Strong Bodybuilding Man Portrait

Machismo is a form of masculine culture. It includes assertiveness or standing up for one's rights, responsibility, selflessness, general code of ethics, sincerity, and respect.
Anthropology has shown that masculinity itself has social status, just like wealth, race and social class. In western culture, for example, greater masculinity usually brings greater social status. Many English words such as virtue and virile (from the Latin and Sanskrit roots vir meaning man) reflect this. An association with physical and/or moral strength is implied. Masculinity is associated more commonly with adult men than with boys.
A great deal is now known about the development of masculine characteristics. The process of sexual differentiation specific to the reproductive system of Homo sapiens produces a female by default. The SRY gene on the Y chromosome, however, interferes with the default process, causing a chain of events that, all things being equal, leads to testes formation, androgen production and a range of both natal and post-natal hormonal effects covered by the terms masculinization or virilization. Because masculinization redirects biological processes from the default female route, it is more precisely called defeminization.
There is an extensive debate about how children develop gender identities.