Is this the best a man can get?
I like to look at the current world as though I am reading history. Considering the plethora of events that occur on a daily basis it is easy to get consumed by current affairs. Looking at the present as though I am looking at the past helps me connect dots in ways that I, perhaps, ordinarily would not have if I had been looking at individual current events and a knowledge of history helps me fill in the gaps where they exist. It is this ability to connect the dots that has seen me notice the current wave of the feminist movement that threatens to sweep across the world. We also see the intense desire of the current world order to completely and thoroughly oppose those efforts to reshape the world positively.
About two months ago, (January 14 to be exact), Gillette launched one of ‘those’ ads. You know the ones; the type that speaks to society without ever really talking about their product (Nike’s ads come to mind). The type that forces the company to take a moral position that companies have historically been loath to take. This ad:
The backlash must have been expected but the intensity of the advert forced me to question if the commentators had even seen the ad; but to paraphrase a Bojack Horseman scene, I realized that when you’re a bull wearing rose tinted glasses, everything looks like a red flag and in that case, the Gillette ad was full of red flags. Many of the people who had issues with the ad claimed that it attacked men, claiming that the ad portrayed all men as bad. Take a look at the responses in that ad and question which ones you agree with. What is striking to me from those responses is that we have a particular problem defining two distinct but interlinked ideas: patriarchy and masculinity.
A simple definition of the patriarchy is the centering of the world around men. Historically, the patriarchy means the rule of the father and has often meant autocratic rule by the head of the family; although the word was only recently applied to the global phenomenon of male domination (in the early 20th century), the real concept far outdates that.
Patriarchy is a difficult concept for many people to understand and the reason is quite simple: generally, patriarchy is defined as the oppression of women by men. When we look around the world however, we see some women prospering and some men oppressed. We see men going off to die in wars and being the major victims of violent crimes and some women flourishing in their wealthy societies.
This causes confusion for many because the reality does not quite fit with the definition (both of patriarchy and oppression). We are blinded by the reality created by patriarchy that sometimes, for the system to survive, men must die. But important truths are not often seen on the surface and we must never be afraid to dig a little deeper to find those truths that may make us uncomfortable and the truth is there is something terribly wrong with our society, isn’t there?
Importantly, systems of oppression often intersect. Sexism often intersects with homophobia. Classism often intersects with racism/ethnic bigotry and it is not often (or ever) that you find a system of oppression that stands on its own. Oppression requires institutions to fully thrive and the best ones exist with support from others. There is no reason why the patriarchy should be exempt from this. Why do we look at suffering men and flourishing women and think that the patriarchy does not apply to them?
Why do we see them as proof that patriarchy is mumbo jumbo instead of seeing them as part of a larger oppressive system of classism? Engels, Marx’s partner in crime, believed that the patriarchy started with the origin of private property. It is tempting to see why that may be the case: with the infusion of class into human society, worth and dignity began to be defined by material things and considering that property was traditionally in the hold of men, the rise of private property gave immense power to men to shape and reshape human society.
A far fetched idea perhaps, but it serves its purpose in underlining how classism infuses itself into the patriarchal system. It is quite obvious that in a class based system, not all men will sit at the echelon of society, only a select number ever make it that far. Rather, the combination of patriarchy and classism compensates losing men with control over women. The combination says “oh we, at the top will be in charge of everyone but other men, here’s some control over *some* women”.
It is a particularly damaging dynamic and you see it lash out most when men talk about women earning more money than they do in their relationships. You see it in the culture that treats sex as a rite of passage for men such that it becomes less about the experience and more about the power it gives us, this power that fuels our inflated sense of self-worth and links us firmly into the patriarchal chain.
This system of patriarchy and classism that has been built and maintained for over six thousand years is at the root of many of the problems of human society [and we must also admit that it has had its good moments as well]. It has defined masculinity poorly and relegated women to a class that is virtually subhuman.
See how Aristotle, one of the greatest minds in human philosophy, considers women: “as regards the sexes, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject” or here, “[T]he relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled.”. Imagine the vast majority of people who have read and learned from Aristotle, how much these ideas have been drilled down for centuries.
In Chinese thought, the idea of yin and yang is quite pronounced and is one of China’s greatest philosophical exports. The idea of balance. Like the West, China ascribes some attributes to the masculine and the feminine. According the the Oxford English Dictionary, to the yin, “in Chinese philosophy, the feminine or negative principle (characterized by dark, wetness, cold, passivity, disintegration, etc.) of the two opposing cosmic forces into which creative energy divides and whose fusion in physical matter brings the phenomenal world into being”. To the yang, “In Chinese philosophy, the masculine or positive principle (characterized by light, warmth, dryness, activity, etc.) of the two opposing cosmic forces into which creative energy divides and whose fusion in physical matter brings the phenomenal world into being”. Notice how femininity is grouped in with the negative aspect and masculinity is grouped in with the positive aspect.
History has continuously repeated itself throughout the course of time. The Christian Bible for example never refers to Mary Magdalene as the prostitute neither is she referred to as the sinful woman who washes Jesus’s feet with her hair and yet; if you ask the average Christian who Mary Magdalene is, those are the images that are almost always conjured. Read the Biblical text and look up genealogies, count how many times you see a woman in the list, “And Abraham begat Isaac…”, as though Abraham himself became pregnant with child.
A major part of Islamic theology is the idea that the Prophet Muhammad married one of his wives, Aisha, at a relatively young age. The exact age is not quite certain but the vast majority of Islamic scholars agree that it was somewhere between 9 and 13. Look at those ages and consider the insanity of that. A nine year old. And although her importance in Islamic theology is not in doubt, she is infact one of the most influential Muslim minds. The insanity of a 9 year old getting married at ANY point in history and the fact that Muhammad’s marriage is used as a defence for child marriage in many parts of the Muslim world is unconscionable.
The #MeToo movement highlights the centuries of oppression that women (of all classes) and men (of specific classes) have faced at the hands of the patriarchy. The societal view that women are designed for men is central to the patriarchal ideology. It is this idea that allows religions to have the audacity to claim that men are automatically the head of the family, simply because they have penises. It is this idea that spreads the concepts of women being the “nurturers” and men being the “workers” as if the reverse cannot be the case.
It is this same idea that lends itself to homophobia, that gay men are somehow inferior because they are assumed to be effeminate and femininity is bad. It is this same idea that coaxes the worst parts of some lesbian women who, in an attempt to establish dominance with their partner, showcase the most violent parts of their humanity. This artificial construct of masculinity that has for decades put the lives of women at the mercy of men has been dangerous and pervasive for far too long.
A construct that promotes a culture of violence and war as conflict resolution. A construct that says that effeminate men cannot possibly *be* men. A construct that positions sex not as a form of intimacy or pleasure but as a tool for power over other men, as a way to say, “Ahn, I can get this many women to sleep with me”, to pursue sex so relentlessly that lying about sexual interactions is commonplace.
A construct that measures the relevance of women in relation to men; that measures virginity as the center of a woman’s worth and the pleasure of men as a woman’s primary goal. A construct that sees women as not just physically inferior but mentally inferior as well; that groups women along with children and infants. A construct where someone can think it is normal to think like this:
This is not all men, or even men specifically, this is the system, the global phenomenon that tells us, “this is what men are”.
And the Gillette ad is a recognition of that. It is a recognition of the things that we, as men, have done wrong. It is a recognition that the world we live in is flawed and the system we abide by lacks the moral integrity to truly be a system of equality that benefits all. That is what the Gillette ad is asking you. That is what I am asking you.
Is this the best a man can get?
