This morning, on one of the local television 'morning shows', there was a short segment that talked about a new website that focuses on The Art of Manliness. The website gives all kinds of advice on 'how to be a manly man' in modern culture. Much of the material on the site relates to grooming, dating, and other rather 'standard fare' which helps men to have a certain level of comfort with 'what it takes to be a man' and for that I have no objection (nor am I taking specific aim at this website, instead only using it as an example of the larger cultural pattern). What I find problematic is the very notion of 'manliness' as a gender role 'that separates the men from the boys' and 'the boys from the girls' in a diametrically opposite portrayal of gender. After 40 years of feminism in our culture, in a great many ways gender roles are as rigid as they were before the advent of the women's, men's, and LGBT movements. From my perspective, our culture continues to suffer, to a profound degree, from gender constipation.
I'm surely not against males having a distinct amount of confidence with their own sexuality or in their gender differentiation from females. I see nothing inherently wrong with males enjoying being men and females enjoying being women. The problem is in the way that plays out in the larger cultural fabric, and how we define 'what it means to be a man (or a woman)'. The traditional rigid gender role structures, of past generations, seem quaintly anachronistic to me and I, for one, wish they could die a natural and clear death. There have been any articles written about how assigning one group of 'gender attributes' to men and a quite different set to women doesn't really make a lot of sense, because most of the attributes are shared, in the 'real world', by members of both sexes -- or at least, in pursuit of 'humanness' as opposed to a strict demarcation of the genders, such shared attribution would be a more progressive development. In order to be an emotionally healthy man, it is important to develop more nurturing and gentle qualities, and to be an emotionally healthy woman, it is important to develop more strength (both emotional and physical) and a willingness to fight, if necessary. I would argue -- and many writers have proposed such as well -- that being human is about each sex having 'traditional gender attributes' of both sexes in spades, of men developing and promoting their feminine energy and women their masculine energy.
This is, of course (as noted in previous blogs), problematic for male and female sexual abuse survivors. Simply living in a world where they have a 'stable sense of their gender identity' is often quite difficult, much less having a comfort with traditionally differentiated gender roles. Depending on the sex of the people who sexually molested them (in addition to whatever sexual confusion those perpetrators exhibited), sexual abuse survivors often have no clear sense about what their gender identity was before the abuse -- or what it comfortably will be in the years following the abuse. However, that's not the focus of this week's blog (I talked about that extensively last week). I only mention it, once again, to note how at least one group has major problems with strictly defined gender roles -- and I would further note that they are hardly the only group with that conflict.
We live in a culture that has a certain bemused comfort with young girls exhibiting 'tomboy' behaviors, but which has no corresponding word for young boys who exhibit 'girlish' behaviors. There isn't, to the best of my knowledge, a term like 'sue-girl' or such for boys (and surely not one which is not viewed as being an insult) -- although rare examples like the Princess Boy are a positive cultural development from the view of this writer. The mainstream media is rife with movies portraying males rescuing damsels in distress, but there are few, if any, movies portraying women rescuing males who are down and out or in need of protection (and there are many such males in 'real life'). We are constantly bombarded with Cinderella-like stories of powerful men sweeping tender women off their feet and carrying them off to Never-Never Land, but few, if any, stories about high-powered female corporate attorneys sweeping tender and nurturing unemployed men off their feet and supporting them in a style to which they'd like to become accustomed. In many ways, this is because the media roles for men and women are still based on heterosexual role structures [which, in many movies, tend toward 'sexist dynamics', in that they view men as 'one-up' and women as 'one-down' -- and therefore portray men as having to be the rescuers and women as needing to be rescued], rather than gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender possibilities or potentialities. Even feminist directors (the few that there are) fail to explore such alternate gender avenues.
With the repeal of DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell) in the military, it is going to be interesting to see if slogans like the Marines' "we're looking for a few good men" will wither away. Misogynistic behavior toward females hasn't disappeared with the admission of women in the military. The Tailhook conventions are still in the news almost yearly for the alcohol-soaked abuse of female entertainers or female military personnel by the men present and the periodic rape of females in the military by guys 'proving their manhood' has not substantially diminished. I'm hardly expecting a 'kinder, gentler military' as a result of the repeal of DADT; it hasn't occurred with the admission of women and, frankly, the business of warfare doesn't really have a place for such a changed behavior. It is true that there's greater 'lip service' paid to innocent civilians who are killed in battles -- they are now referred to as 'collateral damage' -- but how one incorporates transgender roles into the art of battling ones opponents is problematic (not the least because other cultures may or may not share our culture's stumbling attempts to move beyond binary gender roles). It's not that there aren't examples of different approaches -- the military services of the Netherlands is one possibility -- but those examples don't seem to be actively followed by many of the combatants in most countries and aren't likely to be soon.
Frankly, I'm much more comfortable with a more androgynous culture, with the differences between men and women being 'toned down' rather than ratcheted up. Appeals to 'the art of manliness' appear to be a reaction to the demands of feminism and the 'feminization of American culture', as Ann Douglas and others have written about. Personally, as a heterosexual man who has always had far more comfort with (as well as felt more empowered by) his feminine energy than his masculine energy, I would encourage such a cultural shift. That 'kindler, gentler, more nurturing side' of masculinity is exactly what I'm trying to promote via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute version of men's emotional wellness. It's not that feminism doesn't have it's negative aspects -- seeing males as 'the only real problem', while ignoring the aggressive, abusive side of female behavior is one major issue I continually combat -- but in general I believe it's to our cultural advantage to move in a more 'trans-gender' direction (i.e. moving beyond a strict demarcation between the traditional binary gender roles). It will only be by such a process that we can finally, if ever, 'let our inhibitions loose' and stop emotionally harming males and females with abusive expectations that are predicated on a rather prudish [and archaic] anxiety about gender fluidity.
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