Hugo Schwyzer argues that being a man should not induce guilt or shame, but rather be the root of responsibility.
It happens every semester. Not long after midterm week, a young man comes to sit in my office. He comes to talk with me about the work he’s doing in my intro to Women’s Studies course, or perhaps in my Men and Masculinities class. We usually start by talking about the reading, or about his term paper assignment.
Almost inevitably, things soon get personal. He shares his own feelings about what he’s hearing in my lecture and from his classmates during discussions. He’s been hearing about male privilege, and the objectification and dehumanization of women in the past—and in the present. And he’s starting to feel guilty.
Like virtually all those who teach gender studies, I go to great lengths to distinguish between the Great Crime of patriarchy and the complicity of individual men. But as guys come to grips with the ways in which those who share our biology have mistreated and abused women, it’s not surprising that some of them are left reeling. The more obtuse ones are snarlingly defensive; the more sensitive ones are often strikingly overwhelmed by guilt.
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In nearly 20 years of college teaching, I’ve heard “male guilt” come up many different ways. Sometimes, it’s in the form of a question: “Should I feel guilty because I’m a man?” Or, slightly more provocatively, “Why should I be made to feel guilty because I’m a guy?” Sometimes the student wants guidance as much as clarity: “What can I do about this guilt I’m feeling?” And sometimes, it’s not a question at all, just a declaration: “I’m angry because I feel like I’m supposed to feel guilty about being male.”
At this point, I often tell my students about John Bradshaw’s famous distinction between guilt and shame. Though there are a great many different ways to distinguish these two feelings, Bradshaw’s is perhaps the most useful. He writes: Guilt says I’ve made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what I did was not good; shame says I am no good.
There’s little good we can say about shame. It’s soul-corroding, because the person suffering from shame comes to believe in his innate worthlessness. Guilt, on the other hand, is both necessary and useful. When we hurt someone else, we ought to feel as if we’ve done something wrong. Good emotional health means being able to acknowledge having done something one shouldn’t have done without believing that one is, at the core, a bad person. Guilt is about actions (or the failure to act); shame is about identity.
When they come to talk about feeling guilt (or, less often, “being made” to feel guilty), my students are really talking about shame.
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Male shame is real. It is toxic. But it’s not caused by taking a gender studies class or reading a feminist website. It’s not caused by overbearing mothers or demanding girlfriends. For most of these students—and for so many other guys—the shame is rooted in the absence of loving male role models.
In a world where the discussion of emotion is gendered (grown men aren’t upposed to cry, or talk about feelings other than rage or lust), boys grow up with little sense of what goes on inside other men. Reminded by pop culture that “men are simple, women are complicated”; reassured by evolutionary psychologists that they are “hardwired” to be violent and unfaithful; taught by coaches and peers that manhood is defined by athletic prowess, sexual conquest, and heaps of cash, it’s little wonder that so many gentle, kind, sensitive young men end up feeling deeply unhappy about their own masculinity. They feel ashamed of the ways in which they’ve fallen short of the manly ideal—and they come, in time, to feel even more ashamed about pursuing that straitjacketed ideal in the first place.
In my Men and Masculinities classes, I sometimes assign Chuck Palahniuk’s wonderful Fight Club. Anyone who read the book or saw the Edward Norton/Brad Pitt film adaptation remembers the iconic line: “the first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.” But “fight club” is a proxy for all the toxic rules of hypermasculine American culture. The first rule of being a “real man” is not to question, or even talk about, the rules of manhood. The moment you question the “man law,” your “man card” gets pulled. So boys learn to stuff their emotions, medicating their pain with pot, escaping into the ironically named Call of Duty, or—for the athletically gifted—knocking each other down on the football field.
It’s in gender studies courses (and on sites like The Good Men Project) that these rules of manhood get exposed and challenged. It’s in places like this that we delineate the harm that an inflexible masculine culture does to women – and to the many men who fall short of its ideals. When we name the problem for what it is, the feelings often come rushing to the surface. And without any alternative roadmap for how to live successfully in a male body, many young men become angry, depressed, confused—and ashamed. It’s little wonder that some end up blaming the messenger.
There is nothing either guilty or shameful about living in a male body. There is nothing wrong with wanting sex with women, liking football, or enjoying beer. There is something wrong with deriving one’s self-worth from how many women one takes to bed, or how well one plays football, or how much beer one can drink. And there is something very wrong—something worth feeling guilt over—about promoting that narrow definition of masculinity to other men.
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“It’s not your guilt I want, it’s your responsibility!” I often quote that line from Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy to my students who complain of feeling male guilt. I try to always say it with a smile to soften what would otherwise come across as unsympathetic hectoring. I’m not so old I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a young man overwhelmed by a troubled conscience, unsure of the degree of my own collaboration in the Great Crime. Shame is useless, I remind them; but in the end, guilt is only a little less so. Analysis paralysis doesn’t change the world. What changes the world is accepting responsibility.
Responsibility means giving up the excuse of biology or culture to explain behavior that hurts, demeans, or exploits others. Taking responsibility means forgoing the temptation to explain away our bad behavior with appeals to evolutionary psychology, testosterone, or our Y chromosome. It means recovering the capacity for self-reflection, empathy, and articulate self-expression that we suppressed as boys in order to fit in with the other guys. It means talking about the things we were warned not to talk about.
If we’re not willing to do that work because we think it’s too difficult—or not worth doing—then we’re shirking the charge to grow up and become fully human. And if we evade that responsibility, then guilt is exactly what we should feel.
—Photo by Stephen Sheffield
Dear lord this man is a flip flopper.
“There is something wrong with deriving one’s self-worth from…how well one plays football.”
The author is a tosser who envies the achievements of others.
I was a very good javelin thrower as a young man. The self worth I derived from the activity related to hard work necessarily put in over many years to become that good. I have as much right to that self worth as any dancer, musician or professional of any sort.
This was a very good article and I’m sorry that so many people got so defensive about it.
I would love to see Hugo explain how patriarchy and male privilege work as social systems. In “The Gender Knot,” Allan Johnson has a brilliant chapter titled something like, “Patriarchy, Not a He but an It.”
Patriarchy is a social system, not a description of men’s personalities. If The Good Men Project really wants equality, it will ask Hugo (or even Allan) to write articles that explain it.
The parallels between feminism and Catholicism are becoming downright eerie.
Here’s hoping we see a Reformation soon, as the sensible faction splits off from the orthodox.
The only Women’s Studies courses I am closely familiar with are the ones taught at the place I teach, but I have some impression of the way they are taught in other places as well. At my school, and possibly in Hugo’s courses, the approach seems to assume that students come in with some sort of false gender consciousness that the class needs to eradicate by showing the students the clear, single truth. If male students feel anger or guilt at the content, and female students feel outrage against the system, then these are signs that a higher ideological goal… Read more »
Wellokaythen, I couldn’t agree more with your analysis. My background is in economics, and one of the fundamental tenets of economics is that your theory, however elegant, may be proven completely wrong as new and better data become available. The entire field is largely uncomfortable with unsubstantiated assumptions. When assumptions cannot be backed by evidence (as the assumption of rationality increasingly could not over the past few decades), then they must be questioned and even overturned (as bounded rationality has now mostly replaced absolute rationality in economic inquiry). Yet when I was first exposed to Gender Studies, the entire field… Read more »
I write this as someone who thinks that sexism(s) and patriarchy(ies) actually do exist. There’s good evidence for their influence and poor evidence for their influence. Gender ideas may in fact have even more power than I am fully conscious of. I practically assume that they’re probably more powerful than I think. I’m open to being convinced. I just suggest that maybe some of what is taught could be, you know, not quite accurate or a little misguided. Maybe sometimes political goals are the primary motivation and not an ongoing search for reality. (As I’m sure you see in some… Read more »
P.S. I guess what I’m trying to say is that often the field is missing out on an opportunity to develop a more robust, more persuasive theory, and that gives the impression of smoke and mirrors.
Male shame is real. It is toxic. But it’s not caused by taking a gender studies class or reading a feminist website. It’s not caused by overbearing mothers or demanding girlfriends. For most of these students—and for so many other guys—the shame is rooted in the absence of loving male role models. Right… So when young men who take women’s studies classes and hear nothing but negative commentary about males and masculinity feel guilty and ashamed of being male, the fault lies not with the ideology that prompted those feelings, but with the absence of loving male role models, of… Read more »
Feminists must take responsibility for the impact of their views. Responsibility means giving up the excuse of a political position explain behavior that hurts, demeans, or exploits others. Taking responsibility means forgoing the temptation to explain away your bad behavior with appeals to political correctness, social change, and equality. It means recovering the capacity for self-reflection, empathy, and articulate self-expression that feminists ignore in order to fit in with the other feminists. It means talking about the things you were told by other feminists not to talk about. Let’s rephrase your comment and turn it around: Everyone must take responsibility… Read more »
Why do you feel the poster above is a misogynist?
I don’t. No need to jump to that conclusion.
Just noticed that it works both ways.
Misogyny exists and misandry exists. Exploitation and abuse based on gender exists. It is all hurtful. Just because a woman (or a man) speaks out about misogyny in her/his culture does not mean she/he is a ‘feminist’ – as the author I quoted implied it did, before lecturing on responsibility. I agree about responsibility – and it goes all ways.
We are not talking about everybody. We are talking about a group of male students who, after taking women’s studies courses, feel guilty and ashamed of being male. Rather than look at what in his course or in feminism might lead so many male students year after year to feel that way, Hugo blames it on his assumption that those students lack loving male roles models. It is improbable that there is no connection between his students feelings and whatever he teaches in his courses. CW’s conclusion is fair. My comment was directed at feminists, and you simply switched out… Read more »
(Applause for Jacob)
What Schwyzer is doing is not teaching–it’s preaching. And a particularly poisonous doctrine, at that.
If it’s patriarchy that’s the crime, then ALL collaborators ought to take responsibility. Women can also be complicit in the crime of patriarchal exploitation. If men are not allowed to get away with saying “I was only following orders,” then women should not be allowed to get away with hiding behind “I was just doing what the dominant culture expects of me.” I hope no one is suggesting that women in a patriarchal system are only victims and nothing else. I hope no one is suggesting that men are only privileged and nothing else. Patriarchy is so massive and so… Read more »
<i? "If it’s patriarchy that’s the crime, then ALL collaborators ought to take responsibility. Women can also be complicit in the crime of patriarchal exploitation. If men are not allowed to get away with saying “I was only following orders,” then women should not be allowed to get away with hiding behind “I was just doing what the dominant culture expects of me.” I hope no one is suggesting that women in a patriarchal system are only victims and nothing else. I hope no one is suggesting that men are only privileged and nothing else. Patriarchy is so massive and… Read more »
This was an interesting article, but it misses the problem here: the reason most of these men feel guilt, or shame, or however you want to define it, clearly is something they’re hearing in the class. Leaving aside the fact it’s not accurate to simply say “men have oppressed women” as most men have not engaged in that throughout history, there is absolutely no reason for people to be made to feel guilty because some others have done bad things. If young men regularly come to you feeling guilt/shame/etc. after hearing things discussed in class, that might be a sign… Read more »
” So boys learn to stuff their emotions, medicating their pain with pot, escaping into the ironically named Call of Duty, or—for the athletically gifted—knocking each other down on the football field.” Sometimes. It seems like it would be job of a good teacher/scholar of ‘Men and Masculinities’ to recognize a broader range of actually existing masculinities, rather than perpetuating a cliched narrative about ‘what boys do’. Some boys listen to and create music, some absorb and make art, some read novels and write stories, some (gasp) read feminist theory and go to rallies. None of these are uncomplicated, none… Read more »
No one should feel guilty for something they didn’t cause or take part of.
The genders will never be equal, we’ll continue to have one gender being stepped up to better the lives of the other.
Nowadays men are the ones being stepped on.
Speaking of externally-imposed guilt as a motivator… this was one reason I rejected Christianity as a child. I was told “Jesus died for your sins, YOU OWE HIM.”
My quite natural reaction was “Who asked him to? I wasn’t given a say, so I refuse to pay the demanded price.”
I find it very interesting when I read things like, men are no longer number one or men don’t have it easy anymore. It’s so not true. Not true at all. I wish I could say that our system has been shaken up, but it hasn’t. The world, including the West is still a culture based on men being first and women being second. Definitely, we can break it down and study how class and race and sexual orientation come into play. And maybe when we compare ourselves to places like Saudi Arabia, we can think that we’ve got it… Read more »
And, I’d like to add, that by claiming that our system still privileges men over women, that’s not me saying that it’s women’s turn to run the world and that I advocate for the suppression/oppression of men. Far from it. I long for the day when we stop looking at each other through the binary lens of men vs women. I long for the day when the idea of gender is eradicated from our lexicon, because, ultimately, we’ll all benefit from just being human first, whatever that may mean to each individual PERSON.
While I can appreciate the sentiment of getting past the days of forcing everything into the gender binary i think one thing you’re doing that people probably won’t agree with is starting with the conclusion that men are privileged and women are not.
The score is simply not that black and white. There are measurements where men are favored over women and measurements where women are favored over men.
Attempts at minimizing the latter are will only make the days of forcing everything into the gender binary last longer.
“overall, our system is still one that privileges men over women.” White women have more privilege than any other class, with the possible exception of white men. When are feminists going to acknowlege that? Regarding sports, there is no segregation/barrier preventing women from competint. There are no laws or rules preventing women from playing on professional men’s teams. There are, on the other hand, rules that prevent men from playing on women’s teams. Is that the discrmination you are talking about? ” It sounds like some of these people commenting here need to take one of Hugo’s courses.” I wouldn’t… Read more »
That should read instead “there is no segregation/barrier preventing women from competing.”
Pro sports is an example of female privilege, in fact- or at least politically correct pandering to women. If pro sports weren’t segregated, women would not be represented at all- AT ALL- except for in a very, very few cases. If a men’s league got the ratings the WNBA gets, or any other number of female leagues get, it would be shut down. Female privilege and political correctness keeps the WNBA on the air, bolstered by funds from the men’s NBA and elsewhere. And some feminists still have the nerve to complain that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves?… Read more »
Jaime you should have used a different example than sports. The segregation there is actually rational in this case. Women don’t have the strength (or athletic) capabilities to be able to consistently compete with men in Pro sports. I would actually argue that their capabilities are around the high school level (and that might be a stretch).
Pro Sports is a money making enterprise; calling it “male privilege” is inaccurate. The teams want to make money. Money comes from ticket sales, TV revenue, merchandising sales etc… These things are driven by winning and general interest. If there was a woman who could beat out a male player and make the team better they would be all over it. The story of the first femaile NFL player would be a HUGE interest driver; an amazing windfall for the team. Personally I’d love it and probably buy my daughter a jersey. I like the sound of a Christina Johnson… Read more »
This would be a good article, except the entire premise is wrong – men are the disenfranchised class in Western society, not the privileged. Thus, feeling guilt, shame, or what have you, is not simply counterproductive but illogical. Of course, Schwyzer plants the seeds of the lie that leads to such feelings, and as such is responsible for them, not matter if he argues against shame after the fact. Again, if men truly were privileged that would be one thing – the truth needs to be exposed, regardless of the hurt it may cause – but since they’re not, it’s… Read more »
I find the internet mighty depressing when I take inventory of the condition of male/female relating in the world. The men who have a greater degree of empathy (and who feel those ‘guilt’ feelings the strongest) are usually not the guys who are complicit in woman-hating or abusive cultural climates. I’d rather those men not feel guilty at all. Patriarchy sucks, yeah. Authoritarianism in general sucks. History can be colored any way you choose, using any set of perspectives you choose. I think every perspective contributes to the bigger picture. The perspective of most women includes growing up believing that… Read more »
“ The perspective of MOST women includes growing up believing that being a woman means being less-than, being vulnerable, being responsible, and being disposable.” What the . . .? I have 4 sisters and 2 daughters and more female relatives and friends than I could possibly count, and none of them (zero) feel that way. Any girls who feel that way have been seriously abused, or raised in some non-western backward culture. But, here in the west, were that even remotely accurate, it would be men not women who were graduating from high school and college 21% more often, had lower unemployment, lower… Read more »
It is my opinion from our brief encounter that you might have an adrocentric, anglocentric world-view – assuming you’re a white guy. MOST women on the planet, Eric. There are people outside western suburbia, you know. White, middle class American women are a small percentage of women worldwide. Even white, middle-class western women have noticed the absence of ‘she’ in history books, have noticed the absence of ‘she’ in religious texts and religious leadership – and the generally sex-negative and the decidedly misogynistic thrust of Abrahamic religions. Not a woman I know has *not* had a negative experience in which… Read more »
i meant misandry. not androgyny. geez. that’s actually kind of funny.
“It is my opinion from our brief encounter that you might have an adrocentric, anglocentric world-view – assuming you’re a white guy.” 40% of the world’s population is either Chinese or Indian but this website is not based in or based on the events in those countries. This website is US-based (New England) as are most of its writers and commenters. No, I’m not a white guy. “Even white, middle-class western women have noticed the absence of ‘she’ in history books, have noticed the absence of ‘she’ in religious texts and religious leadership – and the generally sex-negative and the… Read more »
I disagree with some of the commenters below who say Hugo wants his students to feel guilty, is happy when they do express feelings of guilt or shame, or that he he believes his male students (or any man) *should* feel guilty. He simply states that guilt can be useful, whereas shame is not, and makes the distinction that most of his students are feeling shameful, not guilty. He implies that his students should feel guilty if (or more likely, when) they act in a way that harms others, specifically women, but they should not feel guilty about simply being… Read more »
*it does mean you have a responsibility as you grow up to be aware of how your sex can be USED harmfully. Sorry for the omission.
I couldn’t agree with you more. This quote from the above article rings true for some of the commenters here:
“The more obtuse ones are snarlingly defensive.”
There’s always an easy way to dismiss any criticism of an argument as invalid, by labeling it “defensiveness” or saying “you just don’t get it.” Unfortuately, such tactics are pretty transparent… right up there with saying ‘If you disagree with what a feminist says, you hate women!”
True. But have you read any of the above comments? It’s like they didn’t even read the article all the way through and got defensive, because of words like “Great Crime” or complicity. If any of the above had a valid argument against what Hugo wrote, then fine. But they don’t. They’re being defensive.
Jaime, I think the above commenters are just tired of Hugo’s baseless assumptions about the what it is to be a man in America. Just look at some of Hugo’s claims: “boys learn to stuff their emotions, medicating their pain with pot, escaping into the ironically named Call of Duty, or—for the athletically gifted—knocking each other down on the football field.” These claims are not only unsubstantiated, they don’t pass the most basic levels of scrutiny. To begin with, no everyone who consumers pot is looking to “medicate their pain” nor is pot use an exclusively masculine trait. There is… Read more »
Exactly.
He implies that his students should feel guilty if (or more likely, when) they act in a way that harms others, specifically women, but they should not feel guilty about simply being male.That is to say, they don’t need to feel guilty about the actions of their ancestors and predecessors […] So NO, having a Y chromosome does NOT automatically make you complicit in the Great Crime of patriarchy, but it does mean you have a responsibility as you grow up to be aware of how your sex can be harmfully and take steps to avoid that. Those two ideas… Read more »
I’m always amazed at the number of topics Hugo can generate. Some seem more tortured than others. Maybe it’s the “this is your brain on lapsed Catholicism” that does it.
The teaser for this article is “Hugo Schwyzer argues that being a man should not induce guilt or shame, but rather be the root of responsibility.”
That got me thinking… really? Schwyzer? But of course the teaser is wrong.
What he really argues us that being a man should induce guilt for the “Great Crime of patriarchy” – and that this should be a catalyst for taking responsibility for the “Great Crime”.
I feel sorry for his students, and agree that he is just psychologically abusing impressionable young men.
so a Y chromosome makes you responsible for collaborating in the “Great Crime?” A newborn baby boy (he’s got that nasty Y chromosome) is a collaborator?! This reads like some bizarre gender studies version of Orignal Sin but instead of offending God men have offended Women… Individuals regardless of gender are responsible for their words, actions and inactions. There are billions of individual men you do not know. You cannot hold them responsible for collaboration in anything without proof of their INDIVIDUAL actions. if you see an injustice in the world act to change it but don’t bother taking responsibility… Read more »
This is 2011, not 1911.
Sorry to be so direct but I need to make a clear point: “Male Privilege” is anti-male feminist psychobabble. White women have more privilege than any other class, with the possible exception of white men. However, when considering many factors, a strong argument can be made that they are as, or even more privileged. However, compared to black men, it’s not even a discussion.
If WS teachers were honest, and not just trying to spread anti-male propaganda, they would teach their kids that race privilege far, far, far exceeds any sex (gender) privilege.
“Great Crime of patriarchy” & “unsure of the degree of my own collaboration in the Great Crime”
What this generation of young men need to realize is that they should feel absolutely no guilt as men. They have nothing to apologize for as they neither cause oppression or are complicit in it, at least against women.
The ideologies spouted by Schwyzer and Women’s Studies courses are nothing but institutionalized psychological abuse.
It’s nice that Schwyzer distinguishes between guilt (over a wrongdoing) and shame (i.e., feeling worthless).
But he doesn’t answer the student’s question: “WHY should I feel guilt in the first place? WHY is guilt something you’re trying to provoke or instill in me for the crime of being male?”
Maybe that’s saved for the final exam.
For most of these students—and for so many other guys—the shame is rooted in the absence of loving male role models.
Is it an absence of loving male role models or is it that the loving male role models are there but in the face of the male culture they grew up with they inadvertently play a part in developing male shame?
Love this, thank you. I linked it to my blog, siting how your descriptives apply to the core of a Love Child’s shame. http://bit.ly/rxoeRK
Here’s my post on you. Error above. http://bit.ly/t4wyeL