Noah Brand - The Masculine Mystique (at the Good Men Project)

This interesting post from Noah Brand (at the Good Men Project) is an exceprt from his new book-in-progress (with Ozy Frantz), What About the Men? You can read the introduction and primary principles here. Below are links to other excerpts from the book-in-progress.

The Masculine Mystique

JUNE 23, 2013 BY NOAH BRAND

Chapter Two, Part 1 (of 4) in Noah Brand and Ozy Frantz’s book about masculinity.

This is part one of the second chapter of a book in progress; we have also published parts two, three, and four. Chapter one may be read here.

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Nobody ever has to specify what they mean when they say “man up” or “be a man” or even just “grow a pair”. Everyone knows what those phrases mean. Or do we? Could you actually define specifically what it means to “be a man”? We all think we know what constitutes manliness, but somehow when we look at it that sure knowledge becomes nebulous. If we’re going to address masculinity, first we’re going to have to pin the damn thing to the mat. (Quick: why do you think that’s a manly metaphor?)

The modern feminist movement began with “the feminine mystique”, the name given by Betty Friedan to the outrageously restrictive social roles and expectations placed on women in postwar America. The identification of this problem helped set off a massively successful wave of social change that did nothing less than reshape our society for the better. But as we observed in the last chapter, you can’t have a set of horrible assumptions about women without creating a parallel set about men, a fact that Ms. Friedan noted when she described men as “fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill”.[1] Forty years on, we still need to ask: what is the masculine mystique?

Hegemonic Masculinity

One of the biggest misunderstandings people have about gender in our society is that they confuse the fact that some men are privileged with the idea that men, in general, are privileged. If you look at people at the top of society, overwhelmingly, they are going to identify as male. However, that doesn’t mean all men are privileged; instead, it means that certain kinds of men are privileged. Sociologists refer to this privileged form of masculinity as “hegemonic masculinity.”

Hegemonic masculinity is “a particular variety of masculinity to which others—among them young and effeminate as well as homosexual men—are subordinated.”[2] Short version: hegemonic masculinity is the form of masculinity that men are told to aspire to, and fall constantly short of.

This ideal, this perfect hegemonic masculinity, is, it’s safe to say, oddly specific. The sociologist Erving Goffman described the traits commonly associated with hegemonic masculinity: “a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports… Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways is likely to view himself—during moments at least—as unworthy, incomplete and inferior.”[3] That definition has shifted a bit since Goffman made his list in 1986, but that gives the general outline.

I’m sure everyone reading this could add a couple of items to the list: cisgender; obsessed with vanilla sex with young thin large-breasted women; able-bodied and neurotypical; tall; employed in a professional career; not a nerd or a punk or a member of any other weird subculture; not a fan of romantic movies or anything theater-related; intelligent but not too intelligent; doesn’t cry. You could also debate the necessity of being married or a father, but the authors think that depends on age—twentysomething men are supposed to be more promiscuous, and then around thirty settle down and get married and start reproducing.

That guy—and there’s about five of him in the entire United States—generally has it pretty good. After all, the entirety of the kyriarchy is set up in his favor. Obviously, he doesn’t have a perfect life: entire issues of the New York Times Book Review have been devoted to ways in which this man, usually in his disguise as an English professor, can be unhappy; several genres of movies are devoted to his pining after the quirky, artistic girl who will teach him how to love, or to the travails of the mid-life crisis where he learns to be content with his existing level of comfort, privilege, and societal endorsement. Not to say those are invalid stories; needs are no less needs for being higher on the Maslow hierarchy.

And, of course, it’s silly to blame those five guys for all the kyriarchal nonsense. They didn’t choose to be born white, heterosexual, athletic and the rest of it, any more than someone else chose to be born black, gay, and lousy at sports. They’re just lucky. There is no point in hating someone because of privileges they can’t change.

However, hegemonic masculinity is problematic for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s inaccessible to the vast majority of men. If you’re born gay, or trans, or disabled, or poor, or a person of color… well, sucks to be you, because you are officially Not A Real Man for a bunch of things you can’t change. Hell, Real Manhood can be lost for something like being born short or with a small penis. How stupid is that? Your worth as a person is not based on your physical attributes; yet we have a social system in which millions of men feel bad about themselves because their genes decided they ought to be 5’6″ instead of 5’11”.

Even if you managed to win the genetic lottery for the inborn traits, you’re not safe. Hegemonic masculinity is a status that can be lost at any time. Like fruity drinks? Poof, you lost some. Broke down sobbing when your girlfriend broke up with you? Boom, you’re lower on the Real Man totem pole. Failed to properly defend your manliness in intragender competition (or, worse, got shown up by a girl)? Expect several people to inform you that your manhood no longer exists.

As of this writing, one of the expressions of enforcement is the concept of a “man card.” All over the internet and in homosocial male conversations everywhere (circa 2013), one hears “you just lost your man card” or “turn in your man card” or similar phrases. This expression literally conceptualizes masculinity as a fragile privilege that can be revoked at any time, on anyone’s authority. The usual reasons are what you’d expect: ordering the wrong drink, wearing the wrong shirt, expressing a recognizable human emotion. The very vagueness of the unwritten rules of manhood means that anyone can be accused of violating them at any time for almost any reason.

Once you’ve lost your hegemonic masculinity through such horrific sins as getting sick of Robocop after the tenth time, listening to the wrong song, or saying something honest, you can earn it back through a disciplined program of being as manly as possible and pretending that whatever it was you did wrong never happened. You’ll have to repress the hell out of your emotions, perform masculinity according to whatever standards the people nearest you are enforcing today, and if possible overdo it. The fact is, many of the ugliest stereotypically-male behaviors are acceptable forms of overcompensation. Men who worry that their heterosexuality is questioned will be socially rewarded more for adopting a pose of contemptuous objectification toward women than for openly loving women. The latter contains emotions, after all. Men whose masculinity is being questioned will win back more points by being aggressive and violent than by being temperate and reasonable. Men trying to prove they’re manlier or tougher than other men will not win by claiming to be dedicated and untiring fathers to their children. Hegemonic masculinity prizes an ideal that vaguely resembles a troglodytic caveman with lots of money and a taste for rape.

That is, perhaps, an oversimplification. In day-to-day practice, there are multiple double binds in hegemonic masculinity. In “emphasized femininity” (the female equivalent of hegemonic masculinity), women are characterized as either a virgin or a slut—both of which are equally unacceptable to conventional wisdom. Similarly, men are trapped within double binds. A real man sleeps around—and he commits to one woman. A real man isn’t “pussywhipped”—and a real man buys diamonds and other tools of the romance-industrial complex. A real man is capable of violence—and a real man doesn’t hit. Managing the contradictions of hegemonic masculinity can be difficult for even the most masculine of men.

Feminism has made great strides toward pointing out the stupidity of the feminine mystique: there is no reason that women can’t play sports or work outside the home; if they don’t want to, then that’s wonderful, but there’s no sense in leaving half the human population to knitting and baking cookies just because they identify as female. When Katie Goldman, a little girl who loved Star Wars, was bullied for liking science fiction more than the color pink, fans around the globe sent messages of support and gave her gifts; she even got to meet the actor who voiced Yoda.[4] This is not to condemn what happened to Katie: support for kids who are bullied is important. But try to imagine an equal outcry about a first-grade boy who was bullied for his love of Disney princesses. Take a minute to actually picture it. That cognitive dissonance you’re experiencing right now? That’s what we’re talking about.

The masculine mystique remains largely unchallenged. Just like there is no logical reason to assume women must be stay-at-home moms, there is no logical reason to assume men must work outside the home. Just like women should watch action movies if they want to, men should watch romantic comedies and historical dramas if they want to. Although still limited by gender roles, women have greater social sanction to choose from a wide variety of possible behaviors; men are still circumscribed.

[1] Levine, Jo Ann. “Betty Friedan.” The Christian Science Monitor. April 1 1974.
[2] Carrigan, Tim, et al. “Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity.” Theory and Society 14:5 (1985): 551-604.
[3] Goffman, Erving. Stigma. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. 128.
[4] Gumbrecht, Jamie. “‘The Force’ Is With You, Katie.” CNN.com. 2010. CNN.

Photo: paalia / flickr

Bookforum Omnivore - The Age of White Male Mass Shootings

This is an interesting collection of links on masculinity, guns, and gun violence from Bookforum's Omnivore blog. One article in particular jumped out at me so I included parts of it below the link collection.


The age of white male mass shootings

JAN 22 2013

9:00AM

• Mark Anthony Frassetto (Georgetown): Firearms and Weapons Legislation up to the Early 20th Century. 
• Do Matthew Lang (Xavier): Guns Affect Crime? Evidence Using a Direct Measure of Firearms. 
• Deniese Kennedy-Kollar (Molloy) and Christopher A.D. Charles (Monroe): Hegemonic Masculinity and Mass Murderers in the United States. 
• The unbearable invisibility of white masculinity: David J. Leonard on innocence in the age of white male mass shootings. 
• Chris Lehmann on the year of the white-guy meltdown: Boehner’s f-bomb, LaPierre’s rant — have the white men in power simply lost it? 
• From TPM, take the Red Dawn fantasy out of the equation, and we’ll have no problem coming up with a sensible gun policy in America (and more and more). 
• Rick Perlstein on how the NRA became an organization for aspiring vigilantes (and part 2). 
• From Capitalism magazine, Michael J Hurd on why rage, not reason, governs support of gun control — and all things Leftist. 
• From ProPublica, Suevon Lee on five federal policies on guns you’ve never heard of. 
• Can cities ban assault weapons on their own? In gun control debate, little talk of “stand your ground”.

One of the articles above, from the Southwest Journal of Criminal Studies, looks at the role of "hegemonic masculinity" in mass murders in the U.S. Here is the abstract, and then a section from later in the paper.

Hegemonic Masculinity and Mass Murderers in the United States

• Deniese Kennedy-Kollar, Ph.D., Molloy College, Rockville Center, New York

• Christopher A.D. Charles, Ph.D., King Graduate School, Monroe College, New York

Abstract 

This exploratory study examines the act of mass murder as an attempt by the perpetrators to lay claim to a hegemonic masculine identity that has been damaged or denied them, yet that they feel entitled to as males in American culture. Biographical information was gathered for 28 men who have committed mass murder in the United States since 1970 and examined for evidence of stressors to the perpetrators’ masculine identities. The majority of the sample demonstrated financial (71%), social (61%), romantic (25%), and psychological stressors (32%) and other stressors (18%) that indicated a failure to attain the hegemonic masculine ideal in American culture. There were co-occurring stressors such as financial-social, financial-psychological and social-psychological. These stressors suggest that the motivations for mass murders are numerous and complex. There is no psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many authors have speculated on their motivations. However, in this study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masculine identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity.

* * * * *

Hegemonic Masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity is the socially supported and dominant masculinity, which informs normative male behavior and unequal gender practices seen in the subordination of women in the society. This dominant masculinity which is associated with power, high status, authority, heterosexism and physical toughness, and legitimizes patriarchy, not only subordinates femininities but also other masculinities deemed to be weaker in the society’s gendered order (Beasely, 2008; Connell, 1995; Lusher and Robins, 2009). Hegemonic masculine violence is not only confined to the urban milieu in the United States, because the socio-economic and political changes that also take place in rural areas, lead to internal and external male violent expressions which are strategic patriarchal practices used to create an imagined rural gendered hierarchy (Carrington and Scott, 2008).

Some critics of the hegemonic masculinity thesis suggest that it does not take into account the inequalities of class based power, and the political economy that produces and reproduces traditional physical male violence. This conceptual oversight means that hegemonic masculinity, is applied outside of relevant historical contexts and material processes, that make the use of the term hegemony a misnomer and the concept an inadequate explanatory factor for patterns of male violence (Hall, 2002). Moreover, the concept is also used in a monolithic way which ignores plural masculinities that take into account the heterogeneity of masculine identity and power (Beasely, 2008). Despite these criticisms, there is an evolutionary perspective which locates masculine violence in the descent of man. This perspective argues that violent masculinity is an expression of the survival of the fittest and the drive for reproductive success which has its genesis in human ancestral environments (Polk, 1998).

School is one of several social domains in which hegemonic masculinity is created and expressed in the contemporary era. Very few Americans link school shootings to the gender of the shooters (which is male) although criminologists have consistently argued that there is a relationship between masculinity and violence. The masculinity which influences male aggression and violence is socially constructed (Watson, 2007). In other words, the incidences of hate crimes, bullying in schools and school shootings among other violent expressions of masculinities are influenced by the approaches, processes and codes of the societal construction of men. Schools are very much reflections of this social construction as the bullying and school shootings just mentioned suggests. The ways of man making, which starts before the pre-K level and goes up to manhood, supports and approves subtle and physical expressions of violence. Therefore, the hegemonic masculinity taught in American schools jeopardises the safety of students and the society (Serriere, 2008).

The context of the inner city streets is also used by youth to express violent masculinities. Respect is central to male identity where masculine street behavior is driven by a code that regulates norms surrounding how grievances and conflicts are resolved. There is also an interaction driven ecology of danger, which is influenced by perceptions of threatening or deadly social interactions with rival males, whether they have hostile intentions and whether or not they are willing to use violence to hurt others (Wilkinson, 2001). The anatomy of violence is evident in the narrative of a young male, who was constructing his masculine identity which required the projection of a preferred presentation of self. This self presentation was achieved through creating boundaries about the use of violence, the reasons for fighting and whom one should fight. Masculine characteristics were made salient in the narrative by sorting and positioning the characters of the story. Several varying depictions of other men emerged in the discourse such as non-men, villain and hero. The foregoing discourse of violence, suggests that that masculine identity was constructed and negotiated through the gendered positioning of the negative other (Andersson, 2008).The use of the life history method to understand adolescent male violence, also suggests that boys use the ideals of hegemonic masculinity to construct their emerging manhood. This identity was buttressed in school by the institutionalized bodily and sexual practices that created subordinate masculinity which is linked to sexual violence and an opposition masculinity which is connected to assaultive violence (Messerschmidt, 1999).

The growing body of evidence in the literature that hegemonic masculinity is related to violence was contradicted by the findings of a study of the relationship between masculinity and violent and nonviolent situations. The findings of the study indicate that there is no relationship between violence and masculinity but the presence of a third party is a significant predictor of violence (Krienert, 2000). In keeping with the overall trend of the data on violent masculinity, the positive presence of a father in the life of a son constructing his hegemonic masculine identity is a key means of preventing the emotional problems that triggers male violence (Pope and Englar-Carlson, 2001). The prevalence of male violence suggests that there is a crisis of masculinity which provides opportunities to stop the violence and challenge the masculinities supported by the status quo (Hurst, 2001). However, masculine violence continues unabated in the United States and the most blatant expression of this form of violence is the action of mass murderers.