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On Patriarchs and Losers: Rethinking Men's Interests Author(S): Michael A On Patriarchs and Losers: Rethinking Men's Interests Author(s): Michael A. Messner Source: Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, rethinking gender (2004), pp. 74-88 Published by: Regents of the University of California Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41035593 . Accessed: 23/04/2014 18:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Regents of the University of California is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Berkeley Journal of Sociology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.125.52.125 on Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:20:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 BERKELEY JOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY On Patriarchsand Losers: RethinkingMen9s Interests MichaelA. Messner* Morethan two decades ago, WilliamGoode (1982) observedthat whenmembers of a superordinategroup are even partlynudged from theirpositions of social centrality,they often experience this as a major displacement,and responddefensively. This, Goode concluded,is why menhave so oftenresisted the movement for women's equality. Goode's analysisrested on an assumptionfundamental to a feministsociology: collectively,men have sharedinterests, opposed to thoseof women.In recentdecades, social scientistshave observed,measured, and described these opposing gendered interestswith hundreds of studies of occupationalsegregation, glass ceilings,wage gaps,domestic labor, sex work,emotional labor, interpersonal violence, and media imagery. The upshotof muchof thisresearch has been this: it is in men's collectiveinterests to maintainthe current relations in thegender order; it is in women'scollective interests to changethem. Casual observation will bearout the truth of this: overwhelmingly,it has been womenwho have put gender issues on the social agenda. While a few men throughouthistory have actively supportedfeminism (Kimmel & Mosmiller1992), pro-feministorganizing by men never got much beyond the level of a loosely connectednational and international networkof men, most of them academics and therapists (Messner 1997). Twentyyears ago, as I drove one of those therapistsback to Berkeleyfrom my "men and masculinity" class at Cal StateHayward, to whichhe had delivereda guestlecture, he pointedat a youngwhite guy speedingby in a pick-uptruck with a gunrack. "I wantthat guy in the men's movement,"he toldme emphatically,"and to get himinvolved, we haveto be able to convincehim that the masculinity he has learnedis self-destructiveand toxic,and thatfeminist change is in his interests." I'm prettysure that the guy in thepick-up never joined up. And I still wonder: is thatbecause he didn'treally see his "true"interests - he sufferedfrom some kind of false consciousness? Or, is it perhaps because he did understandthat his interestslie not in changing,but *This article was presentedas a talk at the 2004 BerkeleyJournal of Sociology "RethinkingGender" Conference. I thankLaurel Westbrookand the rest of the BJS collective for theirinvitation to speak, and for theirthoughtful comments on my presentation. This content downloaded from 128.125.52.125 on Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:20:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MESSNER: PATRIARCHS AND LOSERS 75 rather,in sustaininga genderstatus quo? Or,did perhapshis conception of his interestsas a man- but also as a whiteman, as a worker,as an American,as a veteran,and, (as I imaginedhim) as a heterosexual- just getmore and morecomplicated and contradictoryas theyears went by, leavinghim with no clear sense of havinginterests that go beyondhis individualself? Maybe he just needed,he found,a differentcar, a satellitedish, an iPod, betterclothes, some purchasedsex, and a men's colognethat made a statementabout his rebellious individuality? In this essay, I will share some reflectionson the conceptof "men's interests."First, using broad brush strokes, I will discuss the developmentof thescholarly focus on "menand masculinities."Then, I will drawexamples from two of myrecent projects as windowsin to the ways that"mens' interests"in theU.S. are currentlybeing articulated, respectivelyin commercialculture and in politicaldiscourse. MultipleMasculinities and Men's Interests By the late 1980s, the firstscholarly collections of work on men- edited by HarryBrod (1987), Michael Kaufman(1987) and MichaelKimmel (1987) - grappledwith a puzzle: how to takeseriously and centrallythe feministcritique of men's global powerover women, whilerecognizing both the "costs of masculinity"that many men pay, as well as the existenceof vast inequalitiesamong men- inequalities grounded in social class, race/ethnicity,sexual orientation,and internationalrelations. The answerthat most scholars settled on was to thinkof masculinitiesas multiple.Hegemonic masculinity - the form of masculinitythat, for the moment, codifies the collective project of men's dominationof women- is definedin relationto emphasizedfemininity, but also in relationto marginalizedand subordinatedmasculinities (Carrigan,Connell & Lee 1985; Connell1987). In practice,the idea of multiplemasculinities was sometimes severedfrom its broadhistorical and structuralmoorings, and takenup by researchersinvestigating specific social contexts,resulting ultimately in a dizzyingarray of "types" of masculinities.Like 19thcentury biologistsintent on buildinga taxonomyof theliving world, scholars of the 80s and 90s seemedto findnew formsof masculinityunder every empiricalstone, and seemedalso intenton labelingthem: The discovery of gay,Black, Chicano, working class andmiddle class masculinitywere followedby thedetection of Asian masculinity,gay Black masculinity, gay Chicano masculinity,white working class masculinity,militarized masculinity,transnational business masculinity, New Man masculinity, negotiatedmasculinity, versatile masculinity, healthy masculinity, toxic masculinity,counter masculinity, cool masculinity,and the one thatI confesshaving deployed on occasion,complicit masculinity. Like all This content downloaded from 128.125.52.125 on Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:20:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 76 BERKELEY JOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY such deconstructiveprojects, the danger inherentin the multiple masculinitiesdiscourse is that,ultimately, we riskdeconstructing down to each and everyman having his own distinctform of masculinity:My masculinity;your masculinity.But why stop with men? As Judith Halberstam(1998) has argued,some womenembody and displaythe culturalmarkers of masculinity.With "masculinities"multiplying seeminglyby the hour,and with the conceptnow severedfrom its connectionwith "men," we now face thepossibility of each and every individualon theplanet expressing his or herown uniquemasculinity: Let six billionmasculinities bloom! Whathas keptthe best social scientificstudies of masculinities fromdevolving into a meaninglessradical individualism is a mooringin theconcept of social structure.In particular,the structured inequalities of race, class, sexual orientationand genderare - and shouldremain - at the centerof our intersectionaltheories of powerand inequality(Baca Zinn & Dill 1996; Connell2004). Keepingthese categories of analysis centralreminds us thattheories of "multiplemasculinities" aim not simplyto describedifferent masculine "styles," but rather,to describe and understandcomplex group-based relations of power,and different- sometimescontradictory - relations to materialinterests (Hondagneu- Sotelo & Messner1994). Hence,my focus on interestshere is partlya resultof my sense thatwe have reachedthe limitsof the "multiple masculinities"language; it representsan attemptto re-focuson how genderplays out in group-basedrelations of power. Thinkingabout Interests The two examplesfrom my recentresearch that I am goingto sharewith you relateto sport. Sportis not patriarchalin a simple, seamlesslybinary fashion (all men on top; all womenon the bottom). Sportis "male dominated,"but it is also constructedthrough what Don Sabo (1994) has called an "intermaledominance hierarchy," that is characterizedby a veryunequal distribution of resourcesand privilege among boys and men: star athletesover bench-warmers;athletic directorsand head coaches over assistantcoaches and players;athletes and coachesin centralsports (especially football) over those in marginal "minor"sports (like cross country,swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, andgolf). But some male athletes'experiences of marginalitydoes not automaticallytranslate into their seeing their interests as alignedwith those of girls and women againstthe gluttonyof footballprograms. Structurallocation does notalways predict a group'sperceptions of their interests.In a thoughtfulessay, Bob Pease (2002: 170) arguesthat an analysisof "men's interests"cannot simply be reducedto a rational analysis of men's materialinterests in maintainingtheir patriarchal This content downloaded from 128.125.52.125 on Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:20:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MESSNER: PATRIARCHS AND LOSERS 77 privilege.He arguesthat "people do not have objectiveinterests as a resultof theirlocation; rather, they formulate... their interests, and they do so withinthe
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