These are comments by pwlsax and Richard Jeffrey Newman on the post “Towards a Discussion of Male Self-Hatred“.
pwlsax said:
“Men traditionally need to hate themselves in another very deep way: they must use force and yet be peaceful. In draft-era America that meant being ready to be part of a highly mechanized and dehumanizing military and (maybe) the wholesale slaughter of combat, then to resume home and family life with as little help as possible.
“Because after all, you were indoctrinated that you were defending your way of life. But in reality the contrast was total, but to admit it was sissy at best and subversive at worst. No wonder so many men hated one side or another of themselves after WWII, Korea, Vietnam. And that hate-lesson inevitably spread to how they raised generations of sons.”
Richard Jeffrey Newman said:
Men traditionally need to hate themselves in another very deep way: they must use force and yet be peaceful.
“I just want to say that this is a crucial, crucial and so often overlooked point. There is, at the heart of traditional manhood and the masculinity required to achieve it, precisely this self-hatred. More, it is a purposeful self-hatred, by which I mean that traditional manhood couldn’t function, wouldn’t be what it is, with out it.”
Photo credit: Flickr / Yuri Samoilov
The logical extension of this point is that the sublimated self-hatred percolates and is acted out as violence toward others. It can be overt violence, such as wars, acts of domination, and aggressive competition. Often, however, the violence is acted out in subtle insidious ways that are easily rationalized, explained and excused. It’s difficult to recognize and respond to latter.
Sorry to get so far away from the original idea of self-hatred, and its repression, as manly responsibilities. Obviously it would have cut very close to the skin for 1950s Americans. It simply was not the time for a national unburdening of what war had done to us. It was much more important to get on with building a national life that had been on hold for almost 2 decades, since the depression of 1929. The individual veteran had to buddy-up in private with his fellow vets, and considered himself more of a man to keep it from family, friends,… Read more »
That was a very real issue in 1950s culture, because all of a sudden we had a class of very prominent public intellectuals who were speaking out against the US government. Some of it was legitimate, in that they felt we were moving towards another world war. Some was just lingering resentment from the far left in an increasingly right-leaning country. No matter, it was all threatening to those in power, and to many private citizens who felt that the American thing to do was the way we’d won WW2: being loyal to our leaders. So you had a witch… Read more »
This is what I hated about the John Wayne image of masculinity. Well not all John Wayne movies lack a reflective and questioning male protagonist, so maybe I should say the Charleston Heston/Ronald Reagan image of masculinity. It’s the shoot first and ask questions later way of thinking. Your really tough but only because your placed in a situation that demands that toughness and you don’t have the ability or even the right to question that toughness or the ultimate fact that you aren’t in control of your situation, that other men have decided for you what it means to… Read more »