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2. The Myths of Masculinity
- State University of New York Press
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27 The Myths of Masculinity THE MUTABILITY OF MASCULINITY Feminist critics have tended to regard the category of masculinity as a monolithic, stable, unproblematic, and hegemonic idea, against which the representations of women have been measured. For example, Laura Mulvey in her seminal 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” argues that there is only one dominant type of subjectivity in narrative film and that subjectivity is inherently male. Feminist studies have since argued for the existence of female subjectivity and also for the possibility of multiple points of view for spectators differentiated along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, age, and sexuality. As Harry Brod argues, the treatment by traditional scholarship of a generic man as the norm systematically excludes what is unique to men and male experience, just as women’s experience was formally excluded by the same assumption (“Introduction” 2). The impact of feminism over the past two decades has affected social conceptions of both masculinity and femininity and indirectly incited a pro-feminist men’s movement that aimed to expose the diversity of masculinities and men’s real experiences in a reaction against the assumed hegemony of masculinity. Just as feminism attempted to reconfigure the place of female subjectivity, so too did the pro-feminist men’s movement attempt to redefine masculinity as victimized by patriarchy rather than as monolithic and dominant. As Jonathan Rutherford explains: “The C H A P T E R T W O myth of masculinity is its attempt to pass itself off as natural and universal, free of problems” (“Who’s” 32). The first step in this recovery is to demystify the traditional notions of masculinity as natural, universal, and unproblematic and to expose masculinity as a construction and a myth. Masculinity, like femininity, is a product of culture, not of nature: it is constructed and performed. There remains an assumption, even in contemporary society, that gender differences are innate and reflect an underlying dichotomy between men and women based on sexual difference. The assumption arises from conflating biological sex with gender: sex— male/female—is biologically determined; conversely, gender—masculinity/ femininity—is a social construction. There is a cultural assumption that the qualities associated with each gender—for example, power with masculinity and emotionality with femininity—are biologically determined; but this ignores the influence of culture on the social subject. According to John MacInnes, the terms gender, masculinity, and femininity are products of an ideology used in modern-day societies to imagine the existence of difference between men and women on the basis of their sex—where none necessarily exists (1). Masculinity is not a collection of attributes possessed by a male subject from birth but a set of expectations that society deems appropriate for a male subject to exhibit. According to Rutherford, the reality of men’s heterosexual identities is dependent upon an array of structures and institutions, and when these weaken or shift, men’s dominant position in society is threatened (“Who’s” 23). For example, he notes the changes in the 1980s induced by the shifting nature of work, the introduction of new technologies, high levels of unemployment , and the growing employment of women (among other factors) as contributing to the challenge of assumptions about men’s roles. This capacity for change demonstrates that, even within one culture, masculinity is not monolithic or stable and can vary over time and across the different cultural groups that compose that society; indeed, our contemporary ideals of masculinity are not the same at the beginning of the new millennium as they were a decade or two ago. As Ian Craib states: “Whereas masculine qualities were once seen as normal and good they are now seen as politically and morally wrong, as perhaps in crisis, and as damaging for all concerned” (724). Soft feelings like empathy, nurture, and gentleness have been culturally defined as feminine, and the dominant ideals of masculinity have been constructed in opposition to them (Rutherford, Men’s 70). However , men in today’s society are expected to exhibit, to some degree, the 28 DETECTING MEN [3.238.62.124] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:55 GMT) qualities associated with traditional masculinity—strength, heroism, virility , and violence—and yet also the qualities previously associated with femininity —emotional vulnerability, parental affection, and romantic tendencies—to be acceptable to contemporary society. These qualities are sufficiently contradictory as to make fulfilling them, in any consistent way, impossible. However, the reality is that masculinity is not homogeneous and consists of an...