I tried to find its origins and Fathers.com recites no less than Burt Reynolds as the source:
Some years ago on the Johnny Carson show, Carson asked Burt Reynolds, “What makes a man?” Johnny may have expected a wise-guy reply about loving women or career achievements. But Reynolds thought about it a few seconds and said, “You’re not a man until your father says you’re a man.”
I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not, but it works. Either way, the formulation has, like most aphorisms, a kernel of truth (though not entirely or exclusively – there are some great men who made it without any father, or even father-figure, or dysfunction at its worst).
My dad was great. I have nothing but fond memories and gratitude… But I was fucking terrified of him when I was young. He was larger-than-life: broad-shouldered, muscular, handsome with dark hair and blue eyes, gregarious, funny, charming… but he was strict and like many dads of the day, “spare the rod, spoil the child” was something he believed in. Hence, my sister and I got our share (and then some) of corporal discipline.
By the time I was 19, I had joined Naval ROTC at college as a “Marine Option” and I was due to be commissioned in a few years. I was learning to be a junior officer and I took it seriously. At the time, I was torn between my childhood dream of being a pilot and my newfound love for the martial lifestyle and leading others. I thought about becoming an infantry officer. Dad and I disagreed on that point – and many other things.
I can still remember the moment I “became a man” as I stood face-to-face with my dad outside his house near North Kingstown High School. We were on the porch and we disagreed about something. I don’t remember what. But one didn’t disagree with my dad – at least not loudly or beyond a token statement of disagreement. Anything more was, in Dad’s parlance, being “disrespectful” and for most of my life, being “disrespectful” had consequences that ranged from “go to your room” to “turn around” followed by the sound of dad’s belt coming off or, the worst, the unexpected (and meaty) backhand. (The ‘turn around’ at least allowed for some preparation and steeling of the senses).
So there I stood on the porch, in flagrant disagreement and I had reached a point in my life where I simply wasn’t going to back down from my opinion. I knew for certain he was full of shit and I was done pretending he was right when he wasn’t. Fuck it. I was going to be heard and not shouted down – and if it meant getting my ass kicked, I’d take my licks. By 19, I’d been doing martial arts, wrestling, and a host of other contact sports for years. I was working as a bouncer in my summers and I’d been in enough fights to know I wasn’t going to die. But I had no illusions about winning. I was fit, but I weighed maybe 160 pounds, at best, at 5’6″. My dad, in his youth, was “slim” at 220, at a height of maybe 5’11”. Then in his 40s, he carried the obligatory extra 20 or 30 pounds, but it only made him more imposing. I was going to get fucking killed.
I tensed and waited for the backhand, wondering how I would duck it, or block it, and what would follow if I raised my hand back to my dad.
It never came. My dad, his eyes watering, simply said that he was sorry I felt that way, that he thought I would later come to agree with his side, and he gave me a hug. I could almost see him visibly shrink. He told me he loved me and was proud of me. Then he went back inside. It was obvious he was hurt.
I drove home knowing something significant had happened. It took me a lot more years to really “become a man” but I learned in that moment that being a man means fighting when you might lose and walking away even when you know you can win. Alternatively, it means fighting when it’s the right thing to do – win, lose, or draw. On the surface, that seems profound enough, or at least something to hang your hat on. It would be more years before I would realize the full import of that sentiment.
Specifically, saying “fighting when it’s the ‘right’ thing to do” implies at least some moral sensibility, some clear understanding of right and wrong, that will be a beacon for when it’s “right” to stand up and when it’s not. Implicit in there is having both a moral philosophy – a sense of right and wrong – and a sense of ethics – knowing how to resolve conflicts between competing moral choices.
I was fortunate that I stumbled onto the Marine Corps and chivalric notions of manhood. In the absence of a grounding in philosophy, ethics, and logic, I muddled my way through and consider myself lucky that the range of choices I had weren’t too trying to the morals both my family and the Corps instilled in me. It wasn’t until law school that I got interested in philosophy, in ethics, in choosing between competing moral claims/values – in knowing truly when the “right” time is to stand and fight, and to walk away, win or lose – and that’s when I believe I truly “became a man.”