masculinity

Time for some serious talk about men’s violence. I’ll break it down to make a difficult point really simple.

Number one: Men’s violence against women is a men’s issue.
Number two: Prevention is the best solution.

It’s been almost two months since Chris Brown’s infamous and brutal attack on Rihanna. With our three-second Twitters, four-second sound bites, and a five-second news story shelf lives, it’s like this assault happened a million years ago. It’s so easy to collectively forget and move on to the Next Big Story.

But think back to the leaked police photos of 21-year-old popstar Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face. Although her bruises may have faded along with our collective voyeurism, a crucial issue remains.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 1.3 million women are victims of assault by an intimate partner each year. Do the math. That works out to nearly two-and-a-half women assaulted every minute, typically by a boyfriend or husband.
We live in a culture that shrouds these facts of violence in secrecy, silence, and misunderstanding. We’re taught to confuse abuse with passionate love. Our culture links violence with romance with lines like, “Baby, I only hit you because I love you” — the kind of relentless refrain we see repeated in mainstream movies, TV, magazines, and music.

If a celebrity woman stays in a violent relationship, or gets back with an abusive guy, the takeaway for most people is that that male violence is not so bad. This insidious message, comments journalist Katha Pollitt, reinforces ideas that male violence is a natural part of life, and something in which women are complicit by provoking it, using it, even liking it.

This is dangerous misinformation. It contributes to a culture that normalizes violence and is accustomed to looking the other way, even with the rates of abuse so astronomically high.

But here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about two megastars in Hollywood or the couple living right next door, we might scratch our heads and ask, “If he’s abusive then why does she stay?”

It’s a fair question. But the wrong one. The question that goes to the heart of the matter is Why does he hit?

Men are certainly victims of domestic assault. But the vast majority of cases are women hurt by men’s hands, words, and control. Direct service agencies and hospital samples indicate that men commit nearly 90 percent of domestic abuse. Yet, ironically, we’re trained to think of abuse as a woman’s issue. When we’re talking about male violence against women, says violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz, we’re really talking about a men’s issue.

This isn’t about blaming men. The point is more profound and the goal more constructive than that. The most effective way to end violence against women is to stop the problem before it happens. Doing so means we need men on board. We need men taking responsibility, getting in on the conversations about male violence, and refusing to be silent bystanders to the problem.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are high-profile cultural icons. Millions of fans look to them as trendsetters and culture creators. With media giving so much attention to their personal lives, the couple’s private relationship has powerful public impact.

The Rihanna-Chris Brown fan base skews young. So does abuse. Girls and women between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than any other group to be in abusive relationships. The NCADV reports teen dating violence is one of the major sources of violence in adolescents’ lives. A full 20 percent of dating couples report some type of violence in their relationship. Teen dating violence is particularly insidious because it happens at a time when young people are navigating intense relationships, sorting out their values, and laying emotional roadmaps for their futures.

A recent study of Boston teens that found nearly 50 percent of the 12-to-19-year-olds surveyed blamed Rihanna for getting hit. But this isn’t just about pop-star punditry. The issue literally hits at home. According to the Boston Public Health Commission, 71 percent of the teens they questioned said arguing is a normal part of relationships and 44 percent said fighting in relationships is routine.

This is startling.

So let’s seize this cultural moment to keep talking — really talking! — about masculinity, violence, and pop culture. Honest conversations across communities about male violence against women are crucial for the safety of teenagers at risk, for children who witness abuse, and for survivors everywhere. We need to start talking across communities because men’s violence against women is a men’s issue. And prevention is the best solution.

Our very own Shira Tarrant (curator of “The Man Files” here at GWP) is on the advisory committee for this one, as is Michael Kimmel, whose work I utterly admire.  So I totally wanted to share:

Call for Presentations
THE 1st NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR
CAMPUS-BASED MEN’S GENDER EQUALITY & ANTI-VIOLENCE GROUPS
November 6-7, 2009 / St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota

What it is: Across the country, groups of male students are making their voices heard!  More and more men are finding the courage to say “no” to ideas of manhood and relations between the sexes that aren’t good for women and aren’t good for men as well.  They’re speaking out against date rape and violence against women.  They support gender equality.  Some work through residence life or student activities offices, others through women’s centers and counseling programs.  Some are campus branches of national organizations like MVP, White Ribbon, Men Can Stop Rape, 1 in 4, or V-Men.    These men face common problems: How to have an impact?  How to find positive ways to get their message to other campus men?  How to deal with backlash, to work in partnership with women’s groups, to recruit and sustain their groups?  For the first time, campus-based pro-feminist men’s groups from across the country are meeting together.  To share resources., trade their best ideas, discuss strategies, and simply find out what’s happening on other campuses.

For more details, including on costs and the members of the organizing & advisory committees, visit: www.michaelkaufman.com/campusmensconference

Today being the day our monthly “Man Files” column posts and all, I thought I’d share this round-up of links on, well, MEN. Or rather, men and masculinity. From a feminist perspective. Definitely check out:

Our very own Shira Tarrant’s “Guy Trouble” in the current issue of BITCH in which she asks are young men really in crisis or are these boys just done being boys?

Rebecca Traister of Salon and Emily Bazelon of Slate discuss the recession’s effect on gender and housework in a New York Times bloggingheads video called “Unemployed Husbands”

And Tony Dokoupil has a piece in this week’s Newsweek titled “Men Will Be Men” in which he blows by some of the more progressive changes in masculine behavior and concludes that men continue to define masculinity in market terms.

This month’s guest post to The Man Files comes at us from Jonathan Felix — college student, drummer, sports fan, and astute social critic. In Jonathan’s words, “Me and my dad sarcastically laugh at the sequence of commercials during ‘guy’ shows on TV: beer, burgers, military. Beer, cars, televisions, military …” Here Jonathan takes on Carl’s Jr. ads asking why they portray guys as kind of stupid.

Masculine, Jr.

In true corporate marketing fashion, Carl’s Jr. depicts demoralizing stereotypes of men and women in efforts to attract consumers.

The fast-food chain’s current commercial shows a beautiful skinny blonde girl wearing make-up and a nice blue dress. She enters her boyfriend’s apartment expecting a classy night out, and finds him on the couch playing video games. The couple talks about a steak dinner, and the guy implies they are going to Carl’s Jr. for their new steak sandwich. The motto after the commercial is that Carl’s Jr. is “How guys do fancy.”

This is NOT how I do fancy.

Commercials like this give good guys a bad reputation. Hey Carl’s Jr. — Listen up! A lot of us actually have our lives together and enjoy taking women out to nice places and good dinners.

Or what about the ad with the guy and the avocado? It makes men look like total barbaric meatheads, who can’t even use a spoon to eat an avocado, and we somehow need Carl’s Jr. to make guacamole for us because we’re too stupid to figure it out.

Now I happen to like Carl’s Jr. But for them to portray guys as that lazy and ignorant is offensive. I can only hope my peers would agree that we have to do better than a #4 Combo if we plan on making good boyfriends and future husbands.

These commercials project a message to the world that men are lame and losers and unable to appreciate even the smallest bit of romantic effort. Far too often our society depicts “real” men as barbarians who love sports and beer and total sexual dominance. And although plenty of men have some of these traits, pop culture insists on exploiting our more obtuse characteristics to sell their products.

These ads completely ignore a man’s intellectual or emotional capabilities. This hurts men who actually have their lives somewhat together. It perpetuates negative stereotypes and affects women’s future opinions about men, be they Prince Charmings or Ronald McDonalds.

Show Jonathan some love and welcome him to Girl With Pen by posting your comments here. Or reach him directly at johnnylbeach at yahoo.com. Until next month! -Shira

My latest Recessionwire.com column is now up. I’d love it if GWPenners once again would post comments over there to this one in particular, as I take on my fellow Recessionwire blogger “Joe the Trader” for some rather gender-stereotyped remarks (and a huge THANK YOU for all your awesome comments past!).

Joe’s column, “Out on the Street,” chronicles life after layoff for Wall Street guys.  In his latest, “Gendernomics”, Joe makes a number of great points (especially in comments!) but he also falls into the she-spends, she-nags vision of things that drives me nuts.  Ok, so maybe it drives me nuts in part because I’ve become a nagger. But mostly it drives me nuts because the underlying presumption Joe (who is now at home) and many men seem to make is that all the yucky housework tasks are a woman’s purview, even in couples where both partners work outside the home.

This recession is sure breathing new life into the ole laundry gap debate.  The eternal optimist in me hopes that this time, perhaps we’ll all get past merely arguing over the laundry.  Perhaps more men out of jobs–while their women continue to work–will ultimately result in a more equitable division of labor at home.  One can hope?!

So here’s my response to Joe:  “A Gentle Response to Joe the Trader”

Thanks in advance for comments, and I’ll see you over there!

Did you hear the one about how testosterone is to blame for the meltdown? Pretty good stuff, eh? The headline reads: “Male Hysteria and the Market Meltdown: Is testosterone to blame for the financial crisis? A growing body of evidence suggests an intriguing answer as neuroscience reshapes our understanding of economics.” IMHO, it is perhaps one of the most absurd of the reflections on what the economic meltdown tells us about men and masculinity today.

Wondering if there might not be a “third-wave feminist masculinity scholar” on the project, I talked to my Framingham State College colleague, Professor Ben Alberti. Ben is an anthropologist who usually studies gender in ancient cultures (he says “prehistoric guylands”). Here’s what he had to say:

BA: How the hell can testosterone cause a market meltdown? Saying it is about testosterone covers up the idea of calculated greed. There is a much larger system than the trading room dynamics that accounts for how our economy works—or fails. It is misdirection, like a magic trick.

GWP: But even if we can mock biological explanations, isn’t that calculated greed part of the culture that men live in, a part of the expectations for being a “good man”?

BA: Oh, rubbish. You are simply saying that if men aren’t a “victim of their biology” they are a “victim of their culture”—that’s the “crisis of masculinity” argument, and I don’t buy it.

GWP: There’s been some interesting reporting on how unemployment is stressful for men, but you’re saying that we can biologize masculinity—but we can also culturize it—and get to the same place?

BA: Yes. Men can be victims—and there are a lot of men suffering right now in this economic downturn–but not because of their being men. It isn’t about identity or role any more than it is about testosterone. This crisis is about economics, values, inequality.

GWP: But men are living in a world of changing expectations, and it can be hard to respond because they aren’t (yet) fully equipped to switch gears, right?

BA: Oh come on!

GWP: What?

BA: In masculinity research there’s the notion of the “man box.” The man box view shows us the cultural expectations that men are subject to and that shape their actions. As you can imagine, a “box” suggests it is really hard to get out. I’m saying there’s no f-ing box. It is all about choices. Not the crisis, but the response. There are constraints, for sure. That means circumstances will determine which resources you can draw on for being what kind of man. But don’t masculinize constraints…. When we talk about men, we need to talk about possibilities rather than expectations. We need to talk about actions—what we’re performing—rather than containers—like the box.

GWP: (We’re not supposed to pun about the box, right?) You’ve talked about masculinity as performance—but what does that give us?

BA: Here’s a cliché example, one I’m familiar with: asking directions. So from the point of view of the “man box,” I don’t want to stop and ask for directions because I’m a man. What I’m saying is that, really, I don’t stop and ask directions because I haven’t done it before.

GWP: It sounds like you are saying that the issue of where men are today—in terms of unemployment or in terms of ethical choices in the pursuit of their work or career—is a lot more tractable and a lot simpler than we make it out to be when we expect biology or culture or the man box to leave men in “a crisis of masculinity.” Is that it?

BA: Yes. Stop anticipating a conflict. Don’t anticipate the man box. I am saying when you do it—ask directions, change your approach to work, deal with this awful economic crisis, whatever it is–it becomes part of your repertoire. That’s how change happens.

-Virginia Rutter

A new Love in the Time of Layoff column of mine goes live over at Recessionwire.com today, and in the meantime, I wanted to share this post from another writer over there, Dan Colarusso, former managing editor of Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com until the end of 2008 and current managing editor of The Business Insider. Dan’s post is titled “Recession Recipes: Satisfaction Stew”. A taste:

You’ve been stripped of your big office, fat title, hot assistant and, most important, your paycheck. But being emasculated on the job doesn’t mean you can’t satisfy your significant other at home—with food.

On the Home Depot scale, cooking something impressive and tasty falls somewhere in between changing a light bulb and installing a new shower head—that is, pretty simple. Some quick rules for the new house husband, and a 20-minute recipe…

For the recipe, click here.

That’s right, sportsfans. Botox is now being used by men.

According to an article in Time magazine, “The number of men in the U.S. who paid to get a series of tiny injections in their face nearly tripled from 2001 to 2007–to 300,000, or about 7% of the total Botoxed population. And despite the recession, those numbers aren’t going down yet; one of the many things the laid-off cannot afford is to look their age.”

And now here’s an interesting tidbit:

“Men do, however, fret a lot more about the pain. ‘They get so jacked up worrying that it will hurt,’ says Botox enthusiast and nine-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz. ‘Maybe that’s why women have babies and we don’t.'”

And speaking of which, one of my dear dear dear friends had her baby last night.  Welcome to the world, Baby Maxanne Evelyn!  And what does this have to do with Botox?  Hmm..how bout this: May you long stay away.  (Coming over to meet you, right now!)

Thank you, Laura Sabattini, as always, for the heads up.

I’ve got the cover story over at The Big Money (Slate’s money mag) today! It’s posted here: Love and Layoffs | The Big Money. Your comments over there would be most welcome!

And a humongous shout out to Marco, who is so bravely allowing me to use him as Exhibit A these days, in print.

Meeting Notorious on the Big Screen

I’m happy to introduce Ebony Utley who contributes this kick-ass guest post to The Man Files. Ebony cleverly writes about her “date” with rap star B.I.G. — a posthumous movie night watching B.I.G. on the big screen in the recently released biopic, Notorious. What follows is Ebony’s sharp call about the demands and expectations of masculinity.

Me and B.I.G. just went out on our first date. I’d heard about him around the way, but he seemed like such a bad boy. I was content to watch him from my stoop.  Then some friends were like, “Girl, I heard he done changed. He told us to tell you to meet him at the Pike at eight for this movie.”  And thought, “If dude wanna take me out; he should take me some place where I can look him in the eye and see if he lyin’ when he talk.”

But you know, he’s B.I.G., so I went.

It wasn’t a typical movie date. He told me lots of stuff about his life.  It was juicy.  I was surprised at how open he was about his past. He had been a hustla, but got his money legal.  He loved his mama. He loved his kids. He admitted to being a playa, but he told me I was special. I knew stuff that nobody knew.  Said he’d had suicidal thoughts but now he was ready to live. I myself was mesmerized by his charisma and swagger.  I soaked up every second of his life.  Before we left the movie, he asked if he could be a friend of mine, and then just like that, he was gone.

I’m not going to lie. I miss B.I.G.  Who doesn’t?  But I’m trying to be real about the things he told me on our first and only date together.  I mean, it was still dark in that movie, and I couldn’t look him in the eye good.  What if he told all the ladies that they were special and knew things nobody knew?  He kept saying that he’d changed.  I’m hearing him say that he’d become a man.  I admired B.I.G., but what made him a man? He told me real men make money, have kids, and lots of women, get respect, and die too young.  Hmm.  Even the list is suspect.

B.I.G. made money, yes, but Diddy was in charge of his destiny. Without Diddy telling my girls to tell me to go see B.I.G. we would have never even hooked up.  I can’t imagine that B.I.G. didn’t love his kids, but they didn’t really know him; he didn’t seem to know them.  Sure, he was sometimes at peace with his women but what about the lies, the deception, and the manipulation?  Everybody was celebrating B.I.G. when they killed him. So much for respect. If this is what a man is, I’m glad that we decided to be just friends.

All I can say ladies is don’t let them hypnotize you.  No disrespect to the person who was the Notorious B.I.G., but those traditional celebrations of manhood as the fearless protector, provider, babymaker get old after a while.  Better to watch them from the stoop than get caught up in some mess.  If B.I.G. had tried something different, maybe he’d still be here, but his story is still powerful. I’m glad he shared it with me.  Gives me a point a reference for what else manhood should be—entrepreneurship, present fatherhood, honest, healthy relationships, and caution over reputation.  Thanks for the teaching moment. I’ve still got mad love for you, B.I.G.

Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach and author of  The Gangsta’s God: The Quest for Respectability in Hip Hop (Praeger, forthcoming).