ph33r me, 4 i ramble on ur frENDS lizt

[paulhope]

I used to think (a) all cities were like New York City, and (b) I hated cities. Now I've lived in other cities enough to know that I was wrong on both counts.

Comments

[paulhope]

Um, I think it is. Your point that "manliness" or "be a man" connotes a comparison between men-and-lesser-men more often than might be recongnized is true, but I don't know if they are "much more" about that than men-as-opposed-to-women. Being called a "pussy" or, less crassly, "girly" is as much, if not more, the converse of "manly" as is "immature" or "little boy-like".

I generally agree, but I think there's a lot of individual difference in how people use these words. I had a lot of time to contemplate this on the ski trip I was just on with seven male friends with different attitudes towards this kind of thing. Certainly, several of them commonly used "pussy" in opposition to "manly."

But I was trying to be as generous in my interpretation of the word as possible, and trying to express something closer to my own usage. When I think to myself, "be a man," I certainly am not implying that if I am not a man at that point, then I will be a woman. That doesn't make any sense.

"Immature" doesn't really mean the opposite of "manly" in this case--it has a very different connotation. "little-boy-like" is practically unusable. Perhaps the continued use of "pussy" is partly due to there being no other available word for "non-masculine."