Men's Behavior Men, knowingly or unwittingly, are at a crossroads with regards to their gender-behavior, but deciding which road to take is not always an easy or a lucid choice. The social pressures men encounter from a very early age are forceful and all encompassing, with very little exceptions. These pressures are akin to those societal pressures women face with having a perfect body and both of these pressures would cancel each other out, if Stoltenberg's ideas existed. The force, which has been building against the age old conception of manhood, is gaining strength and the time is coming when all men will have to make the crossing. Stoltenberg calls for men to trade their manhood for their selfhood. Many men can be as unique as Stoltenberg claims, when they are alone, but, too often, when grouped with other men, they seem to lose their identity. Stoltenberg states that some men choose to go along with sexism so that they won't have to avoid men. He also says that men are comfortable among other sexist men because they can build their own little world, where women have no significance. "I have already said that I don't intend to waste a word on the puny, narrow-chested, short-winded crew whom we are leaving astern. Pulsating life no longer concern itself with them. I am thinking of the few amongst us, who have absorbed new and vigorous truths. Such men was, as it were, at the outposts, so far ahead of the compact majority has not yet been able to come up with them; and there they are fighting for truths that are too newly-born into the world consciousness to have any considerable number of people on their side as yet." Ironically, these words from "An Enemy of the People" convey what is exactly at the crux of the problems facing the conception of manhood. Not enough men are rising to meet the new ideal of manhood and those opposing any change are the "compact majority."
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