Is it true that masculinity is becoming extinct in West Europe?
Uma resposta interessante a esta questão (da QUora):
Masculinity is the natural male drive that pushes men to master their environment. It is the drive that naturally pushes men to fight off anything that represents a threat to their basic interests whether it´s the elements, the wild or especially other men.
In its purest base form masculinity is basically a human survival software predominantly programmed in male DNA and best served by male physical attributes (strength, aggression, endurance) and mental attributes .
From an anthropological standpoint, one of the primary functions of masculinity is to biologically drive men to fight hostile men and assert their interest over other men. Any man or group of men that represents a threat to another group of men is generally met with violence or some form of deterrent. There is no voodoo in that, pseudo psychologists and ultra liberal thinkers usually believe otherwise but this is part of the body of knowledge and hard anthropological facts that are really difficult to dismiss.
Masculinity is also a cultural concept closely related to the primal male function in human society as described in the aforementioned.
Now, to answer your question, West European masculinity has changed much in that regard. Most Western European societies have seen a change from the masculine towards the feminine.
Young Western European men grow up and live in societies that nowadays regard fighting or embracing the masculine drive as a negative behavior outside of the context of sports. Not many generations ago, dueling, fisticuffs and building a local reputation by fighting was part of many Western European societies as an accepted cultural trait for that matter. Not so long ago boys fought once on their way to school and once more on their way back home from school everyday of the week, without consequences and this was simply considered as part of a natural stage of development of the masculine character. Nowadays an entire generation of young Western European men has grown up being taught by their school teachers and parents that hitting back when being hit is bad. They grow up relatively safe in societies and environment that are increasingly culturally non-confrontational. In fact Western European societies have developed a cross culture in which young men are scolded for being confrontational and instead encouraged if not rewarded for avoiding conflict. This is fairly recent in Western European culture in general.
Masculinity´s very core function is to deal with confrontation.
Because of that fact, the relative peace and security that Western nations have been keen into building is also at the detriment of classic traits of masculinity. Controlling the masculine drive of men basically equates a relatively safer and stable society or at least largely contributes to impose authority and a given order. Any sort of governing body knows that. The wealth of Western Europe itself was created on harvesting the masculine drive of Western European men for working, for building, for producing. And of course for fighting… Conquer and subdue other human groups. Paradoxically civilization is built by the primal masculine drive but once it settles and complacency occurs as a consequence of safety, order and abundance, a high masculine drive tends to create problems as it seeks its way to perform what is no longer needed by a civilized society… The type of European men who expanded the Roman Empire, who crewed Hernan Cortes´conquistador boats to Central America, fearless Red Coats and Brittish navymen, settlers of the Great North, audacious French Hussards and the type of men who settled Australia or the American frontier are to a large extent the same type of European men who fill European prisons today… They possess to various degrees the same type of masculine drive that the aforementioned type of men who built Europe in the first place but it is a drive that is no longer needed by highly “civilized” European societies they inhabit in which defending a home, conquering territory, fighting endless wars and settle new lands is no longer needed.
The problem occurs when a society that has put too many checks on masculinity now has to deal with an outside threat coming from men who stem from societies in which the confrontational and martial aspect of masculinity is still very culturally present. This is a type of threat that is no longer recognized by most Western European men. Less than a century ago this type of instinct was still very much present in Western European men.
It is said that a society with high masculine drive tends to possess what is referred to as expansive energy, in other words it seeks to expand towards societies with lower masculine drive. That is where masculinity connects with exploration, conquest and subjugation. If you observe the ethnic origin of the men who perpetrated the attacks referred to by the OP, these men come from societies where their masculine drive is not hindered by as many social checks as in Western Europe and which structures´ are still highly patriarchal. On the micro scale of that event it is basically a form of demonstration of male dominance (anthropological conquest) where a group of men with high masculine drive feel safe and dominant enough to allow themselves to impose their will on a group of men they deem to possess lower masculine drive.
Now let´s rewind the Western European cultural clock and observe that in the related previous societies with strong patriarchal culture, boys and men were required to be able to fight and were culturally praised for their fighting prowess. They were required to defend their honor and the honor of the women in their family, their kin and for that matter any woman in distress. They were required to obey some form of code of gallantry and honor. Their masculinity was often put in question in case of failure to prove themselves competent or if they underperformed under that type of pressure. There were grave social consequences to this type of failure and terrible social stigma to endure.
If you wind it back even further back in time it was a simple question of survival even. Not being willing to retaliate could mean your death and probably the kidnapping or mass raping of every woman in your kin or tribe. This is how what is refered to by James Bowman as reflexive honor was born. Reflexive honor is basically the drive to hit back when being hit as a mechanics of preventing further harassment or danger.
Today this sort of standard is no longer a prominent character trait of Western European cultures but it is still present to various degrees in many other cultures.
As mentioned earlier the core of masculinity has always been to deal with confrontation. If the confrontational nature of masculinity is disabled, there is not much of its basic function left to work with.
That is basically what Western European men of these last couple of generations have been victim of, what you observed is part of the result.
Masculinity- because of its inherent nature- is closely related to tribal instinct as well. As men naturally seek to cooperate and bond with other men in order to increase their ability to conserve and assert their interests over other men. Women of the tribe are a highly prized interest. Men naturally tend to protect them because of masculine drive. Modern Western European men whose masculine drive has drastically decreased these recent generations in comparison to the previous ones are also subject to a decrease in tribal instinct. It is a direct consequence of this.
In many societies of Eastern Europe or even the Balkans where not as many checks are put on the nature of masculinity, a band of outsiders molesting local women would most probably not get away with it as easily, it is correct. In the very societies where the men who perpetrated the Cologne attacks were from, a band of outsiders performing the same kind of acts on local women would have probably not gotten away as easily as the perpetrators did in Cologne, for sure. To say the least. Anyone who is not biased knows that rather instinctively.
Even in Western Europe in a relatively not so distant past, it is safe to say the same situation would have most probably led to a beat down and there is even a fairly high chance it would have ended in a carnage of sorts for the simple reason that the masculine drive of Western European men was much higher then than it is today.
These are simple human facts.
What Western European concepts of masculinity implied in the past is fairly remote from what it has become. Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke of the 70´s as some form of shift turn for European Masculinity in general and his predictions can be rather easily observed. So the simple answer might be yes, if you would extrapolate this cultural mutation into the future then there is a chance masculinity as past generations of Western European men culturally knew and understood it might become completely opposed. They already are in many regards…
There is a lot of data and discussion to produce out of the subject but I hope this will suffice to angle you unto a further inquiry. Some other leads can be find in the content of my answer Kriztofer Plitzkin's answer to How is manhood defined?
Stay Strong
Cheers
PS: none of the aforementioned statements are meant to be disrespectful to anyone in particular nor aimed at mocking Western European men. This is a sensitive subject and a complex question to address. This answer is based on my study and understanding of different cultural concepts of Masculinity and Masculinity in general.
Thank you.
