The reality that one experiences is inextricably wound to one’s sexuality. What has come to be, by literary usage and tradition, known as ‘man’ i.e. a heterosexual, adult male, forms in himself a distinct class of a social entity worthy of distinct critique and must be treated as such for purposes of appraisal of what we know as ‘masculine entitlement’. What do we mean by ‘masculine entitlement’? By this we mean an attitudinal approach to things, to human situations, to ideas, to events, to life and living itself, that is characterised by the colour of an unjustifiable, inexplicable sense of entitlement. This sense of entitlement emerges from an over- acquiescence with privilege, from a certain continued social treatment, with the affordability to indulge in a detached dissection of human experience.
‘Man’ as I have aforementioned, is not just a biological being. The expression refers to a certain social entity that has on account of various reasons (beyond the scope of this article at present) self- proclaimed his false superiority (of physical existence, of economic importance, of intellect, of social indispensability) over everything and everyone that is not him.
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It is in this sense that a (heterosexual, adult) male finds within himself aroused something that can him at the unjustified aid and defence of fellow males even when the latter is desert of due criticism and rebuke. It is as though a certain social defensiveness were aroused in him in aid of a false collective, with absolute disregard to the legitimacy of that with which his fellows have been criticized with.
It is as though the first instinct of Man were always to defend men, even if the former knew nothing of the latter, even if the latter were an abstraction or a fictional figment. It is as if the fact that the other is a male, was sufficient to invoke one’s defence of him. It is specifically for this reason that the precept of ‘Man’ creates an insensate rift between what is ‘Human’ and what ‘Man’ is. ‘Man’ thus defines himself in distinction, in isolation, to and from, ‘humanity’. He sees ‘humanity’, he witnesses its movements, its understanding and says “But I am different. My understanding is different.”
The banality, the foolishness, the lack of empathy and the emotionally infantile idiocy of these men is a nuisance to everything that is human, to everything that is the collective human condition. To the basic understanding of ‘human’. He thus acts towards the very refutation of ‘basic human understanding’. There is no such thing he says. There is no commonality that can or must be ascribed to humans he says. Nothing of this sort, none of this hope is possible he says, for to give up this defence which is the archstone of his very being, he would be painfully compelled to face his failings. And this he cannot do, for this would be the renunciation of everything that makes him ‘Man’.
