Grr! Hmph! (Flex!) It’s Father’s Day, and that means that the next seven days on D&S will be dedicated to that strange cultural elaboration on the XY chromosome: it’s ‘Mature Masculinity Week’!
“‘Mature’ masculinity?” I hear you cry! “Isn’t masculinity, by definition, more mature than the silly to-ing and fro-ing of the weaker sex?” Well, apparently ‘masculinity’ is in crisis, and more and more contemporary guys are reaching out for fitting expressions of their gender within modern society. Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis are out, and Seth Rogen and Michael Cera are in: what could it mean?
Perhaps as I’m one of the few men who write on a weekly basis for D&S, I find myself writing this introduction. And I’m probably a good example of the (post)modern predicament: my degree is in English Literature, and I was well aware during my three years at University of being in the extreme minority on that course. There were about a hundred girls, five gay guys, and me. Married, with a kid. Again, on those quirky online brain-gender tests, I regularly rate less ‘male’ than my wife, who studied Maths/Computer Engineering and has a thoroughly rational and un-girly mind. I don’t consider myself to be the patriarch of my home, and I’m not the sole bread-winner.
And yet, (hem hem) I like to work out. I even own a set of weights and a pull-up bar. I grew a proper beard this year! And gosh-darn-it, I’m the one who moves big things in our house and changes the oil in our car. So on that very significant basis, I think I understand the predicament of having genes that put hair on my chest, yet finding myself in a world where David Beckham wears a sarong in public, and is celebrated by his generation for precisely that.
This week, we’ll be approaching the question of what it means to be a ‘man’ from several directions. We’ll be looking at fathers in cinematic history, the LDS conception of Joseph Smith as a man, as well as personal and literary figurations of men in action. I hope you’ll agree with us that although men have been guilty of maintaining a privileged status for millennia, oppressing their female counterparts with indiscriminate effect, the men of today were not around for all that stuff, and want to be decent human beings in an environment of equality. From our now-partially-dismantled pedestal we cry: ‘Throw [us] a frickin’ bone here!’
So let’s celebrate a week – towards an age of more considered and liberal expression of our gender roles – and please join us as we ask the questions that will help us better appreciate and fulfil “what it means to be a man” in the (hopefully more) enlightened world of the twenty-first century.
The portrayal of Hemmingway in Woody Allen’s latest film “Midnight in Paris” captures the ideal of manliness better than any other portayal I know of. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Ahh! You’ll notice that there’s a picture of ole Papa on the front page image for this post! Now that’s when the word ‘man’ meant something, eh! Woody Allen also introduces, you could argue, a prototype of the ‘wet’ romantic leads that are so popular in contemporary rom coms.
Can’t wait to see ‘Midnight in Paris’.
I’m also excited to see “Midnight in Paris.”
I think the topic of mature or modern masculinity is a fascinating topic. I’ve been engaged in so many conversations in the last five years about what it means to be a woman now or a feminist in a patriarchal church, but I’ve become increasingly aware of how this is only one side of the conversation and necessary it is to discuss both sides.
I’m not so convinced that we need to be defining what it means to be a man, or a woman.. personally, I’m starting to think there really isn’t a lot of difference between men and women at all.
Obviously, between one man and one women there are lots of differences, but there are between one man and another man also, I just think we need to talk more about people and allow everyone to choose who they want to be.. I wish we could just do away with the defining of gender at all, but I guess that’s not going to happen any time soon.
I’m with you, Helen. I wish we could do away with all talk of what “fathers should be/do” and what “mothers should be/do” and just talk about parents.
Whereas part of me is inclined to agree with you – that largely the conception of ‘maleness’ is a construction – it still remains that the vast majority of society works through this construction. Therefore, if we’re going to work towards a better model of parenting, we need to move away from unhealthy gender models, and towards more fluid and open ideas of our biological and social roles.
@Andy, it feels like we’re saying the same thing (you, me, and Helen), but you seem to think you are disagreeing or contradicting us. What am I missing?
I think Andy is just saying that he wants to go about this conversation by still talking about being male, as opposed to simply talking about parenting or sexuality or personhood. I agree with both approaches (Helen/Heather and Andy’s), and I don’t believe they are mutually exclusive. It’s very useful indeed to do away with “what men do” and “what women do”, simply because they are not that different. But I believe it’s also useful to look at the gender roles, because they are so common, and go from there.
That’s it, K: and I think these are really important questions to think about at the start of this week. Why discuss ‘masculinity’ at all? Will our discussion just be about how to deconstruct this construction? For sure, I believe that if we see ‘masculinity’ for what it is, we can all be liberated from the value judgements attached to that package of supposed characteristics and qualities. Then if a person of either biological gender wants to evoke that construction as part of their self-definition, they can, as much as any other narrative. It becomes a ‘colourful’ rather than a ‘black and white’ world.
I think that we are in a time when all facets of masculinity are changing. More is required of men in the home with parenting and division of labor. Women are able to earn an income, buy a home, even get pregnant without a man. Traditional male jobs like manufacturing are going off-shore leaving a lot of men unsure where to work and what to do. With all of that change, there is some degree of growing pains as to what it means to be a man. I applaud the writer for being confident in his masculinity despite his wife “scores better on online-brain gender tests” and other feminine traits. The confidence of him knowing where he stands in the world is really the most masculine thing of all.