Ok, I admit it. I took a couple of days off. I'm calling it a post-semester mini-vacanza.
Having momentarily gone astray, I was nudged back on track by this 2005 headline from the Post: "WI$EBUY! Fakefella tried $1M bribe to be Mafia made man." Ooh! An excuse to write about gender! I felt better immediately, since I rarely get a chance to do so anymore.
The headline seems to indicate that the Mafia is, at least, financially solvent and that they are upholding their own code of ethics. You can't be made with money, can you?
This idea raises an interesting question about masculinity. You are a "made man" after you "make your bones" by whacking someone. The killing does not bring you into manhood (not a traditional rite of passage), but brings you into a different type of manhood. There is no implication that prior to being made, you are not a man.
How many of these rites of passage within manhood exist? Probably more than we think, meaning that the things men do are not continual rites of passage into manhood, but through manhood. But, bringing them ultimately where? Is there a finite level of manhood or masculinity? Can it be achieved or even identified? Hmm.
