A letter on masculinity and myth
At one point I considered creating a “Lifewriting for Men” course (I never created it, but the idea eventually evolved into the “Soulmate” course, on the theory that healthy heterosexual men and women are naturally attracted to each other) but it was greatly educational to watch the comments that flew around in response. Here was a fine example from TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2009
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Dear Mr. Barnes,
I’m not so sure how serious you are regarding asking us for advice on your upcoming regarding masculinity project. I’d be happy to contribute my thoughts, but am unsure if I’m replying to a ‘bot (or not)!
I’ve been reading your writing tips for something over a year now and they’ve been helping think about some of my own writing habits. Haven’t plunked the money down for “life writing”, though. Yet.
My wife, (DELETED), and I are anthropologists studying prostitution, sexuality, masculinity, sexual tourism and trafficking of women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You might say that thinking about masculinity is our profession, as much as writing is yours.
Looking at what you’ve jotted down, I’d say you have to make an early decision: do you wish to talk about masculinity in a real fashion (i.e. with some foot rooted in what science has revealed to us) or do you want to speak about it in mythopoetic fashion, a la Robert Bly’s ‘Iron John’?
Personally, as a man and as an anthropologist, I`d urge you to take the high road and avoid the mythopoetry. Mythical musings which essentialize man as hero or protector or whatever have a long and very ignoble history in the west. At the same time, given that you are a writer, I realize that it`s going to be difficult for you to approach this topic from any angle but the mythopoetic.
In that case…
My friend (DELETED) and I have discussed, on and off for years, the need to revinvent masculine myths and given your particular set of skills and sensibilities, you have a much better shot at doing this than most.
I would thus suggest, then, that you think of masculinity as a sort of performance, one which is open to anyone, including women. De-essentialize masculinity and detach it from sex and the Y chromosome. What is it that men – all men – DO? What set of activities, values and ways of looking at the world seem, to you, to be particularly masculine? You might want to sound out a few gay and lesbian friends on this one, btw, given that many gays and lesbians are highly sensitive observers of masculinity.
When it comes to just “ordinary guys” and their discontents, Christ, I could write a book (and in fact am writing one). With masculinity, however, one needs to always tread a very narrow path. On the one hand, maculinity is generally the privileged gender performance in our civilization and many of its discontents are, in fact, complaints regarding the relative weakening of some of these privileges. On the other hand, masculine people are not taught to express their feelings adequately and, in general, masculine complaints are traditionally hand-waved away as so much whining. Because of this contradictory dynamic, one must be aware that what may first sound like the whining of the privileged often covers up some very deep and disturbing issues which really must be aired and dealt with.
Just uncovering what men’s problems are, then, is a problem in and of itself. Feminism has a ready set of answers but, in spite of being a feminist supporter, I have serious doubts about feminism’s ability to adequately comprehend men. Many – if not most – feminists borrow a victim-victimizer dynamic which is ultimately rooted in Marxist dialectical thought to explain gender. While I don’t want to reject this approach out of hand, it strikes me that it has some obvious weakenesses.
For one thing, in the classical Marxist dialectic, the proletariat is not responsible for the ethical, moral and physical upbringing of the bourgeoisie. In the same dialectic as applied to, say, race, black people generally do not raise white people (yes, there are exceptions – some notorious, but these aren’t general). But generally, women raise men and thus a very great part of what we learn about masculinity is thus transmitted to us and/or reinforced by women.
The dynamic of oppression and reaction which exists between men and women is thus more fractal and complicated than most feminists give it credit for (Camille Paglia and Judith Butler being two notable exceptions). Though I still believe that masculinity is relatively privileged as compared to femininity, I no longer believe that said dynamic can adequately be explained or described by a simple binary Marxist dialect which stipulates a clearly dominant oppressor and a cleary submissive (however combative) oppressed.
Any REAL discussion of masculinity is going to be difficult and an exploration of the unknown (or, better yet, the unarticulated) because of the dynamic described above and will almost inevitably piss a lot of people off.
If you’re understandably not willing to dive into the deep end, then I suggest you just repackage Robert Bly’s primitivist happy-crappy for the gay-affirmative era and leave it at that. 😉
Anyhow, just my two cents.
Best,
(NAME DELETED)
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No, I’m not going to write/record something that is also intended for girls, women, gay women, or whatever. I’ve seen plenty of books written for women by women, understanding that women have some special needs and interests. So do men. And in this case, it is the need to define masculinity in a way that serves them and speaks to their deepest needs and desires. Listen too much to what women want, and you’ll fall into the same trap that women fall into if they listen too much to what men say.
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We SAY what is in our conscious minds. We RESPOND to what touches the deeper, unconscious structure. Women are just as likely to manipulate men to be docile and controllable as men are to encourage women to be sexually available. And the result is disaster. The trick, in my mind, is to create the strengths, and then round off the corners, gentle those stallions down. But the core of strength must be there, the ability to respond to aggression, to deal with fear, to build a nest. To be strong, and confident enough in that strength, to have no need to dominate. To be capable of nurturing and protecting a child, even if you have no interest in having one. Much of this stuff is just “what is it to be an adult?” But there are some differences, without which women will not respond to you, and men will not respect you.
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Yes, the rules are changing, but not equally across all segments of society, and trying to pretend this is a unisex world before it actually is simply courts frustration, anger and fear. So…no. I won’t interview lesbians and transsexuals about this stuff, although I’m sure they have interesting things to say. I will draw my attitudes from older men and the women who have been married to them long enough to raise a family. Where THOSE attitudes align with the fevers of youth, I will chart a path. Hopefully, what I have to say will be useful to 90% of men. That I certainly hope for. Where the rules are different for, say, gay men, I would hope there are responsible gay men who will write to that need. My suspicion is that many, if not most, of the rules are the same.
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Everything else has the risk of running off the edge of the map.
Steven Barnes 