Ideas & Gender Issues Posted by Zeus, 18 Oct 2007 06:29 am

Fourth Wave Feminism and Real Men

Introduction

It is both a sad and alarming commentary on the present state of men’s character that so many have objected to legitimate feminist challenges, retreated, and finally lashed back. Instead of rising to the challenge, far too many males have regressed into an infantile and dangerous state combining the worst of traditional and modern masculine roles. For many men, a shameless arrogance thrown together with self-absorption has overwhelmed courage and compassion. This mutation has placed manhood, at least American manhood, in crisis. In the micro, there is the man who murders his wife and children before killing himself. In macro, there are political leaders who would be more comfortable destroying the earth than allowing women’s power to reside with men’s in mutual respect, peace, and benefit.

We need the opposite: men who will take the best of the traditional male, the providing, protecting, serving, and sacrificing, and integrate it with the equality-mindedness of the modern male.

Feminist awareness

After growing up on a on farm where girls and boys both fed the cows and washed dishes, my more formal, conscious feminist awakening came in college and graduate school. In university classrooms and on the street, I learned two crucial truths about feminism and its relation to male identity and well-being:

1) Feminism does not weaken men. On the contrary, men’s own sense of entitlement weakens men, aided by social double-standards and conspicuous coddling. In fact, feminist challenges, by attacking men’s unwarranted privilege, actually help men address their sources of moral and character weakness.

2) Feminism is responsible for allowing men to become self-aware about their own subjectivity, their own emotions, and the harmful effects their sexism has on the women they claim to love. Feminism has helped men know themselves in an unprecedented way. By challenging men, women have opened the way for men to reflect inward instead of directing all their attention outward in telling others what to do or be. As a result, no longer can men reasonably ignore the damage caused to them by their incipient stoicism, competition, homophobia, and drive to dominate. Men are forced to acknowledge how these habits shut down joy, spontaneity, creativity, and intimacy.

The new anti-male

Where the honorable traditional men of my father’s and grandfather’s generations strove to provide and protect, to embody merit, work ethic, self-sufficiency, courage, honesty, responsibility, and competence (even as they suffered from a certain emotional hardness), today’s new anti-male rejects the legitimate obligations placed upon him by his forefathers in addition to those put forth by women. With megalomaniacal irresponsibility he believes he embodies noble masculine qualities simply by claiming them for himself in words. He is free from the burden of actually having to demonstrate noble qualities in action. With paramount ignorance, he expects to indulge himself, abuse or neglect others, and still be adored.

We see too many examples around us: men who refuse to make child care payments while continuing to stalk their former girlfriends or wives; corporate CEOs who take their “family” - their company - into bankruptcy through fraudulent activity designed only to enrich themselves while leaving their “children”— employees, stockholders, and consumers — holding the bag. Such men have recently risen to great power in the United States. It is no coincidence that George W. Bush, the quintessential anti-male, a virtual poster boy for privilege, irresponsibility, and undeserved promotion, is most strongly supported by the most ardent enemies of feminism—a patriarchal, fundamentalist, crony capitalist cabal that sees fit to exert power and assassinate the characters of others even as it promotes the inept, corrupt, and well-connected within its own ranks.

Real men need real women

Being pro-feminist will not necessarily make a man’s life easier. The same is true for a woman that opens herself to the wisdom (and occasional weirdness) of male perspectives. But ease is not what real men or women should be striving for. Excellence in daily affairs, communication and mutual respect in relationships, are worthy of our commitment precisely because they demand more of us: empathy, industry, imagination, mental and emotional intelligence. In short, a distillation of the best combined masculine and feminine qualities.

There is still much to learn as we help free each other from a long history of sexism. There is no way to easily and immediately solve deeply ingrained social and emotional habits, the Cinderella temptations of women to efface themselves, shedding responsibility and risk, in a misguided search simply to be taken care of. There is no simple path for men to come to terms with their entrenched history of domination, assumed superiority, overconfidence, and fear of commitment and intimacy. Healthy, growing relationships rest on a promise we must fulfill on a daily basis: to be vulnerable, to be honest, and to want the best for ourselves as we want the best for our brothers and sisters in this our human family.

This daily personal consciousness and action must be matched with a political awareness and commitment. Therefore, let it be said, “The resurgence of feminism is the revival of democracy.” The right for women’s “equal pay for equal work” has become the right for all to a living wage. The efforts of Code Pink against the latest war in Iraq and for lasting peace is merging with the global cry for international justice and democracy. The women of the world have the knowledge of millennia in creating and organizing human families. Responsible men over the ages have realized they must be willing to apply their full courage, sacrifice, and lives to the service of family—this time the global human family. Women’s strength is acknowledged. Men’s nobility is awakened. We are resolved. We, the real men and women of this world, shall serve and strive together until (and long after) justice, peace, and love prevail.

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Responses to “Fourth Wave Feminism and Real Men”

  1. on 18 Oct 2007 at 10:26 am 1. Seattle said …

    Did anybody besides me read this article yesterday?

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19834735/

    My favorite quote is at the end:

    “What Chinese men need is a good slap in the face and a wake-up call.”

  2. on 18 Oct 2007 at 10:32 am 2. Arnaud said …

    But… I like incipient stoicism!

  3. on 18 Oct 2007 at 10:41 am 3. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks for this post, Zeus. You’ve done an excellent job expounding on how I usually distill it down:

    Today’s women-bashing macho men want all the privileges of the patriarchy, but none of the responsibility.

    Certainly, our parents’ and grandparents’ generation was no Golden Age for women (not that you implied that). But you are right, at least back then most men had at least some sense of their obligation and responsibility under patriarchal rule, and much of that seems to be lost now. The rising suffering and poverty rate of Americans, esp. women and children? Not that big a deal.

    Seattle - no, I did not see that article. Will definitely check it out.

  4. on 18 Oct 2007 at 11:57 am 4. spyder said …

    Another of the various studies released this week was an archaeological report on a dig in South Africa. It seems that 160,000 years ago humans were camping on the beaches, eating shellfish, and making crafts. Do you suppose the males of those small bands were selfish, bloated, pig-heads who crushed free-spirited women? I think not; i would pose that these types of groups relied heavily upon cooperative and collaborative efforts to survive, even endure and procreate successfully. Irresponsibility equaled death, and those that evidenced that sort of behavior didn’t pass along their genes. In some ways, over the intervening millenia, i think we have encouraged and enabled those with selfish brutish tendencies to increase their presence in the gene pool, and reduced the number of the cooperative and collaborative folks. It is about time we start getting back to enhancing humanity.

  5. on 18 Oct 2007 at 12:47 pm 5. Seattle said …

    Ah Spyder, now you’ve brought up one of my favorite topics-the manipulation of the gene pool by those who rely on force to rule. I’ve been contemplating the intellectual reduction in geographical areas where anyone who dares to question authority or protest or just do what’s right is removed from the gene pool either through death or long term incarceration. What are we left with? Survivors who demonstrate the ability to keep their heads down, their eyes averted, and their mouths shut. I call it, culling the herd and breeding for sheep.

  6. on 18 Oct 2007 at 1:52 pm 6. JP Stormcrow said …

    Not to get into too much gender bashing, but why do I suspect that it was a man who designed this insane thing. (Robocop plays out for real in South Africa.)

  7. on 18 Oct 2007 at 2:18 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

    Interesting stuff, Seattle (and spyder).

    Yeah, I’ve actually heard talk among Religious Right types about the need to out-breed the liberals that are destroying America.

    JP - I’d click on that link you posted (#6), but honestly, I’m afraid…

  8. on 18 Oct 2007 at 2:44 pm 8. Seattle said …

    Don’t mistake this for gender bashing. At issue is a subset of the male gender, not ALL males. I’m raising two boys. If they turn out to want the privileges of patriarchy without the responsibilities, I’ll be pointing the finger of blame at myself.

  9. on 18 Oct 2007 at 3:36 pm 9. James Killus said …

    I’m a bit torn here.

    I’ve said most of what I have to say about the authoritarian family in a series of essays on Privation Morality and another series on “Martial Virtue.”

    But the title of the piece reminds me of an old Shel Silverstein cartoon in Playboy, with a guy saying, “What kind of men like to look at pictures of naked women? Latent homosexuals, that’s who. A real man doesn’t need to prove his masculinity by looking at pictures of naked women. A real man stays away from pictures of naked women. A real man stays away from naked women altogether!”

    More seriously, I think that this is another very big subject, one that I only whittle in little slivers from time to time.

  10. on 18 Oct 2007 at 3:51 pm 10. Oaktown Girl said …

    Noble thought, Seattle, but not entirely accurate.

    You’re making yourself far more powerful and influential than you actually are. This overly simplified idea is used as a common bashing point among the ignorant and wingnuts. The argument goes, “Since women primarily raise the children, isn’t it their fault that so many men are sexist pigs?”

    It’s true - women primarily are the ones who raise the children. But boy children, at about the age of 9 or even earlier, begin looking toward men as their primary models for examples of maleness and what it means to be a man. A mother can be the most conscious and aware parent in the world in terms of instilling values, but a parent can only do so much. A child is ultimately their own person - having kids is a crapshoot, and the best parents in the world can have bad apples.

    The stakes are stacked especially high against women raising the kind of boys that grow into men who are truly respectful toward women. The mother may be saying/teaching one thing to her boy in the home (say, 20% of the boy’s time) vs. what the boy hears and witnesses the other 80% of the time out in the world: tv/shock-jock radio/movies/music, in school, observing adult men, etc. It’s a non-stop barrage of “Girls Gone Wild”, T & A videos, and boys trying to prove their “manhood” with big talk about girls as basically sex objects, and the girls in school being called “sluts” and “skanks” and “easy”, while there’s still no male equivalent. On and on it goes. Moms frankly don’t stand much of a chance against all that, no matter how good a mom they might be. They just have to hope some of what they tried to instill in their sons “took”, but there’s no guarantee that it will. You just have to hope for the best.

    So are we really going to point the finger at moms for all the ignorant, sexist brutes out there? I don’t think so.

  11. on 19 Oct 2007 at 1:23 am 11. Zeus said …

    Well said, Oaktown Girl, but there is some hope for moms like Seattle.

    I do think moms can help their sons become critically aware of the messages and roles of men out there in the world as well as provide a conducive and healthy alternative at home.

    Moms can also get together on a community level with other moms (and willing dads) to create social groups and get-togethers involving sports, healthy activity, etc. whereby upright modeling of behavior and reinforcement of real “real men and boys” is discussed, modeled and expanded upon.

    It always struck me growing up, in addition to the paucity of healthy models for manhood, how few and unavailable were the actual ways of conducting yourself as strong, sensitive, caring, providing boys and men.

    This is social failure, and one that might begin to be remedied by our collective imagination, observation, and hard work. Forget habit and respect, I really didn’t even have a clue growing up what it meant to be a healthy male except in some inchoate way that I expressed in rescuing a baby bird that my “friends” thought was such great fun throwing in a pond.

    I went in unthinkingly with my new shoes, much to my mom’s chagrin, even as she appreciated the effort. I still remember it clearly.

  12. on 19 Oct 2007 at 1:27 am 12. Zeus said …

    From Seattle’s article, it was interesting to note what the now increasingly choosy Chinese women desired in their men:

    “Money and security aren’t what attract the new generation of successful, busy young women, the All-China Women’s Federation survey found. Instead, they rate a sense of responsibility and personal integrity as the most important traits in a partner. Two-thirds, in fact, said they wouldn’t mind if their husbands brought home less money than they did.”

    Oh my, responsibility and integrity, how feminizing and disempowering can you get. Those chicks, just want to bring us down by insisting that we bring ourselves up!

  13. on 19 Oct 2007 at 6:17 am 13. christian h. said …

    Zeus, thanks for the post - unfortunately I don’t have the time to read anything right now, so I can’t comment intelligently other than to say it’s a very important topic.

    One quick point in response to various comments: I absolutely do not believe that either conformism or machismo are genetically determined.

  14. on 19 Oct 2007 at 9:25 am 14. Oaktown Girl said …

    Zeus, I absolutely agree with you that moms like Seattle are critical to improving our human situation. What I was merely trying to emphasize is that blaming moms alone for ignorant jerk men is so far off the target it makes my head spin.

    And good moms like Seattle should never point the finger solely at themselves if their boys turn out less than enlightened on the matter of women. Moms, while they can be highly influential, are simply just not Gods.

  15. on 19 Oct 2007 at 10:06 am 15. Seattle said …

    Hey now….and here I’ve been calling myself the Maternal Goddess for years now…snort.

    My youngest just told me this morning with tears in his eyes that his life is horrible because he’s no good at homework and everyone yells at him all the time. Sigh. Watching my “Good Mom” award fade into the distance…. So we sat down and talked about why grown ups yell and why all that says is how they aren’t handling THEIR issues well, not his. Time to chat with Dad again too.

  16. on 19 Oct 2007 at 10:28 am 16. JP Stormcrow said …

    Moms, while they can be highly influential, are simply just not Gods.

    Right, they’re merely saints - just ask Richard M. Nixon.

  17. on 19 Oct 2007 at 10:45 am 17. Zeus said …

    Oaktown Girl and Seattle,

    I believe systemic messages of all sorts are strong for boys, a potent portion of them coming from the family and community system, but, in agreement, just as potent a part coming from the larger culture (media, etc.).

    I am still convinced though that whatever their relative powers, the best chance a boy has is to be introduced and gain consistent experience in the affirmative, alternative roles. We’re a little short-handed here as parents and individuals because we can’t be around our children (boys and girls) all day as the wider culture is. So we end up essentially trying to innoculate them in a way (critical of “macho” and “girlie” models, and affirmative of a kind of spirited androgyny) in order for kids to have some tools to process the larger more consistent influence beyond the home.

    These tools won’t always be up to the job, and a parent shouldn’t blame him or herself if Johnny picks up a stick and starts using it as a gun. (Heck, I did, I learned better, and I wasn’t really imagining and getting a thrill out of “killing” people.) But what really helped me both grow beyond and see the implications of my cultural gender cooking were these very well-planted, tended, and deep seeds of another way of living and being.

    To this day, it is that experiential counterpart that has remained strong. I’d hate to think of who I might be if I didn’t have them. Though they are no guarantee (especially against developmental frustration and occasional despair), they provide the other “lived” lens of reality that makes real identity choices possible.

  18. on 19 Oct 2007 at 12:59 pm 18. Seattle said …

    Monday night I had to tap my son on the shoulder a couple of times during the group cello lesson as he kept working the bullet loading action on his cello bow…. DAMN HALO 3….

  19. on 19 Oct 2007 at 1:00 pm 19. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle - hugs for your little one. Homework can be soooo frustrating. And if there’s an adult in the picture letting their frustration be known to the kid (re: skill and comprehension, not effort), that just makes it worse. Yeah, time to talk to dad.

  20. on 19 Oct 2007 at 7:36 pm 20. spyder said …

    One quick point in response to various comments: I absolutely do not believe that either conformism or machismo are genetically determined.

    Is that also true for cooperation, and compassion???? Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation By Peter Hammerstein from MIT press may be useful.

    Perhaps a sad thing is that at UCSD most of the researchers at that institution hold a very genetic deterministic view regarding all sorts of human behaviors. They even have political science profs writing about it. Maybe that is a complexity that JP can ponder in his effort to know more?