Before history began, boys became men by hunting and killing their first beast. Macedonian boys did not come of age until a wild boar was corralled with a net. The ability to provide for the tribe defined and protected a man's standing with the people.

Battle is another traditional definition of a man. Conscription has always been considered a rite of passage for boys for those countries that require military participation of its male youth. In Barbados, men continually tested themselves against each other through Bajan Stick-Licking, a method of fighting using fire-hardened sticks.

Fertility is a measure of a man that even those without a warrior's skills can hope to meet. The species propagates only thorough the virile man. Thus, the fertility rituals of Papua New Guinea developed over time, requiring some combination of fasting, prayer, body mutilation, and cannibalism. Women were sent to menstruation huts to avoid contaminating the men with their femininity.

Of course, today's male defines his manhood through more modern methods. As the television became ubiquitous, the man took control of the device when he was at home, ruling his castle with an iron fist to compensate for the emasculating post-war world. Children were drafted into the role of rudimentary television tuners and channel changers; a solid smack to the back of the head sent the child scurrying to the set with a yelp, tasked with turning the knob or fiddling with the rabbit ears until reception was restored.

Today's televisions provide much more content with many more functions, making the remote-control-on-two-legs both inefficient and punishable in a court of law. (Most states make an exception to send the child on a remote control hunt. Men don't dig their hands into the couch.)

Men now define their manhood through their mastery of the remote control. An alpha male can pull down the cockpit on his Home Entertainment Machine and rip through 752 channels in less than five minutes, sliding between picture-in-picture and high-definition content as he organizes and then dismisses entire entertainment monopolies without disturbing the beer bottle resting precariously on his stomach. Women must relinquish control of the remote to the men so they can conquer the new landscape, not lollygag through a few channels at a time, sniffing the goddamned flowers of the Oxygen Media empire.