Manliness and Gender Issues essay

With the introduction of the concept of “race suicide,” Theodore Roosevelt’s call to avert this problem has been responded fairly well by the males of the family. Only the males discussed this topic, and were the ones who took part in exchanges, of ritualized boasting with other males and members of the society. This has been a show of man’s virility. Exchanges about the topic “race suicides” were also held among men only. Respectable women were hindered to take part in any of this discussions because it is indirectly about allusions to male potency, which signifies that there discussion was masculine by nature.

Because of this, the context that women are different than man was introduced. Women were seen in different light, were purer, and were always outside the conversation. As comparing it to the public affirmation of male sexual potency, the virility of man is far different from that of women, the reverence for pure passionless womanhood. Manliness is recognized as the presence of appropriate manhood, which is composed of the totality of sexual self-restraint, strong will, and a character of firm, strong character which is not easily swayed.

This is an embodiment of the male’s masculinity, which was then introduced as glorifying aggressiveness, physical force, and the sexuality of the males. People viewed Theodore Roosevelt as the perfect example of being manly, of manliness, thus hold a key spot in changing the people’s perspective. Since he was the one to warn about “race suicide,” enabling the respectable American man to publicly celebrate their male sexuality and exude a domineering stature in the society. The males were the one’s being look up to, the instruments of reproduction and the means of propagation of the “superior race. ”