bell hooks Monday: NOMAS and Ditching the Dominator Model

Been thinking a lot about whether men can get together with each other to work on shifting masculinities without falling so easily back into traditional masculinity and the misogyny that comes with it, partly because of the fucked up silencing that happened recently from NOMAS (details at Shakesville).

I'm starting to think that men, even really well-meaning men, should always work with women (and folks of all genders) when trying to transform traditional masculinities, or do any feminist work. (I recognize that this blog is guilty of that, and am thinking that through too.)  And yet that brings in other problems, of course: Men already ask women to do so much work in the world, and now we want/need to ask (some of) them to help us change? 

Not sure yet what to do, but it all makes me think of bell hooks infinitely deep contributions to men and feminism(s):

Before the realities of men can be transformed, the dominator model has to be eliminated as the underlying ideology on which we base our culture. We already see that within patriarchal culture men can be more emotional, they can parent, they can break with sexist roles, but as long as the underlying principles are in place, men can never be truly free. At any moment this underlying patriarchal ethos can overshadow behaviors that run counter to it. We have already seen that many men changed their thinking for a time when feminist movement was a powerful force for social change, but then when the patriarchal thinking that undergirds our society did not change, as the energy of the movement began to wane, the old order began to reestablish itself. Sexist thought and action that had been harshly critiqued during the height of feminist movement have once again become more acceptable. Clearly, ending patriarchy is necessary for men to have collective liberation. It is the only resolution to the masculinity crisis that most men are experiencing.--bell hooks, The Will to Change

The dominator model is so obvious in some of the exchanges between some folks at NOMAS and the women they're currently trying to gaslight--I also know that lots of men are working on ditching domination, and that (I think) they need feminism to do it.  

bell hooks Monday: On Feminist Masculinity

Wonderful drawing by k funk. Please go buy stuff from them. 

"As interest in feminist thinking and practice has waned, there has been even less focus on the plight of men than in the heyday of feminist movement. This lack of interest does not change the fact that only a feminist vision that embraces feminist masculinity, that loves boys and men and demands on their behalf every right that we desire for girls and women, can renew men in our society. Feminist thinking teaches us all, males especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life. Clearly we need new strategies, new theories, guides that will show us how to create a world where feminist masculinity thrives."--bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love

 Yet another passage that demonstrates why bell hooks is a favorite writer of many a feminist man!  (I would also add that "feminist masculinity" isn't something that only men can benefit from, but people of various genders who think that traditional masculinity is long overdue for some seismic conceptual shifts.) 

I think it is interesting to re-read The Will to Change, a book that is only 8 or 9 years old, and to see how things have changed as regards men and feminism (and also, of course, how they haven't).  Certainly online feminism seems to have upped the ante as regards including men and addressing issues with traditional masculinity.  An article from 2012 on Feministing even addresses the issue that hooks is talking about directly.  Shira Tarrant's book, Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power is now in its second printing (full disclosure--I have an article in the 2nd edition).  I also see a lot of change coming online in the twitterverse--there are myriad feminist and pro-feminist men on twitter who are doing the day-to-day work of online feminism.  And IRL feminist men exist in some of what one might think are the oddest of places.  For instance, I had the good fortune to attend the "allies track" of the Ada Initiative's Ada Camp not too long ago, and met a bunch of feminist and pro-feminist men (and other folks!) who work in open source technology, and are vehemently interested in getting more women to work in open source software fields.  

All of which is not to say that hooks' point doesn't still hit home:  One of the reasons I'm still (occasionally!) writing on this blog is because there need to be various places where men and feminism get discussed, in part so that men don't "take over" feminist spaces that women create, but also simply because the more the merrier (and the more work we'll get done).

bell hooks Monday: From Personal Struggles to Systemic Change

From The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love:

"Even though not all men are misogynists, feminist thinkers were accurate when we stated that patriarchy in its most basic, unmediated form promotes fear and hatred of females. A man who is unabashedly and unequivocally committed to patriarchal masculinity will both fear and hate all that the culture deems feminine and womanly. However, most men have not consciously chosen patriarchy as the ideology they want to govern their lives, their beliefs, and actions. Patriarchal culture is the system they were born within and socialized to accept, yet in all areas of their lives most men have rebelled in small ways against the patriarchy, have resisted absolute allegiance to patriarchal thinking and practice. Most men have clearly been willing to resist patriarchy when it interferes with individual desire, but they have not been willing to embrace feminism as a movement that would challenge, change, and ultimately end patriarchy".--bell hooks

Some of what hooks says is here exactly why I think showing men how patriarchy hurts men can be such a powerful tool, but can also be a bit of a trap if you don't follow through.  Show men how traditional masculinity creates men who can't show feelings (other than anger), and some men get that. But if you don't continue to show/see that this fact also harms women, and then on to how women are harmed in general by patriarchy, then you end up with a Men's Rights Activist instead of another feminist. 

And it's a tough move to make--for all of us who have some kind of privilege, it can be a struggle to continue to recognize it, and divesting oneself of it even more of a struggle. (Which is not to compare it to the struggles of folks who are oppressed.)

In some meditation traditions, compassion for others begins with compassion for self; the way it spreads to compassion for others is (in part) by recognizing our interdependent relationships with others.  In the case of the harm of patriarchy, I can, at times, have compassion for men doing harm through patriarchy by myself recognizing how I have been harmed by patriarchy, but then by also acknowledging how we all have been harmed by it--even the men doing the damage right now. It's not a simple thing, of course, and part of the idea is that it's a process that may go on for a lifetime. 

I'm playing with ideas here, and may be way off base, but I suspect that one way of getting more men to understand and embrace feminism has to do with having compassion for the ways that men are harmed by patriarchy--even though this harm may pale in comparison to the harm that women continue to suffer (most often at the hands of men).  I don't claim this is what feminism is all about or anything--but I do think that we men who embrace feminisms need to have compassion for ourselves and for other men, even before those men have begun to understand the harm they are doing. In this way, maybe we can more easily move from what hooks notes is "individual" stuff to actually changing the status quo.   

Appeals to Humanity, not Masculinity

There's something of a feminist revolution happening in the gaming world, thanks largely to the response of lots of great folks to the hating on Anita Sarkeesian's project, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.  If you're not aware of the whole issue, Sarkeesian has a great roundup of the whole thing here, and I like this article in particular as a summation/commentary.

And, luckily, lots of men who are gamers are getting involved (though more involvement earlier would have been nice, I suppose).  I'm really glad men are doing some of the work here, so it's with mixed feelings that I point out that I think some of the help is less useful than other of the help. In particular, responses which focus on enforcing traditional masculinity as a way of encouraging guys to move away from misogyny are, to my mind, not taking the problem of misogyny on in a way that keeps an eye on long-term changes.  Earnest W. Adams' recent piece on Jezebel is a great example of a well-meaning piece that emphasizes traditional masculinity in such a way so as to sort of defeat its own purpose.

I like much of what Adams has to say, and I'm glad he has said it. He frames his point by basically saying that men who are misogynist gamers are victims of their own arrested development--they somehow got stuck in the "eww...girls!" phase of adolescence, rather than going through that phase and then maturing into adulthood. Even this analysis has its problems (he never asks why there is an "eww....girls!" phase to begin with; I suspect if our culture wasn't steeped in misogyny, there wouldn't be), but the basics make a lot of sense, as does his basic advice to the misogynist male gamers:  Grow up!

I really do think that Adams is on to something here (please read his whole article, because it has lots to offer), but he undermines his own points by confusing "grown up" with "real man". Early on he notes that
"What distinguishes a real man from a boy is that a man takes responsibility for his actions and does not abuse this power." The "real man vs. boy" distinction could just be about "young'uns vs. adults", but in using the "real man" terminology, Adams is invoking enforcement of traditional masculinity, and "real man" has so long been so synonymous with "don't be a pussy/woman/little boy!" that it doesn't take us in the direction we really want to go. Instead, we end up back at square one, with "real men" telling "little boys" how to be "real men".  Adams goes on to say:  Say these words into your headset: "I'm disappointed in you. I thought you were a man, not a whiny, insecure little boy." The "whiny, insecure little boy" language depends on emasculating, and really sounds bullying, which in the long range just reinforces misogyny, on my view. I'd like the "grow up!" approach more if it focused more clearly on appealing to guys' humanity rather than their masculinity.

Complex Masculinity Policing

I've been aware of the not-so-suble policing of masculinity for quite a while now--from adolescence on, men (and women) are taught to police men's masculinity in myriad ways. This sort of policing of masculinity includes anything from being ridiculued for one's haircut by bullies (I'm looking at you, Mitt Romney) to the looks and questions I get about my pink bike. Some of this policing is really overtly violent, either verbally or physically, or both, but much of it is more subtle. A glance, a snicker, folks staring when you don't match up with what they think masculinity should look like. And men are taught to police themselves in this regard almost constantly.

So it was kind of fascinating when I found myself having my masculinity policed in what was a fairly subtle, interesting way the other day. I was having dinner with my partner and some of her friends. Most of us at the table were cisgendered (look it up if you don't know what it means), but as is the case in my social circles recently, not everyone was cisgendered. An acquaintence of mine who is a transguy was there, and he was in a goofy mood; I found myself on the recieving end of some teasing by him--he was teasing me because my sideburns were mismatched. He, of course, had immaculate facial hair, including cute, well-matched sideburns. Little did he know that this version of policing masculinity was/is a button for me, and I wasn't able to play along and take it in the humorous way that I'm pretty sure he intended it. Of course, as with a lot of the more subtle forms of policing masculinity, "jokes" are often a way to make cruel statements socially acceptable, so the grey areas around such comments can be treacherous.

One of the reasons it really got to me, I think, was that I don't tend to hang out with guys who joke in this way--or, at least, I don't hang out with acquaintances who joke in this way. Close friends can tease me like this and it doesn't seem to affect me much, because they know me, know my complex relationship(s) to masculinity, and are often joking "ironically" with me in a way that actually makes me feel accepted. Acquaintances who make jokes about masculinity in this way just don't tend to stay acquaintances with me for long--the spaces I hang out in simply aren't full of men who police masculinity in this way. So when I ran into it, it hit me hard. On the one hand, I have a sort of flip emotional response to it, which can be summed up by something like, "Hey, man, you'll get bored with facial hair after 25 years, too." The same part of me that feels this flip response also wants to say, "Hey, way to go. You can now be recognized as having joined the ranks of men-who-police-other-men's-masculinity!" But I'm also just fascinated by the fact that, clearly, policing masculinity as a man is learned behavior--it's not something that we have to do, it's not something we do because it's "innate"; rather, it's something that we learn to do as we grow into men, just as my acquaintance has learned to do as he has grown into a man.

Girls With Slingshots (...and Boys with Feelings)

One of my fave webcomics of the moment is Danielle Corsetto's Girls with Slingshots.  It's a sort of ongoing slice-of-life comic about a group of friends (and enemies?), centering around a main character who is a struggling writer.  I enjoy it because it's beautifully drawn, very often full of bawdy humor, and, like most great comic strips, manages to do all of that and still have a lot of insight into the human condition. Add to that the fact that it's got a bunch of queer characters, isn't just white people, and manages to somehow insert into a fairly realistic world a talking, alcoholic cactus and a ghost cat, and, well, it's just a winner.

As the title of the strip might indicate, it also delves into gender stereotypes quite often, mostly in funny, subtle, and positive ways. Lately part of the storyline has included Hazel, one of the central characters, having to "grow up" a little, as folks around her are doing some growing, and she's beginning to be left behind.  And one of the most fascinating things to come out of this plot, for me, has to do with seeing men in the strip behave in ways that we don't often see in pop culture--Corsetto shows us that there are men who are working on growing up, and looking for partners who are ready to grow up as well:

Compare this with the ubiquitous trope of men-who-won't-grow-up that we see so often, and you have a refreshing view of men as (gasp!) mufti-faceted human beings.  The cherry on top of all of this is that Corsetto has a real handle on the fact that men are currently dealing with shifting ideas of masculinity--men are more often recognizing that they can have emotions, and express them, but we also exist in a world where we're not quite comfortable with all of that yet.  So, when Zach heads to the bar, hoping he'll see his buddy there so he can talk about his life, he gets some friendly ribbing for it, first from the bartender:

...and then from his friend:

But then he does get to talk about his feelings, like, y'know, a person:

 It's realistic, and refreshing, and I wish more folks explored this stuff in comic strips. Go check out Girls with Slingshots.  Heck, go buy some stuff from Corsetto!

Good Men?

I was really interested when I first heard about The Good Men Project--and I haven't read the book, but a look at the site is discouraging in many ways: I'm disappointed in its overall tone--seems to be pretty based on a gender essentialist framework that isn't (to my mind) particularly helpful. Some examples, from just a cursory look:

Snowden Wright has a long-ish article describing what are (to my mind) the horrors of rushing a fraternity during college, and then ends his article with a stereotypically "no regrets" attitude, even about his own misogyny:

But the pain wouldn’t last. We had been different people back then. On our way home, I thought back on the person I was during those years, rude and crass and smug, without any sense of regret or shame. None. Call me an asshole, label me a misogynist, wish me an early death. Doesn’t matter. I will not apologize for having one hell of a good time. Because that’s the point of college: not only to figure out who you want to be as an adult, but also to spend four years being the person you don’t want to be.

Tom Matlock (the creator of The Good Men Project), in an interview, is the dictionary definition of a gender essentialist:

“I actually disagree with your POV here, Henry. I don’t think it’s about transcending gender at all. I think it’s about men being men. We are different. Just look at all the various statistics about what men are doing and how it differs from women, from education to incarceration to parenting. And what we as men like to do, what interests us, what inspires us. I would hate to think that our mission is a great leveling of the genders. I love women. Because they are so different. I quite honestly cannot tell you how or why my wife does or says or thinks what she does. But I love her for it.

(Because, y'know, women just think differently!)

Andrew Ladd has a slightly more nuanced take on things, but still ends up playing up the stereotypically "male" traits as positive, by noting that being a good man often means being a sissy:

So what to make of all this? Should we all go back to acting like Don Draper? The Man with No Name? Bogey? No. I stick by my own sissiness, and those iconic men of the past century are hardly perfect either. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that what we talk about today as being “good” masculinity often is sissiness, with all the word’s pejorative connotations, and not the purely positive thing we make it out to be.

As if being a sissy can't be a purely positive thing...

Also, the creator of The Good Men Project, Tom Matlock, explicitly distances it from feminism:

The way Boston-based founder Tom Matlack tells it, the website owes its existence, at least in part, to one very important feminist in his life – his mother. “My parents don’t like it when I call it this, but I basically grew up in a commune,” he says. “My mother had a strident form of feminism and it influenced me on a personal level – I found it scary.”

Although Mr. Matlack understandably won’t label his project “feminist” – its mandate includes topics too broad to be boiled down to any one political agenda – he admits there is a relationship. “I think it’s feminism on its head,” he says. “Women were trying to get out of the home. Men’s challenge is the opposite: how to be at home.”

To my mind, any work that men do toward shifting from the traditional male masculinity models to a greater breadth of what it can mean to be masculine is great, but starting from a Men-Mars/Women-Venus perspective is bound to eventually leave out a lot of potential for change.

Men's Stories

New men's stories in November during two nights of performance of the Men's Story Project. Anybody who lives in the SF Bay Area, we'd love to see you there. Even more info at the Men's Story Project site, and on Facebook.

A little taste of a previous MSP:

More Than "Feminism 101"

Today I was reminded, in the best possible way, just how interesting and exciting it can be to start to recognize the complexities in the way the world works, in the ways that systems of oppression work. Every day (it seems) I learn something new about the complexities of gender (and race, class, and sexuality, among others) oppression, so I can tap into that excitement on a daily basis. It's easy for me to feel like I haven't learned anything yet, because I'm learning every day. But remembering back to when I was first being introduced to feminist theory makes me remember that the insights come frustratingly quickly when you're first learning about it, and that it was an exciting and scary period.

I was reminded by all of this by a reader who runs an introductory feminist course in South Carolina, who writes:

hello i came across your blog, i run a blog for an introducory women's and gender studies class. Basically the point of my blog is it is a safe area for students write what they think as they aproach the idea of feminism, which in most cases is new to them. i assure you most of the blogs that they post are interesting to read, and it would mean alot to me if you would follow our blog. the site is wearethewave.blogspot.com.

Along with having a perfect title, Wearethewave is a great read. The students are engaged, interesting, and are coming at feminism from an interesting perspective, often trying to reconcile deeply held Christian values with some of what feminist theory is telling them. And there are men in the class, to be sure--and since this is an ally blog for men who identify as feminists, I'd like to share a part of one piece with you, in the hopes that you'll go check out the rest of the blog. Stephen Long writes:

I am a white, upper-middle class, heterosexual male. I am also a Christian. In many ways my religion has perpetuated a patriarchal system of oppression. Sometimes I feel like an outsider in this Introduction to Women’s Studies course because of my privileged status. During class discussions, I feel as though I have had a hand in oppression although I cannot think of any oppression that I have knowingly caused. However, my status has provided me with benefits and protection in a society where race, class, sexuality, and gender intersect to marginalize and oppress women. I recognize that I benefit from a patriarchal system that favors men like me.

As stated in Bell Hooks’ Feminism is for EVERYBODY, feminism is “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (Hooks 1). The fact that most people learn of feminism through a patriarchal mass media is reflected by the common misconception that feminism is anti-male. In actuality, feminism is committed to gender equality and “without males as allies in struggle feminist movement will not progress” (Hooks 12). Statements like this make me feel like feminism is a movement that easily includes men as well as women. I appreciate Hooks’ narrow focus for feminism, too; her definition is so specific.

It's inspiring to know that men (and, of course, people of all genders) are learning about feminism in positive ways, and are, like Mr. Long, really getting it. (And I'm happy that Feminism is for Everybody is being taught, of course!) So what are you waiting for? Go check out Wearethewave.

Bigger, Strong, Faster

Just finished a darn good documentary: Bigger, Stronger, Faster--directed by Christopher Bell. Not only is it a well made film, it also has a surprising number of twists and turns--in the end explaining that fear of steroids has been drummed up, but centering on the ways in which using steroids really is The American Way, and questioning if that's really how we want things to continue.

Along the road to making these points, Bell also does a mini-expose on the ways in which men's body image has shifted over the past three or four decades, and the ways in which men now think they need to be bigger, stronger and faster in ways they perhaps weren't as concerned about in the past. In this way, Bell indirectly is questioning one traditional mode of male masculinity, and as such I thought it might be interesting to anybody who might still be stopping by here.

One More Thing Feminism Can Do: Critique Traditional (White) Masculinity

I've been thinking some more about why I think the tragedy that is Sean Bell's death is a feminist issue. Holly pointed out at Feministe that part of the reason why it's a feminist issue is because it's difficult to take in the situation without also taking in the women that Bell's death has left behind, and the anguish his fiance, Nicole Paultre-Bell, must live with. Holly also notes:

The problem here, as Delores Jones-Brown points out, is that there is a systemic pattern of police officers shooting unarmed suspects. The problem is that this disproportionately affects communities of color. The black men who are most often slaughtered by such violence, and all the women and children in their lives too, their loved ones, friends and relatives. A system that is all too eager to exonerate “the thin blue line” and continue business as usual. All of these are feminist issues. Racism must be a feminist issue, for any kind of feminism that counts. Police brutality must be; the biases of the criminal justice system must be.

There is another aspect of this, which was revealed to me in a comment by donna darko, who said:

Sean Bell and Jena 6 are not feminist issues although feminists are interested in them and post about them. For example, what is the feminist solution to the Sean Bell and Jena 6 case? There are feminist solutions to incidents of police brutality involving women. This is feminism’s worst nightmare: IT’S NOW ABOUT TEH MENZ!

I think I see Donna's point. To take it to an extreme, we ought to be concerned about the ways in which feminism and feminists may lose focus to the point of making everything a feminist issue. But I also think that it can be worth our time to look at most problems through a feminist lens. In the case of the Sean Bell tragedy, feminism can offer up an analysis of the force of traditional masculinity, for example.

First off, I think that what happened to Sean Bell is at least partly the result of the enforcement of traditional masculinity, a masculinity based on fear-of-other-men, on might-makes-right. Mixed up in all of this is also the way in which traditional conceptions of masculinity revolve around traditional conceptions of white masculinity, where men of color aren't 'real' men, but rather, animalistic, and dangerous. And traditional white masculinity is so entrenched in various institutions that it affects all of the people in those institutions--even to the point of men of color reinforcing such masculinity themselves, as (I think) is the case with the two men of color who shot Sean Bell.

And where do we find critiques of this type of masculinity? Well, one place we find it is within the frameworks of feminism. This isn't the only place we might find it, but it's where I see a consistent critique of it. Which is not to say that anti-racist analysis, for instance, isn't just as viable a lens through which to see this tragedy--but so is the feminist lens, inasmuch as traditional masculinity has had a hand in such tragedies, and inasmuch as feminism offers us ways of critiquing and changing masculinity.

So, in part to speak to Donna's point, I want to say that while there may not be a feminist solution to what happened to Sean Bell, there is a feminist analysis that can be done, that needs to be done, on how traditional conceptions of masculinity helped to cause Sean Bell's death (not to exonerate any of his killers from their individual responsibility, to be clear). Feminism isn't the only tool to use in order to do this, but it's a good one.

Also: Sudy makes a similar point regarding a feminist analysis of the Iraq war:

The question is not what makes the issue feminist, but has a feminist perspective been applied to the issue? Many perceive the Iraq war not to be a feminist issue. I don't give two shits if it's a "feminist issue," I care if feminists have applied their analytical skills, intelligence, resources, and insight to the Iraq war.

Also: If you don't think that some of the problems of police abuse of power don't revolve around conceptions of traditional masculinity, you might watch this, courtesy of Lauren:

Men Doing Feminsit Work: Michael Messner

This week we'll take a look at Michael Messner, a sociologist who specializes in the relationship between masculinity and organized sports.

From his bio on the University of Souther California site, where he is a professor:

Michael Messner's most recent books are Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements (1997), Men's Lives (2004); Paradoxes of Youth and Sport (2002), and Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports (2002). His articles have appeared in Gender & Society, Theory & Society, Men and Masculinities, and Sociology of Sport Journal. He is a past president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, and has conducted several studies of gender in sports media for the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, and for Children Now.

His 1992 book, Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity, takes a critical look at how masculinity is shaped by organized sports, but it is his complex analysis of the impact of traditional masculinities on women's sports (and the effects of Title IX) that I find the most intriguing. In a review of Welch Suggs' book, A Place on the Team: The Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX, Messner brings his analysis to bear:

Yet, herein lies a tension in the public debates about Title IX, and to a certain extent in Suggs's narrative. Suggs is right to raise questions about women's sports' uncritical adoption of "the male model" of sports. Sport sociologists have documented the many ways that men's college sports reflect and perpetuate many of the most negative aspects of narrow conceptions of masculinity (including violence to self and others) and promote values of commercialization that are antithetical to what many see as the mission of university life. Suggs points out that women athletes now face a rising rate of serious injury (especially to the knees) and other health-related problems; that their higher graduation rates, compared with those of men athletes, might now tumble; and that the "club" system of youth sports, as a feeder system to the university, has favored white middle-class kids, thus making it difficult for African American women to benefit from Title IX to the extent that white women have.

These are all important issues, but since Suggs falls short of a radical critique of men's sports, two unsatisfactory alternatives remain: women's sports should use Title IX to "go for the money" and mimic men's sports as much as possible, including taking on all of the costs and negative consequences of men's sports; or women's sports should return to the pre-Title-IX ethic of healthy noncompetitive sports and games. This latter will not happen, of course. As Suggs points out, Tide IX and women's sports are here to stay.

So are we stuck with the unsatisfactory dynamic of liberal, equalopportunity feminism fighting against the backlash of an anti-Title-IX conservatism that claims to fight for fairness for men? I think not. Although Suggs does not become a critic or an advocate-preferring to stay, I believe, in the middle space of the reporter-I think it's consistent with his reporting to suggest that women's sports activists need to proceed simultaneously on two fronts. First, continue to use Tide IX to fight for equal opportunities (still far from achieved, as Suggs points out with ample statistics on recruiting, coaching, and funding in women's college sports). second, wage a critical analysis of the negative aspects of the dominant men's sports-especially football, I would argue, which stands at the center of the sport-media-commercial complex. Far from being the goose that lays the golden egg (as its advocates like to suggest), institutionalized football is a major reason for the perpetuation of gender inequity in sports, for the ramping up of commercialization processes, and for a disproportionate number of the problems generally associated with college sports. And football's monopoly over resources, as economist Andrew Zimbalist's work has so clearly shown, is one of the main reasons that the "marginal" ("nonrevenue") men's sports are so vulnerable today when university athletics departments need to trim their budgets. Playing sports is good for girls and women-that has now been established by research, is accepted in public opinion, and is supported by the law. But the question of how we organize our sports-both for women and for men-needs to be put at the center of the table. Until we ask those more radical questions, we will be stuck in the quandary that Welch Suggs so nicely describes.

Messner is utilizing the feminist conceptual took of intersectionality, noting where gender, race, sexual orientation and class contribute to organized sport in order to take a critical look at male masculinity.

Messner has continued to broaden his study from men's organized sports to the ways in which men organize with each other in general, as the title of his Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements suggests.

You can't help liking a guy who says it like it is, even when he's liable to ruffle more than a few feathers. In an article about Chico State Alumni, Messner is quoted talking about the way some men use gang rape not only as a way to control women, but as a way to bond with each other sexually:

"Gang rape is not about sex as far as the victim is concerned, it's a brutal assault, and a stripping away of dignity, but when it comes to the group dynamic of the guys I think there is something sexual going on in gang rape, and it's not necessarily sex with a woman, because in gang rape the woman is really not there as a human being -- she is the vessel through which men are having sex with each other," said Messner.

More on Messner:
Other books by Messner.
Messner's Wikipedia entry.

Tuesday: Gender in the Comics, the What Men Are Like Edition

As always, click on the comic for a slightly larger version.

Violence is Funny When It's Man-On-Man
They're violent, and they show each other love by beating the crap out of each other. Oh, and it's funny:
Beatle Bailey is actually pretty disturbing in its use of violence, I think. Not only is this a 'running joke' in the comic, but really this is state-sanctioned violence to boot, with the drill sargent beating the private to a pulp.

Men Are So Lazy...
...even their cats call them out on it:
And yet, this still sort of makes me giggle. Must be the talking cat.

Men Love Power Hierarchies
There's nothing other men respond better to then pure, unbridled status:

In my experience, the people who try to manage this way end up really, really successful for a time--sometimes for a very long time--and really, really unhappy along the way. But that's just my experience.

When "Making a Logical Argument" = "Emasculating"

What does making a logical point in a political argument have to do with one's testicles? Apparently the folks over at Talking Points Memo think that backing off in an argument is emasculating. They note, introducing this clip, that "It may be a first. Castration via live satellite hook up.":


What? Only Real Men stand by stupid opinions?

The thing is, I agree with TPM on their critique of Scarborough...he's generally a portrait (from what little I've seen) of a guy full of himself and full of hot air, and he bandies about traditional masculinity like it's nobody's business. And in this clip he clearly has no problem spouting off his opinions to his cohost (who happens to be a woman), but has more of a problem trying to assert his masculinity with Senator Webb on the line; but TPM buys into traditional masculinity by characterizing Scarborough-backing-down as having lost his testicles, and having lost his status in the hierarchy:




True, it looks like it was Veracifier that originally placed the comments in the video, but then TPM just keeps the traditional masculinity ball rolling by introducing the clip as having something to do with castration. There's plenty to criticize about Scarborough without resorting to the language of man-challenges.

Gender Comics Roundup: Men Are Callous, Sex-Obsessed Cretins Who Don't Know How to Load a Dishwasher. Oh! And Women Are Nags.

Once again, the daily comics paint a bleak picture as to what it means to be gendered. (Until we fix our formatting, click on any comic to enlarge.)

How Men Interact with Each Other: No Empathy Allowed

Funny, because this describes exactly how I interact with my male friends! First of all, I only do so while drinking. Secondly, I only inquire as to how they are doing if it doesn't involve me directly. Thirdly, we never empathize with each other. That would be girly. Or gay. Or both.

Men let their significant others be burned alive because they like to watch boobies:
I have to admit that F-Minus is still one of my favorite comic strips. Tony Carrillo often has stuff in his strips that subtly defy gender norms, actually. But this one irks me, in part because of the violence-by-neglect involved. It still would have been "funny" if, say, the house was just burning down around him, but instead his wife is burning to death. Which doesn't make it funnier, to me. (To be fair, I'm being heterosexist here: The guy could be bi and his 'hon' might be a guy. Still, his SO is, as I mentioned, burning to death.)

Men Can't Do Chores, and Women Are Really Good About Nagging Them About It:
So good at it, in fact, that they can teach men a class on it! ha! Take that, nagging wives and girlfriends! And take that, erm, men who don't load the dishwasher!

Of course, there are problems regarding how men do and don't share household chores, so there is a way in which this is both funny and true. Still, both men and women seem to be mocked here, or at least the traditional stereotypes of 'em. Also, apparently, to properly load the dishwasher you have to do it like you're doing yoga.

Women Only Want Strong, Burly Men:
My namesake, Jeff, is mistaken on at least two counts: One, that drinking a healthy drink will make him tall and strong and, two, that all women only want men who are tall and strong.


On a slightly more serious note, it is interesting what happens to one when one realizes that there are people who find one's current body type hawt. You go through life thinking you have to measure up to some set of standards, and then somebody comes along as chastises you for wanting to get rid of your belly, because that's what they like (in part) about you. It's disorienting.

The Lighter (?) Side of Male Masculinity

From one of my favorite comics, Dinosaur Comics (click to enlarge):


A satire on traditional masculinity?(Uh, yeah, pretty sure about that one.)

A reinforcement of traditional masculinity? (In the same way that "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" reinforces homophobia...?)

Both?

Masculinity in Cartoons

On Women of Color Blog this morning, brownfemipower has a video up, created by Sanjay Newton and posted up on racewire, about the way masculinity is portrayed in Disney films. Like brownfemipower, I have a couple of misgivings of some of the analysis--I think, for instance, that Gaston from Beauty and the Beast is mocking some aspects of traditional masculinity, rather than representing the men we ought to become--but there are some very good points there as well, and the general theme is interesting. My favorite part is from Mulan (which I've not seen), wherin the song seems to be "Be a Man," which involves physical strength and hunting ability, pretty much.

I hope brownfemipower doesn't mind my swiping this video for others here to see:

More on Books

Given our recent discussion of reading up on the relationships between men, feminism and masculinity, I was wondering if anybody out there would like to read bell hooks' The Will to Change with me, as sort of an online reading group. If you're interested, email me at jpjesus at speakeasy dot net.

I was thinking we could read a chapter a week or something like that, and perhaps discuss it through IM or maybe even in some bloggy way...

Reading Up on Masculinity

Andrew, over at Man in Self-Arrest has a nice little list of books on men and masculinity. While this list is not exhaustive of the possible books, it's a great starting point, I think. (Maybe at some point we here at Feminist Allies can make some more suggestions about books on men and feminism?) He's also got some interesting ideas as to the lack of books on masculinity and the struggle that some men go through when they first find out about feminism. He says:

It seems when men first come to feminism, they begin a series of laments about the absolute lack of information about guys, about how no one notices how they suffer. This goes on for an indeterminate period of time, and the guy either A) decides feminism is "wrong" for "excluding" him and he becomes an MRA or B) he opens his eyes and realizes there are already more books and blogs about men than he can read. I took route B, after quite an overdose of complaining.

After having been a feminist for a while, I started being interested in men and masculinity and how they related to feminist theory and action, and I, too, found myself a bit frustrated at the lack of interesting theory of masculinity. But then, slowly, one recognizes that there plenty of theory to get started with.

Update: Michael Flood of xyonline notes in the comments that he has created a fairly comprehensive reading list for matters of men and masculinity, indexed in various ways. This list is very welcome, thanks Michael.

Listening to Boys, Men and Each Other

More from Peggy Drexler's Raising Boys Without Men:

One of the strongest weapons we have against violence in our neighborhoods and schools, as well as ultimately in the larger world, is our ability to communicate with boys about what is going on in their lives. Simply put, we must talk to them, and listen to them. This book is rooted in the many, many hours I spend having these conversations.

When I speak around the country about raising boys without men, people want to know how I was able to get the information I did from the boys. Why were they so open with me? The question implies that I must have a special trick that made it possible for notoriously taciturn young males to reveal their true selves to me. I laugh and tell my questioners the truth. Although I do have special training, it's simpler than that. I was curious and eager to know these boys—and still am. They inspire me and give me hope. In a world that sometimes disappoints, scares, and hurts them, they still want to connect.

One of the reasons that men may not communicate with others as well as women do (if this is true, really) is that they are not communicated with as boys. (pp xvi)

I have some problems with some of what Drexler says throughout her book--she has a strain of gender essentialism that bugs me, for instance, but I think here she's right on (and I like her qualifications in that last sentence, because it's not a forgone conclusion in my mind that men don't communicate with others as well as women do). It's interesting to see my nephew's parents interact with him, and continually ask him what he is trying to say, what he means, what he wants. He's almost three now; I hope that trend keeps up as long as he's alive, because I think he and those around him will be better for it.