The Man Question

Male Subordination and Privilege

Nancy E. Dowd

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780814720943
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Diritto di genere

Among the many important tools feminist legal theorists have given scholars is that of anti-essentialism: all women are not created equal, and privilege varies greatly by circumstances,particularly that of race and class. Yet at the same time, feminist legal theory tends to view men through an essentialist lens, in which men are created equal. The study of masculinities, inspired by feminist theory to explore the construction of manhood and masculinity, questions the real circumstances of men, not in order to deny men's privilege but to explore in particular how privilege is constructed, and what price is paid for it.

In this groundbreaking work, feminist legal theorist Nancy E. Dowd exhorts readers to apply the anti-essentialist model—so dominant in feminist jurisprudence—to the study of masculinities. She demonstrates how men's treatment by the law and society in general varies by race, economic position, sexuality, and other factors. She applies these insights to both boys and men, examining how masculinities analysis exposes both privilege and subordination. She examines men's experienceof fatherhood and sexual abuse, and boys’ experience in the contexts of education and juvenile justice. Ultimately, Dowd calls for a more inclusive feminist theory, which, by acknowledging the study of masculinities, can broaden our understanding of privilege and subordination.

1
Introduction

Feminist legal theory began by asking “the woman question.” Feminists persistently asked why women were missing, what justified their subordination, differentiation, and inequality. Feminists affirmatively called for valuing that which was woman-identified. Antiessentialist critics of feminism required feminists to “ask the other question” or questions—questions of race, class, and sexual orientation. Feminists had to acknowledge differences among women and the intertwining of privilege with inequality, including instances of women’s subordination of other women.

Antiessentialism inevitably led to noticing how the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation dissolve any notion that only women are subordinated. And that fact inexorably pushes us to ask “the man question.” The man question is how gender functions to subordinate some or all or most men, as well as how men consciously and unconsciously accept privilege with its patriarchal dividend as well as its costs. Asking the man question strengthens the promise of feminist analysis to challenge and fight inequality and injustice. It may also increase the potential for alliances between women and men. In this volume I begin that task by exploring masculinities scholarship and what it can bring to feminist legal theory.

Feminists have studied men, patriarchy, and masculine characteristics as sources of power, domination, inequality, and subordination. Various theories of inequality have been developed by feminists to challenge and reveal structures and discourses that reinforce explicitly or implicitly the centrality of men and the identity of the top of a hierarchical power and economic structure as male. Feminists have examined, for example, inequalities in work, wealth, family, privacy, reproductive rights, victimization from violence, and state intervention. In law, feminists have exposed women’s absence from legal rules, statutory structures, and constitutional doctrines and protections. They have exposed women’s silence, or their concentration, in particular areas of law that expose women’s relegation to the private sphere. Even where women are formally equal, feminists have sought to explain their ongoing real inequality. Thus, they have exposed how even the process of reform can contain the seed of reconstituted inequality. So, for example, gender neutrality, while persuasive in theory, hides asymmetrical realities, such as the disproportionate caretaking responsibilities of women or women’s disproportionate victimization from sexual assault and domestic violence.

One can argue this focus makes sense. Two stories that Michael Kimmel, a leading masculinities scholar, relates in his work would support such a view. Kimmel describes a study that asked, what would both boys and girls do if they woke up the next morning the opposite sex? The girls “thought about the question for a while, expressed modest disappointment, and then described the kinds of things they would do…. Become a doctor, fireman, policeman, or baseball player were typical answers. The boys, by contrast, took virtually no time before answering. ‘Kill myself’ was the most common answer” (2004, 46).

The second story expresses the link between masculinity and power, particularly violent power, as a source of pride and ultimate power. “After he had successfully tested a nuclear bomb in November 1952, … Edward Teller, the Nobel Prize–winning nuclear physicist, wrote the following three word telegram to his colleagues: ‘It’s a boy.’ No one had to point out to Teller the equation of military might—the capacity for untold violence—and masculinity” (Kimmel 2004, 273–74).

Yet at the same time, failing to look at men, in both their power and burdens, may hide key aspects of male experience. The expectation that men are stoic and emotionally strong makes it difficult to respond to their emotional traumas, as evidenced by the challenges in treating soldiers. The term “shell shock” emerged out of World War I to describe male soldiers who “acted like women,” meaning they exhibited hysterical behavior thought only to be associated with women. The term was coined to describe hysteria in “the rougher sex,” but its victims were viewed as “subnormals, psychic weaklings, malingerers, and draft evaders” (Lunbeck 1994, 253). It was not until the post–Vietnam War era that this phenomenon was understood as a response to trauma, exacerbated by the threat it posed to the individual’s and society’s view of manhood.

One of the fascinating ways in which power, privilege, and the burdens of masculinity are apparent is in language. In a funny, but also sad, book, Peter Murphy explores the terms we use for and about men, and what they suggest about our views about men. As he points out, “the insidiousness of language in the tragedy of contemporary manhood…. [illustrates] how it works against us while appearing to empower us” (2001, x). Although arguably the controllers of language, men use a language of hatred, according to Murphy: “The overwhelming emphasis on performance and the portrayal of the penis as a mechanical device, whether tool or weapon or machine in need of manipulation and repair, reduces masculinity to values of harness, power and control” (137–38). Murphy calls for men to re-create the language of masculinity “informed by equality, not rivalry, caring about other human beings, not subordinating as many people as possible” (144).

By focusing on women, feminists have constructed men largely as unidimensional. This focus is understandable and arguably was necessary, but with the development of scholarship on men as men, rather than as the assumed subject, the unstated norm, that work may bring additional insights to feminist theory for the benefit of women’s equality, as well as uncovering to a greater extent men’s inequalities and disadvantages within patriarchy.

The study of masculinities derives directly from feminist theory, emerging in the 1970s and 1980s to explore the construction of manhood and masculinity, to question the real circumstances of men, to explore how privilege is constructed, and to examine what price is paid for privilege. One of the most intriguing and troubling aspects of men’s gender privilege is the price men pay. For example, men are disproportionately the victims of violence at the hands of other men, violence that is integral to the very definition of masculinity. This definition of what it means to be a man begins with boys and is defined most strongly by bullying. A second, closely related example is military service, an obligation strongly tied to the definition of manhood as linked to strength and violence, which connects to an explicit expectation of military service exclusive to men. Men are required to register for the draft, a gender-specific obligation dictated by an assumption grounded in the definition of masculinity even amid radical changes in the position of women in the military. Men’s bodies are expendable in a way that women’s bodies are not. Women’s bodies may be expendable in other, particularly sexual, ways, but men’s bodies are expendable most explicitly in war.

The construction of masculinity also limits and undermines fathers. Fatherhood is an area that exposes the price of patriarchy by its construction of parenting as being an economic provider rather than a caregiver. The challenges of a work/family structure for fathers are therefore interrelated with those of mothers, but they are significantly different. While women are identified as mothers whether they have children or not, and are expected to care for their children whether they choose to or not, men are not expected to care for children but rather are expected to support their families economically. Men’s difficulty in being engaged caregivers is linked to socialization as well as workplace structure, reinforced by a legal structure that assumes male breadwinning. In addition, the norms of success at the workplace and the behaviors that are rewarded with success may be contradictory to the nurture needed by children. Linked to this is the expectation, despite enshrined norms of gender neutrality and equality, that men will not care for their children. Redefining fatherhood in order to claim a different role for fathers frequently is couched in claims that link to men’s privilege rather than arguments grounded in recognition of the limitations imposed by the construction of masculinity and the institutionalization of those norms. The fathers’ rights movement, for example, is dominated by claims of uniqueness and essentialism, and resistance to feminist analysis. Far from being grounded in cooperative, mutual, complementary models of parenting, the movement is a shrill voice attempting to reclaim patriarchal privilege. The movement constructs its claims grounded on the argument that a man in the house is necessary for children’s successful development.

Masculinities study also challenges the portrait of men as essentialist. Instead of seeing men as a single entity, and only described in terms of dominance and power, the study of masculinities reveals ways in which the dominant gender system subordinates and differentiates among men. Race frequently trumps gender privilege, most notably in the lives of black boys and men. This is evident in their rates of educational attainment and employment status, as well as in the disproportionate presence of black males in the juvenile justice and adult criminal justice systems. The rate of involvement with the criminal justice system and incarceration rises to the level of emergency for black communities and seriously undermines any claim of justice and equality of our criminal justice system. It also leads ineluctably back to the educational realm and the link to employment opportunities. The continued racialization of education in concert with the differential treatment of boys and girls sets up the subordination carried out in the criminal justice system. At the same time, antiessentialism also means exposing affirmative differences among men that challenge dominant definitions of masculinity. The lives of men of color suggest models of masculinity without privilege, particularly with respect to their role in families. Masculinities analysis exposes how those alternative models are constructed as well as quashed by the dominance of a preferred, singular gender model that ultimately limits men’s freedom as well as resisting women’s equality.

The interplay of masculinity and race provides a different perspective to consider how these factors combine to deny privilege, as well as to expose how those with privilege acquire and sustain it. The study of masculinity, therefore, brings a rich additional perspective to how gender functions and the centrality of race in constructing gender. By approaching the study of masculinities from an explicitly antiessentialist perspective, that is, borrowing the feminist insight that not all women are similarly situated and that systems of hierarchy intersect and interrelate in complex ways, we enrich the understanding of the complex interplay particularly of race, class, and gender.

Finally, the study of masculinities exposes the range of masculine models, not only with respect to race and class but also with respect to sexual orientation. Queer theory presents one of the most sustained critiques of the privileged masculinity norm that defines manhood as heterosexual. This analysis has enriched gender theory by challenging the implied heterosexual norm of feminist analysis. In the context of masculinities, it exposes again how all men are limited. The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples is an obvious example of this. A more subtle but equally powerful example is the requirement that all men behave like straight men at the workplace or suffer harassment, irrespective of their sexual orientation. The corollary for women is that they must not act like a man or invade traditionally male occupations, or they will suffer harassment for this challenge to traditional gender roles.

The study of masculinity not only reveals a more complex portrait of men but also enhances the understanding of the construction of gender for women. Women’s subordination and men’s subordination are intertwined in the system of male privilege. At the same time, masculinity study offers another insight into the construction of power and privilege, with the aim of undermining it. It exposes in particular the odd reality that most men feel powerless rather than powerful, yet that powerlessness does not lead to alignment with other subordinated groups but rather to a defense of potential or actual privilege, even if it is privilege that particular men do not enjoy.

The aim of this book is to explore how masculinities studies can enrich and further inform feminist theory. In part 1, I look at this issue from a theoretical perspective and ultimately suggest how masculinities scholarship can enrich feminist theory. Chapter 2 explores the traditional place of men in feminist theory as the essentialist holders of privilege. It links the development of masculinities theory and research to two trends. First, it was a logical outgrowth of feminist inquiry into women and gender. Bringing it into feminist theory fits into the antiessentialist movement in feminist theory generated by Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, Global/Postcolonial critiques of feminist theory, and Queer Theory. Antiessentialism is now a core component of feminist theory, although it is not always easily implemented in fact. Second, masculinities analysis links to interdisciplinary research explicitly concerned with boys and men as gendered subjects, as opposed to analysis of the lives of boys and men as if gender were irrelevant and privilege unintended or incidental. The chapter explores the history and development of masculinity studies as an outgrowth of feminist and queer theory, particularly in sociology and psychology, beginning in the 1970s. Finally, the chapter highlights the challenge of studying men and masculinity with the goal of achieving greater freedom and equality, not a revitalized, reoriented patriarchy.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of masculinities scholarship, particularly scholarship that has focused on theory. Most of the theoretical work has been done outside the legal academy, so this section is multidisciplinary, with particular contributions from sociology and psychology. As Michael Kimmel has so eloquently pointed out, “gender is everywhere, and yet masculinity is oddly invisible” (1997a, 183). The theoretical perspectives and questions explored in this chapter include masculinity as social construction, whether men can be feminists, resisting male privilege, the concept of hegemonic masculinity, the impact of masculinity on boys and young men, and strategic suggestions for reorienting masculinity in a pro-woman direction. The chapter also explores the role of culture, and especially media, in producing and reproducing gender, and the complex threads of rebellion and ongoing reproduction of power.

With this theoretical overview as a base, in chapter 4 I weave together the themes, theories, and strategies that masculinities scholarship suggests for feminist theory. I focus on (1) why the man question needs to be asked, and thus the importance of understanding the construction of masculinity, or masculinities, in order to identify both privilege and subordination; (2) how masculinities function intersectionally, particularly with race, and thus why race is an essential feminist issue, but also class and sexual orientation; (3) what this suggests for feminist analysis, that is, what looking at men can tell us about how we analyze and strategize with respect to women; and (4) what this suggests for all lines of inequality and our understanding of the process of subordination and strategies to achieve equality and freedom. Included in this chapter is a discussion of the challenges of incorporating masculinities analysis without undermining women and of bringing to the center the most disadvantaged and subordinated men as a way of uncovering the privilege of some women as well as the hierarchy among men.

One thing that is clear from masculinities scholarship is how different much of this scholarship is from feminism, because the emancipatory project is not as clear. The position from which men begin as a group as compared to women as a group does not rest on equivalency. In both reality and theory, there is strong asymmetry. There is no masculinism equivalent to feminism because it immediately seems to slide toward dominance instead of equality or liberation. Masculinities studies do not offer a parallel or balance but rather offers something else.

First, it offers insight into the construction of masculinity, which can have an impact on degendering structures and cultures. Feminists have long claimed that structures and cultures are “male,” which disadvantages women as well as men who do not meet masculinity norms. Masculinities studies offer less, however, in terms of destabilizing privilege or achieving equality. The most promising alternatives may well be found by examining the masculinities of alternative, nondominant men.

Second, it exposes the ways in which men are oppressed by the same gender system that oppresses women. Men are oppressed in a different way, as a price for privilege and in order to achieve manhood. Within this perspective one can begin to try to understand why so many of the powerful (men as a group) feel so powerless, which seems to flow most strongly from what it takes to accomplish masculinity and the relationships of men to one another, more than men’s relationships to women.

Finally, it seems clear that as much as feminism can benefit from masculinities research, it also can challenge the scholarship. The agenda and goals need to be pushed toward achieving equality and liberty, rather than narcissistic self-examination. Acknowledging hegemonic power needs to be coupled with a renewed determination to challenge it, to identify successful strategies and structural change. All of this requires a stronger sense of the model or models of a different manhood or manhoods.

In parts 2 and 3, I move from theory to application, using specific contexts to suggest how masculinities analysis can inform and enrich feminist analysis. I focus on boys and men, because they have largely been left out of feminist analysis. At the same time, I suggest how the infusion of masculinities analysis can contribute to feminist analysis in a host of ways, not solely as a gender-specific means of analysis. In part 2, I focus on boys in the areas of education and juvenile justice; in part 3, I focus on men in the contexts of fatherhood and as adult survivors of child sexual abuse.

Part 2 begins with chapter 5, on boys and education, an area where there has been much recent writing on the issues confronting boys. There has been a significant amount of research on the emotional and psychological development of boys, as well as on their learning styles, which has implications for education. There are documented difficulties, academic and behavioral, of boys in school. Those difficulties are different from those experienced by girls. In addition, the challenges of success may be even more complex for young men of color, who may have to negotiate peer norms that require them to “cover” their desire to excel academically with more acceptable masculinity. Masculine norms in the educational process have been explored to challenge the cultural barriers to women hidden by formal policies of inclusion, but they have not as often been explored for the way they discipline and limit men and construct a model of hierarchy and subordination toward women. Education is an area that is rich with analysis of both girls and boys, exposing gender as a barrier for both, but it is also rife with the temptation to think of solutions as requiring prioritizing only girls or boys, rather than including both.

Chapter 6 looks at boys and juvenile justice. A trip to the courthouse in virtually any jurisdiction would suggest that this is a system of boy justice, because of the disproportionately male pattern of children in the system. This pattern links to the similar pattern in the adult criminal justice system. Race also powerfully constructs those in the juvenile justice system and whether children quickly reform from youthful indiscretions or persist and head for the “deep end” of the juvenile justice system. Disproportionately the harshest legal treatment of juveniles is reserved for boys, especially minority boys.

In part 3, I apply masculinities analysis to two contexts involving men. In chapter 7, I consider men and fatherhood. Fatherhood is one of the critical life roles for men, but one that is significantly at odds with core concepts of masculinity. As fatherhood has evolved from an authoritarian patriarch to an expectation of shared parenting and nurture, men have struggled with the concept of fatherhood and have complained of significant bias in the legal system. This chapter explores concepts of fatherhood and the constraints of masculinity. Masculinity essentializes fatherhood rather than supporting men’s nurture and care. Men’s powerful emotional and physical responses to fatherhood can be turned into new claims of hierarchy rather than explored for their relational connection to children. At the same time, stereotypes ...