what is it to be a man?

I've been asking this question a lot recently, particularly since a really important friend of mine C.T. challenged me on a few ideas I had on feminism/gender. Having done a bit of reading around that as an undergraduate I thought myself at least better read and certainly more open to those ideas than many 26 year old men. My slightly regretful feeling is in part feminism ate itself by playing semantics and perhaps more significantly was swiftly marginalised alongside other non-conservative and therefore non-plausible politics. The fact is we probably need it more now than ever in the "west" and outside of that - take one look at a little girl's prospects in Afghanistan and tell me it's all OK.

Anyway, that's not the point of this. If I find it weird and slightly ghastly that a woman would take her boyfriend to a lap-dancing club "because that's cool nowadays" and get a dance herself "for banter" is there not also a problem with the guy?

I started reading Akerlof's Men without Children which, though slightly antiquated reaffirms something I've been thinking a while. Men need to harden the f* up. There is nothing in Nuts magazine be it football, women or photos of various victims of accidents/chainsaws/genetics that has anything to do with being a man. The straight-down-the-line balls to do something, and then stand up for what it is you've done is increasingly rare. I also increasingly see it more in the women I know. We're going to become redundant.