Thursday, June 29, 2006
Manblog, Part II: What use is masculinity?
(Actually, it's just Part I split up into a second post for readability.)
Think about the profile I described yesterday: the uncaring, unfeeling, instrumental male. The definition of a man is completely external: his needs are defined by his circumstances, not an interaction between his own feelings and that circumstance. What are those circumstances? War and the workplace are useful analogies, neither of which allow real self-expression. Empathy, fear, playfulness are all banished to the after-work world. Think about the adjectives used to describe work: dog-eat-dog, get-ahead, kill-or-be-killed. Think about what it means to be a soldier: military training is all about breaking down the personality and rebuilding it as part of a collective in which individuals are not only subsumed, but obliterated, to be replaced by a masculine ethos.
From the unbelievably talented Chris Ware. Buy his books, you won't regret it.
Masculinity as independence, 'being your own man', is a lie. It's used most often when men are the most dependent. The sergeant, foreman or manager is happy to employ tough guys, with no internal guide of feelings or compassion for the outside world. That gives the boss a free hand to impose whatever order he likes.
But masculinity is not just false consciousness. There's something real at its heart: the very repression it feeds on. Men's emotions are present whether men recognize it or not. Psychiatry grew up with capitalism precisely because capitalist production suppressed feeling, separated the mind and the body, and commodified the products of both. Now we needed a science to extract what was dangerous to productive discipline.
Masculinity represents a substitute, an ideology of feeling that suggests the psychically destructive process of wage-labour (not to mention military discipline) is a form of freedom, allowing our supposedly innate aggressive, atomic individualism to shine forth. Now, capitalism isn't an imposition or alienation: it's simply the means to put men's aggressive rationality to profitable ends.
Except, of course, that aggressive rationality is empty: the masculine ethos is never realized. This is a tremendous source of frustration for men, who have no access to their feelings, having been socialized to believe that feeling anything is dangerous and unmanly. They repeat the ritual of masculinity, getting progressively more frustrated that their unspoken, unmet desires are still burning within them.
Luckily, whoever designed masculinity realized it wouldn't work without a safety valve. Men are allowed to be angry, which is conveniently siphoned off into sports, barfights and woman abuse, or is put to good use in war.
That anger is terrifying for its targets: women, children, other men. But it can't be understood as simply wrong or false. It has real roots. Think about the cliche of the angry old man in the cafe. He's everywhere: the guy with battered white sneakers, a cold coffee and half a sandwich, glaring at everyone.
Or, more generally, the inappropriateness of which men - usually scuzzy, greasy-haired, middle-aged men - try to pick up women. All my female friends have been targets; I've seen it myself many times. My favourite was the balding, mid-40s security guard, with long curly hair descending from his temples, I saw in the cafe, trying to pick up a Chinese woman 20 years his junior. She told him she had a boyfriend, which sparked new levels of desperation as he pleaded: "I'm very interested in Asian culture, and I've often thought I'd like to marry a Chinese girl." He left the moment her boyfriend arrived.
I'd argue these are manifestations of a pathological tendency to repeat the tropes of masculinity. The tropes don't work, but that's all men have been offered as a means to relate to women: flatter, use and/or abuse them. Take care of women - or demand to be taken care of by women.
Next Manblog: commodity feminism.
Think about the profile I described yesterday: the uncaring, unfeeling, instrumental male. The definition of a man is completely external: his needs are defined by his circumstances, not an interaction between his own feelings and that circumstance. What are those circumstances? War and the workplace are useful analogies, neither of which allow real self-expression. Empathy, fear, playfulness are all banished to the after-work world. Think about the adjectives used to describe work: dog-eat-dog, get-ahead, kill-or-be-killed. Think about what it means to be a soldier: military training is all about breaking down the personality and rebuilding it as part of a collective in which individuals are not only subsumed, but obliterated, to be replaced by a masculine ethos.
From the unbelievably talented Chris Ware. Buy his books, you won't regret it.
Masculinity as independence, 'being your own man', is a lie. It's used most often when men are the most dependent. The sergeant, foreman or manager is happy to employ tough guys, with no internal guide of feelings or compassion for the outside world. That gives the boss a free hand to impose whatever order he likes.
But masculinity is not just false consciousness. There's something real at its heart: the very repression it feeds on. Men's emotions are present whether men recognize it or not. Psychiatry grew up with capitalism precisely because capitalist production suppressed feeling, separated the mind and the body, and commodified the products of both. Now we needed a science to extract what was dangerous to productive discipline.
Masculinity represents a substitute, an ideology of feeling that suggests the psychically destructive process of wage-labour (not to mention military discipline) is a form of freedom, allowing our supposedly innate aggressive, atomic individualism to shine forth. Now, capitalism isn't an imposition or alienation: it's simply the means to put men's aggressive rationality to profitable ends.
Except, of course, that aggressive rationality is empty: the masculine ethos is never realized. This is a tremendous source of frustration for men, who have no access to their feelings, having been socialized to believe that feeling anything is dangerous and unmanly. They repeat the ritual of masculinity, getting progressively more frustrated that their unspoken, unmet desires are still burning within them.
Luckily, whoever designed masculinity realized it wouldn't work without a safety valve. Men are allowed to be angry, which is conveniently siphoned off into sports, barfights and woman abuse, or is put to good use in war.
That anger is terrifying for its targets: women, children, other men. But it can't be understood as simply wrong or false. It has real roots. Think about the cliche of the angry old man in the cafe. He's everywhere: the guy with battered white sneakers, a cold coffee and half a sandwich, glaring at everyone.
Or, more generally, the inappropriateness of which men - usually scuzzy, greasy-haired, middle-aged men - try to pick up women. All my female friends have been targets; I've seen it myself many times. My favourite was the balding, mid-40s security guard, with long curly hair descending from his temples, I saw in the cafe, trying to pick up a Chinese woman 20 years his junior. She told him she had a boyfriend, which sparked new levels of desperation as he pleaded: "I'm very interested in Asian culture, and I've often thought I'd like to marry a Chinese girl." He left the moment her boyfriend arrived.
I'd argue these are manifestations of a pathological tendency to repeat the tropes of masculinity. The tropes don't work, but that's all men have been offered as a means to relate to women: flatter, use and/or abuse them. Take care of women - or demand to be taken care of by women.
Next Manblog: commodity feminism.
