To start this research, I wanted to get some male perspectives on what "being a man" even means. I created a survey to ask men questions about what shaped their views of masculinity and see if certain answers appeared more than others.
This survey was not meant to be nationally representative, since it was only dispersed to people I know and within my social media groups. However, I was able to obtain 106 responses in just a few days, with participants ranging in age from 13 to 54, having various sexual orientations, and coming from all over the country, as well as a few other countries.
The most central question I asked was:
What are some characteristics or behaviors you associate with being a man/being male/being masculine?
I made a word cloud of the 29 most common responses. The bigger the word appears in the picture, the more often this response, or a synonym, was given.
You can see that "strong", "provider", and "unemotional" were the three most common words that appeared. This is in line with the stereotype that men are the physically assertive, stoic breadwinners of the household.
Words that appeared only once or twice were "compassionate", "empathetic", "gentle", etc. These are more vulnerable feelings that are often encouraged in girls and discouraged in boys.
Even today, despite recent improvements in gender equality, young men still strongly believe in a more conventional view of what it means to "be a man".