Discuss the view that contemporary society is experiencing a crisis of masculinity

Polly Jackman, 12SAM

Masculinity is the word used to describe the broad stereotyped traits traditionally ascribed to all males in British society and the notion of how men should appear and behave. It is more accurate to refer to ‘masculinities’, to reflect the complexity and diversity of masculinity today. There are important differences made between ‘hegemonic’ and ‘subordinate’ masculinities; hegemonic masculinity is the dominant western image – white, heterosexual and middle class, subordinate the diverse masculinities – homosexual men, black men and the working class. David Beckham is a modern icon who has expressed and challenged some of the dominant assumptions of masculinity and identity. He is a talented and committed footballer yet his experiments with fashion and his posing for shoots are taken by some as an affront to the conventionalities of traditional masculine behaviour. Rutherford stated that ‘the reality of men’s heterosexual identities is that their endurance is contingent upon an array of structures and institutions’. He believes that if these structures are threatened or weakened then masculine identities can be threatened or weakened. Rutherford thinks that five changes have undermined the male dominance of certain structures and institutions. These changes are 1) working-class masculinities threatened by the decline of heavy manual industry. Male unemployment has risen while female employment has increased. 2) Violent and sexual abuse of women and children has become more widely publicised and less tolerated. 3) Men’s roles within the family have been questioned. Divorce laws ‘…have been predominantly used by women leaving their husbands’. 4) The women’s movement has queried masculinity; it has shown patriarchal power and portrayed men as self-interested abusers of that power. 5) ‘…radical gay politics and black politics have produced new definitions of the world that are not attributed to the grand narrative of White Man’. Walby believes that the differentiation made between feminine and masculine characteristics are still as strong as ever, but that the characteristics seen as making each sex either masculine or feminine has changed significantly. For example in the 19th Century women were confined to the domestic sphere and were unpaid. In the 20th Century Walby says that ‘the key sign of femininity today…is sexual attractiveness to men’.

Most social writers believe that masculinities are constructed socially rather than being innate. It is believed to be the way boys are socialised into dominant patterns, which put emphasis on such characteristics as toughness, competitiveness and aggression that causes behaviour of the stereotypical masculine type. If social construction is the key to masculinity it follows that men can be resocialised into gentler and more sensitive roles. Seidler believes it is misleading to regard human behaviour as completely flexible, as if ‘bad characteristics’ can be totally eliminated. He suggests Freudian theory is useful in encouraging men (and woman) to confront the ‘darker’ side of their natures. Seidler believes this side needs to be recognised if more realistic ways of controlling it are to be developed. According to the social construction approach masculinity varies historically and cross-culturally. The difference between stereotypical views of the stiff upper lipped Englishman and the emotional Italian illustrate this.

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Men’s reactions to the challenges posed by feminism and the woman’s movements were that of the ‘genuine surprise of the discontent’ (Goode). Goode believes both sexes find it difficult to appreciate the problems of the other sex, and consequently many men reacted with hostility and jeered at feminists. Slowly, men started adjusting to changing gender roles. Rutherford says that there is a ‘plurality of masculine identities; different models of fatherhood, sexualised images of men and new sensibilities’. Rutherford believes there are two groups of men, the retributive man and the new man. Other sociologists also believe in the emergence of the ‘new man’ since the 1970s. They believe ‘He’ is very changed from the ‘old man’, an anti-sexist, non-aggressive, respectful, faithful male, in touch with his ‘feminine’ side. According to Ehrenreich this new man grew out of a feeling of entrapment by their breadwinner roles which enslaved them to a ‘rat-race’ and caused large amounts of stress marking them out as likely victims of heart attacks. They rejected ‘maturity’ and ‘responsibility’ in favour of fun morality and ‘personal growth’. Rutherford argues that the retributive man tries to reassert the traditional images of masculinity and attacks challengers of the long established and strongly held view of what it is to be a ‘real’ man. On the other hand, the new man is a ‘response to structural changes of the past…specifically to assertiveness and feminism and women’. The new man is more likely to take fatherhood more seriously and divide household and childcare roles evenly, while retributive man is likely to want to be main breadwinner, and perhaps expect their wife to play the traditional role of the housewife and main caregiver to children. Mort argued that the changes in style which new man fashions encouraged were reflecting significant changes in male identity in contemporary culture. His study of consumption covered the rise in men’s fashion magazines, toiletries such as aftershave, perfumes, hair gel and designer-label clothing. Mort stated that this reflected a radical shift in attitudes towards masculinity, it was being represented in a way normally reserved for the feminine. The cultural code was becoming blurred. Mort claimed these changes represented an important and significant shift in cultural values and norms of masculinity. Edwards is critical of Mort and argues that he did not examine changes in gender and consumption in a wide social context. Edwards insists on the existence and importance of social structures, which influence individuals’ opportunities for consumption.

In today’s society men seem increasingly confused about exactly what role they are needed to play, In an interview published in the New York Times back in 1912, Carl Jung observed that the libido of American men:

‘Is focused almost entirely on his business, so that as a husband he is glad to have no responsibilities. He gives the complete direction of his family life over to his wife. This is what you call giving independence to the American woman. It is what I call the laziness of the American man. That is why he is so kind and polite in his home and why he can fight so hard in his business. His real life is where his fight is. The lazy part of his life is where his family is.’

Jung was writing about American men at the turn of the last century. Some argue that to be male in today’s society is still as Jung says it used to be. Given the nature and extent of the feminist analysis and the sexual revolution of the second half of the twentieth century much appears to have changed - for women. What has happened to men? In his book ‘Masculinity in Crisis’, Antony Clare writes about how he learned about ‘masculinity and manhood’, he writes that ‘all the learning by way of a kind of osmotic process’. He says that he doesn’t recall anyone such as his parents, peers or teachers saying 'This is what it means to be a man, a son, a brother, a lover, a dad'. Clare believes that he ’learned very early on what a man does; his work is as important as, even more important than, who he is; that a man is defined in modern capitalistic society in terms not of being but doing’. Clare writes:

‘My career, particularly my medical career, was always portrayed and interpreted, by others as much as by myself, as more important than spouse, family, friends. During my undergraduate and postgraduate training, first in medicine, then in psychiatry, I never ever witnessed a male colleague admitting to putting his family first. Male colleagues would blithely arrange late evening meetings of this or that committee and be surprised and irritated when female colleagues pointed out that domestic duties made their attendance impossible. For a male to make such a statement would have marked him as someone not committed to his job. Most male colleagues were busy demonstrating how they worked all the hours God gave them. It was like chimps beating their chests and baring their teeth. Often, it was just about as productive’.

In the late 1960s and 1970s the phenomenon then known as the 'empty-nest syndrome' was regularly encountered. This syndrome affected married women who, after having given their lives to looking after their families, found when they reached their fifties their children had grown up and gone and their spouses were enjoying a life separate from themselves. These days it is far more likely that middle-aged men, having given their lives loyally to a particular company or corporation, will be compulsorily retired, downsized or rendered redundant. Men then look to their spouses or children for support and even guidance, but their children have left and their spouses are otherwise occupied. The roles have reversed; the women now have jobs and friends at work, separate hobbies form their husbands.

The outcome of feminist activity in the 1960s and 1970s and indeed up until the present day was the removal of some men’s ability to have power over women. Of course this has affected the stereotypical image of the masculine, ‘macho’ man as main breadwinner and therefore economic dominator. It is fact that employment has become much more equalised, although there is still a way to go. For example in the 1980s half the accountancy recruits were female (Times 12.12.90), and in 1987 more women that men passed the final solicitors’ exam. This shift in employment has had effect in other aspects of society. In the home the fact that women work similar hours and earn similar salaries to men has meant that men must share household and childcare responsibilities, simply because women do not have time to take on the role of housewife as well as wage earner. This economic independence has also led to sexual independence, where women have broken away from conventional sexual roles opting sometimes for heterosexual chauvinism or separatism, but usually for ‘self-determining sexuality’; being free to decide their own sexual orientation and lifestyles. All this is possible because of changing sexual norms, which have come about by feminists fighting t for equal rights. Since women can earn their own money and be economically independent there isn’t the need for them to get married just to survive and be accepted within society. By changing society, feminists have caused men to alter their roles in the house and society, and this has lad to a change in men’s masculinity, however subtly this is perceived. Some argue that it has not led to any changes in men’s roles, only to a change in women’s, where they now take on two jobs, that of housewife and wage-earner. It can also be argued that men do more housework, but in a study Young and Willmott found women spent an average of 45.5 hours per week on housework, while men spent only 9.9 hours per week. They also found that men do housework in a ‘helping out’ way not as a part of life, and are more involved in the pleasant parts of childcare such as playing rather than changing nappies. Marriage can offer personal survival and greater material comfort for many women when most have very poorly paid work. However Walby believes that the short-term benefits undermine women’s ‘long-term interests in the eradication of the oppression which exists within the family’. As well as changing attitudes and actions in society, Feminism has caused a change in the conscience of men, knocked their sense of superiority by proving that patriarchy is wrong, men aren’t better than women. This is verified by the fact that once women were allowed socially to compete for the same jobs as men, they started getting them, proving they were just as good as men. This competition with women has caused men to lose their sense of superiority.

To decide whether there is a crisis of masculinity there must be a way to measure masculinity to see if it has hanged. There is no clear way to measure masculinity because there is no clear definition. What do we call masculinity? The economic progression took away the structure by which masculinity used to be defined. Men’s sense of self and power was defined by work. The rise in feminism coincided with a decline in industry. Very typical male jobs such a mining, carpentry and metalwork in places such as Foundry’s have either closed down entirely or are much smaller and have fewer employment opportunities. This has meant that men need to define their sense of self outside the workplace. Typical images of men as aggressive and competitive had a very valid place in industry where aggression can be worked out and channelled effectively into hard, manual work, competition was useful in achieving the most they could. In industry work was confined to being down the pit, or in the Foundry; as the end of the working day came, men left the ‘work mindset’ and went home to become another persona. Men defined themselves and their masculinity at work and were very grounded in who and what they were at home or in a different environment they were confident and sure of themselves. If masculinity is measured in terms of aggression and strength, then the loss of industry and the traditional male role has caused a crisis of masculinity. Men no longer have defined jobs. The boundaries of society have altered, and are not yet fixed. Men, as David Beckham proves, have and must challenge the rigid conventions of traditional masculinity, since these no longer belong in the modern world. In the football subculture Beckham is deviant, post-modern in his fluid image changes, trying to find a character to settle as, and representing all men as he does this. Women can and will do anything. Equal rights mean that women can do any job thy want to do, sperm banks mean that women do not need men to have children, lesbianism proves that a happy and fulfilling sexual and platonic relationship can be achieved without men. This leads to the question – are men themselves needed? Serious commentators declare that men are redundant, that women do not need them and children would be better off without them. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that men are in serious trouble. Throughout the world antisocial behaviour is essentially male. Violence, sexual abuse of children, illicit drug use, and alcohol misuse, gambling all are overwhelmingly male activities. Throughout North America, Europe and Australia, male suicides outnumber female by a factor of between 3 and 4 to 1. The rise in the number of young men killing themselves in much of the developed world has been termed an epidemic. These suicide figures are viewed as the tip of an iceberg of male depression, hidden only because men are seen to be either too proud or too emotionally blocked to admit when their feelings are out of control. Men appear terrified by the prospect of revealing that they can be - and often are - depressed, dependent, in need of help. It will be said that it has always been thus and that all that is changing is that men are coming out of the emotional closet. Others argue that there is a genuine rise in male dissatisfaction for which there are numerous causes. The growing assertiveness of women and the lack of women prepared to be the property of patriarchal men. Male power is being overthrown.

There may be a crisis of masculinity, but

‘Men still outnumber women in positions of power across the globe, still glower downwards through the glass ceiling, still strut the cabinet and boardrooms in every developed country in the world, the seeming masters of their fate and everybody else's. In the developing world the situation is even more unequal. The gender disparity in sharing the burden of unpaid work is stark, and for all the talk of equality women throughout the world continue to work longer hours than men and are paid very much less for it. The colonists are still in command.’ (Clare, 2000)