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Recently I shared on my Facebook page that I’ve been working on a new essay exploring the themes myth, sexuality, and the initiation.
In particular, I speak about men’s relationship to their sexuality and the feminine, using the lens of the classic tale “Iron John”. Written by Robert Bly, this book has been a key source for the mythopoetic men’s movement – which has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as it’s discovered by a new generation of men like myself.
Just like when it was first released in the early 90’s, many men in modern Western culture continue to struggle with questions of purpose and identity. And the conversation has been further enriched by with the work of gender activists and the emergence of non-binary gender spaces.
In this vein, my friend Erin Innes reached out and shared her critique of the movement from the perspective of a queer feminist activist. Her article titled “Meet the New Masculinity, Same As the Old Masculinity” brought up some important considerations, especially around the foundational axioms of the movement, which posit the existence of a universal Masculine (and there Feminine).
She writes:
“By continuing to imagine masculinity as universal, unchanging, and only definable in opposition to femininity doesn’t make women safer. It just gives us a different set of rules to follow, a different script to read from and from which we mustn’t deviate or we’ll face the consequences.
Queer people too, of all genders, will always be marginalized in any conversation that can’t talk and think about gender independent of the dynamics of straight relationships. What the mythopoetics are missing is an analysis of power, a critical framework for assessing how gender creates and is created by dynamics of domination and exclusion in the larger culture — in a word, feminism.”
Sensing the value of a longer conversation, I invited her to an interview and she graciously accepted.
Please enjoy our conversation, where we touch upon topics like:
- understanding gender as a cultural artifact
- the problem with essentializing the qualities of masculine and feminine
- and the possible way forward toward a society of true solidarity and diversity.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
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By continuing to imagine masculinity as universal, unchanging, and only definable in opposition to femininity doesn’t make women safer. It just gives us a different set of rules to follow, a different script to read from and from which we mustn’t deviate or we’ll face the consequences. I think the problem here is defining masculinity in terms of women’s safety as if that is the primary issue with it. A lot of the current mainstream discussion on masculinity seems to want to “change things” from defining it in opposition to femininity to defining it in relation to femininity while carefully… Read more »
“What the mythopoetics are missing is an analysis of power, a critical framework for assessing how gender creates and is created by dynamics of domination and exclusion in the larger culture — in a word, feminism.” Feminism and gender analysis are simply not the panaceas that their adherents would make them out to be. Fundamentally, they are reductionist, absolutist, and illiberal- absolutizing what is not absolute; they are not the shining path to enlightenment and liberation. That the proponents of gendered analysis cannot imagine gender ever being relatively, objectively, or proportionately inconsequential (or irrelevant) to any given examination of causality & power… Read more »
““By continuing to imagine masculinity as universal, unchanging, and only definable in opposition to femininity”
The first problem is that this is wrong. Classic masculinity and femininity were meant to be complimentary, not in opposition. Of course when there is opposition, when there is war, people (men and women) are less safe. The individuals who profit are the war mongers.