I am a big fan of TED talks. I am subscribed to their video feed, I check the web site often and I tried to get in to the Adelaide TED when it was held recently (unfortunately I heard about it a touch late and wasn't able to fit in). For those that don't know about TED, it is a series of coferences that are held around the world where inspiring, interesting and awesome people are invited to talk for a short time on the issue they are known for. It covers everything from amazing presentations of statistics to inspiring stories of courage, from cybernetic limbs to environmental success stories. It is truly phenomenal and can be found here: http://www.ted.com/index.php
Today, however, I saw something I have dreamed about for a long time. I saw another man stand up on stage and say that a good proportion of what most men think and do in social settings is twisted. He said that men need to redefine the ways they construct their own masculinity and break free from their "man box"; the group of characteristics that they are expected to conform to by other men.
This guy was Tony Porter and his talk is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men.html
Basically I have been thinking, and even ocassionally saying (on certain forums I frequent), that I think there is something amiss with regard to men and gender. I have studied some aspects of the feminism movements and I am of the opinion that they were incredibly important, and remain so considering the disparities that continue to be perpetrated. I am also of the opinion that feminism has been at least as important to men as it has to women, fundamentally changing the social expectations of men in almost exclusively positive ways, in the same way that the anti-slavery movement has changed the social expectations of white people in general towards the previously enslaved. But there's something missing from feminism.
Men.
I need to clarify that comment. Men are, in my experience, welcomed by most of the current wave of feminists if they demonstrate that they actually understand what women are on about when they talk about their issues as a gender. Men can have detailed, constructive dialogues with women on feminist issues without feeling as if they are being condescended to, kept outside of the loop or blamed, personally, for feminist issues. This is not the problem. The problem is not within the feminist movement, as such.
Feminism, fundamentally, was a sweeping re-framing process that women engaged in to change the lense through which they saw themselves and, as a result, through which men (and society as a whole) saw them. Women consciously, or unconsciously, created the conditions by which they could fundamentally alter what it meant to be a woman and then grasped the reigns of that creative process to redefine themselves in a multitude of femininities that had not previously existed, or which had existed but had been looked down upon.
What have men done?
Largely, I would argue, men have either been actively belligerent against the feminist movements or have been passive recipients of the changes wrought by them. In odd cases here and there, and I would include myself in that category, some men have taken a personal journey to re-imagine what masculinity means to them, but on the whole there has been practically no masculinist movement that seeks to reimagine men in the same mould of what feminism did for women. Or at least I have not seen one.
This is not to say there hasn't been a "men's movement". But on the whole I have found this to be one of three things:
- a mysoginistic band of black-shirted thugs or martyred divorcees bent on reclaiming what they percieve to have lost in matrimonial disagreements,
- a regressive series of pseudoscientific nutters who try to derive a masculinity by reference to some strange primal masculinity,
- or a seemingly well-meaning but reactionary group that appear to want to define masculinity in opposition to what they now percieve femininity to be.
What do I mean by re-define though? What am I looking for?
All of the above men's movements are reactionary. They all take feminism and its oppositionalism toward traditional male stereotyping as the basis and work from there. I would like to see men, without any necessary reference to feminism as such (while still using it's example as a guide), break from the traditional stereotypes and, as a whole, begin to imagine and implement new masculinities in a conscious way. To be able to respect one another for taking a new path towards being a "man". To be able to remove the cultural blinkers and accept multiple varieties of masculinity at once as belonging to the general pool of available options.
Don't get me wrong, this does happen. But I think it currently happens largely because of direct feminist influences, whether they be pressures from growing up in a feminist era, the influences of high incidence of divorce amongst a generation of parents or feminist intervention through post-modern curricula in education institutions. I don't think there has yet been a lot of thought put in by men and, as a man, there is still an awful lor of pressure to conform to gender stereotypes, pressure that I see as specifically lacking for the women in my life.
In other words, women and now told they can be anything, but men still can't be seen as effeminate in any way lest they put in jeopardy their masculinity as a whole.
Getting back to Tony Parsons for a minute, his talk was a revelation. He still didn't go as far as I think men need to go, but he took an important first step. He recognised that much of the current male cultural pressure is mysoginistic and "twisted". Further, he was prepared to stand up in public and say it. And even better, he was prepared to explicitly explain that he thought men needed to break free from this "man box", with the implication that some form of re-imagining would then need to occur. Most importantly, he implied that doing so would not jeopardise your standing as a man.
I think this is such a vitally important idea and I am grateful to Tony for having done what he did. It is the first time I have ever seen it, the first public confirmation of a view I have held for a long time.
As a father of a two year old son, I want to make sure he does not inherit from me the "man box". I hope that I can liberate him from the stereotypes that, for so long and for so many men of my generation and those prior, have held in chains the hearts of both men and women. I don't just want him to be able to express his emotions and hold down a job, should he wish, as a nurse or airline steward. I want him to, also, feel that it is normal that he might hug another man who he loves (and, while I don't want to discount the potential for him to be gay, I mean this in a non-sexual way) or engage in meaningful discussion about gendered or emotional perspectives in any field. I want him to feel equally at ease skipping through a field of wild flowers because they are beautiful and engaging in the thrill of a physical sporting contest. I want him to be able to have relationships with women and feel, not just as if she is his equal, but also that he is her's; intellectually, emotionally, physically and sexually. Likewise I want him to be able to have relationships with men that similar and not based purely in comparative expressions of machismo.
Thanks Tony, you have given me some hope that I am not alone.
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