[“Why is it so hard for men to feel like they can decide for themselves what their identity looks like? Why is it that we deny them vulnerability? The truth is that challenging masculinity norms and getting men to define themselves on their own terms is even more threatening to the system than women gaining their rights and challenging norms around femininity in society. The system relies on the inherent myth of male aggression and dominance to maintain its legitimacy.
Reichert spoke plainly on this. “We are more rigidly wedded to masculine norms, norms for male development. This is for a variety of reasons. There hasn’t been a movement comparable to the women’s movement advocating for freer expression of male emotions and challenging stereotypes. Also, I think it’s important to say that reproducing a prototypical male identity is more at the core of our social organization.”
Female identities, because they are not cast as the leading forces but rather as the following forces of our society, are treated as secondary. “The idea that a boy may be empowered to define himself as a man on his own terms is too threatening to the predictable reproductive process,” Reichert said, referring to reproduction in an academic sense—as the social organization that reproduces itself from generation to generation.
All of this has culminated in a notable absence of a gender revolution for men. While the idea that women are naturally communal and emotional and men are naturally self-interested and rational has stuck over time, women have been narrowing the gap when it comes to embracing more masculine-type behaviors including being competitive and individualistic. But there has been very little narrowing on the other end.
This can be partially explained by a lack of cultural or institutional change in the ways in which we devalue female-type characteristics, activities, and jobs. Where “women’s work” is seen as less prestigious, less skilled, more menial or petty, the incentive for men to leave their traditional spaces and take on such work is very weak. On the other end, many women seeking upward mobility are incentivized by the high value—culturally and institutionally—of men’s work.
To put it bluntly, our gender revolution may have succeeded in helping some groups of women access opportunities their mothers couldn’t, but it has failed abysmally in changing cultural norms around what is valued. This has not been just a gross oversight of the movement; it has so far been a fatal one.
In this case, telling women to hoard male-type opportunities, and not insisting on a full revaluing of gendered roles and work, still leaves large groups of women forced into performing essential and invisible emotional labor at a discount—or worse. And denying men basic human features like emotions and connected relationships is a short end of the straw for them too. Forcing men to be hypermasculine pushes them into destructive behaviors that threaten us all.
In the Promundo study, men in the United States and the United Kingdom who identified more strongly with the seven pillars of the man box were six to seven times more likely to report perpetrating physical in-person or online bullying compared to men who did not strongly identify with the pillars. They were six times more likely to report perpetrating sexual harassment and were more at risk of violence from others. They were also likely to engage in destructive behaviors like binge drinking and less likely to have close personal relationships.”]
rose hackman, from emotional labor: the invisible work shaping our lives and how to claim our power, 2023
jacobvanloon
