Monthly Archives: July 2012

Discussion:

My presentation focused on the creation and maintenance of a hegemonic masculinity, and the discussion was action-oriented on how to create alternate masculinities that can engage the dominant masculine ideals. My argument was that although the citational legacy of gender describes, creates, and reinforces a gender binary, the complication of gender within the preexisting categories could be a valuable way to create effective change. This would involve altering our valuation systems that promote particular traits as masculine.

Articles:

Gender & Society-2005-Connell-829-59

http://webcat2.library.ubc.ca/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=3911239

http://gas.sagepub.com/content/17/3/370.full.pdf+html

http://www.jstor.org/stable/190181?seq=1

The first article is probably more with your time than reading through my presentation, but here it is for reference anyways.

Transcript:

Much of our debate in class has been about exceeding the gender binary, however, we often hit a wall at the point of understanding what that actually looks like. We understand the discursive aspect of constructing gender, the various institutional methods of reinforcing a heteronormative identity, and the tendency to regulate non-normative modes of being. As spoken about in the first class, if gender is constructed discursively, then it must also be performed. Judith Butler talks about “doing gender,” and argues that it requires repeated gendered speech acts to maintain a gendered identity. Obviously, as stated by Foucault and Butler, and as we’ve seen ourselves to be true, this creates the gender as much as describes it.

We may wonder why we keep repeating these acts if it reinforces what we see as a repressive and even destructive system of self-identity. Butler also argues that we really have no choice in the matter, due to what she calls a citational legacy—-starting with the famous moment of inception after birth when one’s parents declare “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”–and then is repeated through our own and other’s actions that then reinforce the initial gendered construction.
What is the ideal against which we are comparing ourselves, however, and who are we emulating in our personal process of doing gender? What is the archetypal male or female that is the thing we are judged against, and can only come short of? For the purposes of this presentation, I will focus on the construction of male identity, and the valuation system that reinforces it as expressed by Fat Man in Burning Vision.

Before we start that, though, here are two videos that superficially play with the idea of masculinity, power, and social construction. Notice the focus on the male genitalia, violence, national identity and systems of power and domination.

>> Washington
>> American man

Obviously we could write a paper just on the first video, but we’ll take a few lessons from it. First, what is a man? Or a real man? Or, who typifies real manliness?

–Discussion–

Those of you who are in my art history class will appreciate this. Kasmir Malevich painted an imperfect black square to represent the impossibility of humans achieving the abstract idea of a square in real space. Similarly, we reproduce the abstraction of an ideal male despite the obvious contradictions within the actual realization.

In Burning Vision, Fat Man is the prototypical male character. As the character introduction states, he progresses from being a test dummy to a real human throughout the play. Similarly, he progresses from being the perfect archetypical American man to being a much more human and sympathetic character by the end of the play. To make it completely clear, he is named after the larger of the two bombs that were dropped on Japan. He therefore can be seen as a literal representation of the bomb as well as the archetypical idealized American male citizen.

Fat Man’s first quote is telling of his attitude throughout the whole play:

“I am a part of the world. I am part of the world just like this new Hi-Fi equipment. Just like this Playboy which states: “A high-fidelity system is commonly accepted as a badge of sophisticated masculinity.” A badge of sophisticated masculinity concerned with their environment. Or should I say lifestyle?

If I was the interior designer I would’ve went with plaid, but hey, a piece of highly trained man material like myself shouldn’t concern themselves with bare walls. That’s for the loonies. I look good. I mean I’m dressed for the part and frankly between you and me that’s half the battle.

Fat Man is concerned with the material signifiers of his male identity as well as acting the patriotic soldier. He works hard to buy the beers, as well as the perfect 50s American domicile. He also alternately acts the husband, father, and the heterosexual agent. He also falls desperately short of being a real man.

Connell and Messerschmidt talk about this in their 2005 paper on Hegemonic Masculinity. The concept was developed in the 1980s as a way to explain the dominance of a particular kind of masculinity in social hierarchies. There has been a significant amount of research and criticism of the theory, and I present it not as an absolute truth but as a critical conceptual framework to help us deconstruct the methods of acting male.

If we are to stop doing gender and start undoing gender, it would be valuable to have a framework through which to understand the initial construction, which I would call Butler’s citational legacy. But I would disagree that attacking the citational legacy directly is the most effective way to subvert it. An example is the couple who decided not to disclose their baby’s gender until it made a choice for itself. This is an admirable move in theory, but it relegates their child to the unknown third gender rather than attacks the systems that produce that gender. This is where I think the idea of a hegemonic masculinity comes closer to giving us an effective critical tool, since it deconstructs the processes that continue to value a specific set of traits as masculine and understands masculinity to be a source of dominance and power.

Connell and Messerschmidt talk about a ethnographically-confirmed plurality of masculinities. We can see this as true in Burning Vision. There is the wizened and authoritative Dene See-er. The sympathetic, subversive and destructive Little Boy. The capitalist Bros. Labine. The strong and husbandly Dene Ore Carrier. And of course, the loud, brash, and crass Fat Man.

Connell and Messerschmidt establish that to have a hegemonic masculinity, you need complicit and subordinated masculinities as well as a heterosexual female participation. They also pointed out that the hegemonic masculinity is not a thing that any one person can possess all of the traits from: look back to our discussion of who is the perfect male. The hegemonic masculinity is one that we use at times when it is necessary for social, economic, political, or cultural reasons. It’s, like Prof. Cavell says, a cultural technique, used by both men and women, and any other form of gender, depending on the correct context. For example, I may play more male when hanging with the boys, than in sociology class. For Fat Man, nationalism and masculinity go hand in hand, and those are directly related to sex.

I’ll go to the masturbation scene. Fat Man’s inability to get himself off reduces his manliness. Sexual dysfunction is not manly. Round Rose’s descriptions immediately goes to sexualities outside of the norm, as she briefly describes Fat Man’s wife engaging in adulterous group sex. A promiscuous wife is probably not a sign of manliness either, yet this invigorates Fat Man. He is willing to defer aspects of the hegemonic masculinity for sexual gratification. In part, this is how the hegemonic masculinity survives: not only does it turn off at times, but it can assume aspects of other masculinities as needed. We can see this in the case of the metrosexual. Heterosexual males who saw the sexual benefit of grooming could appropriate what was seen as aspects of gay culture into their lives without compromising their manliness because it was all in the name of further sexual conquest.

It’s hard to remember the human aspect of the sex and gender debate. I think it’s properly quite confusing. Fat Man is not sure whether he’s lonely or horny, or could be afraid to be lonely as an attempted alpha-male, and therefore is horny. I think this is a salient point, well-put by Connell and Messerschmidt:

“Without treating privileged men as objects of pity, we should recognize that hegemonic masculinity does not necessarily translate into a satisfying experience of life.”

In Fat Man’s case, he is both subject to and the creator of his own destruction. He is the bomb that going to kill himself. We might wonder why those who benefit the least from the dominant discourse fight so hard to uphold it. Or, secondarily, why we ourselves might be complicit.

It’s pretty similar to the idea of hating capitalism but buying a daily coffee. Or hating Walmart but stopping by when you need a cheap pair of socks. You can self-conceive as a highly-principled anti-capitalist activist but occasionally assume the role of a shopper without compromising who you identify as.
If we are automatically complicit in the idea of hegemonic masculinity, then how do we exceed it? Are we trapped like Fat Man in his own house? Connel and Messerschmidt contend that our only hope is to create a positive hegemony. Does that work and how would that look?