The insecurities of men

‘Here take some hand cream’ I said to a male friend who sat next to me working. His hands were chapped badly and they looked painful. He looked at me with great disdain and said ‘I can’t use that I am not a woman’. To be honest I did expect that reaction. A lot of heterosexual cisgender men have a deep fear of loosing their masculinity. This is expressed in pathology, anger, violence and policing. Anger and violence is directed towards people who don’t conform to their masculine ideals, women, LGBT people, disabled people and even other men. Sometimes this fear leads to pathology, take for example Dhat Syndrome a condition that is characterised by a male patient feeling physical symptoms due to loss of semen.

Masculinity is not an unchanging state it is time and culture bound. What constitutes masculinity has undergone significant shifts in my lifetime and will keep changing. It is not the traits that matter it, some of them are decided upon in an arbitrary manner sometimes they are carefully chosen. Take for example the wearing of lace is now taboo for men, look at paintings from three centuries ago men wore lace. Lace is neither male or female but we have come attribute its use on clothing as exclusively female. Men who give into feminine styles of dressing are taunted for their choices, thought of as gay or even worse becoming women. I was chatting to a transgender friend about this today of how men think putting on anything belonging to female will make them female. As someone who is in the process of transitioning she knows there is more to gender than putting on clothing. Julia Serano argues there is a deep psychic gender identity within us the outward transition only confirming what was known to an individual all along. When cisgender men react with disgust and fear of putting on female clothes and makeup they reduce a transgender persons identity to an issue of fashion. That disgust is also degrading to cisgender women who are taught they are not worthy of respect. To quote Madonna

Girls can wear jeans

And cut their hair short

Wear shirts and boots

'Cause it's OK to be a boy

But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading

‘Cause you think that being a girl is degrading’- What It Feels Like For A Girl

Male insecurity is a massive problem as it transcends into patriarchal hegemony. Gender and sexuality are constructed to pander around these insecurities. Patriarchal powers reside in each one of us irrespective of gender and sexuality. Patriarchy is enacted in how we react to gender transgressions, through conformity. A particular quote by Gloria Gloria E. Anzaldúa springs to mind. 

Culture forms out beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power- man. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, for being hocicomas (big mouths), for being callajeras (going to visit and gossip with neighbours, for expecting their husbands to help with the rearing of children and the housework, for wanting to be something other than housewives?   

Anzaldúa’s example is familiar to all, sums up how power and fear collude and feed off each other.  Notice how she explains how patriarchy operates through both men and women. It is easy to see power operating in an obvious example such as that however as Foucault would argue power is most dangerous when it is not operated by a single individual but by the errant subjects on themselves. Women who want to look thin for their men are part of that politic whereby the power is wielded by an invisible authority figure. So while patriarchy is not all men it is still powerful enough to police our behaviour. It is the little voice that tells us how to think and how to behave.

Think of all the times you have seen examples you have encountered of manliness chances are it is based on insecurity, a false bravado and nationalism. Look at its victims it they are women, LGBT people, disabled people and anyone else who does conform.