The con game of American masculinity

Among the topics that has received significant coverage in the lead-up to the current election is the different styles of masculinity represented by the two candidates, both men in their 70s. Reflecting on this, it occurred to me:

When Americans start talking about masculinity, run for cover. Americans think that men are defined by purely physical qualities, of violence and sexuality, both of which are thought to turn on power.

The truth of the matter is that Americans have an anti-intellectual culture in which identity and personality are heavily shaped by notions of power and aggression. That that is what makes a man a normal man is just a stupid gender ideology, and it is one that is slowly dying out. None too soon: the middle ages ended a while ago. Don't let on about this to many Americans.

In my generation, enormous amounts of energy were devoted to making sure that boys would identify with and participate in trials and tournaments of physical prowess and combat. Gender identity was a binary, and guys who weren't so into sports and all that would be labelled "gay." Guys who are into the dominant gender ideology would also challenge other guys, and punish those who seemed weak, or uninterested in the challenge thing. I recall being the object of real hatred, long before I recognized that this was a ritual thing, and these guys were testing me. I was appalled to find this in a short span of time first in a jail where I spend an hour because of a misdemeanor, and then at my university, considered one of the best in the country, though it did seem to have as many young people determined to enforce social norms than to question them. This challenge thing and the hatred that goes with it, is undoubtedly the main reason why as many men as women are raped in America. Most male rape victims are, or were, prisoners, and of course almost no one cares about them, which must be why the anti-rape movement in second wave feminism was always about men violating women. And while it certainly was the case that the most prominent criticisms of the masculine power, strength, and violence ideology were gay men, there is no necessity of that, of course. Gay men, like straight men, exhibit statistically the full range of possible types of gendered personality. It is simply a myth that straight men all want above all to be strong, and gay men are weak. But it is true that men whose identity is bound up with needing to be strong will be inclined in some kinds of circumstances to prey on men they think are weak, and essentially punish them for being so.

I think it is one of the most peculiar things about American culture, and it links up with our national anti-intellectualism. Personally, all my life, I have admired men and women whose prominence has to do with their intellect. Until recently, of course, most intellectuals, scientists, and artists were men. The men I admired did seem to me like men and not women, but they didn't dream of being prize fighters. More importantly, the men and women I knew and admired were not so different from each other. To this day, I think most of the writers I read do not have a strongly marked gender as part of their style.

Artistic people often do have a sense that they have different values than much of their society. Of course, that can mean all kinds of things. It would be easy to show that the ideas of gender identity that have been enjoying spectacular death throes now for a couple of generations are not simply affirmations or negations of a true norm, but a particular normativity that can be questioned in lots of ways.

Americans are unusually macho when compared to Europeans, and this shows in the obsession with spectator sports and other things; also, Christians are more so than Jews, at least apart from the relatively recent phenomena of Israeli militarism and things linked to it; and the poor and lower middle class are more so (and class conflict can plays out partly over this; it is one way that the society is kept conservative by way of the kinds people worry about).

I was able to recognize when I was young that identities were constructed and policed in this way, while finding it difficult to navigate the terrain of our culture, since the equation of masculinity with power and violence was so strong. It is one thing I noticed that seemed much less true of the culture when I lived in France. In Europe and elsewhere in the world, physical toughness as a criterion of masculinity is more true of the lower classes than the society as a whole.

In America, in the 70s, it became popular to suppose that lots of guys must be gay, since that would explain any dissensions from the dominant stupidity that was at work in this way of thinking. The idea was that while it could not be questioned that masculinity is power, and above all physically, it was possible to pretend to appreciate and not just directly despise those guys who did think of themselves as like latter-day medieval knights dreaming of combats with other men, and conquests of trophy women. This meant that an idea of a normative sexuality and gender was constructed that some people were permitted to be exceptions to, though of course it could come at a price. That price was partly to have to see oneself as defined in some essential way through their sexuality and gender identity, and these in terms of very limiting norms. This did not usually bring those who bought into it social acceptance, but it complicated a hatred with a compensatory claim of acceptance that simultaneously disavowed it.

Looking back, I think I should have declared myself aesthetico- and intellectuo- sexual. I think art works and works of the mind are more attractive than most of the people I could chance to run across. It also may be salutary to not think that there are just two types of personality, those who, say if they are guys, want to fuck girls and those who want to fuck guys. That's a curious way to be stupid. But it could be relief to realize that you are not interested in anyone just because of their gender. Who wants to lust after, let alone marry, 3.5 billion people? This could get boring after a while.

What if persons were not so easily defined? The choice of what gender of person you 'want', if that is a choice, is a lot like buying a commodity. Who says this is the most important question for any person, even young people concerned about their identity? I can think of a lot of questions that are more important, and more decisive in determining what kind of person a person is.

The best thing that our culture could do about gender identity and normative ideas of personality is to disinvest ourselves from such notions as much as possible. The second best thing would be to cultivate notions of identity and personality that do not turn on gender and sex so much as other things.

Obviously part of what drives the recent fad (and it partly is that) of transsexualism is that many people feel disaffected with the gender norms that they have been asked to define themselves by, but instead of rejecting all such norms, they ask of themselves and us to let them choose the other one. This is a very interesting phenomenon, to a point.

We ought to vote for presidents and desire other people to fill leadership roles a bit more for what they propose to do in those positions, and a bit less for what kind of identity they want to represent and have people love because they have a lack of being that will be fulfilled by choosing a hero or heroine. Maybe that is asking too much.

Someday, people will stop defining themselves quite so much in terms of the gender of the persons that they want to either be or be with. We could imagine a world in which there are only people of whatever kind who love some one or more persons. And we could think less about the norms of manhood and womanhood and more about norms of personhood.

We will have better leaders then, too.

Meanwhile, if you think Trump is your idea of a manly man, you can, you know, go fuck yourself. Pardon the irony.

Identity is cheap. If you were a laid off factory worker, would you rather have another job or watch the success of a local football team? If you are a member of a minority, would you rather your children have better opportunities or a leader to identify with?