A couple years ago I read an interesting book entitled What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future edited by Rebecca Walker. I revisited this book tonight.
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Rebecca Walker
I enjoyed this book as it the essays were written by men not women. It was written by men who had their own things to say about the limits and confines in which manhood sprouts. Although, I am proud of the women who speak up and out about patriarchy and all it's evil I feel we need to hear more voices from men. Not only because men gain from patriarchy but because men suffer from it too. In order to axe it down men and women must give up the perks that patriarachy can tempt so many with.
The book consists of essays from critics, authors, journalists, prisoners, pundants and more.
Ms. Walker also lends her own experience with this topic when she shares a story involving her own son. She spoke of her young son who came to her one day and said that he thought he should take up sports so that girls might like him better. Additionally, his frustration stemmed from his inability to relate to other young boys who often spoke about sports and video games. These were two hobbies in which he was not involved.
"'You don't understand', he said huffily. 'Boys talk about sports, like their matches and who scored what and stuff, or they talk about new versions of computer games or tricks they learned to get to higher levels.' Tears welled up in his eyes. 'I don't have anything to talk about.'"
"He was right; until that moment I had no idea, but suddenly the truth of being a sixth grade boy in America crystalized before me. My beautiful boy and every other mother's beautiful boy had what essentially boiled down to two options: fight actually in sport, or fight virtually on the computer. Athlete, gladiator, secret agent, Tomb Raider. The truth of his existence, his many likes and dislikes, none of them having to do with winning or killing of any kind, had no social currency. My son could compete and score, perform and win, or be an outcast or worse, invisible, his unique talents unnoticed and unharvested, the world around him that much more impoverished."
Walker goes on to say "There is a war being waged on boys and it starts before they are even born. It is war against vulnerability, creativity, individuality, and the mysterious unknown. It is a war against tenderness, empathy, grief, fear, longing and feeling itself. It is a war against wholeness and psychological integration. It is fermination to annihilate the authentic self, it is war against peace."
Lastly she says, "The war against what is considered feminine that is wounding our sons and brothers, fathers and uncles, is familiar to women, but now we see that it is killing the other half of the planet, too. But instead of dying of heartache and botched abortions and breast cancer and sexual trauma and low self-esteem, this half is dying of radiation from modern weaponry, suicidal depression and heart attacks and workaholism and an overwhelming sense of failure, of missing something exceedingly important that they cannot name."
"What many men today are missing is themselves, the complex and unique experience of self that has been rerouted and surpressed in the name of work, war, and the arduous task of "being a man." This mandate to repress or obliterate anything and everything expansive or off the grid has defined generations, so much so that most men cannot even perceive the extent to which they have been robbed."
"While the woman's movement had been successful in encouraging women to abandon restrictive stereotypes and to question and redefine the very foundation of their identities, men have yet to embark upon a similar mass reeducation, opting instead to - surprise! - suffer in stoic silence."
I know feminist women who are raising sons and I think that the above notion is constantly record playing in their heads. To raise a child be it male or female is certainly a challenge. Parents want to keep their little ones healthy and safe and joyous. However, from the moment they enter school their protective little world suddenly erupts.
Boys and girls must receive a different kind of tutelage. One that harvests the individuality of the child devoid of gender stereotype. Good luck parents! I tip my hat to you all. What a journey!
In an essay entitled Perfect Picture by author Douglas Rushkof the topic of sexual objectification.
"Staying actively apart from women, according to the logic of machismo, confirms male status more than melting into one. For a woman to remain desirous but distant sustains that objectified dynamic between boy and airbrushed photo. This is what generates the boner. We've trained ourselves to respond this way."
"I watched with chagrin as the marketplace capitalized on the sexual objectification trend, and strove to exacerbate our worst impulses for economic gain. With women back at work, teens had replaced women as America's target demographic by the late seventies. Those first Bruce Weber photos of Marky Mark and other muscular teens in their Calvin Klein underwear may not have been any worse than what advertiser have done with maciated female models since the 1960s. But it gave marketers the permission to objectify boys with the same intensity they had used to drive millions of teenage girls to stick fingers down their throats. Instead of looking at pictures of naked girls, they are not poring through magazines filled with the ripped torsos of young men."
Combine this pressure for the mass media with the availability of stark video porn to replace the glossy photos of Daddy's favorite skin mags, and you've got a recipe for objectification on an order of magnitude unimaginable by those of us raised on Playboy and wedgies. Instead of just objectifying females, today's boys objectify the entire sex act, and insist on pulling out before orgasm so that they can watch the "money shot" for themselves."
I feel that there isn't a lot to add to what Rushkof has said here, I think he says it pretty well. My only issue is that I think too many men and women take for granted the oppressive attitudes that so many are fit to carry. Why are so many comfortable with this? It seems obvious that objectification is destroying ourselves, destroying our abilities to relate, to create intimacy, to value, to promote humble attitudes, and to role model to our children.
At the end of this book Howard Zinn presents the afterword. I feel it is fitting to present this piece in honor of a great author, professor, leftist activist and historian who passed away at the age of 87 on January 27th, 2010.
Zinn's death is a great loss but his work lives on. So, I will close with his words.
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Howard Zinn
"The trick played on men is that while they are supposed to relish their strength, the reality is that they live in a hierarchical world in which only a small number of men have power over the rest: can exploit them economically, can send them off to war. The trick played on women is that their presumed natural delicacy is under constant attack by a world that limits their possibilities for a full life. While pretending to revere them as mothers this world puts impossible economic pressures on their ability to raise children, then takes these children, when they are grown off to die.
The challenge then, as Rebecca Walker reminds us, is for men and women to find their purpose in life independent of what the dominant culture has ordained for them. We must not let the rulers of society define us, because if left on our own, we may find that we define ourselves solely by our capacity for love and connectedness, and not by our allegiance to artificial ideals of masculine or feminine.
Perhaps the most pernicious of these artified definitions is that which says men are naturally violent and women, as bearers of children and supporters of men, will therefore be willing accomplices in this violence.
If this were so, political leaders would not have to work so strenuously to inculcate "patriotism" from the time little children are taught to salute the flag and pledge allegiance and admire military heroes. They would not have to use the most sophisticated propaganda tools to persuade the population that a war is necessary for "freedom" or "democracy" or "national security" or "to end all wars." They would not have to entice young men into military services with promises of economic security, nor have to work hard to convince their mothers and wives and sweethearts that they are doing something noble, for their country."
I suppose all I can add is that if these words from these various authors do not ring a bell at least let them be food for thought.
The question needn't be what makes a man but what makes any of us. What makes a human being. Let us rebel against the push to exist in this corner or in that. If you are disturbed by constructual confines, if you are sick and tired of being sick and tired you will rebel and thus grow.
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