I think there is having a behavior that is disrespectful to women that goes unchecked, where your manhood is defined by sexual conquests, where you trade stories with your friends and no one checks anyone. At 19, that was normal.
No man is a man until he has been a soldier.
I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
"What makes a man a man?" a friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.
But remember what drives a man; real men do what they have to do to make sure their people are taken care of, clothed, housed, and reasonably sastisfied, and if they're doing anything less than that, they're not men.
Of all my father's teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.
To define a man: he must be a creature who makes me feel that I am a woman.
To be a man, a boy must see a man
