Summary: Failing to understand “everything I do is masculine” causes men (and their partners, and fellow men) unimaginable but also unnecessary grief.
Samhita of Feministing says
A movie about the changing tide of masculinity? I want to see.
You know what drives me crazy about the trailer? A bunch of grown men with beards, penises, jobs, and partners wandering around worrying that they’re somehow not… men! WTF?
My metaphor for “masculinity” has cutting, carving, or tearing away of everything about biologically male humans that doesn’t fit the stereotype.
How can it be that we call rediscovering, embodying, or otherwise adding back the cut-away parts emasculating? Instead of, I don’t know, maybe remasculating.
What’s funny is that you never see “men’s liberation” groups pushing to expand the definition of masculinity to include more of the full range of human possibilities. Instead it’s all about trying to get everyone to agree our metaphorical amputations should be accepted and/or seen as superior.
p.s. and dear sweet mother of pearl how bought into stereotypes is it to say men are “finding their feminine side” when they do anything outside the confines of masculinity?
It’s so circular, with
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Tue, 2009-12-01 19:57.It’s so circular, with anything not tied into the obvious biology. Bull-riding is manly because men do it, and men do it because it’s manly, and it’s turtles all the way down. Sometimes I don’t even know.
Candlemaking: is that manly or womanly? There’s heat and chemicals and equipment so it’s manly, but it’s artsy and homey and decorative so it’s womanly—what do these even mean? There’s nothing in the male or female body to give me a hint either way. I guess I’ll just have to measure my serum testosterone before and after.
I don’t know if this is as deliberate as I make it sound, but I wonder if this isn’t very old-style sexism at its core: now that it’s no longer acceptable to demand women be “womanly,” men need to be extra “manly” to maintain a differential.
[It’s a good question, Holly. In “For Her Own Good” Ehrenreich and English say that kind of “what does it mean to be a man” wool-gathering didn’t start up till maybe 250 years ago when the industrial revolution broke up the real, old, capital-P patriarchy with it’s highly-defined production-based roles but left male-supremacy behind. Trans folks like Sinclaire and Bond complicate matters since they’re pretty committed to embodying masculinity even though they’re biologically women, and Bond makes a strong case for the perpetuation of masculinity even though it’s “just” a social construct. Still I think it causes more than enough misery, and requires enough effort to maintain, and is so fucking indefinably vague anyway, to outweigh whatever conceivable benefit adherents claim for it. Thanks! —fl]
Have you seen this? A photo
Submitted by The Beautiful Kind (not verified) on Wed, 2009-12-02 05:26.Have you seen this? A photo series of “Men at Their Most Masculine”
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/men_at_their_most_masculine/
Pretty interesting! My biggest fetish is a hairy chest. I LOVE body hair! I get upset when my man shaves off his ear tufts.
[Yup. It’s like, all you have to do to be manly is… be a man and show up. The guy with the silver duct-tape mask and the wrench thought you have to… show up with a mask and a wrench to look manly? He actually raises the point I keep forgetting to mention: a heck of a lot of the show men put on trying to be “manly” is defensive against real or assumed violence by other men. Thanks, TBK. —fl]
Ironically, the men I
Submitted by Bertha (not verified) on Wed, 2009-12-02 08:28.Ironically, the men I generally find to be the most masculine are the ones who aren’t all worried about whether they’re “manly.” With such a man, wearing an apron while doing dishes is just as manly as bull-riding or target-shooting. It comes from within the guy, not from what he’s doing.
Trans folks like Sinclaire
Submitted by Bond (not verified) on Thu, 2009-12-03 20:08.Just for the record, my intention is to make a strong case not so much for the perpetuation of masculinity but for gender justice & autonomy for all people. I just happen to be a butch dyke for whom gender autonomy means masculinity. Compulsory masculinity (/femininity) is indeed a misery-causing phenomenon that more than deserves to go the way of the dinosaurs.
[Eek, sorry I misrepresented you, Bond. Even more so since I keep meaning to call attention to your thoughtful post on the matter. I didn’t mean “perpetuation” in a pejorative sense but I should have used a less loaded term. Thanks for being so understanding. —fl]
No worries. :)
Submitted by Bond (not verified) on Thu, 2009-12-03 23:29.No worries. :)