thefuckoffkid

I posted the following long piece in the Male Club in a thread about masculinity. I thought I'd post it here.

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Feminism has long had an issue with a male-dominated world and its oppression/suppression/exploitation of women. That's pretty much what feminism established itself to respond to and fight against. Radical feminists openly refer to a "male supremacist society", with its implicit suggestion of violence inflicted upon the targetted and scapegoated "other" (women).

Feminists argued that women were operating in constrained (socially determined) gender roles that saw them reduced to the role of nurturer, carer, cook, cleaner -- babymaker and homemaker, essentially. As one radical feminist put it in an argument on a bulletin board, "fuck holes and baby machines".

We have to address the argument about feminists "hating men". I know plenty of feminists who love the men in their lives, so I'm not about to make any such bald claims! (Although I'm going to add the caveat that I've never known a misogynist who didn't love some woman or women.)

What is fairer to assert is what is argued here in this piece titled Resisting masculinity.

Feminism "offers men a shot at being human beings".

OK.

Feminism is in large part concerned with "critiquing (socially determined) gender roles". Of both women AND men. Separatist feminists were so concerned with the constraints surrounding women in a male supremacist world that they advocated living separately from men; but them aside, most feminists accepted that men were part of the world -- but to be part of a new world with feminism, men had to change. It was not enough that laws changed; that women won long-deserved rights and that new choices and opportunities were opened up to them. It was claimed by many that masculinity was at the heart of the problem facing women specifically, and the world generally. It was masculinity -- not simply men, but masculinity -- that needed to change.

As someone once said in the feminist group right here at SG, when feminism has done its job, gender roles will be a thing of the past. As if to say, when the revolution's over, there won't be "gendered" girls and boys, women and men. There'll just be people who happen to have different shaped bodies. Effectively, we'll just have Inseminators and Incubators.

(This is put forward like it's a good thing.)

That's a mild version of it. Here's a stronger version, from Andrea Dworkin:

The title of the book this is taken from is PORNOGRAPHY: MEN POSSESSING WOMEN. You can find excerpts of the chapter on "Men and Boys"
here. Note the subtitle. Pornography implies to Dworkin that women are owned, possessed, enslaved, traded by men for their pleasure. I accept that few of the pro-porn pro-sex SG feminists would adhere to such a view, but nonetheless, such a view is part of feminism's living history (or "herstory"), like it or not.

Dworkin, however much I disagree with her and dislike her views, gets credit from me for one important thing. She's one of few feminists to take men and masculinity seriously enough to even attempt to systematically theorise about it. That she did so entirely negatively is a function of the time and of her own views, but at least she tried. Prior to her, you had Valerie Solanas theorising (well, ranting) about men in the infamous SCUM Manifesto.

But apart from these fairly hostile tracts, feminism has been pretty devoid of serious analysis of what it is to be a man, or why men are the way they are. Rather, it's usually assumed that men are implicitly privileged by patriarchy, and from boyhood to manhood they are taught to be "male" in a sense that conforms to patriarchy and maintains the status quo of gender relationships.

Now, my experience of feminist discussion forums, on the web and elsewhere, is that women are somewhat conflicted about men and masculinity. (Actually, my experience of life tells me that women are generally pretty confused by men, and men are pretty confused by women, and you'd think that'd be kind of an egalitarian starting point for a get-to-know-each-other discussion. But I digress.)

I should add that female feminists aren't politically confused by men. Hardly. Men are privileged, women are oppressed. Men run the world, women are disempowered. Simple as that. End of story. And I'm not talking Dworkinites here -- I've encountered plenty of liberal feminists who've not stopped for long to investigate this assumption. And this is where the conflict lies. Women who think conventional masculinity is the problem that society faces, then have to confront aspects of "conventional masculinity" in their lovers and boyfriends at an emotional level.

What this whole horrible situation leads to is the following. Masculinity in the dominant discourse of modern feminism is (still!) defined as a series of absences and/or negatives. Things it should be but isn't, or things that it shouldn't be but is. Masculinity is "too aggressive", "too competitive", "too removed from its emotions", "not sensitive enough", "not compassionate enough". There is, in this discourse, nothing about masculinity that needs to be emphasised, reinforced, strengthened, or enhanced. There are only things to be removed or suppressed, and things to be replaced with better things that are less conventionally masculine. Concepts that had been celebrated as manly, like honour, loyalty, or sacrifice, were seen as ways of making men bond together against women. They led to tribalism, conflict, violence. Masculinity had no virtues.

Hence, a big project of feminism in the 1970s and 80s was to "reinvent" the idea of masculinity. And this reinvention was about making men "less manly". Men were being instructed to break out of their socially-imposed shackles of masculinity and embrace emotion, sensitivity, tenderness, sharing; things that conventional masculinity had supposedly rejected as "weak".

This was the era of SNAGS -- Sensitive New Age Guys -- who cried, who danced, who hugged and cooperated and cared and shared. Men who didn't compete, who didn't muscle-flex, who didn't use brawn or violence to solve problems. This was what men in the feminist movement were told was desirable, politically and emotionally, to women whose consciousnesses had been raised.

To cut a very long story short, the problem with SNAGS was that women didn't want them. As I heard a woman say, "If I wanted a girlfriend, I'd become a lesbian and get me a real girl."

SNAGS weren't manly. There was something in manliness, in masculinity, raw and primal in some form, that women seemed to respond to and that the SNAGS themselves had disengaged from.

And I want to know more about what that is. Because unless we openly explore that, and not dismiss it as something gender-neutral ("well, women can be strong too!"), how are we to know which parts of masculinity we should value and cherish and work to enhance as we get really serious about ditching the bad parts of masculinity, like boorish machismo, possessiveness and misogyny?

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Further Readings (if you're interested)

1. Men and feminism:

Since most feminist literature is pretty silent (or one-dimensional) on the issue of masculinity, some of the best writing in the literature on the subject has come from feminists and feminist sympathisers who are writing polemics critical of trends in modern feminism.

Warren Farrell's "Myth of Male Power" has already been mentioned. See also Rene Denfield's book "The New Victorians", Chapter 1. Also, check out Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium? by Rosalind Coward. And The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Summers, author of "Who Stole Feminism?", plus Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture.

You might also be inclined to take a look at Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, although I should add that books like this are a pet hate of mine.

2. Feminist perspectives on challengng men:

Resisting masculinity: The importance of feminism to men.

Recuperative versus Progressive Masculinity

3. The backlash -- and it was bound to happen:

I take no responsibility for the content of the material below. I offer it up in the spirit of open enquiry.

Kim du Toit's infamous essay The Pussification Of The Western Male, followed by his wife joining the fray.

Comments on Du Toit here and here.

The Anti-Romeos.

How I became a Mensch.

Criminalizing Masculinity.

Let boys be boys.

Let boys be boys 2.