Gendering Men

GENDERING MEN : THEORIZING MASCULINITIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE AND LITERATURE José María Armengol Carrera Directora: Dra. Àngels Carabí Ribera Tesi doctoral Per optar al títol de doctor en Filologia Anglesa Programa de doctorat “Literatures i cultures” Bienni 2000-2002 Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya Universitat de Barcelona Part II Themes CHAPTER 3. BIG BOYS DON’T CRY? MASCULINITY AND THE POLITICS OF EMOTION IN AMERICAN CULTURE As men in the ‘Men’s Movement’ we recognise that we have to retrace our steps and rediscover in ourselves those traits which have been called ‘feminine’…passivity, warmth, intuition, tenderness, love, EMOTION. We have to discover in ourselves that which has lain dormant for hundreds of years, that society has obscured and hidden until we act as robots -stiffly, automatically, coldly. —South London Men Against Sexism (1974) Traditionally, the world of emotions has been associated with women and femininity. Since masculinity has traditionally been defined as the opposite of femininity (Segal New xxiii), men and masculinities have been usually defined as rational and unemotional. Thus, a large number of masculinity scholars associate masculinity with emotional control. It is often claimed that men are actually victims as well of patriarchal masculinity, because it inhibits expression of men’s inner emotional selves and thus makes them prone to multiple psychological and even physical problems. Indeed, much 163 164 contemporary research on men’s emotions seems to have been directly influenced by the men’s studies literature of the seventies, which, in line with feminist arguments, insisted that men also needed liberating emotionally. As Joseph Pleck and Jack Sawyer put it, “some of us are searching for new ways to work that will more fully express ourselves rather than our learned desire for masculinity” (95). Many studies of literary masculinities, as Shamir and Travis (Introduction 1-2) elaborate, have provided similar arguments, claiming that American (literary) men prefer “freedom” and individuality to women, sexuality, and emotional attachments. Scholars like Nina Baym and Leslie A. Fiedler have read American culture and literature, especially through the nineteenth century, as illustrating men’s flight from the sphere of sentiment. In twentieth-century studies of modernism, the code hero116 has also been described as the strong, aggressive, and emotionally stifled prototypical “Real Man,” while more recently scholars, as Shamir and Travis (Introduction 1-2) insist, have begun to refer to “American Cool,” the 116 The term code hero, as Boker (307) reminds us, was originally coined by Hemingway’s critics. Initially, it was employed by New Critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren to describe a person’s (particularly a sportsman’s) ability to display “grace under pressure.” It has since been described as a moral code that involves courage, dignity, and honor when faced with athletic or military challenges requiring physical aptitudes. Chapter 3 165 contemporary male representative of the code of emotional restraint and disengagement. While masculinity and emotions have thus been usually defined as intrinsically opposed, the present chapter sets out to demonstrate how the exclusive equation of emotions with femininity is a cultural and historical construction. This has two main implications. First, masculinity and sentimentality have not always been mutually exclusive. Second, what was culturally and historically constructed can also be deconstructed from socio- cultural and historicist analytical perspectives. Thus, the chapter analyzes the close, though often neglected, relationship between masculinity and emotion in American culture and history and, even more importantly, explores the political potential of emotions to transform existing socio- cultural relations and structures. More specifically, attention will be paid to the political potential of profeminist men’s emotions to transform masculinities and gender relations. It is true that some men’s studies and groups have focused almost exclusively on helping men explore and express their emotional inner selves, thus neglecting other socio-political aspects of masculinity. Little wonder, then, that a number of masculinity scholars (see, for example, Segal Slow; Robinson) have defined emotions as opposed to 166 social change in masculinities and gender relations. Drawing on the innovative work of several writers, however, I will attempt to challenge this binarism, defining emotions not as preceding political practice but as political practice, not against the social but as social. In order to illustrate this socio-political redefinition of emotion, I will analyze the political potential of profeminist men’s emotions as part of the feminist struggle for social and gender equality. The chapter as a whole should also serve, therefore, to illustrate one of the main theoretical arguments put forward in chapter 2- namely, that (white heterosexual) masculinity is far from stable or monolithic. While it is undeniable that patriarchal structures keep oppressing women -as well as some (homosexual) men-, the fact that some (white heterosexual) men are actively and emotionally involved in feminism does indeed seem to challenge monolithic views of (white heterosexual) masculinity as being synonymous with patriarchy. 3. 1. The feminization of sentiment in American culture Despite the pervasive and radical separation between masculinity and emotion in contemporary (Euro-American) culture, emotion has not always Chapter 3 167 been considered feminine. In her seminal text XY: On Masculine Identity (1992), Elisabeth Badinter (10-3) refers, for example, to the rise of male sentimentality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France and England. Badinter explains that the crudeness of the men of Henri IV’s court and the men of the Fronde (1648-1653), both of whom diminished women and feminine values, was soon contested by the French précieuses, ladies “refined” in sentiment and language. French preciosity reached its height between 1650 and 1660 and became the first expression of feminism in both France and England. The précieuse was an emancipated woman who advocated feminist values. She defended, for example, a new model of womanhood which took into consideration the possibility of her social ascension and her right to dignity. She demanded the right to education and attacked marriage as the very cause of the institution of patriarchy. Challenging the authority of both father and husband, the précieuses rejected not only marriage but also maternity. As Badinter comments, “they advocated trial marriage and the severance of such marriage after the birth of an heir, who would be entrusted to his father’s care” (10-1). The précieuses claimed their right to both freedom and love, and so they advocated a tender and platonic sentiment between men and women. 168 Challenging the patriarchal bonds between men and women, who married each other without love, the précieuses saw love as, first and foremost, the love of a man for a woman, rather than the opposite. As Badinter herself concludes in this respect, “by demanding of a man in love a limitless submission which bordered on masochism, they reversed the dominant model of masculinity, that of the brutal and demanding man, or the vulgar husband who believed everything was permitted to him” (13). Thus, the précieuses seemed to reverse traditional gender norms. A few men, the précieux, accepted the new rules. Although their number was small, their influence was remarkable. As Badinter (11) explains, they adopted a feminine and refined style -long wigs, extravagant feathers, band collars, chin tufts, perfume, rouge- which was copied by other (lower-class) men. Men who wanted to be distinguished now made it a rule to appear civilized, courteous, and delicate. Traditionally feminine values began to progress in the seventeenth century to the point of appearing dominant in the following century.117 The debate over masculine identity was even more explicit in England than in France (Badinter 12-3). In addition to their freedom, English 117 Although the précieux were originally aristocratic men, their influence extended to lower-class men over the eighteenth century (Badinter 11). Chapter 3 169 feminists demanded sexual equality, that is, the right to sexual pleasure and the right not to be abandoned when they became pregnant. England seemed to experience a significant crisis of masculinity between 1688 and 1714 (the period of the English Restoration), which entailed questioning the roles of men and women in marriage, the family, and sexuality. The meaning of gender and masculinity became the subject of a much heated debate. English feminists did not only ask for the equality of desires and rights, but they also asked men to be gentler, more feminine. Thus, the Enlightenment, in both England and France, brought about the “feminization of customs and of men” (Badinter 12).118 As Badinter (12-3) elaborates, the Enlightenment represents a first rupture in the history of virility, and was the most feminist period of European history before the present day. On the one hand, manly values were being challenged, or at least not attracting much attention. War no longer had the importance and the status it once had and hunting had become an amusement. Young noblemen spent more time in salons or in 118 It is true, however, that the précieux were differently received in England and in France. As Badinter (12)

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