Emma Thompson, old white men and ancient virtues

British actress Emma Thompson suggested this week that the Oscars will become more diverse when the white men who are Oscar members either die or are killed off:

Let’s face it, the Oscar membership is mainly old, white men ... That’s the fact of it. Either you wait for them all to die, or kill them off slowly. There’s so many options, aren’t there?

There's an important point to be made here. Emma Thompson is one of those women who think in "sectional" terms. It is becoming common now to hear women like Emma Thompson boasting proudly of their commitment to a sectional politics, in which certain groups (women, ethnic minorities etc.) form into a hierarchy in order to make claims on society.

It is a mentality I find deeply alien. Instead of a "claim making sectional politics" I find it more natural to think in terms of loyalty to the larger tradition I belong to, and of what is required to carry this tradition into the future.

And perhaps this gulf between myself and Emma Thompson is to be expected. The ancient Romans held there to be a specifically masculine virtue called gravitas. A male was thought to have reached a point of adulthood (i.e. of a fully developed masculine nature) when he demonstrated this virtue. What was gravitas? It was a deep-rooted seriousness, and a sense of responsibility to go with this. Men were supposed to demonstrate gravitas alongside the complementary virtue of pietas. Here are some definitions of this virtue:

Aeneas ... represents "pietas" which to the Romans meant dutifulness, doing what was right for the family, the community, the civilization, and the gods.

Around the year 70 BC, Cicero defined pietas as the virtue "which admonishes us to do our duty to our country or our parents or other blood relations."

...a respectful and faithful attachment to gods, country, and relatives, especially parents

So my way of thinking was simply the normal one for an adult male - it was the normal expression of adult manhood.

This doesn't mean that women cannot know these virtues. Courage, for instance, is held even today to be a defining aspect of manhood, but this doesn't mean that women cannot be courageous.

The point I would make is that perhaps the real surprise is not that Emma Thompson thinks in sectional, claim making terms rather than in terms of a larger duty to family, nation and civilisation, but that so many men do not - given that this was held in the ancient world to be a defining feature of adult manhood.

I have been reading a book called "The New Liberalism". In the introduction, the editors, Avital Simhony and David Weinstein, admit that a dominant strand of liberalism has been based on a highly abstracted, ahistorical and individualistic view of the human person. For instance:

The analytic nature of much contemporary liberalism, by featuring solitary abstract individuals who find fulfilment in separation from each other, has probably contributed to its individualistic anthropology. (p.2)

This is how the editors describe the individualism that is characteristic of many variants of liberalism:

Individualism conceives individuals as competitive, self-centered, and independent, and social life simply as an arena for coordinating the competitive pursuit of private interests. (p.16)

Is this not as equally alien to the ancient understanding of masculine virtue as Emma Thompson's sectional, claim-based politics? Where is the sense of responsibility in an individualistic liberalism to the larger tradition? And yet it was a philosophy pushed on society mostly by men. That is the thing really to wonder at. How could grown men adopt a philosophy so much at odds with a fully-developed masculine nature? So much at odds with masculine virtue?

Will this really help Max?

Why does violence against women exist? The answer we give is important. Leftists often argue that sexual violence is part of a patriarchal system designed to dominate and oppress women. In this view, traditional masculinity itself is created to inflict sexual violence on women; therefore, the blame for sexual violence rests with the ordinary masculine man who has the power to end violence against women by turning against masculine norms.

The traditionalist view is very different. We would point out that masculinity is oriented to the physical protection of women rather than to inflicting violence; that traditional Western societies did not permit violence against women; and that violence against women is associated not with social norms but with anti-social behaviour.

Lisa Price lives in Walsall, England. A year ago she was persuaded that the leftist view was the correct one, having read some information on parenting websites. Therefore, she took the next step and decided that her son, Max, must not be raised along normal masculine lines:

Lisa, a full-time housewife, took the decision to allow Max to identify as either a girl or a boy 12 months ago, after seeing high-profile rape cases being discussed on parenting websites. "Gender stereotypes can be so damaging.

"They teach little boys to be aggressive and dominant over women," she argues. "There’s research out there saying that the whole “boys will be boys” thing basically teaches lads that it’s OK to be a certain way, because it’s in their nature to be aggressive. It’s detrimental for them and for females."



Max Price

Lisa Price also justifies her decision to raise her son to be gender neutral in standard liberal terms, namely as part of autonomous choice. This view assumes that raising a boy to be masculine will hamper his freedom to be whoever he chooses to be:

"If Max wants to wear a pink tutu and fairy wings, then he can wear it," says Lisa. "He’s just expressing himself. I don’t want to put him in a certain box and treat him that way. I want to teach him to be whatever he wants to be."

The focus here is on our sex as being something limiting or restricting to self - which assumes that our self is something set apart from our masculine or feminine being. The traditionalist view is that it is not set apart and therefore the point is not to choose a gender but to best develop the masculinity that is embedded in our identity as a man or the femininity that is embedded in our identity as a woman.

I would note here that Lisa Price herself has followed a feminine path in being a stay at home mother and that she presents herself in a recognisably feminine form. The mum wants something for her son that she has not followed herself.

I wonder too if she has considered what qualities her son will need to be successful in his life. We don't just get to choose what the opposite sex finds attractive in a partner; nor do we get to choose what demands are placed on us at school or at work or in the home. Men do still need to have masculine strengths to bear the burdens placed upon them; the questing and resilient spirit of men also helps us to forge a path and to find our higher fulfilments in life.

So Max's mum is not doing him any favours in steering him away from developing along masculine lines.

Bridge Lady

You might have seen the news item about an Australian woman marrying a bridge in the south of France.

She's an interesting mix of things this bridge lady, Jodi Rose. First, she represents an unfortunate trend, the idea of "art as therapy":

I also worked out fairly early on in life that if I wanted to avoid being locked away in an institution, I better find myself a context where whatever I did or said would be accepted, if not always totally acceptable. Which is why I chose  a career in the arts, the crazier you are as an artist, the better. Not that I have an actual mental disorder, more a tendency to melancholy and borderline depression, with an overactive imagination.

It ought to be the very opposite, it ought to be the most spiritually and psychologically "centred" who express what is best in the human experience through art.



The masculine husband: the historic Devil's bridge in the south of France

And what does Jodi Rose want in life? She wants incompatible things, a mix of modernity and tradition. She wants absolute freedom, but also love and security.

And this mix came out in her wedding ceremony. She values the bridge for having some advanced masculine qualities, whilst at the same time leaving her perfectly free to do whatever she wants:

The Devil’s Bridge is everything I could desire in a husband - sturdy, trustworthy, sensual, kind and handsome...This is not a decision I undertake lightly, just as our curves complement, we truly bring joy to each other, and the strength of his pylons will always carry me home. Bridgeland is love!

The story of our romance is a modern love fable...Although he is made of stone, the resonance of his being is very present, and I feel at peace in his strong embrace. He makes me feel connected to the earth and draws me to rest from my endless nomadic wanderings.

In his early years, women like me – educated, independent, unmarried - had an unfortunate tendency to end up in the hands of the inquisition, accused of being the Devil’s consorts and burned on the stake as witches. Women who exert too much independence, sexual knowledge or freedom may still be crucified on the stake of the mass media, while attitudes to those who remain unmarried, for whatever reason, are a combination of envy, speculation and pity, which although it may sting the ego, is preferable to being thrown onto a burning pyre or relegated to unpaid domestic labour.

While I respect those whose romantic and sexual feelings are oriented towards objects, mine is a symbolic affair, a pagan / animist view of the spiritual vibration in everything. He understands that I love other bridges – and men – ours is a love that embraces the vagaries of life, as materialised in the swirling currents of the river that flows beneath his magnificent body.

This is why I am marrying the bridge. He is fixed, stable, rooted to the ground, while I am nomadic, transient, ever on the road. He gives me a safe haven, brings me back to ground myself, and then lets me go again to follow my own path, without trying to keep me tied down or in thrall to his needs or desires. I am devoted to him. The perfect husband… strong and silent!

Interesting. On the one hand, she hasn't really bought into the liberal idea of gender sameness. She is clearly yearning for what is masculine, strong and protective. At the same time, she has bought into the liberal idea about female independence in a big way.

Jodi Rose with her bridge

So it's little wonder she's ended up with a bridge. She sees the job of a husband very traditionally as having the strength to protect. Her job, it seems, is to be independent and footloose. It's not exactly the basis for a successfully complementary relationship.

Someone needs to tell Jodi Rose that women need to embody something more than independence if they are going to offer something compellingly attractive to masculine men. She needs to think about what there is within femininity that is likely to inspire love, but to do this she will first have to liberate herself from political ideas which associate femininity negatively with oppression and thraldom.

So no real men then?

Paul Elam, a prominent men's rights activist, has posted the following advice to men. It's advice that deserves some criticism:

All your life you are told by others what it means to be a real man. And you are told how worthless you are if you don't measure up.

Just know this. Anyone, man or woman, sending you this message is trying to shame you into their service. They are manipulating you to carry their load, to take on their hardships; even to bleed and die for their cause...or their profit.

Don't buy the lie. No one but you can define you as a human being or measure your worth. Never trust anyone who puts an adjective in front of the word MAN.

The bit of this which is significantly true is that men shouldn't respond blindly to calls on their masculinity. That would, indeed, make men vulnerable to manipulation by vested interests. It would be a weakness rather than a strength.

But Elam's formulation is not a good one. It is revealing, for instance, that Elam writes "no one can define you as a human being" rather than "no one can define you as a man". He is suggesting that we define ourselves in abstracted terms as human beings rather than as men - an interesting position for someone claiming to lead a men's movement.

It's not surprising that Elam puts things this way. He seems to believe that concepts of masculinity have no real basis to them but are just made up so that some people can manipulate others. It's a similar position to that of radical feminists who claim that femininity is just an invention of the patriarchy designed to subordinate women to men.

It is not "empowering" to tell someone that the only possibility is to self-define. If masculinity (or personhood) has no meaning except that which I give to it, then it means that it is just made up and it loses greatly in significance.

The traditionalist position is that masculinity does exist as a kind of life principle; that this principle is expressed in the character of men; that it is possible for a community to recognise and to encourage ideal forms of masculinity; that men feel a positive sense of fulfilment the more they live through these ideals; and that masculinity creates a positive connection between identity, social role and higher values.

It is often in men's interests to be challenged to live up to ideals of masculinity. The difficulties that men have to meet in adult life aren't going away, so the strength of character that has traditionally been cultivated in men still needs to exist. Why deprive a younger generation of men of the culture of masculinity that will allow them to succeed in their adult lives?

A wrong turn

Local news is still dominated by the murder of Jill Meagher. A march of perhaps 30,000 people took place in Sydney Road as an expression of community feeling about the crime:

Commentary on the crime has been wide-ranging, but one remark particularly stood out. A psychologist, Evelyn Field, was asked to explain the outpouring of public grief. One reason why she thought the case had resonated so strongly was that:

All the gains that women have made are suddenly stripped away - you need a man to protect you.

I shouldn't be surprised at this comment. If you believe that autonomy is the great prize in life, then a woman will want to be independent of men, which then requires that she not be in need of men's protection.

That explains as well why the more radically feminist Catherine Deveny wrote that she would aggressively reject a male offer to walk her home because she was perfectly capable of defending herself better than a man could.

But for women to reject male protection as a regressive thing, as anti-woman, has some serious consequences. The instinct to protect wife and children is one of the most powerful masculine drives leading men to commit in a stable way to family life. It is also at the core of masculine self-identity.

Men follow this instinct on the understanding that in doing so they are using their masculine strengths on behalf of women. If they are told the opposite is true and that they are harming women, then you can't expect male commitments to remain as high as they once were.

For women to identify the protection of men as dragging them down seems to me to be one of those wrong turns we have taken in the West. It means that ideals of political progress are set against what a woman needs for a successful marriage and family life.

So women are going to lose out either way.

W.L. George - when a male feminist gets it wrong

We sometimes forget that feminism is now a very old political movement. There were feminist writers in the early 1800s, but it seems to have been picked up at an institutional level by about the 1860s. The first wave reached a peak of radicalism in the years before WWI.

One of the male feminists of this radical pre-War period was an English writer by the name of W.L. George. He wrote a tract called Feminist Intentions which I want to look at. George began his piece as follows:

The Feminist propaganda...rests upon a revolutionary biological principle. Substantially, the Feminists argue that there are no men and that there are no women; there are only sexual majorities. To put the matter less obscurely, the Feminists base themselves on Weininger's theory, according to which the male principle may be found in woman, and the female principle in man. It follows that they recognize no masculine or feminine "spheres", and that they propose to identify absolutely the conditions of the sexes.

George recognises that the feminist programme is a revolutionary one in that it aims to overturn the principle of two distinct sexes, male and female. Sex is to be made not to matter, in keeping with the liberal principle that what is predetermined is an impediment to individual autonomy.

George's second paragraph is also worth reading:

Now there are two kinds of people who labor under illusions as regards the Feminist movement, its opponents and its supporters: both sides tend to limit the area of its influence; in few cases does either realize the movement as revolutionary. The methods are to have revolutionary results, are destined to be revolutionary; as a convinced but cautious Feminist, I do not think it honest or advisable to conceal this fact. I have myself been charged by a very well-known English author (whose name I may not give, as the charge was contained in a private letter) with having "let the cat out of the bag" in my little book, Woman and To-morrow. Well, I do not think it right that the cat should be kept in the bag. Feminists should not want to triumph by fraud. As promoters of a sex war, they should not hesitate to declare it, and I have little sympathy with the pretenses of those who contend that one may alter everything while leaving everything unaltered.

That last sentence is a good insight. Are there not many Westerners who sign on to a radical liberalism without recognising what they are bringing down in the process?

And George is not entirely faultless here either. He expected that feminism would "strengthen the race"; and that it would improve the character of both men and women. I wonder what he would say if he could travel forward in time and witness ladette behaviour, or the thugging up of men, or the declining fortunes of the Western family and the Western peoples:

Therein lies the mental revolution: while the Suffragists are content to attain immediate ends, the Feminists are aiming at ultimate ends. They contend that it is unhealthy for the race that man should not recognize woman as his equal; that this makes him intolerant, brutal, selfish, and sentimentally insincere. They believe likewise that the race suffers because women do not look upon men as their peers; that this makes them servile, untruthful, deceitful, narrow, and in every sense inferior.

Similarly, George thought that if traditional marriage were abolished that it would liberate men and women to have unions based on love alone - he didn't foresee the coarsening of relationships and the instability of family life that would result:

Their grievances against the home...are closely connected with the marriage question, for they believe that the desire of man to have a housekeeper, of woman to have a protector, deeply influence the complexion of unions which they would base exclusively upon love, and it follows that they do not accept as effective marriage any union where the attitudes of love do not exist.

Next comes an argument that time has proven to be utterly wrong. George says that the feminists of his time wanted women to be economically independent, in part, because it would then allow women to choose the best men as mates and that this would have a eugenic effect - which would then benefit the race:

Under Feminist rule, women will be able to select, because they will be able to sweep out of their minds the monetary consideration; therefore they will love better, and unless they love, they will not marry at all. It is therefore probable that they will raise the standard of masculine attractiveness by demanding physical and mental beauty in those whom they choose; that they will apply personal eugenics.

The men whom they do not choose will find themselves in exactly the same position as the old maids of modern times: that is to say, these men, if they are unwed, will be unwed because they have chosen to remain so, or because they were not sought in marriage. The eugenic characteristic appears, in that women will no longer consent to accept as husbands the old, the vicious, the unpleasant. They will tend to choose the finest of the species, and those likely to improve the race. As the Feminist revolution implies a social revolution, notably "proper work for proper pay", it follows that marriage will be easy, and that those women who wish to mate will not be compelled to wait indefinitely for the consummation of their loves. Incidentally, also, the Feminists point out that their proposals hold forth to men a far greater chance of happiness than they have had hitherto, for they will be sure that the women who select them do so because they love them, and not because they need to be supported.

Something like the opposite has happened. The emphasis on being independent and career focused has led many upper class women to delay family formation and then either to settle in a panic or else fail to reproduce; nor does it seem to be true that when women no longer need men to provide for them that they then select men of mental and physical beauty.

George next tells us that feminists want to loosen the marriage tie. However, they want the man to continue to pay even if the woman chooses to divorce as:

The rebels must accept situations such as the financial responsibility of man, while they struggle to make woman financially independent of man.

George then starts to dream of a utopian future:

Personally, I am inclined to believe that the ultimate aim of Feminism with regard to marriage is the practical suppression of marriage and the institution of free alliance. It may be that thus only can woman develop her own personality, but society itself must so greatly alter, do so very much more than equalize wages and provide work for all, that these ultimate ends seem very distant...

....in common with many Feminists I incline to place a good deal of reliance on the ennobling of the nature of the male.

George is claiming that all the sacrifices men make for women as husbands and fathers has the ultimate effect of suppressing a woman's personality. So why would a man make such sacrifices if the effect is a negative one?

And can it really be said that a feminist sexual revolution has ennobled the nature of the male? It's more likely that it is we who look back to George's era and notice a stronger culture of masculine nobility that what we have today.

George also noticed that some feminist women of his time wanted to lay claim to children as theirs alone, with the father having no rights:

One feature manifests itself, and that is a change of attitude in woman with regard to the child. Indications in modern novels and modern conversation are not wanting to show that a type of woman is arising who believes in a new kind of matriarchate, that is to say, in a state of society where man will not figure in the life of woman except as the father of her child. Two cases have come to my knowledge where English women have been prepared to contract alliances with men with whom they did not intend to pass their lives,--this because they desired a child. They consider that the child is the expression of the feminine personality, while after the child's birth, the husband becomes a mere excrescence. They believe that the "Wife" should die in childbirth, and the "Mother" rise from her ashes. There is nothing utopian about this point of view, if we agree that Feminists can so rearrange society as to provide every woman with an independent living...

George did not have a high opinion of the New Woman - the radical feminist women of his own time:

The "New Woman", as we know her to-day, a woman who is not so new as the woman who will be born of her, is a very unpleasant product; armed with a little knowledge, she tends to be dogmatic in her views and offensive in argument. She tends to hate men, and to look upon Feminism as a revenge; she adopts mannish ways, tends to shout, to contradict, to flout principles because they are principles; also she affects a contempt for marriage which is the natural result of her hatred of man.

But, like most revolutionaries, he thought this was a necessary transitory stage and that new social conditions would then create a more ideal type of woman. In his words:

The New Woman is like a freshly painted railing: whoever touches it will stain his hands, but the railing will dry in time.

George then floats another idea, which is that women should wear a uniform:

One tentative suggestion is being made, and that is a uniform for women.

He seems to have associated an interest in appearance with sexually distinct feminine women - something which contradicted the idea of making the sexes the same. Hence a uniform for women.

Finally, George finishes with this:

Thus and thus only, if man will readjust his views, expel vir and enthrone homo, can woman cease to appear before him as a rival and a foe, realize herself in her natural and predestined role, that of partner and mate.

That strikes a false note. For a man to expel vir (manliness) and enthrone homo (humanliness) is not a readjustment of his views - it is overthrowing his own sex and his distinct identity as a man. Here again is the radical insistence on abolishing sex distinctions.

And George "readjusts" the truth by claiming that women traditionally appeared to men as rivals and foes, and only by getting with the feminist programme can women finally become partners and mates. The traditional understanding was not that men and women were foes but that they had interdependent and complementary roles; it is feminism which has institutionalised the idea that men and women are competing for power in the cause of maximising an individualistic autonomy.

One thing I hope this post has demonstrated conclusively is that feminism did not begin with Germaine Greer, nor even with Simone de Beauvoir. It existed in a radical form long before these women arrived on the scene. And the aim has been much the same, namely to make sex distinctions not matter; to maximise female independence and autonomy; and to promote relationships on female terms.

The sad thing is that George believed his feminist programme would strengthen the race, ennoble men and women, and create a more loving culture of relationships. In this he has been proved disastrously wrong.

Masculine & feminine energies

I write sometimes about masculine and feminine essences. So I was interested to read a post by a woman called Aoefee attempting to set out some of the distinctions between the masculine and feminine.

Aoefee is a very long way from being a traditionalist, but she's reached a point in her life in wanting to accept her own feminine nature:

One of the issues I see facing men and women today is a lack of understanding regarding the differences between the genders. There's too much time spent on how equal we are and not enough on inherent distinctions.

Masculine Energy:

• Goal Oriented
• External Focus/Drive
• Separate/Individual
• Penetrating

Female Energy:

• Ocean of Emotion
• Inner Focus/Process Oriented
• Not Individual/Group/Home Focused
• Open and Receptive

...I think some of the mistakes I have made have been in trying to apply male logic to my goal of meeting a significant other. Although a very feminine woman I've been using male, goal oriented strategies. Setting up seven dates in six days, specifically targeting older men, was a very driven, goal oriented approach for example.

Being open and receptive, a feminine approach, I learned a great deal about men and what they appreciated in women when I hung out in male dominated forums. I learned that men could care two toots about my job and I rarely talk about it now. I learned men like women who dress like a woman and wear heels, skirts/dresses, have pretty hair and maintain a good hip to waist ratio. A woman is allowed to be vulnerable and not have all the answers, she is also valuable when she takes the time to process information and be able to offer meaningful advice. 

I believe men fail to accept women's emotional natures, they rally against it rather than accept it and figure out ways to offset potential chaos. Women NEED a strong force to guide them. We are like the ocean, still, calm and then without much warning we build tsunami waves. A man who recognizes that these things are sometimes beyond the control of the woman (hormones, stress) stays out of the storm and steadfastly keeps the ship going the right direction. He realizes giving her the wheel is a bad idea and calmly ignores her pleading for the driver seat. When a woman has a man who can't be moved by her mercurial nature she is much less likely to feel lost at sea and the storms lessen.

...I challenge you to look at your current relationship and see if you are struggling because you don't understand their energy. Are you trying to make into him into a feminine you? Are you sure the Notebook is the way you want to live your life? Are you trying to make her focused and driven to do the things you feel she should want? Are you helping her be open and receptive to you or are you closing her off?

Obviously not all relationships are going to be the same. I do think it's the case, though, that women will sometimes crash up against their men early in a relationship and find an element of calming security when the man holds firm.

A reply to a reader on female combat troops

One reader didn't like my post The body has meaning. He wrote the following comment:

The original post astonishes me. When I was 12 or so, I thought, "Men are this, and women are that." Then I grew up and realized the world is more complex than that.

The world is not made up of G.I. Joes and Barbie dolls. You seem to suggest that it should be.

Your idea seems to be that men and women each have a distinct, intrinsic nature, from which their proper roles in society can be inferred, en masse. But isn't it reasonable to expect a person to act on the basis of their own nature? If someone wants to do something, such as join the army, then joining the army seems to be in the nature of this person. You would say to them, "But that's not in your nature." I think they should reply, "Clearly it is in my nature, for it is what I want to do." How do you reply to this?

It's a reasonable question to ask. The answer is that masculinity is not only an aspect of the nature of men, but it exists as well as an essence in the sense of it being a quality that has intrinsic value and meaning.

So a man will not only have a sense of his own masculine identity, he will also recognise the existence of a masculine ideal to develop toward, one which brings purpose and fulfilment.

Ordinary preferences and wants do not have this same potential. They certainly do not define our nature as men; if anything, they are to be brought into line (i.e. ordered) according to our efforts to cultivate masculine character.

And the same goes for femininity & women. Women obviously have a feminine nature in the sense that their bodies are more fitted for motherhood than warfare, that women are in general more emotional than men and so on.

But that's not the end of it. Women have the chance to embody the feminine principle in life (to put this another way: to express a feminine essence).

They cannot do this in the role of a combat soldier. It just isn't possible to develop along feminine lines in such a role.

And so a woman who thinks she wants to be a combat soldier has some serious thinking to do. Even if she is at the more mannish end of the female spectrum, and so is drawn more than other women to masculine pursuits, she is choosing a pathway that cannot lead her to an admirable womanhood, i.e. to a womanhood that embodies or expresses that feminine principle of life.

Why would they say masculinity is bad for us?

There was some advice for men in the Melbourne Age this week. We were told that bad things would happen to us if we were masculine and that we should learn to be more emotional and to be more touchy-feely with each other:

IF MEN could just learn to show some affection, share emotions and hug each other more they could literally save themselves a lot of heartache, researchers say.

The tough, fearless and self-reliant self-image of Western men is holding them back from showing love, leaving them more vulnerable to addiction and disease such as heart problems, according to a study presented yesterday at the International Congress on Applied Psychology.

Dr Ryan McKelley from the University of Wisconsin said men needed to become more emotional, open up and not be afraid to be vulnerable with each other, and that they would reap the benefits in better health...

Closer male-to-male relationships could be the key to changing the manly image that stops men from feeling like they can reach out for help, the study showed.

But men's health expert Kerry Cronan said that most men in our culture are afraid of being emotionally close - or platonically intimate - with other men.

"In many cultures, touch does not signify the same taboo attitudes as it does in Western societies," Mr Cronan said. "Outside of the sporting field or a drunken night out, men in our culture are generally afraid of any form of affection or closeness with each other."

I'm sceptical of such advice. It seems to me that men need more than ever to be emotionally strong in order to succeed at work and at home.

So I decided to do a little internet digging on Dr Ryan McKelley and Kerry Cronan. Is there something about these men that might lead them to be biased against masculinity?

I decided to begin with Kerry Cronan. When someone tells you to overcome the taboo against touching other men, then it's right to have suspicions about their motivations. In short, I suspected that Kerry Cronan might be a gay activist of some sort.

What did I find? It turns out that Kerry Cronan is both a psychologist and a priest (though he doesn't seem to be attached to any parish). In 2002 he was investigated by the Health Practitioners Tribunal in Queensland for touching the genital area of one of his male patients:

in Queensland, a priest working as a registered psychologist is facing disciplinary action after massaging a patient - a fellow priest - behind his genitals. Kerry Richard Cronan applied the pressure point technique in the Maryborough presbytery as part of "body work" therapy on a priest who sought his professional help as a counsellor...

Fr Cronan provided the Health Practitioners Tribunal of Queensland with literature stating that massaging the perineum region was good for menstrual and genital conditions, constipation and insanity.

But the tribunal said there was no scientific data to support this - a fact Fr Cronan failed to tell the complainant. 

The Age told its readers that Kerry Cronan was a "men's health expert". It didn't tell them that he had been investigated for the inappropriate touching of male patients. That would have cast a different light on Kerry Cronan's advice to men about getting touchy-feely with other men.

And what of Dr Ryan McKelley? His story is different. He seems to be a regular family guy who publishes his academic research in psychology journals. But I think there is a case for bias in his advice as well on four grounds.

a) Touting for business

What is one of Dr McKelley's key research areas? It's the thesis that traditional masculinity makes men less likely to engage the services of psychologists like himself.

Therefore, he has a possible motivation of self-interest in attacking traditional masculinity, as he anticipates that this would increase the number of clients for the psychology profession.

b) Academic influence

Psychology, just like other academic disciplines, is heavily influenced by the liberal orthodoxy on campus. When you browse through the kind of research being published, you get the usual liberal themes, including an assumption that masculinity is a restrictive social construct to be overcome.

Dr McKelley himself uses terms such as "traditional masculinity ideology" and "restrictive gender role norms" when referring to traditional masculinity.

If you assume that masculinity is "restrictive" (because it is not self-determined) and an "ideology" (because it is assumed to be a social construct) you're unlikely to write positively about it.

c) Defining masculinity

And how do researchers like Dr McKelley define masculinity? I discovered they use something called the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI). But this is a crude measure of masculinity, one that makes being ultra macho the measure of masculinity.

The twelve norms of masculinity are taken to be: Winning, Emotional Control, Risk-Taking, Violence, Dominance, Playboy, Self-Reliance, Primacy of Work, Power Over Women, Disdain for Homosexuals, Physical Toughness, and Pursuit of Status.

It's not that these aren't related to masculinity. But the way you get to be rated as "more masculine" is dubious. For instance, when it comes to violence you are considered the most traditionally masculine if you agree with the statement "I am always the first to start a fight". Similarly, you get rated as more masculine on the playboy scale if you agree with the statement that "Emotional involvement should be avoided when having sex."

And how did being a playboy get to be on the inventory of masculine norms? That in itself is an interesting story. The academic who established the inventory (James Mahalik) justified it on the grounds of research presented in one book. But when one sceptic checked out the book he discovered that its author had actually presented four roles that expressed masculine ways of loving: breadwinner, faithful husband, nurturer and playboy. Only 1% of men had described their dominant role as that of playboy. And yet it was the playboy role that made it onto the list of masculine norms.

The categories chosen were then refined by focus groups chosen by James Mahalik. But another odd thing happened with the focus groups. According to Mahalik the masculine norms dominating all men in the US were those of upper- and middle-class white men. But who was in the focus groups? Of nine participants only three were white males! The majority of participants were young female graduate students - and those who have been at uni will know that such women are the most heavily indoctrinated into feminist theories about men.

So it was not even the views of middle- and upper-class white men which were used to refine ideas about the gender norms of such men. It was mostly young graduate women.

So, again, the definition of masculinity being used by Dr McKelley isn't to be taken as the scientific last word on the subject.

Research results

Finally, if you read the most recent research of Dr McKelley the results are not as straightforward as presented in the Age article. Dr McKelley expected to find that those rated as most traditionally masculine would be less likely to seek help when confronted with a problem - but that wasn't borne out by his research. He did find partial support for the view that those rated as most traditionally masculine attached more stigma to going to counselling than other men.

In other words, even when using a crude measure of masculinity based on extreme A-type personality traits, Dr McKelley's research didn't find any strong differences between men rated as "traditionally masculine" and those rated as less traditionally masculine.

Furthermore McKelley stressed in his paper how new and uncertain the research is and how much it is still lacking in a conceptual framework.

And yet you'd think there were no doubts at all about the research when reading the article in The Age.

There's an increasing amount of academic research now on the topic of masculinity. A lot of it is going to present masculinity as something negative, restrictive and artificial that men must cast aside for the sake of themselves, women and society.

What men need to be aware of is the bias behind such research, especially the political bias. The research will be presented to the public in a straightforward way as the neutral scientific findings of experts. But it only takes a little research to discover just how sceptical we should be of such claims.

And this person wants to transform all of you men!

This is a story with an extraordinary ending, so please bear with me and read all the way through.

It begins with a man named Robert Connell. Back in 1995 he wrote a book called Masculinities. There wasn't much that was new in the book. It consists mostly of standard patriarchy theory: the idea that masculinity is a construct and that it provides men with a "patriarchal dividend" at the expense of women. Therefore, social justice requires the deconstruction of masculinity.

But how to do it? Connell argues in Masculinities that there are many masculinities but that one is "hegemonic". This is an idea borrowed from Gramsci. It means that there is one form of masculinity which manages to get itself accepted as authoritative and that through this the existing values of society are upheld.

Therefore, there cannot be transformative change until the hegemonic masculinity is deconstructed. But Connell recognises that a sense of masculinity is embedded in the male personality and that it is formed in part through bodily practices (such as sport).

So what's required is not just a change in patriarchal institutions. What is needed is a change in the male personality and bodily practices. Men need to be degendered in body and in personality.

Connell's book was highly successful. He became the world's leading theorist of masculinity. The charity Oxfam, for instance, believes that its role is to secure gender equity by transforming masculinity throughout the world. The information on its website is clearly drawn from Connell's work:

Throughout the organization, we will base our work on a common understanding that gender equality is key to overcoming poverty and suffering.

[this requires a consideration of] the invisibility of gender issues to most men and the notion of the ‘patriarchal dividend’ (i.e. the privileges that all men draw upon simply by virtue of being male) ... the dominance of specific forms of (‘hegemonic’) masculinity; how masculinities are actively constructed; the costs associated with masculinity for both men and women; and the dynamic nature of masculinities over time.

‘Hegemonic masculinity’ is a concept that draws upon the ideas of Gramsci. It refers to the dynamic cultural process which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.

Again, just to illustrate how serious Oxfam is about transforming masculinity here are some additional ideas from its website:

Oxfam’s approach to poverty – the importance of gender analysis

The study highlights the importance of coherent gender analysis … Gender analysis is central to Oxfam’s understanding of the root causes of global poverty … if gender relations are to be transformed …

Changing masculinities, changing men

… masculinities are actively ‘produced’ by individuals, rather than being programmed by genes … It is sometimes argued … that being ‘natural’ masculinity is impervious to reform. But our research demonstrates the reverse … Clearly there are risks involved in attempts to reshape masculinity …

Again, Connell is the most frequently cited authority in this document written for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The document reminds readers that the UN has called for a "transformative change" to achieve gender equity. Masculinity, it is claimed, stands in the way of "progress" toward a new world order of centralised, global government and increasing ethnic diversity:

In effect, masculinity becomes a rhetorical currency by which opposition to global integration, state centralization and increasing ethnic heterogeneity can be mobilized. (p.4)

It is Connell who is again looked to as the expert authority on the matter:

Typically, as Connell notes (1998: 17), “hardline masculine fundamentalism goes together with a marked anti-internationalism”. (p.4)

So Connell managed to become an international authority on masculinity, or at least the deconstruction thereof.

But this is where we get to the dramatic twist in the story. In his book Masculinities Connell anticipated that the aim of degendering men in their bodily practices and in their personalities would arouse opposition.

In particular, it would arouse the fear that a process of degendering men would turn men into women:

If the problem is basically about masculinity, structural change should follow from a remaking of personality. (p.230)

...emotional turmoil and guilt feelings ... are a measure of the resistance even in favourable circumstances. In other circumstances the project will be rejected out of hand as an attempt to turn men into women.

It follows that a degendering strategy, an attempt to dismantle hegemonic masculinity, is unavoidable.

The degendering strategy applies not only at the level of culture and institutions, but also at the level of the body - the ground chosen by defenders of patriarchy, where the fear of men being turned into women is most poignant. (p.232)

What we are moving towards is indeed "something rich & strange"; and therefore, necessarily, a source of fear as well as desire. (p.234)

The reason I highlighted these passages is this: Robert Connell is no longer legally a man. He has, it seems, had sex change surgery, legally changed his identity, and transformed himself into Raewyn Connell. Below is a photo of the radically transformed Robert Connell.

Given that Robert Connell took this drastic step, I think we're entitled to ask some questions.

Did Robert Connell always feel conflicted in his own masculinity? Does this help to explain his feeling of estrangement from mainstream masculinity? Or his repeated claims that men needed to change their bodily practices to more feminine ones of nurturing babies?

Or did the theory itself push Connell to view masculinity as so malignant that it had to be physically cut away?

Or did the theory, with its emphasis on the bodily transformation of men, lead Connell to arrive at the radical solution pictured on the left?

At any rate, the idea that the great project of liberation is to degender men's bodies and personalities, is associated in the case of its founder with a result that won't appeal to too many men.


Hat tip: Paul Elam

The man of the future?

The Green Party gets about 10% of the vote in Germany. They were part of a governing coalition from 1998 to 2005.

How are they keeping busy in opposition? By writing a Men's Manifesto. This manifesto is interesting to me because it applies liberal principles to men, just as feminism applies them to women.

Remember, according to liberal autonomy theory what matters is that we are self-determining. Our sex is predetermined and is therefore held to be an oppressive restriction on our individuality. Liberals therefore set out to make gender not matter.

So what we ought to expect from the Men's Manifesto are claims that masculinity restricts men; that it is oppressive to men; and that men and women should be levelled to follow the same life path.

So I'll now let Jan Philipp Albrecht, a Green MP for the EU, introduce his manifesto:

Equal rights in the year 2010? We men see that our society is still pervaded by a deep seated spirit of sexual polarity which reduces women to femininity and men to masculinity. We have to finally put a stop to it. We no longer want to have to be macho, we want to be people!

[It didn't take long for the liberal orthodoxy to come out, did it? Already Albrecht has set out the terms of the manifesto: masculinity is something that "reduces" us (i.e. is a restriction), which stands in the way of a human identity, and gender has to be made not to matter - there has to be an end to "sexual polarity" in society.]

You aren't born a man, you are turned into one.

[Again, a predictable claim that masculinity has no basis in nature or biology but is socially constructed - an idea that flies in the face of modern science.]

Sex roles for men are also a corset, that does them more harm than good.

[The language of restriction again - a "corset" - plus the claim once more that masculinity oppresses men.]

We as male feminists say: men, give up power, it's worth it!

The crisis is male. The climate, financial and economic crisis, hunger and justice crisis, these are all the direct result of a particularly male way of life, work and economic conduct, which has driven the planet to the brink of ruin.

[So now there does exist something distinctly male - only it's so ruinous that it has to be given up. Albrecht is saying that men as they really exist are contemptible - only when we rebirth into something non-masculine and non-distinct will we be redeemed. Not a great basis, I would have thought, for a "men's movement".]

The existing division of roles between the sexes frequently leads to serious psychological stress ... It is therefore urgently necessary for the body and mind of people to break apart the roles.

[A dramatic way to claim that masculinity and femininity are oppressive to people and must be deconstructed.]

It's true, of course, that masculinity does lay some obligations on men. At times, these obligations can be burdensome. I have no objection to a movement which wants to keep these burdens from being overwhelming.

But let's be honest. It is not a freedom to lose your sense of masculine strength. It is not a freedom if women become less attractively feminine.

These Greens should be careful what they wish for. Who would really want to abolish sex distinctions? After all, our sex is a core part of our identity. And sex distinctions are a vital part of our sexuality and of our instincts toward love and family.

Finally, I'll leave you with an image of our feminist New Man. Below is a photo of Jan Philipp Albrecht, the author of the Men's Manifesto. Is this really the man of the future?

Trawlermen

One of the best TV shows I've watched lately is Trawlermen. It doesn't sound promising: it's a documentary about some fishing crews based in Peterhead, Scotland, who trawl for fish in the North Sea.

But the series gives you a very good idea of the challenges faced by these men. The trawlermen have to leave their families for long periods of time while they journey out into the North Sea. There they are subject to the full blast of the elements: to the cold winds and to stormy seas. The job is a highly dangerous one: one of the men featured in the series was swept overboard and lost at sea.

And there is a lot of financial risk involved as well. Expensive equipment is frequently damaged. Many of the skippers are in debt. If the nets come in empty or near empty, as they often seem to do, there is a financial loss. There is a lot riding on the decisions made by the skippers, the difference between success and failure.

These trawlermen are men who pit themselves against the elements, who take risks, for little reward of prestige or power. It's difficult not to admire their determination to succeed in such conditions.

Embracing the superficial

In my last post I looked at the ideas of Professor Judith Butler. I want to follow up by seeing how these ideas play out in the writings of one of her fans, Professor David Gauntlett.

Professor Gauntlett is keen to publicise the works of both Judith Butler and the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. In one article, Gauntlett explains why he considers the ideas of Foucault and Judith Butler to be powerful and liberating:

I like the idea that identities aren't fixed ... that our destiny and power and life are not determined by a few supposedly descriptive 'facts' about yourself such as gender, class, ethnicity, age and so on.

This is liberalism in a nutshell. Liberals believe that the highest good is to be autonomous. Therefore, the aim is to self-determine who we are (Foucault, for instance, promoted "the idea of a self which has to be created as a work of art"). But this means rejecting, as "restrictions" on the self, whatever is significant in our life which is predetermined rather than self-determined, such as our gender, class and ethnicity.

The result is that Professor Gauntlett, in his writing, insists that our identities be multiple and fluid; that we should aim above all to do our own thing; that tradition is a negative, hostile force; that the overthrow of traditional roles is progressive; and that society is advancing toward liberal or post-traditional attitudes.

Let's consider some excerpts from Professor Gauntlett's book, Media, Gender and Identity. The gist of the book is that popular culture is at the forefront of smashing the old to make way for the liberated future:

Fluidity of identities and the decline of tradition

... identity is today seen as more fluid and transformable than ever before. Twenty or thirty years ago, analysis of popular media often told researchers that mainstream culture was ... trying to push people back into traditional categories. Today ... the mass media is a force for change ... masculine ideals of absolute toughness, stubborn self-reliance and emotional silence have been shaken ... Although gender categories have not been shattered, these alternative ideas and images have at least created space for a greater diversity of identities.

Modern media has little time or respect for tradition. The whole idea of traditions comes to seem quite strange ... What's so great about the past? ... it must surely be considered good if modern media is encouraging the overthrow of traditions which kept people within limiting compartments.

And then there's this:

The knowing construction of identity

Modern Western societies do not leave individuals in any doubt that they need to make choices of identity and lifestyle ... As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted, in late modern societies everyone wants to 'live their own life', but this is, at the same time, 'an experimental life' ... Because 'inherited recipes for living and role stereotypes fail to function', we have to make our own new patterns of being, and ... it seems clear that the media plays an important role ...

Magazines ... provide information about sex, relationships and lifestyles which can be put to a variety of uses. Television programmes, pop songs, adverts, movies and the internet all also provide numerous kinds of 'guidance' ... in the myriad suggestions of ways of living which they imply. We lap up this material because the social construction of identity today is the knowing social construction of identity. Your life is your project - there is no escape.

So let's sum up to this point. Professor Butler believes that a traditional culture kept people within "limiting compartments". We are supposed to agree with him that a strong masculinity was "limiting" to men - as opposed to making our own "pattern of being" from a modern pop culture of rap songs, lads' magazines and sitcoms.

Well, I know which option I find more limiting. A traditional masculinity had depth. It was a larger aspect of being, one difficult to fill. In contrast, a modern pop culture runs more on the surface. It operates more at the level of lifestyle and celebrity. I would not like to have to construct my identity out of it - it is this that would be an exercise in self-limitation.

But Professor Gauntlett is serious in what he claims. He argues that the older generations would be less "narrow-minded" if only they read FHM or Cosmopolitan:

Generational differences

... Traditional attitudes may be scarce amongst the under-30s, but still thrive in the hearts of some over-65s. We cannot help but notice, of course, that older people are also unlikely to be consumers of magazines like Cosmopolitan, More or FHM, and are not a key audience for today's pop music sensations ... [it] remains to be seen whether the post-traditional young women and men of today will grow up to be the narrow-minded traditionalists of the future.

Professor Gauntlett has studied lads' magazines like FHM and is impressed by their influence on men:

These lifestyle publications were perpetually concerned with how to treat women, have a good relationship, and live an enjoyable life. Rather than being a return to essentialism - i.e. the idea of a traditional 'real' man, as biology and destiny 'intended' - I argued that men's magazines have an almost obsessive relationship with the socially constructed nature of manhood. Gaps in a person's attempt to generate a masculine image are a source of humour in these magazines, because those breaches reveal what we all know - but some choose to hide - that masculinity is a socially constructed performance anyway ...

It's not all a world of transformed masculinities, though. Images of the conventionally rugged, super-independent, extra-strong macho man still circulate in popular culture. And as incitements for women to fulfil any role proliferate, conventional masculinity is increasingly exposed as tediously monolithic. In contrast with women's 'you can be anything' ethos, the identities promoted to men are relatively constrained.

Again, think of the choice on offer here. What Professor Gauntlett is offering men, as a liberal, is a fake masculinity that is merely performed. The flagship for this new "masculinity" is FHM magazine. In the current issue of this magazine are, predictably, features on celebrities and Hollywood. There are lifestyle articles on gaming, on curing hangovers and on healthy hearts. It's just modern pop culture aimed at younger men.

Isn't it this version of masculinity, Professor Gauntlett's version, which is "constrained"? What does it really offer? Pretend manhood, celebrities, lifestyle advice and pictures of women. Is this really enough for a man to make a decent life out of?

It's true that traditional masculinity didn't tell men that they could be anything. But this would have been bad advice anyway - just as it has been for a certain generation of women.

Finally, let me underline what is so striking about Professor Gauntlett's views. He holds out to us a certain vision in which we give up deeper forms of human identity and being for a pop culture lifestyle. He seems to have no qualms at all about the trade off. Tradition strikes him as strange. FHM magazines become the hopeful standard-bearers of the new world to come.

The American image of Australian men

Last week I reported on moves here in Victoria to discriminate against white males:

DISCRIMINATION against dominant white males will soon be encouraged in a bid to boost the status of women, the disabled and cultural and religious minorities.

... Equal Opportunity Commission CEO Dr Helen Szoke said males had "been the big success story in business and goods and services".

"Clearly, they will have their position changed ..."

Herald Sun columnist Susie O'Brien made clear her hostility to white men in reporting the news:

THE powerful white man is set to join the powerful white rhino as the world's latest endangered species.

Let's say goodbye to what some have dubbed the "VOMITS" - the Very Old Men In Ties who are running this country.

The bluntness of the attack on white men was noticed at the American website View from the Right. A reader of the site, John Hagan, started a discussion there by noting that,

This is unlike any thing I have ever seen from a Western government, and the only recourse for whites in the state of Victoria should be one of active resistance.

Lawrence Auster, who runs the site, agreed that the language used by our authorities was novel and disturbing:

I can't recall ever hearing an official of a Western government use quite such ruthless, totalitarian-style language about whites

But will men here in Victoria actively resist the new laws? An Australian reader of View from the Right argued that Americans often hold an overly optimistic view of Australian men as being more traditionally masculine and more likely to fight back when attacked. Lawrence Auster agreed that this impression of Australian men did exist:

That's an insightful comment about the way Americans view Australians. I know it's true of my view of Australians. I'm sorry to hear I was wrong.

Australians have this vigorous, upbeat, confident quality which creates the impression that Alan is referring to. But, as with all good things under the conditions of modern liberalism, these virtues end up being subsumed under liberalism. Thus the fear of being called racist/sexist trumps being a manly, irreverent Crocodile Dundee type. People seem to be strong, but they're really weak.

My own impression is that Australian working-class men have resisted liberalism better than most. They have held to a traditional identity for much longer than other social classes; they broke with the Labor Party when Paul Keating began to openly promote a trendier, radical form of liberalism; and at times they have shown some fighting spirit of their own.

And middle-class men? The problem here, I think, is that the image Australian middle-class men have of their role in life is too confined. To be a good and successful man means succeeding in your career, having a family, having a nice house and perhaps contributing to a charity for poor people overseas.

Australian middle-class men have done reasonably well up to recent times in pursuing the role set for them - hence the anger of the equal opportunity apparatchiks that there are still numbers of white men succeeding in their careers.

But what is missing is any sense that these men have a larger, civilisational role in society. There is no expectation that middle-class men will act to uphold the best aspects of the tradition they were born into; or that they will act in the public sphere to defend institutions like the family; or that they will identify more widely with a national tradition of their own.

And so they don't.

Their failure to do so is going to make it much harder for them to succeed at even the limited role society has set for them. The apparatchiks are now setting up a more aggressive and intrusive set of restrictions on white male employment - and a reduced access to jobs will make family formation that much more difficult.

Feminism, too, has disrupted family formation, with marriage being increasingly delayed or opted out of.

We traditionalists have two tasks ahead of us. The one we are most involved with now is challenging the liberal political ideas that are currently dominant. What we also need to do is to promote a different ideal of what a good and successful man is. This is what the radical left did in breaking down the older Western civilisation: they openly promoted their idea of the New Man (and the New Woman).

We obviously don't need to reject the particular aims of career success, family and a nice house - we can continue to point out the unnecessary obstacles being put in the way of achieving these goals.

These aims, though, don't define masculine strength or a complete and admirable life for a man. It is the man who is strong enough to go further and contribute to the defence of his own civilisation and tradition who deserves our respect.

The Old Father

One of the best books on fatherhood is Fatherless America, by American writer David Blankenhorn. In one of the chapters of this book, "The Old Father", Blankenhorn notes that the traditional, masculine father arouses a strong, negative reaction in modern cultures.

The question is why? I'd like to set out my own answer to this, drawing on the useful source material (and many of the arguments) provided by Blankenhorn.

Gender splitting

Why has there been such a strong rejection of the Old Father? One reason is that the traditional father was strongly masculine. As Blankenhorn writes,

In essence, the Old Father is the paternal embodiment of ... what several analysts term "the masculine mystique.

Why is this a problem? The answer runs as follows. We live in a society shaped by liberal political principles. The first principle of liberalism is that to be fully human we must be self-created by our own individual will and reason. However, our sex - our manhood and womanhood - is not something that we can choose for ourselves. It is, in the terms of liberalism, a "biological destiny".

It's difficult for liberals to accept the idea that our lives might be influenced in an important way by something unchosen like the sex we are born into. They prefer to believe that traditional sex roles are oppressive social constructs which can be overcome. They think that we are liberated when we throw off the "confines" of such sex roles, by achieving genderlessness (androgyny) or better yet by reversing traditional sex roles.

Blankenhorn provides a large number of good quotes illustrating this kind of liberal thought process. For instance, Carolyn Heilbrun claims in her book Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (1993) that,

our future salvation lies in a movement away from sexual polarization and the prison of gender toward a world in which individual roles and modes of personal behavior can be freely chosen.

This is simply a very orthodox liberalism in which gender is thought of as a "prison" because gender roles are not "freely chosen" by the individual.

Another interesting quote is Judith Lorber's call for "the eradication of gender as an organizing principle of post-industrial society" and the "restructuring of social institutions without a division of human beings into the social groups called 'men' and 'women'."  Lorber is so concerned here to show that gender difference is merely an outmoded social construct, that she puts the words men and women in inverted commas and refers to them as "social groups".

Susan Moller Okin spells out the liberal view in these terms:

A just future would be one without gender. In its social structures and practices, one's sex would have no more relevance than one's eye color or the length of one's toes. No assumptions would be made about "male" and "female" roles; childbearing would be so conceptually separated from child rearing and other family responsibilities that it would be a cause for surprise, and no little concern, if men and women were not equally responsible for domestic life or if children were to spend much more time with one parent than another. (Justice, Gender and the Family, 1989)

In this quote Susan Moller Okin is calling for gender to be made so entirely irrelevant that it would be both surprising and concerning if mothers spent more time with their babies than fathers did (and note again the placing of the terms male and female in inverted commas).

Finally, there is family therapist Frank Pittman's warning that "Heavy doses of masculinity are unquestionably toxic, and no longer socially acceptable."

So liberals reject the Old Father because they are led by their first principles to reject traditional sex roles. Blankenhorn adds a further twist to this idea by noting that many theorists are especially opposed to the male sex role because they believe that it is the origin of "gender splitting" - in other words, that it's masculine fathers (rather than feminine mothers) who trigger the masculine identity of their sons and feminine identity of their daughters.

That's why family therapist Olga Silverstein specifically targets the male sex role when urging us to seek "the end of the gender split", as "until we are willing to question the very idea of a male sex role ... we will be denying both men and women their full humanity." (Our very humanity is at stake! ... as liberals see it, anyway.)

What is the conservative response to all this? I won't launch into a full-scale criticism of the liberal attitude to gender at this point. I'll simply point out that science has already proven that differences in male and female behaviour can be at least partly attributed to differences in the biological natures of men and women. So liberals are going against both nature and reason in claiming that gender differences are a social construct which can be overcome.

Paternal authority

There's a second major reason why the Old Father arouses a hostile response in modern Western societies. David Blankenhorn perceptively recognises that,

At bottom, much of this assault [on the Old Father] centers on the problem of paternal authority: the use of power by fathers in family life and in the larger society.

Why should paternal authority be such a problem? Again, we have to go back to liberal first principles for an answer. Liberals believe that we should be subject only to our own individual will and reason, but this means that liberals can only accept forms of authority that they themselves have consented to or contracted with. Unchosen forms of authority are made illegitimate by liberal first principles.

That's why early forms of liberalism were often so hostile to the power of kings and priests, as the authority of both was unchosen. The eighteenth century writer Denis Diderot captured this hostility perfectly in his famous saying that,

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

But it's not only kings and priests who wield unchosen authority. So too do fathers. We don't vote to accept our father's authority, nor do we formally assent to it. Instead, we are simply born into our father's dominion. Our own reasoned preferences don't come into it at all.

So it's little wonder that the Old Father should provoke such opposition within a liberal culture. As Blankenhorn describes it,

The Old Father wields power. He controls. He decides. He tells other people what to do. He has fangs. This aspect of his character generates suspicion and resentment ... This is the heart of the matter. Many contemporary critics view authority ... as synonymous with male identity itself.

Blankenhorn provides quite a number of examples from within popular culture in which the authority of fathers is feared or reviled. For instance, in 1993 Oliver Stone produced a television miniseries, "Wild Palms", in which there is a struggle in Los Angeles in the year 2007 between liberal humanists and malignant totalitarians. The humanists call themselves "Friends" in contrast to the totalitarians who call themselves "Fathers".

There is also the case of Sara Maitland who in describing "every dark thing that father means" confesses her desire to "cast out the Father in my head who rules and controls me ...This frightens me; I want to protect my father and my love for him. I do not want to kill him, to see him dead. I want to set the man free from having to be a father."

From the sphere of "high" culture there is also the viewpoint of poet Adrienne Rich, who believes that our unjust society is a Kingdom of the Fathers, which stands for "rapism and the warrior mentality".

Of course, the tension created by paternal authority is not only a product of liberalism. It exists also because it's an authority which is so close to home, so personal: if it's wielded unwisely it touches an especially raw nerve.

This is a point focused on by Blankenhorn who notes that "antagonism toward paternal power seems to go with the territory of fatherhood." Although maternal authority also exists, the father's power is "more rule-oriented, more emotionally distant, more aggressive, more physically coercive, more instrumental, and therefore more overtly severe."

This means, in Blankenhorn's words, that there is a "necessary but potentially explosive tension between father and child. Much of this tension is rooted in the fact that the child both craves and resents authority. So does culture."

Blankenhorn continues by eloquently rebutting those who think the solution to the question of paternal authority is to destroy it. He writes,

Here is a core irony of fatherhood. If having a father fosters anger in children, having no father fosters greater anger. If fathers generate tension and ambivalence in children that is hard to resolve, fatherlessness generates cynicism and confusion that is much harder to resolve.

If paternal authority it problematic, abdication of paternal authority is tragic. Yes, a fathered society must struggle with the inherent tensions of domesticated masculinity. But a fatherless society must accept the consequences of undomesticated masculinity: mistrust, violence, nihilism.

Adrienne Rich is wrong. Ultimately, rapism and the warrior culture mentality represent the kingdom of the fatherless, not the fathers. Male predation is not the synonym, but rather the necessary antonym, of encultured paternity.

Bringing it together

Liberals, therefore, reject the Old Father on two grounds. First, for liberals it is illegitimate to base parenting on traditional gender roles. Second, liberals don't easily accept unchosen forms of authority, including paternal authority.

So liberals need to find a way to avoid gender splitting on the one hand, and to overcome paternal authority on the other. One logical way of doing this is to have a single parental role shared by both sexes, but based on the mother, rather than the father.

Back in 1982 this is exactly what Sara Ruddick urged in her book Rethinking the Family. In this work Ruddick tells us that she looks forward,

to the day when men are willing and able to share equally and actively in transformed maternal practices ... On that day there will be no more 'fathers,' no more people of either sex who have power over their children's lives and moral authority in their children's world ... There will [instead] be mothers of both sexes.

This must have seemed a radical proposal back in 1982. Yet we can't laugh at it, or dismiss it as "going too far", because it has already become the accepted attitude to fatherhood.

In the mainstream media it is now assumed that a good father, an involved father, is one who takes on a traditional mothercare role, especially hands-on babycare tasks. It is also assumed that because the Old Father did not engage much in these tasks that he was uninvolved in family life.

It's not even considered that the Old Father contributed to his family in an important way by going to work to provide an income, by teaching discipline and morals, by actively guiding and socialising his children and by providing emotional stability and physical protection for his family.

To put this another way, there is no longer a recognised masculine role for men within the family. Effectively a distinctive fatherhood has been abolished as a social ideal. Men can now either be one part of a motherhood team, or else simply not be recognised for their efforts by the culture they live in.

Liberty & fatherhood

The liberal principle is that to be fully human we have to be self-created by our own individual will and reason. If true, this means that that the liberty to be unimpeded in our individual will is what makes us human. Liberty of will therefore becomes the trump card of politics.

Liberty of will, expressed simply as "liberty", is an attractive slogan. There are even conservatives who wish to make it a one word definition of conservative politics.

I hope, though, that what I've written above serves as a warning to conservatives not to accept the current understanding of "liberty of will" too lightly. The logic of this concept, as currently understood, requires a radical transformation of society, including the effective abolition of fatherhood.

Nor does "liberty of will" really deliver a true sense of freedom to the individual. Is abolishing our gender identity - our sense of manhood and womanhood - really felt as a personal freedom? Is it really a freedom to restrict men's participation in the family to a feminine role?

Liberty of will just doesn't work as a sole reigning principle of politics. It doesn't correctly define what is worthy and what is necessary within a social order. It cannot even deliver the one thing it promises, namely individual freedom.

Conservatives, then, will be exactly those people who reject the idea that "liberty of will" is the sole determining principle of politics. If masculine fatherhood is an impediment to individual will, conservatives will not automatically sacrifice fatherhood to remove the impediment.

This is because the worth and the necessity of fatherhood is not reasonably measured just in terms of its effect on liberty of will. Fatherhood has its own importance, residing elsewhere: in the security provided to mothers and children by a strong, protective father, in the transmission of moral values through paternal authority, and in the successful socialisation of boys to a productive and well-directed manhood through fatherly role models.

(First published at Conservative Central, 18/01/2005)

Hubbell's Angry White Men

According to Gary Hubbell there is an important group being forgotten in American politics: Angry White Men. Hubbell believes that there are millions of white men who share the traits of being hard-working, self-reliant, independent and resourceful. They will accept others of any background who also work hard to make their own way.

What angers these men is unfair competition from illegal immigrants; the outsourcing of jobs to low wage workers overseas; and the squandering of tax dollars on "victim" groups. For these men, writes Hubbell, the symbol of what is wrong with America is Hillary Clinton who is loathed by them with a passion.

It's no accident that the kind of man being described by Hubbell also exists in Australia. Both Australia and the US had their frontiersmen, their pioneering settlers. This role required a hardy masculinity characterised by self-reliance and resourcefulness.

The frontiersman qualities of Hubbell's Angry White Men are clear in the following passages of his column:

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country ...

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter ...

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy ...

There is much to admire in such men. Hubbell presents them to us as an ideal type, as a genuinely masculine group of men who are proudly hard-working and capable.

What Hubbell misses, though, are the flaws in the frontiersman ethos. It's one thing to be self-reliant and resourceful when you are left to yourself on a homestead in a small pioneering community. These qualities aren't sufficient, though, in a larger, more settled society. Men are then called on to defend a particular civilisation.

I'll try to describe the problem this way. I think it's true that many white men think the way that Hubbell claims they do. They believe that they can make their way regardless of what life throws at them and that this defines masculine strength. This has the virtue of safeguarding white men from a passive victim group mentality; however, it also leads to an overconfident individualism, in which a defence of the culture and institutions of their civilisation is neglected.

We are no longer frontiersmen. We need a masculine ideal which continues to emphasise resilience, but which also holds us to a responsibility to defend our civilisation. This means identifying oneself as part of a larger whole, to which some of our individual strength is directed. It means taking on a leadership role not only within a business or a family, but also in the realms of politics and culture.

Hubbell thinks that his Angry White Men might act as spoilers to someone like Hillary on election day. This, though, is a setting of their sights too low. It reflects the problem with the masculine ideal as it stands now amongst white men in America. It should be thought natural that such men, capable and resourceful as they are, would act to lead society at all levels. Instead, they are consigned to the role of politically ignored spoilers, a role which should flag the failure in modern America of the frontiersman ethos.

Hat tip: reader David

Leftist women & the image of masculinity

What do left-wing women think of the modern male? Some radical women appear to want something more traditional.

A case in point is the American radical writer Lakshmi Chaudhry. She has noted a shift in the image of masculinity in popular culture. She cites examples of male characters on TV and in novels who are self-absorbed, unable to commit, confused and unwilling to grow up. Her response is to compare this image of masculinity unfavourably with the traditional one:

popular culture continues to fetishize the traditional, '50s model of masculinity, but in a distilled form - kick-ass machismo stripped of the accompanying values of honor, duty and loyalty ... Where traditional masculinity embraced marriage, children and work as rites of passage into manhood, the 21st century version shuns them as emasculating, with the wife cast in the role of the castrating mother. The result resembles a childlike fantasy of manhood that is endowed with the perks of adulthood - money, sex, freedom - but none of its responsibilities.

Chaudhry understandably fears that the New Man is not promising husband material:

... if adult responsibilities are defined as emasculating, then it's no wonder that popular culture now defines "commitment" solely as a woman's goal.

Domesticity may have always been a feminine realm, but marriage and children were once defined as integral to the traditional gender roles of both men and women. Today, it's the woman who is cast in the role of caveman, eager to club some unsuspecting, reluctant male on his head and drag him to the altar.

It's not surprising that Chaudhry, as a left-liberal, blames the market:

this resistance to adulthood is closely associated with a market-driven consumerist culture that feeds and sustains a Peter Pan version of masculinity. "To be grown up is to be settled, comfortable, stable, responsible and secure," Kimmel says. "Those are bad conditions for advertising ..."

The market also has little time for the old-fashioned male virtue of self-denial, the imperative to do the "right thing" at the expense of pleasure. A stoic John Wayne has been replaced by the "metrosexual," a man who is all about self-indulgence ...

Susan Faludi foreshadowed the rise of the metrosexual in her 1999 book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, which describes an "ornamental culture" that tells men "manhood is displayed, not demonstrated. The internal qualities once said to embody manhood - sure-footedness, inner strength, confidence of purpose - are merchandised to men to enhance their manliness."

It's refreshing for feminists to accept gender difference and to express admiration for the stronger masculine qualities. But the market is not primarily to blame for a decline in the traditional male virtues.

The problem has more to do with modern philosophy. Both the left and the right in Western societies accept the basic ideas of liberal autonomy theory. According to this theory, our humanity is defined by our ability to be self-determined. The aim is for individuals to be self-defining: to be unimpeded in choosing who they are.

In a culture which emphasises autonomy, it's likely that both men and women will defer commitments to marriage and family. After all, we are most independent and most unimpeded in our choices when we pursue a single girl/single guy lifestyle.

Chaudhry herself is a follower of the modern orthodoxy. In an article discussing race, she follows the usual pattern of denying that racial identity is based on any "essence", which then means that it is something we can create for ourselves as individuals (i.e. that it's something which is self-determined):

[leading scholars] instead draw attention to the performative aspect of race, wherein racial identity is not a fixed unchanging essence but a set of mutable and contingent cultural behaviors. As Sarah Susannah Willie writes in her book Acting Black, "By treating race as acquired, like a skill or behavior, we can begin to see it as something over which individuals have differing degrees of control and varying options for agency, as an aspect of identity that is at least partly performed, continuous, and contingent."

Later in the same article Chaudhry writes of a fellow autonomy theorist that:

his critique suggests that we should each be free to "act" our race according to our own needs and desires - rather than to confirm or subvert social expectations ...The freedom to perform our identity gives us the power to define its meaning.

So Chaudhry is stuck in a difficult position. She is committed to the ideal of the autonomous, self-creating individual herself and so cannot easily blame it for its negative effect on masculinity.

Notice too that Chaudhry in her article on men is reluctant to criticise autonomy for women:

While progressives and feminists have rightly championed a woman's right to reject marriage and motherhood, they rarely address the consequences of living in a culture where pair-bonding and parenting - the basic processes that form the foundation of all societies - are constructed as the antithesis of masculinity.

So it's right for feminists to encourage women to reject marriage and motherhood, but wrong for men to defer commitments to their own family responsibilities. Isn't this a double standard?

Which brings me to a final point. It seems odd that Chaudhry should be such a liberal autonomist when discussing race, but then such a traditionalist in her expectations of men.

The contradiction might be explained as follows. Chaudhry seems to most resent the idea that women are left to try and force commitments from men. It's not so easy, in this situation, for women to freely exercise their own autonomous choices: men are resisting playing their part in what adult women might want to do.

For female autonomy to work best, men have to fall in line with what women want at each stage of a woman's life. This won't happen if men are pursuing their own version of an autonomous, independent lifestyle.

So autonomy theory breaks down in practice. For women to maximise their autonomy, they require men to follow traditional, non-autonomous values (a willingness to self-sacrifice, reject self-indulgence, remain loyal etc).

But men are unlikely to accept the purpose of such self-sacrifice. Faced with a female individualism, they are likely to respond with an individualism of their own. This is especially true when male and female identities are held to have no essential existence.

Dating cruelly biased?

Dating is one of the most difficult things for modern men to negotiate. One of the problems is that feminism has encouraged women to pursue independence in their twenties, which translates into careers, travel and casual relationships. There’s little pressure on women at this time to cultivate attractively feminine qualities, or to make the right signals to men seeking serious relationships, or to restrain the impulse to reward bad boy behaviour.

And then when women hit their early thirties it suddenly changes. Instead of quirkiness, or androgyny or attempts to shock, you begin to meet women who make a real effort to be friendly and to present well.

By this time a lot of men have become demoralised or have internalised the non-committal culture of relationships. So there will be some competition for genuine husband material among thirty-something women.

Bettina Arndt has written a column discussing such dating issues. She confirms my own impressions by claiming that when people pass the carefree years of the twenties:

the dating world is suddenly a very different place.

When women hit their 30s, they encounter a “flip,” which shifts the balance of power in the dating game irrevocably in man’s favour, according to blogger Sam de Brito.

After years of grovelling for female company, now it is the men who find themselves in a buyer’s market as women start to panic over finding partners willing to father children.

“Mother nature is particularly unfair to her daughters and it’s about age 32 that many women realise life’s great game of musical chairs is cruelly weighted toward guys”.

Although I agree that the “flip” occurs, I don’t see why we should think of the situation as cruelly biased against women. After all, women have considerable advantages in their mid-20s, which is the more natural time for family formation.

Arndt then gives a sad statistic: by age 35-39 nearly a third (31%) of women are still single (feminists might at least ask themselves what went wrong). It’s not because of a shortage of men – according to Arndt there are nearly 500,000 more single men in their 30s than single women in Australia (the statistic, I have to say, seems excessive).

This surplus of single men has its limitations:

significant numbers of these men are unemployed and low-income – men who are the big losers in the partnering stakes and the most likely to end up never married.

And with many of the successful, better-educated men fishing outside their pool – choosing younger women, or women far less educated than themselves – this leaves a mighty lean pool for successful women.

Arndt draws the most obvious conclusion: it would help women if they attempted to partner earlier, when conditions are most favourable:

we should be encouraging women not to leave their run too late ... The lessons from the past few decades have been that it is in women’s interests to get serious about finding the right partner early – before the competition heats up.

Finally, Arndt takes on the opposition, in the form of comedian Kaz Cooke, who is continuing to encourage women to remain independent:

You don’t need a man to protect you, you don’t need a man for money, and you don’t need a man to make an impact in life and on what you do.

Arndt replies as follows:

Yes, but most women are still attracted to the exhilarating journey of a shared life with a family.

I think Arndt is giving away too much in this reply. Most women will need a man to protect and provide for them and their children. Even with government welfare, it’s still the case that much poverty is connected to single motherhood. A hard-working father is still a real asset to a woman seeking a good standard of living for her family.

And women do still look to men for protection. Consider the reasons given by Angela Epstein for preferring to put her security in the hands of a man. She suggests that her feelings:

may be sourced in the fact that every girl inherits the princess gene which dictates her desire for a strong male role model to cosset and comfort her.

I see it in my three-year-old daughter who runs to her older brothers or her daddy when a dog barks at her in the park. She trusts them more than me to protect her.
There’s a dash of the old “damsel in distress” dynamic at play too ...

The fact is that when we women are tired, weak, compromised, in need of sympathy and vulnerable, nothing beats the strong arm of male capability and its implied protection.

A man who doesn’t think he will be called on to play a protector role is likely to experience a shock on getting married. I doubt if a man can ever be as capable of filling this role as a woman would ideally like. Arguably, one of the skills required of men in marriage is to set limits to the expectations placed on them as protectors by their wives. It’s a difficult role to live up to, and often chastening - the fall from “hero to zero” is a quick one.

Denying the reality of the role does little to prepare men for it and so I would have answered Kaz Cooke differently than Bettina Arndt chose to do. Still, the basic idea behind Arndt’s column – that the delay in family formation is harmful to many women – is an important one to make.