“Western” Masculinity (Part 1 / 3) — It’s a bit gay, no?
As a man, ostensibly, I would like to stop for a moment and have a little talk about masculinity, “Western” masculinity in particular.
I think that it is worth talking about because it seems to be a topic on many people’s minds, it is an area where there is a great deal of discussion and misunderstanding, and it is an area in which the views being taken or championed can have very real effects on millions of men and women all around the world.
I won’t pretend that I am some kind of expert on the matter, according to a lot of men I think I would be considered reasonably “unmanly,” but, as I will gradually explain, I think most other men are awfully unmanly themselves.
Part of the problem with the confusion around masculinity seems to come from the fact that we do not have a very good definition of it, it is bizarrely vague and imprecise.
Looking around the internet for “what makes a man a man” leads you to various lists that claim that a man is a hodgepodge of cool-sounding characteristics like: strong, self-reliant, confident, respectful, has a code of conduct, is not easily swayed, a skilled leader, and so much more.
The obvious issue with this is that I think I would be hard pressed to find any man that managed to check all those boxes along with the many others that are supposedly needed. I’ve met some very strong and confident men who were extremely disrespectful of those around them, I’ve seen respectful men with little to no confidence, I’ve seen confident men with no code of conduct, and so much more. The common definitions of “Man” seem to be attainable only to those skilled in self-delusion; if you can perform the mental gymnastics to convince yourself that every cruel or cowardly act you have taken in your life was actually justified, then sure you can convince yourself that you check all the boxes.
Otherwise, not so much.
Further, there is the issue that none of these traits are immutable features that come attached to being a man, there are men who lack one or more of these traits and there are non-men who have one or more of these characteristics. I have seen women much stronger than most men, I have seen women with a code of conduct that puts most mens’ to shame, I have seen skilled, respectful leaders who completely lack a penis swinging between their legs, if you can believe such a thing!
Not to mention the obvious fact that any of those “positive” traits can become a negative when taken too far: Confidence can easily become arrogance, “not being easily swayed” can rapidly leave you a pig-headed, stubborn fool, and so on.
In short, the criteria for being masculine are so vague and have so little to do with being a man that we can essentially define absolutely everyone and absolutely no one as a “real man.”
Even attempting to appeal to the classically male interests can fail us.
I know plenty of women who know far more about cars, guns, and sports than I ever will, and I personally know more about cooking and gardening than many women.
It’s all a bit gay, don’t you think?
I should make it clear that I am only bringing up homosexuality, and how gay western masculinity is, because avoiding “gayness” seems to be something of an obsession for those that fear for their masculinity and the masculinity of others.
I think it is all a bit funny when you stop and consider most male-centric activities, we are desperate to not be gay and yet we seem to spend an incredible amount of time trying to avoid women and keep ourselves surrounded by men.
For example: Men love to get together with other men to watch sports, mens sports of course, not women’s sports. In other words, men like to get together in a group with other men so they can watch another group of men get really sweaty together….. hmmm.
A lot of men also like to play videogames with their friends, but usually only if those friends are other men as well. Also, the games that we often like to play involve burly, manly men getting sweaty doing manly things with or against other men. In fact a lot of men get very, very upset if a game features a female protagonist at all….. hmmm.
There are a ton of fitness influencers and bodybuilders on Youtube, Instagram etc. These fit, muscular men usually have large followings that spend hours and hours hanging on their every word and being very impressed with all of those muscles the influencer has.
The odd thing is that most of those fans will be, again, other men….. hmmm.
I guess what I am getting at is that it has always struck me as very strange that so many men are obsessed with their “straightness” and are desperate to avoid doing anything that could be construed as even a little bit gay; at the same time, these same men go out of their way to avoid women, gather into a regular “sausage fest” or two and spend all of their time watching and listening to fit, often sweaty, men.
I’ve never fit in super well to what you might call male culture, and I have been accused of being a homosexual for it, but a lot of what men like to do looks a little gay to me, don’t you think?
Part of the hostility towards homosexuality, as well as current hostility towards feminism and the ways masculinity is changing, seems to stem from an obsession with the delusion of “simpler, better times” in the past. The problem with this nostalgia is that we always remember the past as something far better than it truly was, the mythical past we always want to return to is just that, a myth.
The 2020s are hardly the first time we have experienced a hysterical “crisis of masculinity” in which a group of terror-stricken reactionaries have started shrieking about how all of our precious masculinity is disappearing.
During the industrial revolution, for example, there were concerns that moving into the cities and working in factories rather than farming or lumberjacking or whatnot was turning all of the men into a bunch of effeminate weaklings that would lack the spine to keep running the world.
I honestly cannot help myself, I’m sorry, here’s a quick tangent.
I just can’t miss this opportunity to point out something else I think is rather strange: why is it that so many of the people who harp on about how important it is to be strong and tough and manly are out of shape, inactive, cowardly individuals?
There are so many “manly intellectuals” that rant about how weak and effeminate men are becoming while they themselves work a desk job and clearly don’t spend their time fighting, or lumberjacking, or whatever it is that a real man is supposed to be doing.
They talk about how men should be stoic and tough, yet they are the first to start crying on camera and whining about how they are being persecuted and that anytime they say something racist or sexist the mean leftists come and hurt their delicate snowflake feelings by calling them racists or sexists?
I find it super weird.
Where was I? Right.
This is not a crisis of masculinity.
Every time society is undergoing major changes, it requires that we update our thinking and our definitions for who we are as people and how we fit into the society we are creating. This is good and healthy, it only becomes a crisis when we dig our heels in and refuse to grow, when we try and insist that we all act like it is the 1950s when we are in the middle of the 2020s. We have successfully moved forward as a species in many ways, we have lost our need for monarchs, we have lost our need for supernatural explanations and rituals, we are working hard to lose our racism (or at least some are), and I think that it might be about time that we drop our childish ideas about male dominance and supremacy.
I think we are old enough and grown-up enough that we can set aside a few more of the bad ideas we have outgrown.
No, seriously though, it’s always been a bit gay
Amidst the growing hostility and pushback against the LGBTQ2S+ community, particularly trans people, I think that it is important to remember that “Western” culture and society has always been filled with things that might be considered gay or queer, and that the current backlash is ridiculous and overblown.
We, of course, have plenty of recent examples but do not forget that as recently as the 1940s the US military put on drag shows of their own, one even featured Ronald Reagan himself (oh so he did actually do a couple good things).
But what if we go way, way, way back to what is arguably the beginning of “Western culture,” the ancient Greeks?
The ancient Greeks were, in many ways, super gay, and I meant that in the most factual and non-disrespectful way possible.
The ancient Greeks were, for a time at least, quite accepting and open about homosexuality. Our word for gay women, Lesbian, comes from the name of an island; the Isle of Lesbos where a famous homosexual female poet, Sappho, lived and wrote many love poems about women.
Furthermore, the practice of pederasty was common is some areas for a long time (Trigger Warning: Pedophilia), I’m not arguing that this was good, but that it was considered normal and manly for a middle aged man to have relations with a teenage boy. It is important to remember the good, the bad, and the weird because all of these things have had an impact on who we are today and what we believe. It matters that we remember that homosexuality, queerness, asexuality, pansexuality, and yes, being trans, are all things that have been with our species since the beginning, none of this is new or unnatural or the result of some sickness.
Humans are complex, we have animal bodies and instincts yet are blessed and cursed with the ability to think at a level far beyond what any other animal can; we are able to think about our gender and sexuality, we are able to feel shame or embarrassment over normal, natural aspects of who we are, and we are able to form complex systems to police our own and other people’s behaviors and thoughts. These systems and attitudes, being completely made up by us, are highly malleable and can change wildly over time, things that we once viewed as acceptable may no longer be so, and things that were taboo may become mainstream. The point is that we owe it to ourselves and each other to show a little compassion and honesty, and we need to take the time to think these matters through before we start rushing to make laws or spout condemnation. Presenting LGBTQ2S+ people as “against western culture, thought, and gender roles” is to completely ignore the way that LGBTQ2s+ people have been a major part of western culture since the start.
Claims that “the gays” are undermining our culture also ignores some of the most celebrated works of our culture, more than a few things look a little…….shall we say “fruity” when you examine them more closely.
Take for example “the Bard of Avon” himself, William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare wrote a number of plays that involved men dressing up as women, sometimes even as fabulous fairy queens, and making out with other men on stage to the adulation of raucous crowds.
In many ways some of his plays look rather like drag performances don’t they?
There were men in fancy dresses, upbeat music, lots of laughter and fun being had — exactly like a drag show.
I’ll confess I could be reading a little too much into that, but the point stands that throughout history we have celebrated and enjoyed various activities and entertainments that would likely be considered “gay” today.
Manhood is a little confusing
My ultimate point is not that any of these things are necessarily good or bad, it is that they are all part of what masculinity is or has been throughout the ages.
Masculinity is often talked about and presented as some kind of unchanging, monolithic entity that has been with us since the very beginning and is now under threat from dark forces. The reality is that masculinity is a social construct that has gone through multiple changes throughout history, it has been re-made and redefined to meet the needs and challenges of the times.
Our current crisis of masculinity is much more a crisis of refusing to make the needed changes, it is a crisis born of us allowing people with a fossilized idea of masculinity to dictate to us all what a man must be. They are trying to trap us in a kind of masculinity that supports the deeply unjust and flawed social and economic systems that are driving us all apart and making us miserable. They are trying to push a kind of masculinity that lessens men into angry, entitled worker drones that spinelessly accept the abuses and bald-faced lies of the rich and powerful while taking out their frustrations on women, blaming feminism for the harms of capitalism, oligarchy, and nepotism.
There is a way forward. Masculinity is a fluid concept and can change, adapt, grow, and evolve to become something more, something better fitted to the world we now live in. The greatest obstacle on that path forward are the old and outdated ideas of what a man must be, and the people who champion those often-misogynistic beliefs.
Come back soon, and let’s have a chat about how else we might be able to define masculinity, and why I think that it is not me who is unmanly, it is actually a lot of you!
Parts 2 and 3:
