Subscription 790/year or 190/quarter

The politics of masculinity

In the United States, men must run twice as fast to be considered attractive partners. There is little freedom in that, even for women.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

"But for fuck's sake! The outbreak fell a few years ago when I was dating an American, let's call him Mike. There is a lot to say about Mike: He was dark, handsome, ongoing and confident, and worked as a publicly appointed defense attorney. No man has, before or since, courted me as Mike did: On our first date, he had planned an excursion to a park in Presidio in San Francisco with subsequent special beer tasting. Afterwards, he installed me with champagne in the bar of a restaurant, while he went home and switched to white shirt. I didn't pay as much as a penny for the good food we ate. Some would probably think that the constellation Baja's defense lawyer meets feminist rape scientist was doomed to failure. But even though the waves could go high in our discussions, I always admired Mike for his human rights commitment. He was, and is, above all an idealist who defended people whom others viewed as scum: pedophiles, wife bankers, rapists and murderers. Without his efforts, they risked getting a syringe.

Even so, it did not go completely smoothly. Because it wasn't just on the first date that Mike had everything pat and ready. In fact, he should always decide where to eat and what to do. Or rather, it was often so I was given alternatives: Thai or Chinese? Club or cinema? Besides, Mike would always pay. And then I mean always. At first I let him do it, but after a while it felt wrong. Everyone realizes it's hard to argue with someone who just bought the city the best beef for you, lissom. When I asked the waiter to split the bill or get him in the pre-sale and just simply took it, there were three possible reactions: Gulping, stated head-shaking or rage: "But for fuck's sake! Why do you always have to be so goddamn independent ?! ”

It was a while before I really understood what it was about. It happened on one occasion when I wanted to repay a larger sum of money I had borrowed from him: "I don't want your money. You're cutting my dick off, fucking emasculating me, do you understand !? ”

Contract. The American man must be strong, self-sufficient and able to take financial care of his family. These are not just silly ideals. It is also pure necessity. As is well known, American society has one of the worst social safety nets in the Western world, and then the efforts of the family and the individual become important. Compared to Norway, gender equality in the USA is poor. On average, American women earn 81 percent of what men earn. This is due both to the fact that women work in low-paid occupations, and that there is real gender discrimination within the same occupations. Admittedly, according to the World Economic Forum, which publishes the Global Gender Gap Report every year, it is best with economic equality, compared to, for example, health and political participation. But the lack of public welfare schemes weakens women's incentives to work. For example, the United States does not have a statutory right to parental leave for all workers, and more women stop working when they have children. Mothers are squeezed out of working life and are also exposed to discrimination in connection with employment, promotions or salary increases. An experiment with 188 participants conducted by researchers from Cornell University showed that mothers were perceived as less competent and dedicated to the job than non-mothers. Being a father did not turn out badly.

In a society with such an economic structure, the man must run twice as fast and take on the role of breadwinner. The economic structure is legitimized and reproduced by conservative gender ideology where men and women are considered essentially different, biologically and socially. "Different, but equal", seems to be the chorus.

The chorus permeates the most intimate relationships, and also creates and maintains a contractual mindset where men and women are partly expected to invest differently in the love relationship. Men should contribute with security and strength, women with care and gratitude:

"Oh man, I can't handle it anymore!" said a man to a friend on the phone. He was planning his own divorce, and I overheard it all on the 1st line between South Ferry and 242 street / Van Cortland Park a while back. "It's enough now. I have invested enough money and time in her. " No one could avoid getting the passenger with them.

You give some, you get some.

Sustainer Ability. Since, as mentioned in previous American letters, I am a voyeur of rank, I recently went on a flirting course with a so-called love coach to see what Americans actually learn about checking and love. In an article in Atlantic magazine, writer Millie Kerr wrote a while back about her experiences with hiring such a love coach. She was told to talk to men as if they were seven-year-olds and cultivate her "female energy", which quickly became synonymous with wearing a 1950s female ideal with high heels, dresses and pastel-colored lipsticks. My frightened suspicions did not fail. A man in the congregation wondered what to do to approach women who are out with a larger group of girlfriends. Love coaches smiled. This was a question she was used to getting. Eye contact is important, she said, adding: "And buy a drink and send it to her! I know you guys just 'why must vi always buy the drinks? ', but that's how it is. Get used to it. »

Men should contribute with security and strength, women with care and gratitude.

When the liberal and gender-oriented Scandinavian woman who is used to sharing the expenses takes the bill out of the hands of the conservative and equality-oriented American man (whose masculinity and attraction in the gender market are defined by virtue of dependency), the conflict that follows is no longer just a matter of poor communication or cultural preferences. «But for fuck's sake! Why do you always have to be so goddamn independent ?! » is also an expression of the fact that American masculinity's policies and their respective dating conventions are collapsing there over Thai food.

Narrow conditions. "So how do you meet men in Norway?" asked Mabel, a single woman in her 60s on the flirting course. I grinned and told that I checked up on my current roommate at the boys' toilet at Klassekampen's summer party. Or I failed to talk about the Class Struggle, it would just be too difficult. "That would never work here!" she laughed out loud.

And that can be said with a certain weight. Breaking the norm of the gender-segregated toilet can be seen as so much more, perhaps as a silent, symbolic protest in which the person who transgresses says: "My gender does not define which rooms I have access to." This androgynous stretching of gender norms is incompatible with the "different, but equal" chorus where each gender has its own space and its own assigned role repertoire.

Fortunately, Americans have visionaries, people who oppose this inequality – in a gender regime that stifles men's opportunities to be anything other than breadwinners who must always be strong, and who punishes women who are financially and sexually independent. One of the most powerful problematizations of this gender regime, is the American author Erica Jong. In 1973, she wrote about how the regime suffocates the conditions the zipless fuck, a passionate sexual encounter between two equal people:

"The zipless fuck is completely clean. It is free of underlying motives. It is without any game of power. The man does not 'take' and the woman does not 'give'. No one tries to deceive a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything back. The zipless fuck is the cleanest there is. And it's rarer than a unicorn. And I've never had one. "

When I look at these micro-interactions – the argument with Mike over Thai food, the impending divorce in a home in the Bronx, and the love coach's promise that drinks can buy intimacy, it becomes clear how narrow the feminist vision of free and consenting love and sex is. today's USA. For in a social and economic space where people treat each other as market participants who have to adapt to narrow gender roles in order to be recognized as ideal partners, the human encounter is stripped of the spontaneity that can make us so intoxicated by happiness and antics. The politics of traditional masculinity are not, and never have been, a particularly good guiding star for equal freedom. Unisex Doors, on the other hand!


Anne Bitsch is a social geographer and regular columnist in Ny Tid. Visiting researcher at Columbia University in the spring of 2015.

 

You may also like