Men are not born with a predetermined understanding of masculinity. They encounter cultural ideas about masculinity, which they then internalize, modify, reject, or reproduce. A potential problem emerges when cultural ideologies become internalized as requirements of identity. When masculine performance becomes fused with personal worth, cultural expectations can become his operating instructions. 

As a follow-up to the series on sexual scripts, this series on masculinity adds context to that discussion, while supporting the position taught at Center for Peace; masculinity can be examined, challenged, and reconstructed in ways that support agency, character, and relational responsibility. 

Identity Construction

Identity construction occurs as a continuous, lifelong social process through which individuals develop, shape, and express their own uniquely architected and organized sense of self. Rather than being a fixed or innate trait you are born with, identity is built and negotiated through ongoing interactions, culture, language, and social contexts.

When we examine identity through the sexual script theory, identity construction is not simply about being a man, it can often become about how successfully one performs what has been culturally defined as masculine. These metrics are highly influenced by the cultural ideologies one adopts and applies individually. 

There is no single, defined masculine script, however, many of male scripts are culturally curated, and some can produce serious consequences. Concern arises when those scripts operate from power-over beliefs. 

An adopted identity script or constructed viewpoint does not determine behavior. Each person retains the agency and accountability for their own behavior and the impact of that behavior on others. Regardless of whether identity has been shaped by culture, relationships, history, temperament, or experience, those influences do not eliminate the person’s capacity to examine, accept, reject, revise, and integrate what they may have adopted. 

Shaping does not compel belief or behavior.

Masculinity Is Learned, Not Inherited

A man does not enter the world already knowing what masculinity means. He encounters messages about it through family, peers, media, religion, sexuality, status systems, and other social structures. Over time, he develops an understanding of what a “real man” is expected to be. 

The following are examples of adopted and potentially unexamined scripts.

Emotional scripts

• Men should be emotionally self-contained.
• Needing others is a weakness.
• Vulnerability diminishes masculinity

Sexual scripts

• Men should be sexually successful.
• Men should pursue and women should respond.
• Sexual access demonstrates masculine worth.

Power/status scripts

• Control demonstrates strength.
• Competition establishes value.
• Male authority should be respected.

Relational scripts

• Men are providers and protectors.
• A man hurts others before they can hurt him.

The problem surfaces when cultural scripts are interpreted as identity requirements – when a person believes he must perform them to be seen by others, or himself, as masculine. 

A potential identity construction error occurs when a socially constructed performance is mistaken for an essential requirement of identity. For example, adopting a belief such as, “being like “X” makes one less of a man,” can create not only an identity error, but also a problematic operating system.

When these cultural patterns are acquiesced to without examination, particularly within intimate relationships, they can contribute to coercive relational dynamics. Rather than observing, evaluating, and intentionally adopting healthier ways of relating, a man may internalize an unexamined script – for example, the belief that a wife is obligated to ‘give her husband sex.” Such beliefs can produce profoundly unhealthy outcomes within marriage. 

Building a Masculine Operating System

A script is an expectation about how a person should behave in a particular social situation. An operating system is the deeper organization of those scripts into beliefs, rules, meanings, and assumptions that influence how a person interprets circumstances, makes decisions, and relates to others. 

A healthy objective begins with the recognition that human beings construct themselves within multiple spaces of the socio-cultural world. We develop within the small-scale units of family and home, adopting ideas, mannerisms and beliefs from those around us. As we individuate, we accept some and we reject others, gradually developing the unique person we choose to become.  

Individuality is both sought after and rejected depending on how strongly a person desires acceptance within the larger systems and social units beyond a family of origin. These opportunities to construct ourselves in multiple social environments, provide variety and possibility, but they also reinforce the human desire to be accepted and valued by others. 

The noise of acceptance can be particularly loud when acceptance is equated with being normal, belonging to a group, or having value. 

For some individuals, this process can lead into environments founded on value-negative traits rather than value positive ones. Depending on the individual and his environment, the adoption of cultural values can contribute to character decline as he builds an operating system composed of maladaptive ideologies, entitlement, or other antisocial practices. 

For men, identity formation constructed on unchallenged socially established ideas can create problems when forming relationships.

These internalized beliefs, along with the how one assigns meanings, values, assumptions, permissions, prohibitions, and relational expectations, guide how one conducts himself, what he expects from others, how he interprets circumstances, and decides how to act.

The process can be understood as:

Script exposure to interpretation, adoption and internalization of how one identifies and operates himself in relation to others. 

Exposure to a script does not make the script inevitable. The critical point is the space between exposure and action – the point at which a person can examine what he has leaned and decide whether it belongs in the operating system he wants to live by.

Separating Masculinity from Entitlement

One’s masculinity is not the same thing as entire manhood, character or human worth. Identity holds a much larger aspect of being human than performed social roles or adopted social beliefs. 

Men who self-reflect and self-audit can ask themselves who they are beneath perceived social standards. Those social standards may be present, but no one is required to organize himself around them without questioning their truth, validity and usefulness.

This process is known as agentic sovereignty:  the foundational capacity and responsibility of an individual to be the author and agentic authority over his own life and mind. 

In this way, we choose to act rather than be acted upon by unchallenged cultural beliefs, values and practices. 

A man might therefore ask:

• What have I learned about what being a man means?
• Who taught me that?
• What did I have to do to receive masculine approval?
• What behaviors have I confused with masculine worth?
• What happens internally when my masculinity feels threatened?
• What do I believe I am entitled to because I am a man?
• What do I believe I must never experience because I am a man?
• Which parts of masculinity reflect my actual values?
• Which parts are simply adaptations to gain status, belonging, approval, or power?

This is not rejecting masculinity. It is placing masculinity back under the authority of the person, rather than allowing cultural expectations to exercise unquestioned authority over him. 

Sovereignty creates greater potential for the individual when agency is applied, rather than when cultural expectations are followed to preserve popularity and acceptance from the crowd, or a sense of belonging.

From Masculine Performance to Character 

If masculinity is treated as an identity that must continually be proven, a man can become preoccupied with performance, status and perceived power. He might also become preoccupied with what other men have or do if those things represent what is ‘normal.’ 

Without questioning, without investigation, he can adopt other people’s ideas instead of establishing his own value-based operating system. 

A critical self-audit can help identify gaps in the operating system used currently. 

Have you shifted from, 

• “Am I strong enough?” to “Do I use my strength for good?”
• “Am I respected enough?”  to ‘“Do I work to show respect to all?
• “Am I sexually desirable enough?” to “How well do I engage in relationally ethical practices in my sexual expression?”
• “Am I dominant enough?” to “Do I work to build a power-with rather than power-over position in my relationships?”
• “Am I successful enough?” to “Am I using success to power over or to build better in the world in which I live?”
• “Do other men see me as a man?” to “Do I show up and speak up as an example of ethical masculinity?”

The bottom-line question becomes:

“What kind of man am I choosing to become?”

In the first set of questions, the focus is primarily on social validation, comparison, and acceptance. In the second, the focus shifts toward character, agency, values and responsibility.  

Masculinity Without Entitlement

When a man’s identity contains unchallenged culturally constructed masculinity scripts, a perceived threat to his masculine identity may also become a threat to his sense of self. 

A threat to one’s self-concept can reveal unresolved wounds, unexamined beliefs, or an operating system in which masculine worth has become contingent on status, control or approval, or sexual validation. 

This can expose the absence of a sufficiently examined character structure – one in which identity is grounded in values rather than social status, and interactions are founded in respect rather than gender-based entitlement.

When masculine worth becomes fused with sexual desirability, rejection can be interpreted as evidence of diminished status or masculinity. For some men, that perceived threat may activate attempts to restore status through pursuit, pressure, retaliation, domination, withdrawal, contempt, or other coercive behaviors. 

Many of the men who come to Center for Peace for help have experienced relational fractures of this type as deeply negative. They may have then attempted to restore their self-perceived status through pursuit, pressure, infidelity, domination, retaliation, withdrawal, contempt, or other coercive tactics, often to the detriment of the relationship.

Interrupting this Fracturing Process by Separating Identity from Entitlement 

Despite common beliefs about the relational issues in our present social environment, a woman’s autonomy cannot diminish a man’s masculinity. Her sexual boundaries and rights of consent cannot emasculate him. Her disagreement with him is not inherently critical, nor can her disagreement make him less of a man. 

Her agency is not disrespect toward him.

His response to her agency, however, provides information about the character and relational ethics of his own operating system. 

Agentic sovereignty becomes relational when one has constructed an operating system that is relationally ethical. We would not accept another person’s claim to agentic authority as justification for controlling us or using us for personal benefit. Human value and worth are not proven by a demanding respect; they are honored through how one treats others, especially those with whom we are in intimate relationships.

Agency is the capacity to direct one’s own behavior. 

Control is the attempt to direct another.

Relationally healthy agency does not require control because it is grounded in self-governance. When one attempts to govern another person rather than govern oneself, the potential for coercion and abuse emerges. 

When masculinity is treated as an identity that must be constantly proven, a man can become governed by his defense against perceived weakness, powerlessness, undesirableness, or disrespect. 

The question is not whether a man can perform masculinity successfully. 

The question is whether the man he has constructed is a man who can live with agency, integrity, dignity, and relational responsibility.

Character Reset

If you find yourself at the crossroads of a culturalized masculine operating system and the health and safety of your wife and marriage, our Character Reset program is for you. Schedule a Discovery Call today.