What Everyone Gets Wrong About Manhood and Masculinity
The poet Robert Bly — who died on Nov. 21, at the age of 94 — was best-known for his controversial work of archetypal psychology, Iron…
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The poet Robert Bly — who died on Nov. 21, at the age of 94 — was best-known for his controversial work of archetypal psychology, Iron John: A Book About Men.
In the 1990s, Americans weren’t nearly as polarized on gender as we are now; Bly’s work had broad crossover appeal. It spent 62 weeks on the bestseller list. I can still remember my father passing a worn hardcover edition to my older brother. The book became a cultural phenomenon, launching a “mythopoetic men’s movement.”
Bly and his colleagues were advocating for a men’s movement that would complement, not oppose, second wave feminism. Nonetheless, he was widely criticized by folks who recognized the movement’s latent misogyny. They were correct. A good argument can be made that Bly’s work laid the foundation for incels, the manosphere, and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.
According to the New York Times obituary, Bly’s work “drew on myths, legends, poetry and science of a sort to make the case that American men had grown soft and feminized and needed to rediscover their primitive virtues of ferocity and audacity and thus regain the self-confidence to be nurturing fathers and mentors.” Hence, nobody who is well acquainted with Iron John should’ve been surprised last month when Sen. Josh Hawley complained at about “the deconstruction of American men” and called for “a revival of strong and healthy manhood” at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando. This perspective is part of long tradition: men whining about how emasculated they feel while living a culture that’s progressing — at an appallingly sluggish pace — toward gender parity.
Hawley doubled-down on his politically-divisive iteration of Bly’s original message in a follow-up interview with Axios on HBO. He complained that “the Left” devalues masculinity and drives young men to withdraw “into the enclave of idleness and porn and video games.” Folks on Twitter were outraged. Writers on Substack went ballistic. But I suspect most people’s consternation had more to do with residual ire about Hawley’s January 6 fist pump than his actual comments. After all, while his take on manhood is undoubtedly misguided, it’s not uniquely contemporary, or even partisan.
When it comes to stereotypical rhetoric about men and women, progressives and conservatives are more alike than dissimilar. Folks on both sides of political spectrum struggle to think beyond familiar conceptions of gender. When confronted with troublesome trends, like the decline in men’s college enrollment and completion, and a rising suicide rateamong middle age white men, both gravitate toward pop-psychology and pseudoscience for answers. Most pundits conclude that feelings of inferiority have made today’s men more apathetic and rageful than ever before. Liberals blame it on economic disenfranchisement and changing socio-cultural norms. Conservatives blame it on elite liberal academic jargon and fragile millennials.
Either way, the explanations are ineffectual. They’re the equivalent of an over-protective mom assuring her son that the other kids only tease him because they’re jealous. This is the real “coddling” that should worry everyone. Again and again, we frame problematic trends in masculinity as understandable recompense. These are feeble attempts to shield boys and men from discomfort, by validating and reinforcing male entitlement. It doesn’t help. What boys and men really need is not more excuses and scapegoating, but rather honest and meaningful support as they confront the inevitable disruption of the patriarchal status quo.
The truth is most boys and men are just as unprepared for the 2020s as Robert Bly’s contemporaries were for the 1990s. They don’t have the vocabulary, social-emotional acumen, or cognitive tools necessary to adequately confront feminist movement. They don’t know how to imagine themselves without the privileges and entitlements of patriarchy. And as a result, some men have become reactionary. They blame women, mothers, and the “identity politics” of elite liberal college professors like me. They fight political battles against women’s reproductive rights because they unconsciously mistake non-cisgender-male bodies as a threat. Of course, the only real threat is a lack of meaningful symbolic grounding, a dearth of aspirational imagery that has been adequately updated to align with the current cultural ethos.
This becomes clear when you consider what Sen. Hawley gets right. For instance, it’s true that video games are often a place where kids go to find refuge. But it’s not to escape so-called woke ideology. Instead, it’s where they find alternatives to the locker room bullying and status-jockeying that typically characterizes male comradery. Contrary to the mainstream anti-screen time rhetoric, studies have consistently debunked the notion that digital media has an adverse effect on teen mental health; most dependable research indicates the opposite; many teens turn online when looking for supportive outlets for dealing with emotional tension. They not only find like-minded communities on social media and multiplayer games, but also alternative hierarchies that tend to be based more on digital and/or in-game merit than stereotypical identity signifiers. In other words, gamers have their own pecking order that’s not necessarily akin to what Television’s mean-girl and jock-bully teen soap-operas have conditioned us to expect. Still, different is not necessarily better. Video games are often just another arena in which teen boys act out the ritual violence and competition that has long been at the core of ordinary American manhood.
Sen. Hawley may also be correct that teen boys are watching porn to deal with feelings of insecurity and marginalization. But it’s absurd to say that it’s because they feel like masculinity has been devalued. More likely, the opposite is true. Porn thrives because boys have been socialized — under patriarchy — to equate misogynist sexual domination with status and power. It’s a way to make themselves feel more assertive. They turn to fantasy to act out a more individualistic identity; it’s playing make-believe to fortify a sense of self. Porn helps boys compensate for the feelings of inferiority which are a well-documented and endemic characteristic of “precarious manhood.” That’s the term experts use to describe how men constantly need to prove their masculine status. As Liz Plank writes in her book, For the Love of Men: A New Vision of Mindful Masculinity, “Masculinity is procured through ritualized and often-public social behaviors.” And one defining characteristic of American manhood is that, for individuals, it’s always threatened.
The use of both porn and video games has nothing to do with the proliferation of progressive gender theory or the supposed devaluation of masculinity. Instead, these are well-worn instruments of patriarchal socialization. Just like the old Iron John concern that manhood has lost its mojo, commodified sex and brutal competition are not new. They are products created by and for a culture that values — rather than devalues — patriarchal manhood. These are not the symptoms of masculine decline, but rather indications that American manhood remains entrenched.
