We’re all pretty hip around here, pretty into questioning gender programming and taking our own path, and I think we can forget that outside the Social Justice League, things are a lot uglier.
Masculinity is conflated entirely with maleness for a lot of people, so that failure to be sufficiently masculine equals loss of one’s entire gender identity, and of course performative masculinity is extremely fragile and precarious.
So yeah, if you fail to perform a sufficient number of rituals and meet enough arbitrary and contradictory criteria, your entire identity as a man is forfeit. Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s look at a few examples:
Right off the top, we’ve got this poor fellow:
Well, evidently body language is sufficient to strip one of one’s entire gender identity. And here I’d thought gender identity was a complex issue, but no, apparently it can be as simple as a stance and a pair of sunglasses.
Some of you may be asking what in hell a “man card” is. Fortunately, there is a very obnoxious site dedicated to explaining exactly that. It contains a list of “revocations“, or guys who have been stripped of their male identity for insufficient performativity. Try to read through those and imagine what kind of person could meet every criterion cited. For those who don’t want to give them the hits, here’s a small sample:
Note that these particular examples involve demonstrating common sense and sexual fidelity. You might not think of these qualities as unmanly, but here’s an exercise: go to any site with a bunch of movie trailers, and watch the trailer for anything marketed as a “guy comedy”. Frat-boy gross-out comedies, white-male-mid-life-crisis comedies, action-movie spoof comedies, whatever. You’ll see that lack of common sense and (at best) difficulty with sexual fidelity are universally presented as intrinsically and inseparably masculine qualities.
Now, some will argue that those are comedies, and really everything I’ve cited here is basically a joke. That is, in fact, exactly my point. Jokes require context to be funny, and everything I’ve cited is a that-always-happens joke, intended to be a humorous observation about a universally-understood truth. So these jokes are not advocating for this insanely restrictive and damaging notion of manhood, they are assuming you already subscribe to it, because hey, doesn’t everyone?
I don’t even know what to add at this point. I’m gonna go enjoy some show tunes just to piss these people off.
OOH! Has anyone else found the store connected to the website linked in the blogpost? http://officialmangear.com/featured/authentic-man-card.html For just $6.95 (plus shipping and handling) you to can have your very own Mancard! It of course comes customized with your name, membership number, and flag of the nation of your choice! Note that is also comes complete with a certificate of authenticity (because NOBODY wants a counterfeit Mancard) and a “revoked” card for when you inevitably do something to get your Mancard revoked. It is handy to have a physical manifestation of everything people in this thread have been talking about. The… Read more »
Show tunes?
@ myself
“Like anyone would be.”
Hey, look, ma! I just othered men.
Braiding hair is innately more difficult then braiding rope.
That’s because hair sticks together and there are a lot of little strands that need to be marshalled. My husband braids my hair and he can’t do it when it’s dry for that reason alone.
It may be that the men, who were given a task they had less experience with and thus more daunting, were understandably frustrated and/or upset at their lack of ability. Like anyone would be.
I didn’t read anything in the link that said that the participants had any more trouble with braiding hair than braiding rope. I didn’t read anything that said they had trouble braiding at all. I don’t know why a study participant would think that a hair braid would be even semi-permanent, either. And just because we didn’t see it there doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But maybe hair braiders had additional stress just from having to be in contact with another person? Possible. I know I probably come off a bit persistent here but if this experiment is being mentioned… Read more »
I know that personally, as someone who hasn’t learned to braid anything, I’d be more at ease at braiding rope than a braiding hair. Because the rope is done and voila. The hair is done, but I tugged your hair the whole time…probably not a good thing.
And this isn’t about fear of being emasculated. As a trans woman, you can’t really emasculate me. You can deny I’m a woman, say I’m “really a man”, but not deny I’m a man (because I don’t even care one bit about that).
I didn’t read anything in the link that said that the participants had any more trouble with braiding hair than braiding rope. I didn’t read anything that said they had trouble braiding at all. I don’t know why a study participant would think that a hair braid would be even semi-permanent, either.
But maybe hair braiders had additional stress just from having to be in contact with another person?
Druk: Well that’s why they had the control group of men braiding rope, a far more manly thing to do. But to me that still doesn’t explain why the hair braiders punched or punched harder. Maybe its because that over is basically a summary of the experiment (meaning all the details aren’t there) but it seems to me that the control group could not account for men being more likely to know how to braid rope (as you say its a more manly activity), getting anxious because unlike an inanimate rope a person could be affected by a f’d up… Read more »
@typhonblue: I think “man card” is inextricably linked to masculine qualities (and it’s a bit late to try to reclaim the word “man” as gender-neutral), but perhaps we could subvert “man card” to make the point that not all who are masculine are necessarily male? A picture of a woman succeeding at something stereotypically masculine, with a caption “man card: not just for men anymore”, or something.
@Danny:
(delete my other post please, argh!)
Well that’s why they had the control group of men braiding rope, a far more manly thing to do.
@ Spudtater “I do think that there’s been a shift recently towards a more tongue-in-cheek style of joking about gender roles.” There is that. This does seem to be a more self-aware take on gender policing and seeing it as humorous rather then srz bsns seems to be progress. Someone should subvert their subversion by creating a card that gets right to the linguistic root of the word ‘Man’ as gender-neutral. This new Man Card can be bestowed on either wer or wif depending on their evincing particularly adult qualities (ie. self-sacrificing, self-aware and compassionate) or withdrawn depending on their… Read more »
I wonder what percent of people who vote on this site are men, and how many are women? And do men and women typically vote the same way? I’m not sure what this would tell us about society as a whole, considering how self selecting the voter pool is at “The Official Man Card” website, but I still think it would be interesting to find out.
I do think that there’s been a shift recently towards a more tongue-in-cheek style of joking about gender roles. Look at the subtitle below the “man card revoked” demotivational. “By order of the Bro council”. That does at least demonstrate some awareness of gender policing, and a willingness to laugh at it as much as with it. The “man box” article was a real eye-opener, so thank you for that. I’m seeing “man box” and “man card” as pretty much identical concepts, so I don’t care if somebody demands my “man card” from me — as far as I’m concerned,… Read more »
I did try to credit him for his original point… I just had issues with his implications in making it.
Yes. This is Moby Dicking. “Whether Frederick Douglass is a feminist” has absolutely nothing to do with “gender role enforcement and the precariousness of masculinity,” like, at all.
Well, the other people who attended the Seneca Falls convention are generally (retroactively) considered feminists, and the convention is generally considered the first feminist convention. So I don’t think it’s reaching at all to consider the guy who made the most important single speech at the convention also a feminist. Plus I’m detecting an implication there (from Orange, not Danny) that feminism is not only much smaller than it actually is but it’s full of the nasty things feminism has done with none of the good ones. The feminist movement is for all reasonable purposes synonymous with the women’s rights… Read more »
Well, BH just said he died before the word was ever coined. So, Frederick Douglas probably never called himself that and it’s hard to say if he would or wouldn’t have. Or whether he would have in that context but post-Womanism chosen to call himself a “womanist” instead (assuming that is done in womanist circles? I admit I do not know…). Either way though, I think BH’s original point is that it is not “ironic” that a feminist is also a masculist. I just strongly disagree with his wording and his notion that Frederick Douglas immediately qualifies as a member… Read more »
I saw the credentials you’re listing off there and the mention of male and American feminists but I was still (and am) wondering if he actually claimed the title or is this one of those retroactive claimings where if something/someone appears to be good in nature all of a sudden it/they are feminist.
Because frankly its perfectly possible to do those things and still not claim the label.
“And where is that claim that he was a feminist in that article?” Let’s see: He not only attended the Seneca Falls convention, he gave the speech that convinced them to pass the resolution supporting women’s suffrage; he was the vice-president on the ticket of the first woman in US history to run for president; he died the night after he gave a speech to a woman’s rights convention; he was his whole life deeply supportive of women’s rights in many other ways (and particularly the right to vote nearly a century before they actually got it), and if it’s… Read more »
It is interesting but I am having trouble putting together all my thoughts on it. I like that it shows the difference in having a “different masculinity” and being “woman-like”, and that these Japanese men are feeling more free to explore a wider range of roles, though I wonder about that claim that this being a reaction to Japanese women becoming “scary”… something about that troubles me. Though, it is interesting there are “carnivore women” stepping up and filling the role as one who acts… when I read about this a while ago the article emphasized women’s disinterest. I do… Read more »
Heeeey, all.
Perhaps this deserves a post of it’s own, but I recently stumbled upon this:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120696816
It’s about young Japanese subverting masculinity and becoming much more passive and less interested in sex as a whole. It’s a rather interesting read!
@Skidd: Interesting catch. 60% seems like a crazy high figure for that kind of trend, but who am I to say? My instinct is to write this off as one of those overhyped faux-lifestyle stories that American media loves to run every few months, but then, that instinct is based on American media; I don’t know how well it translates to a Japanese frame of reference.
@doubletrack: tena koe
We may not get Man points, but we sure as hell get Parent points. If only we lived in a world where we could dress up and prance whenever we wanted WITHOUT the excuse that it’s just for the kids…
Also, supporter of women’s rights =/= feminist. I support women’s rights. I care about them very deeply. But I cannot ID as a feminist. It is a movement that does not want my trans sisters, it does not want my lesbian sisters, it does not want many women that I care about too much to align myself with a movement that consistantly shows how little it cares about their lives.
Frederick Douglas may have cared about women’s rights but I would hesitate to call him a “feminist” unless he called himself that.
BlackHumor:
There’s no irony that one of the earliest anti-racists was also a feminist, is there?
And where is that claim that he was a feminist in that article?
@debaser71 “I prance around playing dress up with my daughters. Why should I gave a shit what some web site might think?”
Awesome.
(I think) I remember you saying here that parenting made you feel masculine. I wish I lived in a world where a man prancing around playing dress ups with his daughters meant he got LOADED with man points.