Before I go on please let me say I have nothing against men who find the models of traditional masculinity to be the ones that work for them these are just some observations I’ve made from studying certain online sources most notably the site official man card – which I admit to becoming scarily addicted to over the last week – Noah linked to in his gender enforcement in the wild post.
It occurs to me that, put side by side with something like Hooking up Smart, there really is no difference in the advice they are giving in regards as how to conduct yourself in accordance with your gender: it’s just as narrow, just as hectoring and just… well, prissy.
Although I’m not the first person to make this observation far from it, journalist (and coiner of the phrase Metrosexual) Mark Simpson has been saying it for years:
I’ve always felt the facade of traditional gender roles is fragile at best; it requires constant vigilance to maintain, and with all this constant policing and fussing it’s only natural that you’re going to notice when someone else does something you’ve trained yourself to spot as being outside of self-imposed norms.
That’s when you head to places like Man Cards to gossip with your fellow real men about how totally saw Dave wearing eye liner, crying over some girly film, or eating something other than red meat and cheese and like a bunch of spiteful mean girls from a cliché high school comedy they have their little bitch fests.
This is something that could only exist on the internet as well; could you imagine what would happen if these guys uttered their critiques of their friends to their faces, so they do it in private where their intentions and their prissiness won’t be called into question.
I should say again that I don’t have a problem with so called “traditional behaviours” as long as they are not being enforced or are being touted as the only way men and women can lead happy lives because they’re really not.
@manontopbook
I would argue that sport is a symbolic, ritualized representation of the pursuit of masculine ideals.
Reply on @tu quoques comment Tu quoque, i really appreciate your comparison of traditional masculinity and Olympic sport. I see functioning masculinity as doing the best you can do at every turn. It is not trying to be women or gladiators. It is not comparing yourself to others but rather it is functioning from your optimal level and thriving in your world. Is it prissy to want to be a good, upstanding citizen that people can count on, who is a good neighbor, who is a good human being? The notion of gender goes out the window when we are… Read more »
“Now, this apexual identity is not really masculine or feminine. It’s just an arbitrary social role. In fact the apexuals who attain the highest levels of this arbitrary hierarchy (where it’s relatively porous) have the least sense of themselves as men or masculine; the greatest perception of identity deficit in relation to women; and feel the most threat from other men.” I see no reason why you think “apexuals” aren’t masculine. They absolutely identify as men, more vigorously than most men. They don’t identify with mere *males*. They see themselves as the real men. Of course they feel the most… Read more »
Pretty good terminology, Typhon. My only quibble is that lots of the people at the top (men or women, usually men) don’t particularly identify with any other humans at all. Even for the ones who aren’t sociopathic, the path to the top is often lonely, dehumanizing, and immoral (by most standards) or amoral in terms of philosophy(there’s a reason “The Prince” is still standard reading). Politicians and other high ranking people often view everything as a game to win or lose and often view anyone who is not playing in their status game as either non -existent or else (if… Read more »
Ah I see.
@ tu ” But because masculinity is so powerful, it puts men who can embody it at the highest rankings of society.” Then it’s not masculinity that’s powerful; it’s the absence of a immutable gender identity that’s powerful. This absence spurs men to compete or cooperate or labor in order to attain a positive identity. I’m going to term men who believe they have to achieve notability–financial, political, etc–in order to attain a positive identity, apexuals. Apexuals do not identify with other men as a source of a positive identity, they identify with the hierarchy for the source of their… Read more »
You know, y’all… I’m really not sure women don’t need to justify our existence. In the good old “women = birthers of children!” formulation, if we end up not pairing off with a suitable partner, not having kids, or somehow are perceived as failing as a mother to those kids, judgement can get pretty harsh. Luckily the stigma against childlessness and singledom is slowly fading, but it’s definitely still around. Good lord, just look at how gossip magazines act like Jennifer Aniston is somehow a pitiable creature because she’s divorced, childless and 40ish.
“Needing to justify their existence? To whom? And doesn’t not needing to justify their existence put women in the more powerful position in terms of their gender identity?”
To the societies they dwell in.
It puts most women in a more powerful position than most men. But because masculinity is so powerful, it puts men who can embody it at the highest rankings of society.
“You actually just supported the assertion with this:” That’s like saying innovation is less powerful than mediocrity since what’s common determines what can be unique. However, even though masculinity is innovative, that’s not to say men as a whole are more powerful in society. I agree with you that a man who isn’t masculine is not seen as fully human, as well as this breakdown someone made on Feminist Critics: M>W>w>m. By definition, the vast majority of men will not be alpha, and therefore their value as people will rank lowest on the human totem pole. But masculinity itself is… Read more »
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial
“Men are Generic, Women are Special” cuts both ways, as always.
“I’d really like to know, how do you square that with femininity being considered superior? Maybe more like ubiquitous, or… devouring, or something.”
As someone said above, men are considered unspecial because they can’t give birth, so if a woman can give birth, AND do serious stuff…it mustn’t be THAT much serious stuff (or else guys ONLY doing the serious stuff are fucking lazy).
I guess that’s a possible theory anyways.
@typhon, I think the point here is to remember that it wasn’t always easy for women to join in on any old activity. Now that we often can, the concept of manhood as “whatever women don’t do” is obviously under fire. I don’t know if that implies any particular power balance, just that femininity is a category capable of expanding while masculinity is dependent on a set of things which haven’t been feminized. There’s another piece of the puzzle here – feminized often means “devalued”. As an example, we can take my profession, urban planning. This is actually something I’ve… Read more »
@typhonblue:
“Sex seems to refer to the physical male or female.
Gender seems to refers to the psychological man or woman.”
I know that, but I was looking to describe manhood as an institution, the idea of manhood in itself, which is heavily linked to the physical (just look at how often the penis is mentioned).
@ Tu
“I don’t think deeming femininity as more powerful and masculinity as submissive is correct. ”
You actually just supported the assertion with this:
“The reason why women joining in on an activity makes it feminine is because a masculine pursuit has to be something women don’t do or it doesn’t help to justify men’s existence.”
Needing to justify their existence? To whom? And doesn’t not needing to justify their existence put women in the more powerful position in terms of their gender identity?
Ergo: Don’t do stuff because other people don’t do it, or because some people do it.
Do it because you, personally, and as subjectively as possible, like this.
Play videogames because that’s how you like to pass time. And avoid player-vs-player because you think it’s too drama-prone and e-peen waving. Don’t feel forced to do or avoid either of those “because other people think/say so”.
Even less because some people say it makes you “not-inborn category”.
“That’s the point of the pursuit of masculinity: it’s a culture created by men to make them necessary and to balance the discrepancy of not being able to get pregnant. The reason why women joining in on an activity makes it feminine is because a masculine pursuit has to be something women don’t do or it doesn’t help to justify men’s existence.” Then it can stop existing now. You don’t need to be uber-different-from-some-other-category to value existing. Your uniqueness an individual is already pretty good. You’re good at ________ because you are _______, where the last blank is not filled… Read more »
“Masculinity is, functionally, a rather submissive thing. It can never coexist with femininity, it can only exist in femininity’s absence. Sort of like a void or a negative.” I don’t think deeming femininity as more powerful and masculinity as submissive is correct. Pregnancy, which is considered an inherent attribute of femaleness, justifies womanhood. It’s also a attribute that a man can never have. Thus, in order for men to justify their existence, they need to acquire attributes that women very rarely express. That’s the point of the pursuit of masculinity: it’s a culture created by men to make them necessary… Read more »
Ugh. End italics, damn it.
@Skidd: Perhaps a better relation than sports is something like dog shows. There is a rough “breed standard” for men, and while each person judges each man in their own way, there are still those that will win best in show most often. The “winners” are the ones with the least faults, as perceived by most judges. Oh, I like that. There’s room in the metaphor for criticism (what’s the point of setting up a breed standard that gives bulldogs breathing problems, or makes men emotionally repressed?) and for people who just aren’t playing the game at all (a shelter… Read more »
Gender as a concept in gender discourse is borowed from linguistics, and originally referred to a system in Indo-European languages that is a subset of noun clases as a general phenomenon in language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class. It is not inherently or necessarily about a feminine-masculine contrast and in fact in Indo-European it arose intially as an animate-inanimate copntrast, and as such it intersected with the case system (inanimate nuns could not be subjects, so there was no nominative form for them.) In most IE languages the inanimate (“neuter'”) has died out and the animate has split into masculine and feminine genders –… Read more »
‘Sex seems to refer to the physical male or female.
Gender seems to refers to the psychological man or woman.’
Im in the same boat of AB, but I got the difference of the two pretty fast, but only because I stumbled a blog (right now I dont remember exactly witch blog was) where the topic was gender vs sex.
@ AB
Sex seems to refer to the physical male or female.
Gender seems to refers to the psychological man or woman.
“so I’m still learning to navigate the English separation of the concepts.”
That puts you way ahead of most English-speakers. And bear in mind it’s a moving target for now. The semantic boundaries are not yet really set because the concepts haven’t really gelled.
@typhonblue:
“Again, manhood may be socially better then womanhood, but males are not more valuable then females.”
Didn’t mean to imply there were (at least not always), but some people seem to have a problem with the word gender, so it was the only word available to me in English which encompassed the idea, and ideal, of manhood. In Danish, there is only one word for both sex and gender, køn, so I’m still learning to navigate the English separation of the concepts.
@ AB
“I guess that’s one of the advantages of not being the most prestigious sex.”
Men who fail at manhood are not even treated as human. Again, manhood may be socially better then womanhood, but males are not more valuable then females.