A few months ago, I went to an ace unconference–an unconference being an event where attendees create sessions on the spot, rather than planning sessions in advance. I’ve been to quite a few of these, and I usually end up attending a discussion on ace men, because men are a minority within ace communities, and that’s worth talking about.
However, something was different this time. This discussion was framed around ace masculinity, rather than ace men. I relate much more to one than the other.
Several attendees were interested in the question of how to maintain their masculinity while being ace. A lot of masculinity is associated with being sexually aggressive, so ace men are perceived as less masculine. However, they were still invested in following some form of masculinity, either because it was gender affirming, or because they wanted a certain presentation as they approached dating, or because they just liked it. So they were talking about stuff like clubbing and going to the gym.
I don’t deny the value of the discussion, but my reaction was “oh god, I hate masculinity so much.” I said: being ace isn’t a challenge to my masculinity, it’s an opportunity to escape it. I talked about how much I liked growing my hair long despite initially feeling that it wasn’t very gender affirming. I talked about preferring Zumba instead of gym workouts. Several other attendees voiced similar feelings (noticeably, the ones with longer hair).
When it comes to masculinity, a lot of discussion centers around toxic masculinity. There’s this idea that to get rid of toxic masculinity, we need to find a better substitute, a positive masculine ideal for men to follow.
So, in reference to my anecdote, why do I have this negative reaction to masculinity? Is it because of toxic masculinity? No, not at all. There’s nothing inherently toxic about going to the gym. I just really don’t like gyms. Even if you found a “positive” masculinity, I probably still wouldn’t like it. Positive masculinity is not for me, and it’s not for me to propose what a positive masculinity should look like.
However, I got an opinion about that.
When people imagine a replacement for toxic masculinity, they envision the polar opposite, a virtuous masculinity. But we’re ignoring the middle ground, what I’ve called a harmless masculinity.
If masculinity is conceived as a set of virtues, where does that leave someone like me, who prefers to reject masculinity? If I reject masculinity, would I therefore be a villain? Perhaps the gay-coded mustache-twirling type? For that matter, if masculinity is a set of virtues, where does leave women? If a woman does the right thing, should that ever be coded as masculine? If it is truly a virtue, then why should it only be a virtue for men?
Besides, we already have a virtuous masculinity. “Hegemonic masculinity” refers to the cultural ideal of masculinity, the masculinity expressed by the archetypical male hero protagonist. Hegemonic masculinity is not a description of men in the real world, but rather a prescription of what men are supposed to live up to–and fail to live up to. It’s a carrot held cruelly over our heads, and our lot in life is to crawl over one another to reach for it, in vain.
When people propose a positive masculinity, what they’re really proposing is a refurbishment of hegemonic masculinity. They want to excise the masculine “virtues” that aren’t really virtues at all. They want to make the masculine ideal more realistically attainable, without putting down other men in the process.
But what I want, is for masculinity to be “take it or leave it”. Like a fashion choice, something we are free to enjoy or ignore. And that precludes envisioning masculinity as a set of virtues.
If masculinity is conceived as a set of virtues, where does that leave someone like me, who prefers to reject masculinity? If I reject masculinity, would I therefore be a villain?
Don’t tie masculinity to virtues (in spite of the origin of the word “virtue”) simply be virtuous on one axis and whatever degree of masculine you wish on the other. The whole problem with toxic masculinity, in my opinion, is the connection to virtue: if someone wrongs you, avenge yourself, Charles Bronson-style. This is manliness, how? It is simply violent thuggery and, as history and our media teach us, it is well within the capability of men and women of various degrees of virility (e.g.: Bernie Goetz was possibly reenacting a Charles Bronson movie in his mind’s eye). The issue is confused by class consciousness and social status but in ancient Japan, a great samurai warrior could be meticulous about his appearance, write poetry, and fight nobly on a battlefield. The word “nobly” even does work there, because things like Bronson-style revenge were not considered virtuous, though peer-to-peer revenge was (i.e.: two equals might fight a duel and everyone would appreciate it, but an armed expert soldier cutting down unarmed people who begged for money Bernie Goetz style would be shunned) What I am getting at, here, is that it is our society that is weak and sick and does not understand masculinity and its relationship to virtue. Even ancient Romans would not encounter a warrior setting out to murder beggars. What I think we are seeing is a very distorted view of masculinity coupled with cultural and political dominance from the US. We keep making these movies extolling sick weak-ass punks like “Dirty Harry” who use superior skill and social status to murder people with a quip. The problem is US. There is something seriously wrong with us.
The deeper question, of course, is “what is it that is wrong” and I’d point toward christianity on one hand, and the psychological distortions resulting from slave ownership and the genocide of first peoples. It is impossible to grow up brave and honorable under such conditions, so we have established a sort of weird blustery, violent cowardice.
I’ve come to increasingly question the value of “masculinity” per se. As far as I can tell, masculinity is void of any content except in places and times where it is, essentially, a sextortion protection racket, and that is indubitably something undesirable (including in well-defined technical senses, such as “not Pareto optimal”).
There’s not a virtue I can think of that isn’t equally admirable regardless of the virtuous one’s anatomy and/or gender identity; nor a vice. There’s no moral code I can currently conceive that’s superior to “act so as to empower people, starting with the least-empowered” or something pretty close to that, where “empower” here means to increase their ability to protect their own existence, access basic necessities, and pursue their own interests with the proviso that they not do so in ways that disempower others (save, perhaps, those who have been grossly over-empowered, like billionaires, whose excessive consumption can’t but come at the expense of limiting others’ options in a finite world). That moral code appears to be essentially universal, i.e. ideally if we encountered little green men they’d adhere to it too, let alone other humans.
In point of fact, there’s a series of dichotomies here that seem to lead to only one progressive conclusion.
First: either masculinity (and femininity) involve substantive differences in virtues, morals, and ways-of-being-human, or they do not. And the first of those alternatives is extremely suspect because it would mean reality is gender-essentialist in some way, which is an extremely dubious proposition.
Second: if there are no substantive differences, then either they are really just fashion choices of a sort, or they are completely without content at all. The latter would make these gender qualities actually an incoherent idea, and reduce arguments about masculinity (or femininity) to “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. This seems all too plausible, given that just as much as religious arguments do, such arguments tend to generate vehemence and at times even violence while being utterly unproductive of any actually valuable insights or discoveries about ourselves or the worlds (beyond “that dipshit over there is an even bigger jackass than I originally thought!” and other such revelations, of course).
If there’s anything salvageable there at all, then, they are fashion choices, maybe largely about being sexually attractive to one versus another substantial chunk of the population (with a gap — aces — and an overlap). Important fashion choices to some, to be sure, especially some among the trans community. Further, there are probably actually more than two of these gender fashions available. I’d posit at least four, with two axes, masculine vs. feminine and passive vs. active (with the two conservatives would accept as valid being passive feminine and active masculine), and of course existing on a spectrum with neutral ground in between (semi-active androgynous would I guess be the center-point there).
I’d ask why the ace person at that conference wanted to style themselves masculine so badly, given their presumed disinterest in actually sexually attracting anyone. I guess it would turn out to be because it was seen as necessary to be accepted and respected in some homosocial group(s), which points to another of the problems facing society: when we’re not “bowling alone” we seem to be expected to socialize according to a certain gendered stereotype of how to socialize, and of who to socialize with, according to patterns that seem obsolete and suspiciously patriarchal in origins. Male homosocial groupings, in particular, behave an awful lot like a gang vis-a-vis the aforementioned sextortion protection racket, while providing dubious and fragile moral support or solidarity within the group (how much will the group still respect one if one appears weak before it? how then can one ask it for help or support when facing an emotional or other crisis?); female homosocial groupings seem to act in a much more positive-sum way (modulo perhaps the tendency toward gossiping) and provide much more genuine (and unconditional) emotional support for one another, but of course by definition exclude male participation (likely out of self-defense, given how some of the men out there behave). People increasingly have a hard time becoming a part of any such grouping (the “bowling alone” phenomenon), partly due to neoliberalism-induced overwork and partly due to neoliberalism-induced enclosure and elimination of “third spaces” in favor of transactional commercial venues that are atomizing by nature.
Fixing this requires two structural remedies. The easier one is to drive a stake through neoliberalism’s heart and start expanding non-commercial, collective spaces in society again, and that still runs into “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. The harder one is to get to a norm of heterosocial groups that behave more-or-less like existing female friend networks aside from being equal-opportunity — with the caveat that toxic males need not apply. Most likely though this only happens if generations of boys are raised without most of the masculinity norms boys are currently raised with. This doesn’t mean “raising them as girls” — there’s a famous (and ethically-dubious) experiment that proves that would be disastrous — but rather raising them as, I dunno, just people perhaps, and instilling similar behavioral norms to girls’ regarding sharing, cooperation, (non-)aggression, and non-hyper-competitiveness, and instilling across the board a behavioral norm of socializing with everyone regardless of gender, leaving that to be strictly about sexual attraction and not larger roles-in-society.
Or something like that. The devil will undoubtedly be in the details.
@Bekenstein Bound,
Oh, it wasn’t just one guy at the unconference, it was several. Yeah, I’m going to draw a line here and stand in their defense–after all these are people I met, and all you did was read a brief anecdote about them. I don’t question their motivations for wanting to have a masculine expression, if that’s what they’re into. What they want makes sense, I just do not share the desire.
It’s worth understanding that some ace people are indeed interested in finding long-term partners of various sorts. But also there plenty of motivations outside of finding partners. You might as well ask of a woman, why do you wear lipstick if you’re not trying to attract a man? Well, not everything women do revolves around men! Trans people aren’t the only people who enjoy gender affirming expression.
I’ve long ago given up trying to understand what “masculinity” is, about all I have figured out is what people think it isn’t, and that seems to me to often involve sexist and homophobic bullshit.
For some reason, being physically weak or unathletic is not “masculine”, but driving a ridiculously oversized pickup truck is, to the point where a physically weak person in a pickup truck is somehow seen as more masculine than a very fit/strong athletic person riding a bicycle.
So maybe it’s more about ability to project power/subjugate others, but I think that falls pretty squarely into the “toxic masculinity”, and I think that is sorta what Ranum is focusing on.
I’ve got my own biased little angle here, as I’m a bicycle commuter, and get threatened/harassed by automobile drivers on a monthly basis. I’ve noticed that a very large majority of them open with insults/slurs (I’m assuming?) targeting my “masculinity” – it’s almost always some variety of “bitch” or f-slur. I don’t think I’ve ever had a driver call me an asshole, dickhead, fuckface, idiot, etc., unless it’s part of a long string of insults/slurs that also include “bitch” or f-slur.
No sources/links off hand, but a couple years back, I ran into some summary of a study claiming there was a notable difference twixt men and women as to requesting/refusing bags or using reusable bags when shopping, and supposedly a sizeable portion of men were concerned that if they refused a disposable bag, or used a reusable one, then they were concerned other people might think they were “gay”
I just don’t understand people…
This reminds me of Christians who believe in complementarianism, which says the husband has to be the leader of the marriage, and the wife has to submit- which I used to believe in- which leads to the conclusion that a man can only be marriage material if he fits some kind of stereotypical “leader” image. I remember reading some articles from complementarian women talking about “Being a leader doesn’t mean he has to be like that! My husband is quiet but also very emotionally supportive of me, and so he is a leader in that way.” At the time, I was happy to read that- if you’re required to believe in complementarianism, it doesn’t necessarily have to be “men have these virtues and women have different ones”- it could be “everyone should be a good person regardless of gender, and when men do that, we will call it ‘leadership'” which is sort of an improvement.
But eventually I was like, wait, so “leader” doesn’t really mean anything, then.
Marcus Ranum @ # 1: … the origin of the word “virtue”…
To elaborate etymologically a little on this (at the hazard of being corrected by cartomancer et alia): “vir” means “man” in Latin (thus “virile”, “triumvirate” [rule by three men], “virago” [a masculine woman], “werewolf” [man-wolf], etc). “Virtue” came from “manliness” (and from essentialist thinking), as, roughly, the ultimate social value – from that, somehow, the highest value for women got the label “virgin(ity)”.
Language, like human thinking, is weird but sometimes fun.
lochaber@4: I walk lots of places. I haven’t run into the sort of treatment you describe, but I have noticed that in more rural areas at night drivers here will lower their highbeams for oncoming cars but not, typically, for oncoming pedestrians. Either they don’t think pedestrians need to be able to see where they’re going, or (much more likely) they just don’t give a shit and are actively disdainful.
Dickheads.