Why has Masculinity Become a Dirty Word?
This week’s episode is based on an article that Douglas Murray wrote a couple of years ago. It was posted on a website named ‘UnHerd’ which is a play on the word ‘unheard’ meaning not listened to, but spelled U N H E R D. The term ‘herd’ is controversially applied to human beings in social psychology, by the use of such concepts as ‘herd behaviour’ and ‘crowd psychology’. These concepts explain how groups can align with, and be uncritical of, for example in the case of this article, popular ideas about masculinity that have been disseminated by academia and the media.
In their mission statement, the online publisher UnHerd says that they wish ‘to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places’. In my own words, UnHerd welcomes writing from the left and the right of politics and appear to be encouraging critical thinking.
In his article entitled ‘‘Why has Masculinity Become a Dirty Word?’, the link for which is in the episode notes, Murray explores why, in the current zeitgeist, meaning the current collective attitude or outlook of people or a culture at this point in time, the impression is being given that male characteristics are only ever bad.
Murray begins his piece by asking us to imagine a scenario where it is decided that there are aspects of female behaviour that are deeply troubling, indeed so troubling that a phrase enters the language, first on university campuses and then across wider society, that phrase is ‘toxic femininity’.
He tells us that even those who recognise it as an ugly phrase, also recognise that it would be unwise to deny its existence. Eventually, a new generation begins to take the existence of ‘toxic femininity’ for granted.
Imagine next that, a number of other things happen. The American Psychological Association, the APA, issues new guidelines to all of its practitioners, guidelines about how to deal with women and girls in their practice. The new guideline outlines particular harmful aspects of femininity that need to be challenged, suppressed or removed. These include Murray says, very basic feminine traits which some women have in abundance, and others do not have at all. Traits such as caring, cooperation and motherliness. Despite the fact that these are probably ineradicable, the APA has never-the-less identified them as needing to be expunged from the female of the species.
Next, a feminine hygiene product company starts a new advertising campaign, aimed at those who use its products – weirdly, its message seems strangely hostile to its target audience, the advert shows them at their absolute worst.
For example, the advert presents women who will use their sexuality to get their own way or who will go to any lengths to get pregnant. These behaviours are obviously not representative of women as a whole, and yet this is how the advertisers are portraying all the women in their advert.
Murray asks us to consider, ‘how would women feel about this? Would there not be a degree of anger as well as confusion?’ As a psychotherapist I might expect a rage response; my understanding of rage is that it is a whole load of different feelings trying to come out at once, involving shock, anger, fear, sadness and hurt. And I agree with Murray about a confusion response but would couch it in terms of disbelief, being lost for words, speechless.
This exact scenario happened in reverse. As I have touched on in another episode, the APA issued guidelines for working with men and boys.
An article is quoted, there’s a link in the episode notes, claiming that 40 years of research showed that “traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression, is undermining men’s well-being”; the APA had produced these new guidelines in order to help practitioners, ‘recognise this problem for boys and men’ and tackle these ‘traditional’ aspects of masculinity.
The APA guidelines defined traditional masculinity as ‘a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including, anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence’.
Murray says that the APA gave very little idea of how in practice these men and boy problems would be resolved. He wonders, for instance, if competitiveness is indeed an especially male trait – as the APA suggests – then when is such competitiveness toxic and harmful, and when is it useful? Might a male athlete be allowed to use their competitive instincts on the racetrack? If so, how can he be helped to ensure that off the track he is as docile as possible?
Might a man facing inoperable cancer with stoicism be helped out of this harmful position so as to be less stoical? If ‘adventure’ and ‘risk’ are indeed male traits, then when and where should men be encouraged to drop them? Should a male explorer be encouraged to be less adventurous, a male firefighter be trained to take fewer risks? Ought male soldiers be encouraged to less connected to ‘violence’ and be more keen to show weakness? If so when? By what mechanism should male soldiers be reprogrammed to use their useful traits and skills when society badly needs them but have them squeezed out when society deems them problematic?
For its part, Gillette chose to launch its new advertising campaign not with the statement ‘the best a man can get’ (as used to be their strapline) but rather something along the lines of ‘the best men can be’. Having named their advert, ‘the best men can be’ strangely though, it focused on every negative male trait; young boys fighting, bullying, a man in the boardroom speaking for a woman and the problem of women receiving unwarranted male attention. These traits were presented as specific to men, and which all men are at risk of falling victim to.
In short, Murray tells us, Gillette chose to show men at their worst and then suggest that by using Gillette – with its new ethical and moral code – men could all make ourselves better.
There has been fallout because of the Gillette advert and the new APA guidance. “Both of these endeavours point to one of the biggest culture wars of our era”, Murray says, “ the usefulness or otherwise of certain masculine traits”.
No one could deny that the traits that the APA lists as especially male (adventure, risk, violence) can be exercised negatively. Murray gives an example of violence as a negative trait, hitting someone in the street who they think is looking at them and of violence as a positive trait, on the rugby pitch or in a war zone. He argues that there are plenty of occasions where violence can be harnessed for the good of everybody.
Likewise, characteristics more often listed as feminine, those of empathy and sensitivity, can be used for the good, although not much talked about, can also have less favourable effects.
Paul Bloom in his book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, shows that empathy can have enormously negative consequences. My own personal and practice experience tells me that too much caring for others can indicate that self-esteem is dependent on being needed, oftentimes it can result in self-neglect and may result in doing for others what they could do or should do for themselves, encouraging dependency rather than autonomy.
Murray concludes that If the APA and Gillette were merely stressing the importance of reining in the worst aspects of people, perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad thing; he does though query why a vast multinational corporation should be among those doing the lecturing; however, he says, ‘the impression being projected is something else. It is not that certain masculine traits can – like all traits – be taken to extremes and go bad. It is that the traits themselves are wrong and that the people who hold them must, as a result either re-programme themselves or be reprogrammed by others.
His final words are, and I agree, ‘this is a pitch to feminise men which is as bizarre as a campaign to make women more masculine’.
“This sort of thing”, he comments, “may be interesting to a post-modern cultural-studies professor, but for many men – especially young men trying to find their way in the world – it is a message that is flooring, in a world that is already complex enough to navigate”.
Good Guy of the Week
My good guy of the week this week is 109-year-old Alfie Date, Australia's oldest man. Alfie makes tiny clothes in his spare time; he knits sweaters for penguins.
He began knitting in 1932, when his sister-in-law taught him how to knit a jumper for his new-born nephew, so he’s been knitting almost 90 years!
In 2013 Alfie loaned his talent to knit for the Phillip Island penguins affected by an oil spill. In March last year, another oil spill caused Phillip Island's Penguin Foundation once again, to put out a call for keen knitters to create little jumpers, to help prevent penguins from swallowing the oil when they attempted to clean themselves. Alfie told a reporter, “the penguins can be poisoned if they try to clean the oil off their feathers” and once again he is putting his generous and still-nimble fingers to good use.
This most recent call was put out on the same day that Alfie had arrived at his new retirement home in Umina, on the Central Coast of NSW; “I think I'd been in here about 12 hours” he said, “might have been 13, the two girls (by that he meant nurses) came in to me and said, "we believe you can knit".
The 109-year-old quickly went to work, joining in with hundreds of people from all over the world who answered the plea for jumpers for the tiny penguins.
Despite his age, Alfie said that he always makes sure his jumpers are up to scratch. 'I like to make them without mistakes, no excuses”.
Alfie's nephew who was the first beneficiary of Alfie’s knitting skills, is now a grandfather himself, and the 109-year-old is the proud grandfather of 20, and great-grandfather of 'roughly the same' he said, although he suspects there might be more.
Little penguins are only found in New Zealand and southern Australia, and there’s a colony of 32,000 who live on Phillip Island. The Phillip Island Penguin Foundation officially labelled Alfie their 'most senior little penguin jumper knitter' but weren’t aware when he started contributing that he was also the oldest person in Australia.
Danene Jones, spokesperson for the Foundation said, they were very privileged to have Alfie aiding their efforts. Want a fab man Alfie is.
I’ve included a link to Alfie’s interview because, if you haven’t seen them already, you must have a look at the tiny penguins in their all the colours of the rainbow knitted sweaters.
Why has Masculinity Become a Dirty Word? Douglas Murray
https://unherd.com/2019/01/why-has-masculinity-become-a-dirty-word/?=refinnar
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, 2016, Paul Bloom
Good Guy of the Week