Photo by Flickr user lickyoats. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A semi-live-blogging review of Getting Off: (Pornography and the End of Masculinity) by Robert Jensen that I began here. See also here.

Chapter 3: “Where We Are Stuck”

Mostly a discussion of contemporary masculinity.

First, a couple or three scenarios outlining different effects of masculinity indoctrination: a macho-clouded confrontation in a bar; a Male-Answer-Syndrome confrontation at an academic setting; an exercise in reflexive “she has authority so she’s a bitch” misogyny. Well interpreted as attempted domination by a) force b) argumentativeness, c) insult.

Next, a nice set of distinctions between biological sexual identity (e.g. “male” and “female”) that’s based ultimately on chromosomes and the shape of reproductive organs (with an acknowledgement of ambiguity in a small percentage of individuals.) By biological he means “based on the material reality of who can potentially reproduce with whom. ... That is what typically is called ‘sex.’”

Beyond “sex” is “gender.” Gender is socially constructed and can include: assignment of social, political, or economic roles; expectations of different dress or behavior; and traits or “virtues” where one gender is expected to be aggressive and another to be “gentle.” For men the aggregate term for all this gender association is “masculinity.” For women it’s “femininity.”

Jensen goes further and says men are also stuck with a special characteristic called “manliness,” for which there really isn’t a counterpart for women.

Then he says that while he’s “fond of many human persons who are male … [he doesn’t] much care for men, manhood, or masculinity.” He obviously means he doesn’t care for those distinctions.

Now, given that those distinctions exist primarily as limits on men’s behavior (you can’t wear this, you mustn’t do that, it’s “unmanly” to think this other thing) then yeah, I don’t care for the murky layers of masculinity tradition has shellacked over the freedom of being male. (Heck, even inside the manliness tradition the idea that men should be afraid to do this or that for fear of being “unmanly” ought to grate intolerably!)

Jensen doesn’t mention it but I have to believe he also doesn’t care much for “women” or “femininity” since those too would be social constructs that drastically limit what real female human beings can be.

But back to manliness:

Jensen seems to think one key component of manliness is “the struggle for supremacy in interpersonal relationships and social situations” is strictly a manliness… meaning, presumably, that he believes women and “unmanly” men are innocent of such aspirations. And this is turning into my biggest issue with this guy — he’s clearly bright as a tack, and extremely well-intentioned, and I really really want to be able to just nod and smile, but then he comes up with these daffy assertions that make you wonder how much experience he’s got with non-male enterprises.

Another out-of-the-blue-ism: “No matter who is playing, [king of the hill] is a game of masculinity.” No, no matter who is playing, king of the hill is a game of hierarchy, and yes, in a game with that objective there ultimately can only be one king of the hill and he or she is always subject to usurpation. But hierarchy and masculinity are neither identical nor inseparable.

After these non-sequiturs Jensen returns to the perfectly reasonable point that the pressures of masculinity certainly exacerbate competition with the result that to be successfully masculine is also to be isolated, paranoid, “broken and alone.”

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Next he says that, based on his experience, most people hold clear feminist values but of those most are reluctant to actually identify as feminist. One obstacle he perceives is that for many people being “feminist” means undermining established gender norms, especially masculine ones, and since that’s perceived as a threat to men most people don’t feel comfortable going there. Especially when addicts like Rush Limbaugh aggressively attack perceived threats.

I think you sort of have to define what “threat” means here. For instance, taking a page from the old, real, pre-MRA activism: it does no one a favor to fail to challenge a facade if it’s really so rotten that a few shed tears or a little responsibility or a little authentic generosity or a little less cheating with demands for “male prerogative and family wages” would bring it down.

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Near the end of the chapter Jensen again hits a patch of ice, trying to use the generally very solid work he’s doing on the very real issues of the limits the artifice of gender imposes on male and female humans for leverage into a problem he has with pornography.

“Pornography seems to shout out at us, crudely. ... But in reality, pornography speaks to men in a whisper. [saying] “...‘if you come into my world it will all be there, and it will all be easy.’”

He says pornography isn’t about sex but about reassurance that men are still men, that they can dominate women, that no matter how crass or crude, ugly or cruel, women will never call bullshit.

That I can handle, not least because I think it’s true. But then he skids with “But for most men, [porn] starts with the soft voice that speaks to our deepest fear: That we aren’t man enough.” And at this point my marginal note says “Huh? Are you mental?”

Because I hate to break it to you but the whole point of his analysis heretofore is that the problem with the “manliness” fetish is that everything fucking whispers… shouts even, that we’re not man enough. And not to put too fine a point on it, but everything out there from porn down to the lawnmower selection in the local Sears garden shop says “if you come into my world [manliness] will all be there and it will all be easy.” That’s the whole fucking point of advertising.

So yes. Let’s shout it from the rooftops: porn plays on mens inherently fragile, built-on-sand images of manliness and falsely makes problems that not only can it not keep nothing can keep them because the inherent premise of masculinity, as entirely distinct from male humanity, is inauthentic.

And having said that let’s follow it up with a big fat “so what?” Because so does an ad for The Gap and any declaration one can make about exploitation in porn can be declared, in spades, about our garment industry — from exploitation of children (why do we keep hearing about forced child labor year after year?) to insatiability (through most of history all but the very richest have had one garment for regular days and one for “Sundays”) to alienation from the main point (and we need to buy our clothes pre-worn-and-torn, with non-utility seams, pockets, and findings because…?) And trust me, I happened to pick The Gap completely at random and on the spur of the moment — virtually everything dealing with commerce and male humans either undermines or bolsters men’s fears about masculinity just as all virtually everything dealing with commerce and female humans plays up or plays upon fears about femininity. And we’re supposed to pick porn out as special because….?

—-

The main thing that’s coming through for me is that Jensen’s real purpose is to crawl out of the masculinity trap — a very real problem for men and boys that, frankly, kills way too many of us before we turn 30… ok, and after 30 too! The problem is he keeps acting as if destroying porn is the only or best way out instead of a way that worked for him.

And I don’t even think he’s wrong about industrial-style porn — most of it isn’t just “99% crap” in Ted Sturgeon’s famous phrasing it’s 75% sociopathic, worse-than-conservatism, hate-filled, spite-filled, powerless-rage-creating, unwanted pain-celebrating bullshit. The consumption of which is to libido satisfaction as seawater is to dehydration. And Lord knows that if he, like waaayyyy too many other kids had to rely on porn for his sexual education then yeah, that’s a huge problem too.

But at least as far as I’ve read his discussion of porn is way more flashy/noisy/button-pushy but less important than his myth-of-masculinity work. Which is a shame because guess what keeps getting everybody’s attention?

Again, live-blogging something like a book has its risks, not least the possibility that in later chapters the author will make clear what seems misguided now. (Another risk, of course, is that I reveal myself as talking through my hat, but hey, this is a blog and the contract says somewhere that we’re supposed to do that anyway.)

But at least so far the detours into porn are distracting from what ought to be the real point: if we really dealt with masculinity our problems with porn would probably take care of themselves, whereas if we dealt with porn our problems with masculinity would be almost entirely unaffected.

Commons
“She Ra and He Man” photo by Flickr user Alex Peterson.

More on the distinction between masculinity and being a man, derived Amanda Marcotte’s reflections at Pandagon on Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: (Pornography and the End of Masculinity).

I’m not sure why eradicating masculinity offends Courtney [Martin, who wrote about Jensen’s book at Feministing] but I can’t help but think maybe she’s confusing it with eradicating maleness? I’ve seen Jensen speak; he struck me as someone who is quite full of confidence and conviction, far from the self-hating weasel his critics try to paint him as. When he talks about eradicating “masculinity”, he’s talking about eradicating the social construct of masculinity, especially as it’s defined in America. Think about how masculinity is constructed in America: violent, hateful, out of touch with “softer” emotions like love, irresponsible, stupid, willfully ignorant, and of course with a sexuality based around violence and conquest, not around pleasure and the sharing of it. (Today’s example—how anal sex is only “fun” if it’s a coercive process—is just one of many to add to the mind-numbing amounts of misogynist porn out there.)

The construct of masculinity is largely responsible for everything from rape to the propaganda push leading up to the invasion of Iraq. But masculinity victimizes the true believers, as well as women and men who find themselves on the wrong side of dudes on a masculinity trip. Men die younger than women for a myriad of reasons that relate to the construct of masculinity, from the idea that overeating (especially of fatty red meat) is a proof of masculinity to the unnecessary risk-taking that accompanies displays of masculinity. Masculinity is extremely stressful to men, since it’s not something you ever get to have, but something that you’re always fighting to prove, a battle that’s never completely won but has to begin anew every day. Men sacrifice a lot for masculinity, often destroying their ability to have truly loving and intimate relationships with their friends, family and romantic partners in order to maintain the facade. Feminists have invested a lot of energy into showing how the construct of femininity—from feigned helplessness to restricting ambition to the endless beautifying tasks—cripples women and clips our wings. Isn’t it possible that the construct of masculinity does the same thing to men? Masculinity is a burden; surely men would be better off without it.

I’ve mentioned before that I started to distinguish “masculinity” from being a man after reading discussions of the feminist distinction between being “feminine” and female. Without taking anything away from transsexuality, bisexuality, or intersexuality, our gender is with us right down to our chromosomes — we are nearly all male or female (even with transgender we’re male or female assignment if not in biological fact.) But if we’re born male or female, woman or man, we make up masculinity and femininity.

Now making up personas like “femininity” or “masculinity” is all fun and games until someone forgets its a game and mistakes it for the truth. Then it stops being fun and then, as Marcotte reminds us, people start to get hurt.