{"id":8466,"date":"2016-10-05T07:27:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T12:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=8466"},"modified":"2016-10-05T09:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T14:13:43","slug":"hey-guys-its-not-about-your-manhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2016\/10\/05\/hey-guys-its-not-about-your-manhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey Guys, It’s Not About Your Manhood!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Men can now openly enjoy\u00a0My Little Pony,<\/em>\u00a0and some now\u00a0call other men out for rape-supporting attitudes.\u00a0 But as sociologists\u00a0C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges\u00a0astutely note<\/a>, in these cases men often still cling to a notion of manhood that they have and that the outsider lacks.\u00a0 Not the\u00a0right<\/em>\u00a0kind of Brony?\u00a0 Then a guy might hear, “Go be normal\u00a0somewhere else, faggot!” \u00a0Not the right kind of campus dating man?\u00a0 Then the message might be, “You’re a rapist, not a\u00a0real man<\/em>.” \u00a0Pascoe and Bridges\u2019 point is that toxic masculinity is about that act of denying a powerful social identity to others.\u00a0 Redefining the behavior that\u00a0suits a”real man”\u00a0<\/strong>doesn’t change the way men\u00a0seek acceptance from other men\u00a0as men.<\/p>\n

Sensing or at least presuming that being a man is what’s important to guys, rape prevention advocates have tried to appeal to manhood to get guys to rethink their assumptions.\u00a0 As we explain\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>, the “My Strength” campaign offers a\u00a0<\/strong>series of posters that remind men to choose to use their (presumably natural and superior) strength to protect\u00a0women, rather than to rape\u00a0them.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Campaign
Campaign for Caleb’s Hope NGO. www.calebshope.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Likewise, the\u00a0“Real Men Don’t Rape” campaign<\/a>\u00a0trades on how important manhood is to men, and attempts to redefine manhood as respectful, gentlemanly.<\/p>\n

The “real men don’t rape” strategy hopes to convey that manhood ought to be defined by morality, not muscle.\u00a0 But, as a photo from the campaign illustrates, it winds up essentializing male strength\u2014as if that’s the one thing no one can challenge, that at the end of the day (or date), the man there is more physically powerful and ultimately dominant over the woman.<\/p>\n

In the educational film designed to reconstruct gender for African American boys and men,\u00a0My Masculinity Helps<\/em><\/a>, many male allies are shown taking the problem of violence against women seriously.\u00a0 One woman in the film states, “Men have power. Now let’s talk about how to harness that power for good.” \u00a0While we would all agree that we need those with privilege to embrace the social movement’s goals.\u00a0 But why does it have to be about their masculinity and how useful or helpful it is?\u00a0 The feminist movement has challenged gender ideology and, importantly, the centrality of demarcating manhood.\u00a0 Could we imagine, and would we accept, a film about stopping racism called\u00a0My Whiteness Helps<\/em>?<\/p>\n

C.J. Pascoe and Jocelyn Hollander argue, in a recent\u00a0article published in\u00a0Gender & Society<\/em><\/a>, that campaigns attempting to mobilize men turns men’s not raping into a “chivalrous choice, \u00a0a courtesy extended to a subordinate rather than the respect due to an equal.” \u00a0These campaigns highlight women’s subordinate status and almost celebrate men’s putatively\u00a0superior\u00a0strength and power.\u00a0 They oppose\u00a0rape “in ways that work to reinforce, rather than challenge, underlying gender inequalities.”<\/p>\n

When men are enlisted as allies in ways that attempt to make them feel good about themselves as men,\u00a0we are continuing the rape culture by privileging men’s feelings.\u00a0 That same privileging of men’s feelings and needs is exactly what men who abusively control their partner and sexually assault women expect: their feelings and desires to be prioritized.\u00a0 Moreover, in this movement men continue to be framed as the more powerful sex, and women continue to be framed as damsels in distress who “real men” help and not hurt. “Real men” are still dominant\u2014they are just to use that power and dominance benevolently.\u00a0 This protectionist discourse actually works to reinforce some of the very beliefs that it appears to call into question.<\/p>\n

The strategy behind “real men don’t rape” and “my strength” is meant to suggest that respecting women, rather than getting laid,\u00a0is what makes you a man.\u00a0 Of course, this tactic turns the tables, given the assumption that men are so eager, even desperate,\u00a0to have sex with women (even if\u00a0the women\u00a0aren’t willing), because it helps them see themselves as manly.<\/p>\n

As a result, we are now told that\u00a0rape is something committed only by weird, desperate, unmanly men.\u00a0 But,\u00a0as we point out elsewhere<\/a>,\u00a0Prof. Michael A. Messner argues\u00a0in his\u00a0Gender & Society<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0the effort to change rape culture by framing the problem as one of a few bad apples is a major break from the feminist movement that challenged rape to begin with.\u00a0 As Messner puts it, in the 1970s feminist women and pro-feminist men thought that<\/p>\n

“. . . successfully ending\u00a0violence against women would involve not simply removing a few bad\u00a0apples from an otherwise fine basket of fruit. Rather, working to stop\u00a0violence against women meant overturning the entire basket: challenging\u00a0the institutional inequalities between women and men, raising boys differently,\u00a0and transforming in more peaceful and egalitarian directions the\u00a0normative definition of manhood. Stopping men\u2019s violence against\u00a0women, in other words, was now seen as part of a larger effort at revolutionizing\u00a0gender relations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Messner points out, the institutionalization and professionalization of anti-rape work since that time\u00a0has led us to embrace a\u00a0health model of rape prevention, which has medicalized the problem of sexual violence\u2013and thereby, at least in some ways, de-politicized it.\u00a0 Once\u00a0the overall problem of rape has been depoliticized, nobody cares that we’re kowtowing to some dude’s\u00a0need for his\u00a0manhood to be confirmed.<\/p>\n

In those earlier days of the anti-rape movement, male feminist writer\u00a0John Stoltenberg argued in his book\u00a0Refusing to Be a Man<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>that, when\u00a0a man is\u00a0making out with a woman, he\u00a0should be more worried about\u00a0being the friend there<\/em>\u00a0than about\u00a0being the man there<\/em>. \u00a0 Stoltenberg’s point was far more radical than today’s tactic of simply reversing what counts as real manhood.\u00a0 Stoltenberg suggested that we just stop worrying about who’s a real man.<\/p>\n

\"whos-a-good-boy\"The current campaigns basically presume men are like\u00a0the\u00a0dog waiting for affirmation in the dog meme–you know the one in which the dog is saying, “What if I never find out who’s a good boy?”<\/p>\n

Our message to guys would be: No, you’re never going to find out who’s a real man.\u00a0 Let’s move on and worry about what being a\u00a0respectful human being<\/em>\u00a0actually looks and feels like. We really\u00a0aren’t concerned\u00a0about your masculinity, however you conceive it. Because your sense of manhood is not what this movement is about.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

\"mccaughey-cermele\"<\/strong>Jill Cermele<\/strong>\u00a0is a professor of psychology and an affiliated faculty member of the Women\u2019s and Gender Studies Program at Drew University. Her scholarship, teaching, and activism are focused on gender and resistance, outcomes and perceptions of self-defense training, and issues of gender in mental health. With Martha McCaughey, she was a guest editor for the March 2014 special issue of\u00a0Violence Against Women<\/em>\u00a0on Self-Defense Against Sexual Assault. McCaughey and she also write the blog\u00a0See Jane Fight Back<\/a>, where they provide commentary and analysis on popular press coverage of self-defense and women\u2019s resistance.<\/p>\n

Martha McCaughey<\/strong>\u00a0is a professor of sociology and an affiliated faculty member of the Gender, Women\u2019s, and Sexuality Studies Program at Appalachian State University. She is the author of\u00a0Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women\u2019s Self-Defense<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science<\/em>. With Jill Cermele, she guest edited the special issue of\u00a0Violence Against Women<\/em>\u00a0on self-defense against sexual assault and blogs at\u00a0See Jane Fight Back<\/a>. www.seejanefightback.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men can now openly enjoy\u00a0My Little Pony,\u00a0and some now\u00a0call other men out for rape-supporting attitudes.\u00a0 But as sociologists\u00a0C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges\u00a0astutely note, in these cases men often still cling to a notion of manhood that they have and that the outsider lacks.\u00a0 Not the\u00a0right\u00a0kind of Brony?\u00a0 Then a guy might hear, “Go be normal\u00a0somewhere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25814],"tags":[34984,37881,39309,37880,39318,39311,35073,39312,31129,39310,39319,39315],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manly-musings","tag-c-j-pascoe","tag-gender-society","tag-healthy-masculinity","tag-jocelyn-hollander","tag-john-stoltenberg","tag-men-can-stop-rape","tag-michael-messner","tag-my-masculinity-helps","tag-my-strength-is-not-for-hurting","tag-real-men-dont-rape","tag-refusing-to-be-a-man","tag-tristan-bridges"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8483,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions\/8483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}