would come over to visit my grandfather and would pick out the occasional bone splinter from that leg while sitting in the living room.
I keep running across comments online that claim women are more pampered than men, but if I'm thinking about the majority of women I actually know, I really don't see that at all. Maybe men and women just have different ideas about what avoiding comfort means for their respective sexes? Men sometimes seem to think that seeking out comfort is effeminate, but a lot of older women I've known seem to hold the idea that women have to be tougher than men, who are sort of inherently wimpy. I don't know if part of the issue is that women often focus on providing comfort to others? So men, left to their own devices, don't do much in the comfort department; and if they do get comfort, it's often from women, so that's who they associate comfort with. But women's provision of comfort is usually aimed at other people more than themselves, which is why they've got their own form of toughness ideology.
"Maybe men and women just have different ideas about what avoiding comfort means for their respective sexes? [...] I don't know if part of the issue is that women often focus on providing comfort to others? So men, left to their own devices, don't do much in the comfort department; and if they do get comfort, it's often from women, so that's who they associate comfort with. But women's provision of comfort is usually aimed at other people more than themselves, which is why they've got their own form of toughness ideology."
I can specifically relate to the avoidance of moisturiser as unmanly, I didn't start using it until my hands began to crack and bleed! (I blame a combination of cold weather and cheap soap.) That was stupid, and it reflected an attitude to life that was harmful for my mental and physical health.
On the other hand, I do admire the strength of men and women who persevere despite hardship, I'm trying to be a more stoic in my attitude to physical fitness and more self-sacrificing in my general approach to life. At the same time, I am conscious that, as you point out in the last paragraph, there's an important (if not always clear) distinction between self-sacrifice and self-harm.
Learning to make it through discomfort is one thing. For those whose baseline is tolerable comfort in their body, "no pain no gain" can be helpful: it encourages people to venture outside their comfort zone. And, when pain is truly inevitable, nothing can be done but learning to live with it. We live in an age, though, where "something" is expected to be done — since very often, something *can* be done. But how?
Chronic pain patients, for example, are often expected to "do something" about their pain — if not to lessen it, specifically, then at least to increase their ability to cope. Their productivity. For these people, discomfort *is* their "comfort zone", and "no pain no gain" therapy can further entrench already-sensitized neurology, making pain "inevitable" when it might not have to be:
"Pain is a warning system, and central sensitization is therefore a disease of over-reaction to threats to the organism — a hyperactive warning system. When physical therapists, massage therapists, and chiropractors treat chronic pain patients too intensely, they may trigger that alarm system, potentially making the situation worse.
"Central sensitization is bad news, but worse still is how few health care professionals are aware of the neurology and make things worse with careless or even deliberately rough, no-pain-no-gain treatment. It’s bad enough that ignorance of central sensitization leads to wild goose chases and patients riding a merry-go-round of expensive and ineffective therapies, but many kinds of therapy are also quite painful — and can make the problem worse. With tragic irony, the most likely victims are also the most vulnerable and desperate patients, patients going through the therapy grinder, their hopes leading them right into the hands of the most intense therapists."
Somewhat relatedly, I've read exasperated psychologists mention the problem with treating anxiety in people with physically-uncomfortable chronic problems that increase the risk a rational actor would assign to ordinary activities is that these people's anxieties have so often proven warranted that they can't shown to be irrational, the way psychologists are used to doing! That comes pretty close to telling some people their rationality is a mental disorder, and it's pretty belittling.
As a man, I honestly find the first quote hard to relate to - probably just because I've always been in very academic spaces, where resorting to physical aggression is going to get you sent to HR rather than being more respected by your peers.
That said, competition and aspiration seem like a core part of masculinity (although like all "masculine" virtues I wouldn't say it's exclusively male, it's just often expressed in a different way by women), most of the men I know would be pathetic in a fight, but are still very concerned about advancing their careers. I'm genuinely unsure of how much of this avoidance of violence is temperament and how much is environment. I do think it comes down to the kind of man you want to be, which comes down to the role models you aspire to be more like, and all of my role models are more intellectual than athletic.
Slightly tangential, but the gentleness of Aikido put me off it, when I did martial arts at university I went for Jiu Jitsu. The masculine violence of it was the main reason I wanted to do it in the first place, although there were quite a few girls who were way more committed than I was! Admittedly, the fact that it was mostly safe was also part of the appeal - regardless of how cool I think martial arts are (both in fiction and in reality), I have no desire to get into fistfights with strangers.
Not sure on the whole “Power felt is power wasted” philosophy - I see where it's coming from, but I think strength directed appropriately can be very productive - that's as true in life generally as it is in a brawl.
Pros and cons to the stoic/masochistic avoidance of comfort - obviously it can be taken to self-harming extremes, but at the same time I do enjoy the satisfaction of forcing myself to complete difficult challenges. The main thing that makes me feel like a "man" (in the sense of being an adult rather than a child) is finishing something challenging, whether that's running 5 km really fast, fixing my bike, painting a wall or writing up a research report.
The gentleness of aikido put me off, too! Temperamentally, I like Krav Maga a lot better. But that's why I signed up. I thought I'd learn more by studying something so against my instincts.
"...but at the same time I do enjoy the satisfaction of forcing myself to complete difficult challenges. I main thing that makes me feel like a 'man' (in the sense of being an adult rather than a child) is finishing something challenging,"
This reminds me of one way I struggle to be a "good woman". I like challenges. In college, I majored in a subject I had previously felt relatively stupid at (math). At the same time, "mathematician's disease" is quite unwomanly. Here's an example of "mathematician's disease" in joke form:
"An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are staying in a hotel. The engineer wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills a trash can from his room with water and douses the fire. He goes back to bed.
"Later, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He opens his door and sees a fire in the hallway. He walks down the hall to a fire hose and after calculating the flame velocity, distance, water pressure, trajectory, etc. extinguishes the fire with the minimum amount of water and energy needed.
"Later, the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He goes to the hall, sees the fire and then the fire hose. He thinks for a moment and then exclaims, 'Ah, a solution exists!' and then goes back to bed."
The challenges of daily life often aren't "challenging" in any grandiose sense. They're just an endless grind of disparate tasks, each often quite undemanding in itself, but all of which must somehow get done. I find coordinating such tasks especially vexing, and while my impatience might be a character flaw in anyone, it also seems especially "unwomanly" in a woman. Around the house, I do most of the "men's work", and find it more satisfying than the "women's work", because "women's work" is often both "less challenging" and what's undone the quickest. Cleverly take down a dead tree limb using just the tools you have and a bit of bravery (or folly), and it stays down. "Anyone" should be able to wash dishes, and when you do, they're soon dirty again.
Tara Isabella Burton wrote, of the man she married,
"He always checks the backs of the dishes when he washes them...
"If you had told me, when I was fifteen, that I would marry a diligent man, I would have been appalled."
I check the back of the dishes when I wash them, too, but out of a kind of resentful perfectionism, not the loving attention Burton describes in the essay. Burton's husband sounds like what Leah is asking about, though.
Reading the comments made me think of something I told my daughter the other day. When you think about or take care of others first, you have less time to focus on yourself. I think that the idea of sacrifice, putting someone else before you, whether you are a man or a woman is the point.
I highly identify with a masculinity of "an intense desire for self-sacrificial love." I feel that for my wife, for my son, for my brother, my parents, my cousins. I would do anything I could for them, and I often put myself second to their desires. I think this is something that people don't quite understand about men, especially as the more progressive-minded people hand-wave away the notion of psychological differences between the sexes.
I also identify with being duty-bound, especially in a structure of hierarchy. I get a bit anxious when my wife and I do conceptual work together, e.g. planning meals or figuring out what should be planted in the yard. But once a decision is made, I have a laser-like focus in achieving those ends. Being set to a clear task and being given the space to accomplish it is where I thrive. Again, this is hard for more progressive people who might want to split every activity 50/50 between spouses, say.
A wise man in my life loves the phrase "everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to do the dishes." The point, I think, is that true strength and virtue are not usually found in grand acts of heroism, but in daily, deeply unglamorous acts of sacrifice and service for those around you.
I also think we need a revitalization of the idea of *brotherhood,* which in its truest form, is the antithesis of the everything-is-a-competition and everyone-is-an-enemy sort of masculine dynamic that Christman describes. A true brotherhood directs our expression of strength and power away from each other and towards a common purpose.
This is where I get to brag about my dad! He comes from a dysfunctional --- loving to the best of its ability, but still dysfunctional --- family, and he is the softest man I know. He's had to become that on purpose --- he talks a lot about how he has a terrible temper, and in his youth didn't restrain it at all, but we don't see it. He's become that good at controlling himself. He does dishes, and makes food when our mom is sick (he used to work in a restaurant, too, so it's actual cooking, not microwaved stuff), and has come home from a long day at work to a household of crying women and set down his bag and come immediately to the work of mopping all of us up on *innumerable* occasions, without so much as a sigh. He has a soft spot for our rescue cats: one of them took long naps on the couch atop his chest, and two of them now vie for his lap as he works remotely from our basement. (One of them once fell asleep in his work chair, curled up in the blanket, when he got up to take a break, and when he came back he didn't have the heart to disturb him, and so worked from somewhere else.) He cries at weddings and funerals, and goes pink when anybody says anything nice about him. My sister and I have never not known what it means to love your wife and give yourself up for her, because that is what my dad *lives*; that, and leadership as service. This isn't stuff that gets him publicly recognized, and he's been criticized for not being take-charge enough as a husband, but it takes far more strength and self-discipline than curating the visible accidents of strength or manliness.
The types of educational/formational experiences I'd like for my son include NOLS, team sports, language immersion camp, and something like Deep Springs. I want him to experience challenges, test his limits, and learn about the art form that is leadership.
Right now, at 5, self-formation looks like developing compassion by helping out with our (growing) menagerie. Taking responsibility for his actions ("Mom! I spilled!") and learning the give & take of playing with others, including what to do and say when someone says something mean, and what it means to feel and express his feelings. Trying hard things and stretching limits are just a very real and constant part of growing up at this point, and something I don't think we give babies and kids enough credit for!
I don't code any of this as particularly 'masculine'. I'd want the very same for a daughter.
This is a half-baked thought, but I’ve been watching Under The Banner of Heaven and have been struck by its portrayals of different models of masculinity within the contours of Mormonism. In particular, I’m really drawn to the character of Jeb Pyre, and how he both embodies ideal Mormon masculinity and rejects the temptations of abusing the power granted to him by the culture.
I’m not Mormon but grew up in AZ and had a lot of LDS friends growing up. I’ve always been fascinated by the culture, and in particular how the religion is quite patriarchal but counterbalanced with really, really high moral expectations for men. I grew up evangelical, a lot of my other friends were from very conservative Catholic backgrounds, and we all had experiences of the power dynamics of patriarchy in religious structures, but the Mormons were unique.
It seemed like the Mormons were the only ones who had genuinely equal expectations around chastity, and who genuinely counterbalanced the burdens of motherhood with high expectations around fatherhood. Like, if I had a dollar for every politically connected conservative evangelical/Catholic dude I grew up around who was known to have affairs or mistreat their family, I could buy a pretty decent meal at Chipotle. With guac! I genuinely can’t say that about the Mormons in positions of authority that I knew.
I know that there have been abuses within LDS communities and affairs and other problems, so I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture. UTBOH is literally about how that particular faith could be used for sexist control and literal murder. But still — there’s something really interesting and good about most LDS people’s understanding of the need for balance between power and obligation, even though I can’t buy into the theology more broadly.
"I live out my masculinity most often as a perverse avoidance of comfort: the refusal of good clothes, moisturizer, painkillers; hard physical training, pursued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of physical pain or self-imposed discipline that I owe the universe."
Gotta admit this doesn't sound specifically masculine to me, but like what I thought was expected of teenage girls when I was that age. Sure, clothes should *look* good and your skin should *look* moisturized, but even the moisturizer is about presentation, not comfort.
Like you, Leah, I was a young stoic. It was just the culture in my family, particularly among the women, perhaps for understandable reasons. (We have some heritable health problems in the family that tend to be worse for women.) Looking back, I regret investing so much in an "if you're comfortable, you're doing it wrong" ethos, for reasons similar to what your aikido teacher described. Pain that is sacrifice for some better end makes sense, pain that just *feels* like sacrifice because it's painful, but which doesn't accomplish, and perhaps even undermines, better ends is a waste. And for those with a desire for self-sacrifice, it can be a seductive waste, indeed.
Yeah, this was my thought, too. My mom and grandmother both had major tough-it-out mentalities; my mom suffers from chronic pain issues but refuses to use painkillers. (Part of the problem may be that they don't work, but she's also got various concerns about liver damage.) My grandmother had really bad periods, to the point that (according to family lore) she would faint from blood loss, then get right back up and resume working. She was in horrible pain her last day of life, but she insisted on spending it doing ministry work.
Meanwhile, my grandfather's mother once had an ankle practically crushed as a result of falling through a porch. When the doctors wanted to amputate it, she refused, insisting that she needed the foot to be able to take care of her children. Fortunately for her, the ankle eventually healed, but bone splinters remained. Family lore has it that she would come over to visit my grandfather and would pick out the occasional bone splinter from that leg while sitting in the living room.
I keep running across comments online that claim women are more pampered than men, but if I'm thinking about the majority of women I actually know, I really don't see that at all. Maybe men and women just have different ideas about what avoiding comfort means for their respective sexes? Men sometimes seem to think that seeking out comfort is effeminate, but a lot of older women I've known seem to hold the idea that women have to be tougher than men, who are sort of inherently wimpy. I don't know if part of the issue is that women often focus on providing comfort to others? So men, left to their own devices, don't do much in the comfort department; and if they do get comfort, it's often from women, so that's who they associate comfort with. But women's provision of comfort is usually aimed at other people more than themselves, which is why they've got their own form of toughness ideology.
This is very good:
"Maybe men and women just have different ideas about what avoiding comfort means for their respective sexes? [...] I don't know if part of the issue is that women often focus on providing comfort to others? So men, left to their own devices, don't do much in the comfort department; and if they do get comfort, it's often from women, so that's who they associate comfort with. But women's provision of comfort is usually aimed at other people more than themselves, which is why they've got their own form of toughness ideology."
I can specifically relate to the avoidance of moisturiser as unmanly, I didn't start using it until my hands began to crack and bleed! (I blame a combination of cold weather and cheap soap.) That was stupid, and it reflected an attitude to life that was harmful for my mental and physical health.
On the other hand, I do admire the strength of men and women who persevere despite hardship, I'm trying to be a more stoic in my attitude to physical fitness and more self-sacrificing in my general approach to life. At the same time, I am conscious that, as you point out in the last paragraph, there's an important (if not always clear) distinction between self-sacrifice and self-harm.
Learning to make it through discomfort is one thing. For those whose baseline is tolerable comfort in their body, "no pain no gain" can be helpful: it encourages people to venture outside their comfort zone. And, when pain is truly inevitable, nothing can be done but learning to live with it. We live in an age, though, where "something" is expected to be done — since very often, something *can* be done. But how?
Chronic pain patients, for example, are often expected to "do something" about their pain — if not to lessen it, specifically, then at least to increase their ability to cope. Their productivity. For these people, discomfort *is* their "comfort zone", and "no pain no gain" therapy can further entrench already-sensitized neurology, making pain "inevitable" when it might not have to be:
https://www.painscience.com/articles/sensitization.php
"Pain is a warning system, and central sensitization is therefore a disease of over-reaction to threats to the organism — a hyperactive warning system. When physical therapists, massage therapists, and chiropractors treat chronic pain patients too intensely, they may trigger that alarm system, potentially making the situation worse.
"Central sensitization is bad news, but worse still is how few health care professionals are aware of the neurology and make things worse with careless or even deliberately rough, no-pain-no-gain treatment. It’s bad enough that ignorance of central sensitization leads to wild goose chases and patients riding a merry-go-round of expensive and ineffective therapies, but many kinds of therapy are also quite painful — and can make the problem worse. With tragic irony, the most likely victims are also the most vulnerable and desperate patients, patients going through the therapy grinder, their hopes leading them right into the hands of the most intense therapists."
Somewhat relatedly, I've read exasperated psychologists mention the problem with treating anxiety in people with physically-uncomfortable chronic problems that increase the risk a rational actor would assign to ordinary activities is that these people's anxieties have so often proven warranted that they can't shown to be irrational, the way psychologists are used to doing! That comes pretty close to telling some people their rationality is a mental disorder, and it's pretty belittling.
As a man, I honestly find the first quote hard to relate to - probably just because I've always been in very academic spaces, where resorting to physical aggression is going to get you sent to HR rather than being more respected by your peers.
That said, competition and aspiration seem like a core part of masculinity (although like all "masculine" virtues I wouldn't say it's exclusively male, it's just often expressed in a different way by women), most of the men I know would be pathetic in a fight, but are still very concerned about advancing their careers. I'm genuinely unsure of how much of this avoidance of violence is temperament and how much is environment. I do think it comes down to the kind of man you want to be, which comes down to the role models you aspire to be more like, and all of my role models are more intellectual than athletic.
Slightly tangential, but the gentleness of Aikido put me off it, when I did martial arts at university I went for Jiu Jitsu. The masculine violence of it was the main reason I wanted to do it in the first place, although there were quite a few girls who were way more committed than I was! Admittedly, the fact that it was mostly safe was also part of the appeal - regardless of how cool I think martial arts are (both in fiction and in reality), I have no desire to get into fistfights with strangers.
Not sure on the whole “Power felt is power wasted” philosophy - I see where it's coming from, but I think strength directed appropriately can be very productive - that's as true in life generally as it is in a brawl.
Pros and cons to the stoic/masochistic avoidance of comfort - obviously it can be taken to self-harming extremes, but at the same time I do enjoy the satisfaction of forcing myself to complete difficult challenges. The main thing that makes me feel like a "man" (in the sense of being an adult rather than a child) is finishing something challenging, whether that's running 5 km really fast, fixing my bike, painting a wall or writing up a research report.
The gentleness of aikido put me off, too! Temperamentally, I like Krav Maga a lot better. But that's why I signed up. I thought I'd learn more by studying something so against my instincts.
"...but at the same time I do enjoy the satisfaction of forcing myself to complete difficult challenges. I main thing that makes me feel like a 'man' (in the sense of being an adult rather than a child) is finishing something challenging,"
This reminds me of one way I struggle to be a "good woman". I like challenges. In college, I majored in a subject I had previously felt relatively stupid at (math). At the same time, "mathematician's disease" is quite unwomanly. Here's an example of "mathematician's disease" in joke form:
"An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are staying in a hotel. The engineer wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills a trash can from his room with water and douses the fire. He goes back to bed.
"Later, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He opens his door and sees a fire in the hallway. He walks down the hall to a fire hose and after calculating the flame velocity, distance, water pressure, trajectory, etc. extinguishes the fire with the minimum amount of water and energy needed.
"Later, the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He goes to the hall, sees the fire and then the fire hose. He thinks for a moment and then exclaims, 'Ah, a solution exists!' and then goes back to bed."
The challenges of daily life often aren't "challenging" in any grandiose sense. They're just an endless grind of disparate tasks, each often quite undemanding in itself, but all of which must somehow get done. I find coordinating such tasks especially vexing, and while my impatience might be a character flaw in anyone, it also seems especially "unwomanly" in a woman. Around the house, I do most of the "men's work", and find it more satisfying than the "women's work", because "women's work" is often both "less challenging" and what's undone the quickest. Cleverly take down a dead tree limb using just the tools you have and a bit of bravery (or folly), and it stays down. "Anyone" should be able to wash dishes, and when you do, they're soon dirty again.
Tara Isabella Burton wrote, of the man she married,
"He always checks the backs of the dishes when he washes them...
"If you had told me, when I was fifteen, that I would marry a diligent man, I would have been appalled."
https://mereorthodoxy.com/on-diligence/
I check the back of the dishes when I wash them, too, but out of a kind of resentful perfectionism, not the loving attention Burton describes in the essay. Burton's husband sounds like what Leah is asking about, though.
Reading the comments made me think of something I told my daughter the other day. When you think about or take care of others first, you have less time to focus on yourself. I think that the idea of sacrifice, putting someone else before you, whether you are a man or a woman is the point.
I highly identify with a masculinity of "an intense desire for self-sacrificial love." I feel that for my wife, for my son, for my brother, my parents, my cousins. I would do anything I could for them, and I often put myself second to their desires. I think this is something that people don't quite understand about men, especially as the more progressive-minded people hand-wave away the notion of psychological differences between the sexes.
I also identify with being duty-bound, especially in a structure of hierarchy. I get a bit anxious when my wife and I do conceptual work together, e.g. planning meals or figuring out what should be planted in the yard. But once a decision is made, I have a laser-like focus in achieving those ends. Being set to a clear task and being given the space to accomplish it is where I thrive. Again, this is hard for more progressive people who might want to split every activity 50/50 between spouses, say.