What makes a man? I’m not talking about in a hyper-masculine, John Wayne, what sets the men apart from the boys sense; I mean literally: how do we as a society determine what is male and what is female?
As a society, we are prescribed a binary two-sex schema. The binary set-up indicates that whatever is not male is female and whatever is not female is male, which leads me to ask: what is male? What is the deciding factor in what makes a man? What are the requirements and how many of them must be fulfilled before a person can be called male?
Is it something biological? For instance, do genitals determine maleness? And if so, exactly which genitals have to be in place before someone is considered male? Surely, the penis is crucial. But do the testes have to be present, as well? And must these body parts be fully functional in order for their owner to be considered a man?
Perhaps manhood is not determined by genitals; perhaps it is written in the chromosomes. Is it the presence of the Y chromosome that makes a man? If it is simply the DNA that makes a man, then persons with Turner’s syndrome and androgen insensitivity syndrome must be men, despite the fact that their bodies, replete with breasts and vaginas, appear to be anything but masculine.
Maybe it’s not genitals or chromosomes that make a man. Maybe it’s something more visible, something that a person regularly displays. Could a five o’clock shadow make a man? Rippling biceps? A deep, booming voice? A chest covered in hair? If this is the case, then how many of these characteristics must a person possess before he is considered a man?
Certainly he does not need to possess all of them. Is a scrawny person with a deep voice, furry chest and full beard a man? What if this person is scrawny with a body free of hair, a voice identical in pitch to that of a newborn kitten and a handlebar mustache? Is the mustache alone enough to make this person a man? And if not, then what? Could this mustachioed being possibly be a woman? How do we decide?
The two-sex schema is something that affects our lives regularly, from which public restroom we use to how others interact with us. It is not something that we can escape. So, if this system is such a seemingly natural part of being, why are its parameters so difficult to define? If we are strictly either male or female, then what do we do with all of the gray area?
Holly Combs can be reached at
