Hey, y’all:
There’s already a pretty excellent discussion going on in the comments over on Logan‘s post My Strength is not for Hurting, re: relationships between men and women, expectations, and men’s “provider role.”
I encourage you to go on over to Logan’s post and contribute to that discussion today.
I’d also love to declare this comment thread a place to talk about definitions of masculinity. Historical, current, ideal, theoretical, attractive, unattractive, exceptions, personal stories, let’s hear any and all of that.
How do you define masculinity?
To kickstart talkin’, let’s watch this video:
That is three men dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies, with her choreo, but dressed in menswear. Are they being masculine? Why or why not?
And let’s look at this photo:
That is Kurt Cobain, on the cover of a magazine, in a dress. That many women wanted to fuck Cobain, and many men wanted to be him, is not a thing that is debatable. That was also not an isolated occurrence. There are many pictures of Cobain in dresses.
Was he masculine? Why or why not? Could a rock star “get away” with that now? Why or why not?
Cobain was an interesting character on several levels. First off, being a “frontman” for a rock band has always been a hyper-masculine role: you hold your guitar like it’s a giant penis, you strut around, you sing about sex, woo groupies, all of that. Cobain sort of reacted against this in a “reluctant introvert” style, but there was nothing super unusual about this. The punk tradition Cobain was coming out of had plenty of lead singers/guitarists who rejected the overt frontman masculinity (slouched posture, refusing to engage the audience, that sort of thing).
But here’s where Cobain was genius in this whole dress thing: he was calling out the sexism and hypocrisy of the LA-style hair metal of the late 80s, which in a lot of ways the grunge movement ended. Poison, Warrant, Motley Crüe: all these bands projected hyper frontman masculinity with some feminine elements: feathered hair, makeup, lycra tights, high falsetto voices. But at the same time, they just sang about hetero-sex, giving women “every inch of their love, and stuffed their feminine tights with bulging cucumbers (see Spinal Tap). In other words, Hair Metal was saying, “I am a hetero man, and I am so confident in my sexuality and my ability to fuck tons of groupies that I can dress like a woman.
BUT, beyond just dress, hair metal did not really bend gender or sexual norms; indeed, most hair metal in the 80s was full-on homophobic and sexist (DUH). No hair metal musician would have ever been caught dead wearing a full-on dress, play making out with another male bandmember, or painting the words “God is Gay” on his amp. Cobain did all of these things. Additionally he even writing some pretty disturbing songs such as “Rape Me” and “Polly” that dealt with the gut-wrenching realities of sexual assault from a female perspective; the polar opposite of the light frat-boy rape culture approach of something like Warrant’s “Cherry Pie.” By taking the superficial femininity of hair metal and really going deeper, Cobain was showing that, despite their intended images, 80s rock stars were really not all that radical or norm-pushing from a gender perspective.
Check out the liner notes of Nirvana’s album “Incesticide,” which Cobain wrote:
http://www.livenirvana.com/digitalnirvana/discography/nirvana/incesticide_note.html
It’s not deep gender theory or anything, but he wrote these words in the early 90s for an angry, isolated 14 year old kid such as myself to read:
“My wife challenges injustice and the reason her character has been so severely attacked is because she chooses not to function the way the white corporate man insists. His rules for women involve her being submissive, quiet, and non-challenging. When she doesn’t follow his rules, the threatened man (who, incidentally, owns an army of devoted traitor women) gets scared.” (ok, so, we now know that Courtney Love was, in fact, fucking crazy, hehe)
“At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
” Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song “Polly”. I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience.”
It was a big deal in the early 90s for the biggest rock star of the era to write these things and put them in an album. You could easily make the case for Cobain being the first mainstream rock star feminist, among other things.
Would you call Cobain “masculine”?
Cobain himself would have insisted that he was not masculine. But I would call him masculine in the sense that, as a man, he could wear, act, and do whatever he wanted. Not sure if that’s the most convincing response, though.
it’s certainly an *interesting* response, because you’re basically defining masculinity as privilege.
But in some ways, wasn’t Cobain just taking what hair-metal band frontmen were doing one step further? Like he was saying “I’m a hetero man, and I’m so secure in my masculinity that I’m going to write some songs with a feminist perspective and write silly notes about how women are better than men” — so (maybe) there’s nothing really radical about what he did, and it was just an expression of his male power.
I mean, consider just some random non-famous guy writing songs empathetic with rape victims and generally being a progressive guy. That wouldn’t be attractive in and of itself. It’s because Cobain embodies a lot of classical masculine traits that he is seen as so attractive in the first place — boldness, confidence, very high ranking on the social pecking order. That he uses his position to subvert other masculine norms that are harmful to women just makes him hotter. But if he wasn’t a highly masculine figure in the first place, he just wouldn’t be anything.
I mean, I like Cobain’s music a lot. And I think it’s really great to have a popular and conventionally masculine man taking a pro-woman perspective — like you said, many men wanted to be like him, so he may have made those ideas more palatable to them.
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I sometimes struggle with whether or not masculinity is redeemable, which, of course, really depends on how you define and frame masculinity. Sometimes when I’m feeling really down on it I feel like it is so inherently defined by asymmetrical power dynamics and in opposition to femininity that I should just give up on it altogether. The word is too tarnished by a history of violence from which is can’t be reclaimed.
But at other times that feels silly. A society’s conception of what defines and is appropriate and normal for a man, and all the mixed up confusing baggage that goes with that, can change and change drastically. And that thought motivates me to keep defining certain things I do, as a cis man, as masculine, particularly the things that typically undermine my masculinity in other people’s eyes. If nothing else to confuse people a little bit about what masculinity is and isn’t. In tiny little ways it feels like leveraging my body’s privilege of being decisively identified as male to loosen up people’s ideas of how men should/must/typically behave. Maybe that’s too hopeful.
That’s one of the things I like both about those gents doing Single Ladies and Cobain on that magazine. Maybe people aren’t looking at them and saying, “oh okay, those are clearly men, they must be doing things that are appropriate and okay for men to do and I will now incorporate that into my idea of masculinity.” But it is at least challenging a rigid and stereotypical concept of masculinity that is binding and oppressive. People who see those have to find a way to reconcile an image of someone they see as male (and who has whatever masculinity points they generally get as freebies just based on that) with the idea that men simply do not move their hips like that, wear their hair that long, or wear floral dresses (other dresses are fine).
So I’d like to say that they are all being masculine (assuming that they all identify as male). I don’t want to wed masculinity to male gender identity irreducibly, but I generally feel like if someone is presenting themselves to an audience as a man, then it is reasonable to read much of their behavior as masculine (although certainly reasonable to read it otherwise depending on particular context, the viewers hermeneutic of choice, and the intent of the presenter. Bam. Done qualified the meaning right out of that sentence…).
Oh also, the “I’m so secure/confident in my sexuality so I can get away with blah” line has bugged me for a long time. I feel like it distances the person and their identity from the behavior/act. It compartmentalizes and disassociates them from it. If I put on a dress and someone teases me for it and I say “Well I’m just super secure in my sexuality/gender so there…” I feel like the tacit end of that sentence is “so I can do embarrassing/silly/stupid things that only women or gay men would do without compromising my masculinity/straightness.” Instead of incorporating those behaviors into my identity, into my the masculinity I project, I’m saying “Hey I’m so intensely ALL MAN that sometimes I can behave like a woman and it doesn’t touch me, which is good, because that would be terribly demeaning.” Feels like it both reinforces the idea of defining masculinity and femininity in opposition to each other and makes clear that I want to disassociate myself from my aberrant, ostensibly non-masculine behavior. Basically it just seems like an impulse that finds its root in a sexists and/or homophobic place. It’d be nice if these sorts of things could be more harmoniously incorporated into people’s identities.
Hope there was an intelligible thought or two somewhere in all that!
And the other problem with “I’m so secure in my gender/sexuality that…” is that some people aren’t sure about their gender or sexuality. They’re in a place of uncertainty, and that’s OK. Some people go their whole lives without being 100% sure about their gender and sexuality.
Totally good point. I feel like there is a pretty strong sort of generalized cultural push towards “finding oneself” or “discovering who you are,” which I don’t necessarily have a bone to pick with, except that that someone you’re supposed to discover is, often, a fixed being. Like there is some absolute, inner nature that we all spend our youth waiting to be revealed via splendiferous, ground-shaking epiphany. A misleading canon of young adult literature may not have served us all well in this regard (Sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting to hit, like, 30, at which point someone will hand me the Zach User’s Manual and everything will be crystal clear from that point on). While I certainly think discovering an identity that feels empowering, grounding, and safe is an amazing thing for many people, and they should totally embrace that if it brings them joy, letting more people feel okay with just not really ever having a firm handle on what they hell they are doing with their gender or sexuality would be a good thing. Anyways, celebrating the idea that the “figuring stuff out” phase needn’t be a phase, but just an ongoing adventure seems wonderful to me.
Completely agreed. I’ve adopted the philosophy that self-actualization and self-awareness is an ongoing and adaptive and evolving process. That’s kind of a lot of what makes life exciting! As I go through life I am constantly being exposed to new ideas and new experiences and new perspectives and all of those things factor into who I am at any given moment in time. Understanding myself at the moment is a noble goal and can provide incredible insight into how I interact with myself and others but to, at that point, stagnate and no longer grow emotionally and mentally because I’ve finally “figured myself out” leaves really no room to completely experience myself and my relationships with others over time.
Thank you for this, zachariahary. All of the thoughts you mention here have been floating around in my head in a complete tangle and it’s been hard for me to actually put them out onto paper in coherent words. I think you’ve done a pretty great job of adding a little coherence to them : )
*interesting.*
I’ve always read “I’m secure enough in my masculinity to [blah]” as “I am secure enough in my masculinity for it not to bother me that MY masculinity includes things that you may not include in YOUR masculinity.”
From the male perspective “I’m secure in my masculinity…” in my experience usually comes from “I’m doing this thing that I expect people to make fun of me for/shame me for/demoralize me for and I’m going to try to get out in front of their accusations and assert myself and my norm-masculinity in kind of a self-apologist way.”
“Bro, it’s totally cool that I’m wearing a pink shirt, I’m just that secure in my masculinity!”
I think it can be either way. What I was picturing when I thought that was male blues dancers. In particular, Dexter Santos and Tim O’Neill, both of whom are known for hip-intensive, super fluid, unquestionably masculine dancing. (Contrast with, say, the often-sharp masculinity of Randy Pante.) They’re not shaking their money makers as an affectation on top of their masculine presentation. That is PART of their masculine presentation. I read the same into Cobain in that dress.
I think the difference we’re both describing is the difference between being, in fact, _not_ secure and self aware and overcompensating for acceptance, and actually being secure and aware of your identity and integrating things that define who you want to be and be perceived as and discarding things that don’t.
As a more self-aware/accepting/loving person I embrace all the aspects of myself that define my particular chosen presentation. I have a beard and like hockey and sometimes propose solutions to problems that aren’t real, that’s great (mostly)! My hips also swivel and I have feelings and like to bake and look at kittens, that’s equally as great!
can we PLEASE hang out soon?
ErmagherdWANT. Geeze!
It’s unfortunately a trap that I’ve fallen into MANY times since I embody many norm-feminine traits and was also incredibly starved for peer acceptance and inclusion.
Yeah that occurred to me when I was writing that comment, Rosie. But then decided that if I added more caveats I’d end up with even more of a monster of a comment and I should exercise restraint for once. There have been times when I’ve read it that way too, although mostly when I know the person speaking, love them dearly, and believe wholly that they are self-possessed, confident people who really do want to change what masculinity means. But generally, I’ve got to agree with what Skylar said. I used the “I’m just so secure in my…” line from time to time throughout my teen years and, in retrospect, it had little to do with me reclaiming/redefining my masculinity and challenging the status quo and a lot to do with “oh sweet god please leave me alone I am so godawful insecure I really just want you people to think I’m cool despite/because of my effeminacy. Either would be fine by me.”
Anyways, I think it can go both ways, but I remain distrustful towards the phrase generally. Most of the time I think it bespeaks insecurity, defensiveness, and an apologists approach to genderbending (reiterating quite a bit of what Skylar has already said I just realized). With that said, hey we’ve all been in a place where we’ve needed a glib, problematic rejoinder to shut up some jerks.
And Skylar, thanks! I’m often pretty nervous about commenting on these sorts of things so it’s nice to hear that. I very much like DDP and have enjoyed trying to nail down some of my own jumbled thoughts by commenting here.
I’m always happy to have thoughtful people enter the conversation so I’m surely glad you have!
“With that said, hey we’ve all been in a place where we’ve needed a glib, problematic rejoinder to shut up some jerks.” – word.
I have also been thinking about the fact that the most appropriate times I could have used it (ie: now that I am more in tune with and accepting of everything that defines me) there doesn’t seem to be a reason or desire to use phrases like that. I’m leaning towards it being, in my experience, almost entirely a fear response.
On the “I’m secure in my masculinity” thing, it’s kinda interesting how there isn’t the female equivalent “I’m secure enough in my femininity so I can do x, y and z” or at least I can’t imagine anyone saying that. I think it’s seen as OK for women to violate superficial gender norms about clothes and stuff, while men it’s unnecessarily strict hence the “I’m secure in my masculinity”.
It’s not as big of a thing, because the gender policing is different for men and women.
Hmm, interesting question. It’s hard to say. Masculinity and femininity will be different for everyone. I can’t really say what I am myself. I tend to be both…