{"id":21229,"date":"2019-08-22T11:54:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T09:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feministeerium.ee\/?p=21229"},"modified":"2019-08-22T11:54:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T09:54:07","slug":"to-my-fellow-men-on-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/to-my-fellow-men-on-the-right\/","title":{"rendered":"To my fellow-men on the right"},"content":{"rendered":"

An awful lot of phenomena are behind the rise of nationalism and xenophobia today. I would be careful with any analysis that \u201cgets it\u201d all by pinning it on one or two reasons. But there\u2019s one phenomena that I don\u2019t think gets enough attention as much as it probably should – masculinity. As men I think we should meditate on how much of our political choices spring from this place. Here is what I\u2019ve been thinking on this:<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of us, men, are gripped in a sense of anxiety thrown up by the social and economic changes that globalization brought with it – especially in the working class. The material conditions that the past few decades have brought, have washed away the secure position of the breadwinner. For a long time, the men gained an idea of their selfhood and a sense of purpose by embodying this role. With increasing financial precarity, the breadwinner identity now is either in completely gone, or on its way to disappearance. What hasn\u2019t left though, is the old construct of masculinity. Even though the socio-economic conditions have made it extremely difficult for a lot of men to actually be the breadwinner, in other words, to be the sole provider and defender of a family, what it means to be a man is still seen to be someone who provides and defends – leaving many men feeling insecure and groping for ways to successfully feel \u201cmen\u201d again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fear requires us to look within<\/h2>\n

When anxious or scared, we\u2019d do anything to make it stop. Hatred is far easier to manage than our anxieties and fears. Fear requires us to look within, to change our ways of looking at the world – all that is hard work. Hatred is easy. It puts the problem to somewhere outside of us. The legendary Jedi master Yoda once remarked that \u201cFear leads to anger, anger leads to hate\u201d – but even non-legendary, mortals, like high school bullies know very well that to avoid feeling weak and fearful is to bully someone \u201cweak\u201d. After all, isn\u2019t being a man being young, strong, powerful, heterosexual, and a part of the majority group, as opposed to a minority group?<\/span><\/p>\n

Not all men take up this hatred out of fear, though. Some men from our lot are doing quite alright – thank you for asking. They\u2019re not scared at all, but just have found a way to find new masculine strength in sweet promise of a pure, white nation. The socio-economic changes never got them worried about anything, but wouldn\u2019t some more social power be lovely?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Tim Marshall<\/p><\/div>\n

How to maintain masculintiy?<\/h2>\n

One way of reclaiming, maintaining, or strengthening the hegemonic nature of our masculinity is to be a part of masculine nation. A nation created in our self-image as an impenetrable, aggressive nation rather than a compassional, feminine one. A politics of exclusion and violence is built within the idea of such a nationalism – exclusion of both the enemy Other, and voices that embody a frail, feminine or sentimental vision of nation. This makes for a powerful combo that\u2019s part racist and part sexist.<\/span><\/p>\n

This combo works well because it promises the materialization of a masculine nation alongside the return of gender hegemony. Is it any wonder then that xenophobic feelings are quite often presented as a battle between two sets of men? Although seemingly concerned about threat of rape from \u201cinvaders\u201d, it would be a safe claim to say that many times the real anxiety is whether \u201cour women\u201d will choose to have sex and perhaps children with \u201calpha males\u201d who aren’t white. Two groups of men fighting out their arenas of domination over women – as if the women in question are unwilling non-agents being dragged into relationships. The aggression towards the other group of men seems clearly based on who-owns-these women. This is why, the <\/span>\u201cthey\u201d<\/span><\/i> in <\/span>\u201cThey are taking away our jobs and our women\u201d <\/span><\/i>are always the Other men.<\/span><\/p>\n

Xenophobia and masculine anxiety have walked parks together<\/span><\/h2>\n

Why else would the Donald begin his campaign accusing immigrants of being rapists? In fact, it is boring how many times this exact trope has been played out successfully in history. Xenophobia and masculine anxiety have walked parks together, for instance, when the KKK played on fears of women being raped to lynch black men or when the Charleston church shooter exhorted: \u201cI have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Foto: Albert Mcleight<\/p><\/div>\n

Othering the outsider on gendered lines in the name of nationalism is one thing. We also want to preserve the nation\u2019s power and cultural authenticity by the subordination women and increasing their restriction. Their status and bodies become the focus for expressions of our control and return. Questions of tradition and modernity have, since a long time, been debated on the bodies of women. So it is pretty obvious that women disproportionately bear the burden preserving the country\u2019s tradition and culture. Women\u2019s personal choices to bear a child or not, become the litmus test for the country\u2019s anxieties or sense of well-being. Women are called on to preserve the ways of country, at the expense of their liberties.<\/span><\/p>\n

The traitor and the saviour of the nation<\/h2>\n

\u201cSelective-labelling\u201d is one dirty trick we play to get this done. We label those aspects of our social life that cater to our increasingly dying sense of hegemony as \u201cbenefitting the nation\u201d. Holding on to these practices then becomes “preservation of our culture” and activities that challenge our trick becomes \u201ccultural loss”. Ignoring the fact that women’s conformity to the status quo is not the same as preservation of culture, we cherry-pick aspects of our social life that serve male dominance, and hold them as central components of \u201cour plan to save the nation\u201d against the Other men on their way to get us. This immediately, and very slyly, casts feminist challenges to such practices as “cultural betrayals.” Fighting against feminist work then becomes this sacred task of “resisting globalization” and “preserving the nation”, thus reducing the fight to protect women\u2019s liberty as “betrayals of nation and culture.”<\/span><\/p>\n

All this, while there are other constructive non-sexist, non-racist projects that can help with preserving and propagating our national cultures more effectively. Investing in cultural research, making language accessible to learning, investing in building brands for local fashion and so on – projects that aren\u2019t premised on showing the women and exotic men their place are chosen for this project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagining post-patriarchal masculinity<\/h2>\n

Perhaps the only silver-lining to this mess that we\u2019ve created for ourselves is that this is gives us a beautiful opportunity for interventions in schools, labour markets and universities. An intervention premised on the hope that new masculinities can be created while acknowledging the ache of collapsing old ones. Masculinities that create identities on constructive, human and compassionate markers instead of racism, misogyny and homophobia.* <\/span>In fact, it is precisely by embodying a masculinity beyond traditional gender roles that we can find solace – in a place where we no longer push ourselves to attain a dominant role amidst a slow but sure loss of gender dominance. Unfortunately, very few are taking time out to have this conversation. Or to even begin imagining a new, fresh, masculinity after the demise of patriarchy.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Tim Stus<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead, some of us rather choose to be comforted by someone else having to take responsibility of dealing with us. New magicians have showed up in our towns who, with moral character of comical proportions, promise to make us feel okay again. All they want is our trust, and our votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span> Bolstering your masculinity on racial or gender superiority might also be bad for your blood pressure. Or maybe not – but a<\/span> study<\/span><\/a> shows it definitely is bad for those at the receiving end of it. You certainly don\u2019t want that bad karma, do you? <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An awful lot of phenomena are behind the rise of nationalism and xenophobia today. I would be careful with any analysis that \u201cgets it\u201d all by pinning it on one or two reasons. But there\u2019s one phenomena that I don\u2019t think gets enough attention as much as it probably should – masculinity. As men I think we should meditate on how much of our political choices spring from this place. Here is what I\u2019ve been thinking on this: Some of us, men, are gripped in a sense of anxiety thrown up by the social and economic changes that globalization brought\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1673,393],"tags":[578,552],"class_list":["post-21229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","category-uncategorized","tag-masculinity","tag-men"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21232,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions\/21232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}