Men finally set to get the respect they deserve, says the Times
A friend sent along an article from the Times Online about gender wars. I hope you don't mind if I quote it at length: it's so riddled with faulty assumptions that I want to show you I'm not overstating it position in a paraphrase. I know I'm getting pretty worked up about a work of pop psychology here, but really, there's no point in getting worked up over serious science, which no one but Gina Kolata will ever hear about. Pop psych is the new religion, the thing people are going to take to their hearts and change their perceptions to conform to, and, unlike religion, it changes frequently and so stays in the news. And can be easily explained away by one like me.
"WHO’D be one of you, eh chaps? Let’s be honest, your CV these days is hardly enviable. Outperformed by girls at school, emasculated by women at home and at work, shockingly dislocated from your emotions and the hapless joke figure in endless TV commercials and sitcoms whose message is that females rule and men are fools."
Oh those nasty working women, snatching up all the CEO jobs, demanding maternity leave and flextime, insisting on equal pay for equal work. Wow, I never realized how painful it must be to be a man in the workplace today. Ms. Midgely, we have not come far enough for nice journalists like you to go retrograde. And excuse me, the message of TV sitcoms is that women are shrieking harridans, can't-deal ditzes, or bitchy sluts, and men are fools. Women given more nuance than men? Maybe on Lifetime.
"“What has happened to men over the past 30 or so years is that they have moved from defining the world . . . to having their world defined by women,” says Salzman, 45. “Men have been the butt of the joke for too long. TV is the snapshot of our everyday lives . . . there are men making jokes about men, women making jokes about men but not men making jokes about women because that would be politically incorrect."
Fallacy. Being the butt of a joke is a marker of power. Think about it: people makes jokes about the CEO, not about the underlings. You joke about what you fear. When weak people makes jokes at their own expense, it just makes you cringe, but when powerful people do it it's funny. It's almost taboo in our culture to laugh at a self-referential joke from a woman, which I think reflects a history of women's powerlessness. (I think it's fair to classify sitcom male jokes as self-referential, even if they're not quite the same as a Woody Allen stand-up: they're performed by men and probably written by men.)
"Salzman’s point is that you can have M-ness whether you are a happily married house-husband or a 45-year-old serial dater, a physician or a soccer coach. You must do whatever makes you happy, gives you self-respect and makes you feel whole while respecting the other gender’s right to the same. But you must be multidimensional. You must love your family, have male friends to whom you are not afraid to show affection, have one or two hobbies."
M-ness, by the way, is the mystical quality invented by the author of the book discussed in this article and slated to help all men lead better lives in this female-dominated world. I just want to point out how a minute ago the victimized man in the picture was Ray Romano, the shlubby butt of jokes; now, apparently, he's some hidebound, non-relating Willy Loman.
Here's the quote that made me think this article especially relevant to this blog. From Jim Frank, a magazine publisher:
“Until there are significant changes in the concept and biology of childbearing, women, unfortunately, will never quite reach equality across all people. Individual cases, absolutely; across ‘mankind’? No.”
Even with men who've evolved to the radically extreme point of sensitivity where they "love their families" and have a few friends, it's still going to take artificial wombs and human cloning for us to achieve equality. Got that, ladies? You heard it here first.
How in the heck do you change the "concept" of childbearing?
Why would men want to adopt "M-ness" if it's going to foster female equality? I mean, if they wanted women equal, they'd already be . . . uh . . . "M", no?
How do we know they don't like shlubby-husband jokes? Someone's got to be watching all those worthless sitcoms.
posted by Theologienne @ 5:27 PM
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2 Comments:
I don't think I can have any good things to say about the people responsible for perpetrating "metrosexual" on an innocent world. In addition to being a linguistic crime, the term has probably done more to set back evolving gender awareness for men than anything else in the past ten years. At least as played out in the popular media, it took a highly laudable phenomenon--men pursuing their own interests and conceptions of masculinity in face of macho culture--and turned it into a way for corporate America to make men feel inadequate if they weren't using the right brand of exfoliant. I've read too many articles about how it's now "totally okay" for men to go to day spas; the implicit message is that if you're not comfortable dropping a hundred dollars a month on various kinds of "product" you're less than complete. (See Susan Faludi's Stiffed for an interesting, if long, discussion of these issues and the ones below.)
Women, of course, have faced these concerns for years, and you are right that the article in question dangerously trivializes the continuing challenges facing American women. Nonetheless, I'd like to suggest that you've created a bit of a straw, um, man. Just because women are still systematically disadvantaged in numerous ways does not mean that men today don't face problems of their own. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I think one of the causes of the "masculinity crisis" is indeed the progress women have made in the last century or so. Oversimplifying at the risk of sounding regressive, the still dominant conceptions of masculinity require that men compete in any number of arenas for women's approval. Feminists have rightly documented how limiting this role is for women, and I would argue that it's harmful for men as well. Nonetheless, it becomes less applicable all the time. Men today in virtually any field are apt to find women outperforming them, and likely these women are better socialized as well. Small wonder men feel threatened--performance is no longer a path to women's approval. Moreover, his behavior is apt to be subject to criticism as well. The bumbling husband in the sitcom does remain the titular head of the household, but the sting of those jokes is that he is maladapted to modern life: he can't do anything right, he doesn't bring anything unique to the table, he's just filling space. If he adopts metrosexual attitudes in an attempt to smooth over his objectionable habits, he may feel like he's sold out his manhood completely.
It's not surprising, then, that the writers of this book and the article present the problem as men vs. powerful Amazons who control the world. Combining my arguments with yours, though, I think the problem is better stated as men and women vs. our conceptions of masculinity and femininity. The conclusions the book seems to suggest are along these lines, but the words they use to get there seem all wrong to me. I think ultimately each of us needs to make peace with our roles as individuals, letting the demands of our circumstances shape our lives more than our perceptions of the "appropriate" behaviors for someone of our gender. And, it goes without saying, you'll thereby gain a greater appreciation and tolerance for the divergent paths chosen by other men and women.
And, since I desire your feminine approval, I'll close with a quote by a feminist:
Men weren’t really the enemy -- they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
--Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
I agree that the metrosexual trope has narrowed the range of acceptable male behaviors, and I think increasing awareness of gay men, and of the stereotypical ways they act, has been doing the same thing for a number of years. Before people were widely aware of gay men and gay culture, the worst insult used for a man who wasn't into whatever was deemed typical male stuff was "feminine." Now a fairly innocuous variance in behavior raises questions about a man's sexuality, not just his personality. There are so many icky assumptions at work here: it shouldn't be an insult to be considered gay, and yet it's always uncomfortable to be viewed as something different from your own identity; it doesn't help either straight men or gay men that sexuality is defined so rigidly and by such a limited behavior set, even if both straight and gay men milk these stereotypes for a lot of social and professional entertainment; and while some would challenge the entire wisdom that whom you love dictates mannerisms, to others the link is real and a given. I think metrosexuality will probably fade pretty soon, although I'm afraid that it'll fade by becoming the norm. (In the last century and a half of female beauty standards I can't think of any insecurities that have been allowed to go away once created; the steps to correct the percieved flaws gradually become an accepted part of normal grooming.) Obviously, the difficulty of sexuality-linked behavior stereotypes will stick. Again, the only way I see the difficulty fading is for "gay-acting" straight men (whom my friends and I, gleefully participating in the problem, call GASMs) to become less of a minority. If metrosexuality catches on grooming will no longer be a cue; with the promised Latinization of American culture dancing will again spread in all walks of society; and then only straight male lovers of Broadway will ever be placed on the defensive.
There's a lot to unpack in your point that the declining value of "performance" as a path to women's approval might cause men anxiety. I hope that men always expected to have people in their lives whose approval would be unconditional to worldly performance. Obviously, financial, sexual, whatever performance does affect relationships, and there are some great examinations of masculinity (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Full Monty, Death of a Salesman, which I'm always citing--even Abraham and Sarah) that look at what happens when a man can no longer fulfill his worldly roles. But I think the reason those have always been so compelling is that it hurts and shocks us a little bit to think that a couple could be broken apart or other bad fallout occur because a man loses his capacity as provider. If expectations for men are being lowered because more women are succeeding on their own terms, I understand how this could feel like a narrowing of the niche for men, but if the pressure becomes pathological, as in those examples, I would think women's greater autonomy might help take it away.
Betty Freidan (and you) have it exactly right--so much of the bizarre behaviors and injustices of gender are created when we try to fit ourselves into a societally defined role, instead of allowing our personality to dictate our behaviors. It saves us potentially painful introspection if, instead of saying "What am I meant to be, and how do I get there?" we look around and say "Here's what a woman is supposed to be, thus this is how I have to act." Lots of women (still not enough) now are getting the message that women don't have to be as anyone says they have to be. Maybe as yet that freedom's only been granted to men on more superficial issues, like exfoliation.
Women waste a lot of time giving men positive attention for doing "masculine" things that might not inhere to either the way he wants to act or the way she wants him, or a man, to act. That can be a very worthy thing if it's done out of love, but (lest you think I'm veering too much into JPII gender-role territory here) it adds a ridiculous third step to the natural process of affirming someone for his true being. "Good job for you doing this male thing, man" can be nice to hear, but usually, I venture, it's less authentic for both parties than an affirmation along the lines of "That is so you, and that's why it makes me happy."
Now, everyone throw out all those cultural gender roles braided into your neurons, and let's move forward being only ourselves, and approving each other for ourselves.
Just kidding. Until we create a society more perfectly free from gender norms, it'll continue to be honorable and loving to approve nonauthentic gender-role behavior. We'll have to fight not to let the masculine/feminine stereotypes that are so powerfully inculcated eclipse our view of the true other person. Being conscious of the difference, having these conversations, helps immeasurably.
And sandwich making remains a privilege, not a right.
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