Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I love Mira's recent threads regarding gender and roles and wants.

I thought it would also be interesting to have a related thread: What Do Boys Want?

To save sweet young ladies from distressing situations.

Right?

According to my survey of my male friends, the answer is mostly 'beer and boobs', there being one lone vote for 'steak and boobs' from the guy who doesn't drink.

Right, it depends on what age boys we are talking. Boys go from wanting their mommies to wanting candy and comic books, to wanting friends, to wanting girls, to wanting jobs, families, grandkids, and finally tapioca pudding and a clean bowel movement. In between there are all sorts of lesser and greater urges, some virtuous, some not so much.

Boys want toys. Big boys want big toys.

Quill wrote:Right, it depends on what age boys we are talking. Boys go from wanting their mommies to wanting candy and comic books, to wanting friends, to wanting girls, to wanting jobs, families, grandkids, and finally tapioca pudding and a clean bowel movement. In between there are all sorts of lesser and greater urges, some virtuous, some not so much.

Freaking hilarious! Quill, you are right on! :)

Quill, you are so funny!!

Some answers from men include:
Adventure!
A good game.
To build and connect and interact physically and intellectually with the world.
Sex. True Love. A tribe he belongs to with standing, lineage, contribution.
The capacity to provide (hunt) (bring home the bacon) and protect and thrive.
Super Powers.

Other types more interested in:
Power.
Money.
Status.
Control.
(in more competitive ways)

Seems a lot of favorite boy movies include sea adventures and Batman.

What motivates the male protagonist seems often a mix of general and specific things that make him up and make him more interesting.

Wow!!! A thread ode for asking questions??? thank you! I'm honored, bcomet. But I hope you've thought this through because this kind of thing is likely to encourage me. Just warning you.

:)

Funny answers.

Let's see - I have found the men in my life want me to respect and trust them. They also want me to leave them alone when they want to be left alone (OMG, that is sooo hard to do). They really, really, really don't like it when I try to prove I'm smarter than they are (I can't tell you how much they don't like this, it's a bad habit of mine, comes from being an older sister). They really don't like advice unless they actually ask for it, they just want you to listen and understand (arrgghhh, that is sooo hard).

Thinking about it, it's kind of surprising I have any men in my life at all. But I really like men. They're cool.

I'm a boy. I think Mira's great, and smarter than me, so I'll honor her and give this a shot, and I'll speak for all boys everywhere, because they're not here to stop me.

• We want everything in life to come in a bullet list.
• We want to be in Griffindor.
• We want to save you. We don't know why. Something to do with the Griffindor thing -- more bravery than brains. It's what boys are taught to be.
• We want to be smarter than you, unless we are certain of your unconditional love. Then you can be a frickin' genius because it makes us look good that a genius loves us.
• Most of the week we want to be Johnny Depp. On Fridays we want to be Captain Jack Sparrow. On Sundays we want to be Superman.
• We want to win. Unless losing gets us sex. Then we want to win, but not quite so much.
• We want to understand you but only if you make sense (to us). Otherwise it just makes our brains hurt, so tell us what the hell it is you want us to do and stop playing guessing games.
• We don't ever want to talk about the toilet seat, ever, ever again. We want you to stop caring about it and figure out what's truly important in life and live yours to its fullest extent. We want you to go save lives, feed the masses, cure cancer, and be our next Shakespeare, whether or not the damned seat is up or down or made of solid gold or smoldering in a radioactive ray of death.
• We don't want to kill things to prove our value (most of us). We want you to understand that our fascination with professional sports and action movies permits us to live life without wanting to kill things to prove our value. Saving lives, ladies, every day.
• More than anything else we want true, intimate, lasting affection. But we will hardly ever admit it. And that's the secret to men, which most men don't even acknowledge to themselves. Every time you think we are acting crazy, it's because we're afraid it's going away, or never coming, and we can't talk about it because we have been conditioned to hide this need at all costs (never show that much weakness!) but it nevertheless dominates our emotional tapestry.
• We want as much sex as we can get away with and still get what I spoke about in the last bullet.

I could go on, but I'll probably get enough hate over this, and I haven't even hit the really ugly stuff yet. To all you men whom I just outed: sorry dudes, I know it stings, but buck up and take it like men.

I assume you're talking about what men want in literature, lol. If that's the case, then I imagine they want the same thing women want - quality characters and an amazing storyline they can connect with. A representation of themselves and their interests. And to stop being told magazines and graphic novels don't "count" as reading.

Dearth of Reason,

Wow. I mean it. Wow.

Thanks for that Insight.

Wondering who you are?

And hoping you get all you want.

I've been resisting since this thread started and I can't hold back any longer.

cheekychook wrote:I've been resisting since this thread started and I can't hold back any longer.

That song has been stuck in my head ever since I saw the thread title. LOL.

I have a friend who says that if he were ever to be a Literature professor he'd want to teach a class featuring men's literature, as opposed to feminist literature. I don't remember all names he mentioned, but among them Hemingway and Faulkner would be taught. I know there are plenty of others, but I think something like this is a good idea. While these writers are taught in classes there isn't a focus on them as masculine literature even though there is always an emphasis on feminist literature. A humanities class was almost taught on campus called Arms and Men (I think), but it was cut when the professor was let go for budget reasons. Anyways, I think it'd be great if there was something like this for men. While I am a feminist I do enjoy the male perspective on all types of Literature.

Moni12 wrote:I have a friend who says that if he were ever to be a Literature professor he'd want to teach a class featuring men's literature, as opposed to feminist literature. I don't remember all names he mentioned, but among them Hemingway and Faulkner would be taught. I know there are plenty of others, but I think something like this is a good idea. While these writers are taught in classes there isn't a focus on them as masculine literature even though there is always an emphasis on feminist literature. A humanities class was almost taught on campus called Arms and Men (I think), but it was cut when the professor was let go for budget reasons. Anyways, I think it'd be great if there was something like this for men. While I am a feminist I do enjoy the male perspective on all types of Literature.

This actually bugs me a little (not you! Just the attitude you're talking about), because, um, I went to a Liberal Arts college and earned an English degree. And the vast majority of classes I took featured "men's" literature. I mean, I took entire courses on James Joyce and Shakespeare. I think there's very much a focus on such literature and discussion about the masculinity/maleness of it. Particularly when studying Joyce - we spent an entire section talking about male sexuality. I didn't feel like I was missing out on the male perspective at all. I felt like the majority of my education was about the male perspective, actually.

I just personally feel like there's a lot of backlash against purely "feminist" and "multi-cultural" studies, and the argument tends to be "They get special classes! Why don't white men get special classes?" When, really, the feminist and multi-cultural courses? Are the only ones that truly focus on those people. EVERY. OTHER. COURSE. Teaches from a predominantly white male perspective. Just because they don't call it "Earnest Hemingway: A Study on Masculinity in An Old Man and the Sea" doesn't mean there's not a focus on the masculine.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go into a little rant, and I'm not trying to be over-critical of this position. I do think studying both genders in equal measure is appropriate and necessary, and I appreciate that when there's a lot of focus on the feminine, it makes males feel left out. I just feel it's very disingenuous for people to act as though there aren't courses that focus on maleness and masculinity in the arts, because there absolutely are. I suppose I feel that perhaps groups are just sort of - blind? - to their own perspective being represented. I mean, I know I received a lot of female and feminist points of view, as well, but it FELT like it was all men-men-men all the time while I was there.