Two words
Five little letters
And three reasons why I bristle
As I travel about the country, I have often left in my wake bemused men and women who, innocently and well intentioned have offered up the instruction to ‘man up’. In explanation rather than apology, for the varying outbursts they have been subjected to, I offer up this.
1) Up is ‘better’. George Lakoff and Andrew Johnson in their book, ‘Metaphors we live by’ explain how metaphor is part of a conceptual system that we are not normally aware of, but governs ‘our everyday functioning, what we perceive, how we get around the world and plays a central role in defining our realities’.
And what is up?
Up is an orientational metaphor for force, control, more, better, status, goodness, rationality and the future. Think about it. As a child you physically have to look up at important people. Up is a metaphor very deeply embedded for us. You wouldn’t knowingly pay a higher salary to someone because of his or her height, but taller people get paid more. Up is a metaphor controlling our thoughts and behaviour about who we should listen to, has power and is controlling how we understand the world. When combined with the word man, we have a comparative deletion. If men are up, then the inference is women are…? Men who act like women are…?
2) What is this version of man? The phrase ‘man up’ is used in response to signs of illness, injury, vulnerability, grief, complaint or dissatisfaction. It is an instruction with imperative. As if to be a man is to have no emotional intelligence. As if to be a man is to never to be sick, or scared. As if to be a man is to limit your ability to communicate.
There are some interesting explanations about the etymology of the phrase – from a military term the right manpower or a football term for marking opponents. Urban dictionary offers some other descriptions about what the phrase means.
If you go by these definitions, to be a man is to;
And seeing as this phrase is not limited to men alone, this seems to be what we want for our women too. Or, based on the comparison, for all women to be, well the opposite. There have been some attempts to redefine the phrase, such as the man up campaign looking to address gender violence (http://manupcampaign.org). There are also meanings to the phrase meaning bravery, leadership, taking responsibility and setting goals. When these become part of the bastion of ‘men’ we either undo the work for equality of women by reinforcing the idea that to be any of them, you must be a man, or in doing so are behaving like one.
3) Who do we hurt? Needless to say, any inference that to be feminine is lesser, weak and irrational is an all too known message shown to us everyday. What of men? To offer this instruction to others is damaging to both men and women because it limits us all. It reinforces boundaries about gender that are illogical and representative of stereotypes that continue to be pervasive and punitive. Brene Brown talks eloquently of the dangers of creating environments where vulnerability and communications are restricted – environments that breed shame and misery. Environments that breed more gender violence, not less. Environments that restrict the choices our children make. Environments that punish boys for crying and teach girls they are inferior to their brothers. Environments that widen gaps, rather than closing them. Environments that flavour the way we see world in way that I am just not ok with.
Whilst this may be dissection of a simple, but pervasive phrase, the wider implications apply for every word that comes out of us. When Bandler and Grinder published ‘The Structure of Magic’ and brought NLP into the world, they named the book based on what language can do.
Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.
(Sigmund Freud)
Language matters. And you ignore this at your own cost. Intention doesn’t matter. What you say, is what was heard – and this may be consciously, or unconsciously. Tell me I’m wrong. Just don’t tell me to man up.