Your manhood can be revoked!

The following are adapted excerpts from my "Tough Enough? Beyond the dominion of conventional masculinity in the politics of national security" -- a presentation to the Women in Public Policy weekly seminar, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA USA, 18 October 2005.

These excerpts addresses the contingency of manhood, the social enforcement of conventionality, and how this is used to create gender-based 'war parties' to pursue international violence. They also explore what's to be done to move beyond this sort of destructive politics.

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While conventional womanhood status is achieved for the most part through biological processes, conventional manhood status is granted by other males after ritualized ordeals and other social tests that often involve symbolic or actual violence. That other men are the keepers of manhood status has important consequences for gender politics. Men live with their manhood under the constant threat of revocation, and this contingency is a powerful enforcer of conventional power relations among males.

To illustrate how contingent manhood fits into the discourse about security and how it shores up a hegemonic masculinity I refer to the words of an archetypical man of action who in a moment of enthusiasm told us something interesting about how he experienced the fighting in Afghanistan.

On February 4th of 2005 the AP quotes Marine Corps Lt. Gen James Mattis as saying:

Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of hoot… It's fun to shoot some people. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

What drew my attention in this statement is that Mattis is justifying his pleasure in lethal violence within a cultural notion of 'manhood' and, in particular, the issue of who has it and who doesn't. Mattis derides the manhood of his enemy counterparts and once Mattis can judge them as less than real men he finds full permission to enjoy killing them.

Feminists have pointed out that in the stories of war the victor is usually gendered male and often the vanquished is gendered (or re-gendered) female [Goldstein p. 371]. In the binary system of conventional masculinity and femininity, if you have your manhood taken away what are you other than a woman, or in the masculinist discourse, a sissy or a girly-man? Furthermore, while a woman is tolerated in her place, in this system of thought there is no place for 'out of their place' males who are named and rejected as sissies, girly-men, fags, or queers.

From an international relations perspective the personal motivations of an individual soldier such as Mattis are well below the radar: state interests and associated motives are thought of as quite different from those of individuals in the state system. Furthermore there is no evidence I know of that most soldiers are motivated to fight by ideas such as Mattis' or that the military is a haven for men who share those ideas.

Nonetheless, Mattis's story provides me with a good introduction to a key political premise:

For every person like Mattis in the military there are undoubtedly ten, twenty or a hundred in civilian life. And in the American system of governance wars are pursued by ad hoc war coalitions that need to mobilize diverse groupings of political actors. People who are inclined to fight over matters of manhood offer a significant and reliable part of war coalitions and this group tracks closely to conventional masculine identity.

Now I want to return your attention to Mattis' seemingly gratuitous remark that he likes brawling! Brawling is fighting, usually fist fighting, for sport. People who do it tend to think of it as a worthy activity, and even if bloodied in the process, it is experienced first and foremost as fun. Participants who are usually male pride themselves with being ready for a fight at the slightest provocation. I believe Mattis made this remark about brawling because our culture includes the notion that real men are brawlers, and his affinity for brawling shores up his identity as a 'real man.'

However, brawling is not something that I have ever, ever wanted to do or thought might be fun. And when I have witnessed it I have made a point to give it a wide berth. Mattis' statement signaled that his masculinity is very different from mine.

I believe there is some more than trivial portion of males in our society who feel something like me and who exclude from their masculine identity affinity for brawling and, indeed, most any violence against males or females. I propose to you that this portion of males, when organized into self-confident identity and in alignment with other gender identity groupings, represents a potentially significant political expression in regards to national security policy. Right now organization of these males is inhibited, but with attention to this potential, this situation could change in the next decades.

However, under current conditions of hegemony the leading males who have laid claim to the title of 'real men' are able to make political use of the binary opposition of 'real man' and 'not a man' which is internalized in nearly all males. They use this to suppress opposing political expression of other males who are inclined toward different security policy preferences and to thereby rather too easily pull them into a hegemonic consensus.

If other masculinities are to challenge the hegemony of the conventional, we must resist the temptation to contest the character of a 'real man' -- to redefine this type - to say "We are real men of a different sort..."

The best strategy, I believe, is to cede to conservatives this particular ground, the lonely mountain top held by real men. Instead we need to develop multiple strong points for males in a diverse gender space of politics. I stress the word 'develop' since I believe there are as yet few alternative strong points in gender space for males to occupy. Gay man is one such point that has some strength, culturally and politically. But we need several others.

When I refer to gender space I am thinking about all of that space between and around what has traditionally been placed into a duality of masculine and feminine. I believe there is a multidimensional space of gender possibilities that don't lie in a straight line between man and woman. Gay, lesbian and transgender (and more recently queer) culture and politics has brought awareness of this gender space, especially among younger Americans who are increasingly open and accepting of a wide range of gender expressions simply unimaginable a couple decades ago.

Although GLBT and Q cultures are leading the way in this discovery, it is not my contention that they as an allied set of social movements will gain sufficient power to transform the politics of national security in the foreseeable future. Rather, my hypothesis is that there is some meaningful portion of males, many of whom are sexually straight and don't currently identify with queer culture, who have masculinities distinct from the traditional 'real man' type. This set might be composed of two or three different masculine types. Right now we simply don't know much about this male gender space and as part of a research agenda we need to learn more about these males and the gender space they occupy.

Just as women have organized themselves in opposition to conventional feminine roles and behaviors and then moved on to positive new feminine identities, there is latent potential for males to make this move away from conventional masculinity. It is time to realize this potential!

To restate my political hypothesis:

In the set of other masculinities, that already exists yet is currently subordinate, there is considerable political latency which could be organized into eventual alliance with progressive women to advance security policies that are less reliant on violence. Effective political organization will require establishing strong points of identity and confidence for these males.

The power of this set of other masculinities will remain latent as long as these males are kept within the confines of conventional masculinity by a combination of shaming and physical intimidation and the reified idea that there is only one gender choice for males - "real man" or "not a man." It is routine for boys growing up to be teased, harassed, and beaten if they stray ever so little from conventional male looks or behavior. This is something I can vividly remember from my childhood.

At the extreme, many of the most vicious hate crimes are against gays, transsexuals, and people of ambiguous gender appearance and behavior.

Returning to the potential political expression of males who are not fixed in the conventional masculine posture, the requisites for realizing their potential political power when aligned with women are these:

1. describing and "raising consciousness" about these different masculinities so that males can recognize them in themselves and have the option of identifying with one or another of their aspects or types.

2. an impassioned struggle, along the lines that gays have mounted in the last thirty years, against the shaming and physical intimidation of boys and men; and

3. following the examples of gays and lesbians, creating a proud and assertive political and social expression for these male gender variants.

I don't want to speculate on how long it will take for these new masculinities to emerge as a contending political force, but I am willing to hazard a prediction that a generation from now gender expression in politics, including national security politics, will be very different than it is now.

posted by Charles Knight

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in Americaby Stan Goff

Stan Goff has written this interesting essay on militarism, fascism, and masculinity -- Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America.

An excerpt:

The film genre that most closely corresponds to a fascist mind-set is the male revenge fantasy, wherein after some offense is given that signifies the breakdown of order (usually resulting in the death or mortal imperilment of idealized wives or children) in which Enlightenment social conventions prove inadequate, and the release of irrational male violence is required to set the world straight again. Any reader can list these fantasies without a cue. It is one of the most common film genres in American society.

R. W. Connell wrote in Masculinities (University of California Press, 1995):

In gender terms, fascism was the naked reassertion of male supremacy in societies that had been moving toward equality for women. To accomplish this, fascism promoted new images of hegemonic masculinity, glorifying irrationality ("the triumph of the will”, thinking with “the blood") and the unrestrained violence of the frontline soldier.

a female-male alliance supports a profound shift in the culture of violence

The following is excerpted from Security in the Great Transition by Charles Knight, published by the Tellus Institute, 2006. It is an imagined history of 21st Century warfare and international security written from the perspective of a grateful historian in 2084.

Few of the advancements in international security arrangements and in the demilitarization of nation states we enjoy today would have been possible if there had not been a deep change in culture from below. The previous century had already witnessed less glorification of warring and the rise to prominence of several outstanding leaders and movements committed to non-violent political struggle.

In the twenty-first century a deeper cultural change happened. Non-violent practice became central to many more people's lives and identities at all levels of relationships, from the personal to the global. Historians trace this “culture revolution” back to the feminist and gay liberation struggles of the twentieth century. By the second decade of the twenty-first century these movements had evolved into broad and multi-variant gender revolution that found strong resonance in the Global Citizens Movement that was then gaining strength (Kriegman, 2006). More and more people came to understand that gender identity and roles were much more of a choice (and had many more possibilities) than had been understood in previous generations. Gender identity and roles were increasingly understood as non-dichotomous, occupying a complex space of sexual and gender behavior possibilities. Gender expression was an active, creative, and inventive part of life and very much a choice in the way of being with and among others.

Although there was significant cultural resistance to this gender revolution, many observers expressed surprise at how quickly millions, especially among the young, broke with conventional identities to join in the freedom of open gender expression. For matters of security this “revolution” had several effects: a significant minority of males began to identify with a masculinity that did not include an affinity for violent or dominating relations with others and a majority of females were no longer willing to cede management of security (in their immediate lives and internationally) to males. This had political effect in that it became much harder to form political coalitions in support of wars—in particular, fewer people were willing to throw their political support behind organized violence. Also many more females aspired to be elected or promoted into positions of power and found success, often supported by significant numbers of males who preferred less violent and less dominating approaches to security issues frequently favored by female leaders.

This female-male alliance caused a profound shift in the culture of violence at the personal, familial, and community level. As the century progressed the steady decrease in the size of national armies and the numbers of wars was matched by a similarly paced decrease in violence “domestically”, the result of intensive social and political organizing by this growing female-male gender alliance. Of course, this change in gender identities and relations was not evenly paced across cultures and societies, but an unmistakable global trend was apparent that supported lower levels of international, inter-communal, and inter-personal violence.

gender
peace
masculinities

Jean Baker Miller - celebrating her life and work

This past weekend I attended a memorial celebration of the life and work of Jean Baker Miller, one of the founding contributors to the branch of feminist psychotherapy and psychology known as Relational-Cultural Theory. She was also wife of a dear colleague of mine. I can attest that she was simply a wonderful human being and she will be deeply missed by those of us lucky enough to have known her!

I reproduce below a 'brief summary' of Relational-Cultural Theory by two of Jean's closest collaborators, Judith Jordan and Linda Hartling.

Believe me when I say this has everything to do with new masculinities.

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The Development of Relational-Cultural Theory

by Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D., Director and Linda M. Hartling, Ph.D., Associate Director, Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, Wellesley Centers for Women ~ 781-283-3800 ~ http://www.jbmti.org

Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) is rooted in the groundbreaking work of Jean Baker Miller, who proposed a new understanding of human development in her book Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1976). In 1978, Jean Baker Miller, a psychoanalyst, along with three psychologists, Judith Jordan, Irene Stiver, and Janet Surrey, began meeting informally to re-examine developmental psychology and clinical practice (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991). Their twice-a-month meetings were the beginning of a collaborative theory-building group that led to the birth of a revolutionary approach to understanding psychological development.

In 1981, Jean Baker Miller was appointed as the first director of the Stone Center at Wellesley College and the theory-building group found an institutional home, allied with the Stone Center’s mission to study psychological development and the prevention of psychological problems. At the Stone Center, the theory group initiated a series of colloquia in which they, along with other scholars and researchers, explored the complexities of women’s development. Over the last twenty years, the proceedings from these colloquia and other presentations have been documented and published as over 100 "works in progress." These works became the core writings that describe the fundamental concepts of the theory that has become known as RCT.

Today, many of the core ideas underlying RCT are articulated in several books (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991; Jordan, 1997; Miller & Stiver, 1997; Walker & Rosen, 2004; Jordan, Walker, & Hartling, 2004; Robb, 2006). These ideas suggest that all growth occurs in connection, that all people yearn for connection, and that growth-fostering relationships are created through mutual empathy and mutual empowerment. In particular, Jean Baker Miller (1986) described five good things that characterize a growth-fostering relationship:

1) increased zest (vitality),

2) increased ability to take action (empowerment),

3) increased clarity (a clearer picture of one’s self, the other, and the relationship),

4) increased sense of worth, and

5) a desire for relationships beyond that particular relationship.

These five good things describe the outcomes of growth-fostering relationships, that is, the outcomes when growth occurs through mutual empowerment and mutual empathy; we grow not toward separation, but toward greater mutuality and empathic possibility.

In addition to describing the benefits of growth-fostering relationships, i.e., connection, RCT explores the impact of disconnection, recognizing that disconnection is an inevitable part of being in relationship (caused by empathic failures, relational violations, injuries, etc.). When, in response to a disconnection, the injured (especially the less powerful) person is able to represent her feelings and the other person is able to respond empathically, experiences of disconnection can lead to a strengthened relationship and an increased sense of relational competence, i.e., being able to effect change and feeling effective in connections (Jordan, 1999). However, when the injured or less powerful person is unable to represent herself or her feelings in a relationship, or when she receives a response of indifference, additional injury, or denial of her experience, she will begin to keep aspects of herself out of relationship in order to keep the relationship. In RCT, this is referred to as the central relational 2 paradox (Miller & Stiver, 1997). In these situations, the individual will use a variety of strategies—known as strategies of disconnection or survival—to twist herself to fit into the relationships available, becoming less and less authentic (Miller, 1988). This is similar to the pathway that Carol Gilligan traces for adolescent girls who keep more and more of themselves out of relationship in order to stay in relationship (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan, Lyons, & Hanmer, 1990). This pathway leads to failures in growth-fostering relationships, accompanied by diminished zest, empowerment, clarity, worth, and desire for connection. Within this context, one’s natural yearning for connection becomes a signal of danger; the individual comes to dread the vulnerability necessary to fully engage in growth-fostering relationships.

While RCT was initially developed to understand women’s psychological experience, it is increasingly being used to gain a better understanding of all human experience, including men’s experience [bold added]. Special attention is being paid to examining the importance of difference, particularly difference informed by imbalances in power and privilege. RCT is the foundation for a growing body of research on depression, trauma, eating disorders, substance abuse, chronic illness, mother-daughter relationships, lesbian relationships, as well as issues of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, along with a multitude of other psychological and social problems (Hartling & Ly, 2000).

Social/Cultural Disconnections

Another key component of therapy based on RCT is the recognition that disconnections as well as opportunities for growth occur not only on the individual or familial level, but also occur at the sociocultural level. Societal practices of categorizing, stereotyping, and stratifying individuals have an enormous impact on peoples’ sense of connection and disconnection (Walker, 1999, 2001; Walker & Miller, 2001). Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism impede all individuals’ ability to engage and participate in growth-fostering relationships. RCT suggests that therapists must be aware that different forms of unearned advantage and power accrue to different categories of identity. For example, being middle-class, white, or heterosexual carries with it all sorts of unearned privilege in a society that values these characteristics over others. bell hooks’ notion of “margin” captures some of the dynamics of this distribution of privilege and advantage (hooks, 1984). Those at the center hold the power of naming reality, the power of naming deviance and norms, and often hold the power to eliminate the possibility of open conflict with or challenge from those who are forced to the margins. The exercise of dominance and privilege suppresses authenticity and mutuality in relationships, limiting and interfering with the formation of growth-fostering relationships. These sociocultural dynamics inflict disconnection, silence, shame, and isolation on marginalized groups. These issues must be in the forefront of the therapist’s work with a client. Thus, the central tenet of RCT is that people develop through and toward relationship, which occurs within and is influenced by a cultural context. Above all, RCT asserts that people need to be in connection in order to change, to open up, to shift, to transform, to heal, and to grow.

*The above article is adapted from Jordan, J.V., & Hartling, L.M., (2002). New Developments in Relational-Cultural Theory. In M. Ballou & L.S. Brown (Eds.), Rethinking Mental Health and Disorders: Feminist Perspectives (pp. 48-70). New York: Guilford Publications.


References

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Boston: Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, C., Lyons, N. P., & Hanmer, T. J. (Eds.). (1990). Making connections: The relational worlds of adolescent girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hartling, L. M., & Ly, J. (2000). Relational references: A selected bibliography of theory, research, and applications. Project Report, No. 7. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory from margin to center. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Jordan, J. V. (Ed.). (1997).

Women's Growth in Diversity: More writings from the Stone Center. New
York: Guilford Press.

Jordan, J. V. (1999). Toward connection and competence. Work in Progress, No. 83. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

Jordan, J. V., Kaplan, A. G., Miller, J. B., Stiver, I. P., & Surrey, J. L. (1991). Women's growth in connection: Writings from the Stone Center. New York: Guilford Press.

Jordan, J. V., Walker, M., & Hartling, L. M. (Eds.). (2004). The complexity of connection: Writings from the Stone Center's Jean Baker Miller Training Institute. NY: Guilford Press.

Miller, J. B. (1976). Toward a new psychology of women. Boston: Beacon Press.

Miller, J. B. (1988). Connections, disconnections, and violations. Work in Progress, No. 33. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

Miller, J. B., & Stiver, I. P. (1997). The healing connection: How women form relationships in therapy and in life. Boston: Beacon Press.

Robb, C. (2006). This changes everything: The relational revolution in psychology. NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Walker, M. (1999). Race, self, and society: Relational challenges in a culture of disconnection. Work in Progress, No. 85. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

Walker, M. (2001). When racism gets personal. Work in Progress, No. 93. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

Walker, M., & Miller, J. B. (2001). Racial images and relational possibilities. Talking Paper, No. 2. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

Walker, M. & Rosen, R. (Eds.). (2004). How connections heal: Stories from Relational-Cultural Therapy. NY: Guilford Press.

the other & beyond male -- what's he like?

The following is adapted from some exploratory writing I did earlier this year:

A premise of my work on male gender identity and politics is that there is already some significant minority of males who reject (consciously or in their being in the world) the dominant male gender identity and role. I ask: around which characteristics and what behaviors might these males eventually discover each other and then combine into a new gender identity?

First, they would understand how hard it is for a male in this patriarchal society to express love and be in loving relationships of mutuality. They would consciously be in pursuit of healing this wound in themselves and of sharing the rewards of love with other men and women (thanks to bell hooks for articulating this.)

Men who reject Real Manhood would desire the joys and challenges of nurturing the young, the sick, the old, and their much-of-the-time healthy friends. They would want access to as much of their emotional and spiritual life as possible and they would be ready to struggle against cultures that seek to stifle it in the name of efficiency and order.

These men would reject violence for the deep hurt it does to the community and they would prepare themselves to struggle fiercely and with respect for others to protect that which is precious in their families, community and world.

They would work to accept the existential vulnerability of their corporal life in a world of uncertainty. By accepting vulnerability they would give up the illusion of control which drives so much of the will to dominate.

C.D.Knight

of me (the editor) and this blog

My feminist friends tell me that it is important to ‘locate’ myself when I write. And blog culture is very conducive to writing about ‘me’, so for this first post on this new blog I will take the hint and tell you something about myself and why I am taking the trouble to create this blog.

Professionally I work as a national security analyst. I work for a ‘think tank’ and I spend about half my time writing critical studies of U.S. defense policy (that should help you locate my political leanings) and the other half of my work goes to making information about national security issues available on the Web so that millions of people in the United States and around the world (we have actually reached millions with our Internet sites) are better informed and therefore better prepared to engage in the politics of security.

I am a male. My ancestry is primarily European-American. My family has accumulated and passed along considerable wealth over generations. I am sixty years-old. I have been married to the same woman for almost forty years. I have three children and two grandchildren. Pretty straight! At least you’d think so by the description so far. And I have been pretty lucky, in many ways! More about me in future posts...I promise.

Back to national security. Several years ago I started to get serious about gender and national security. I watched while George Bush and Karl Rove successfully called John Kerry’s masculinity into question around a war in which Kerry had served with distinction while Bush had used family connections to avoid going. Seemed like an unlikely formula for political success. But Bush and Rove used male insecurity and female attachment to the most fundamental of bargains in patriarchy (men protecting the women folk) to build an election victory.

It was then that I decided that in order to make it harder for men like George Bush to lead us into wars we need to free as many males as possible from the tyranny of wondering if they are ‘real men’ so that they can confidently say ‘no’ to war (as well as other destructive behaviors.) And that will take a movement of liberation of males from the confines of conventional masculinity.

A friend called my attention to the literature of people who have trans-gendered. Reading their stories really brought home to me how much of what we experience as our gender is socially constructed. If trans people can do it and if we just allow ourselves to think outside the confines of the binary Male/Female, the possibilities for liberating males is huge and obvious.

One day, inspired, I started to draft a manifesto about this type of male liberation. I showed it to some trusted feminist friends and the feedback I got convinced me that it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. And besides, a manifesto is a political document, and, as such, it is better if it represents the views of more than one person. So I will ask some others to help me revise and add their voices to it. When it appears in print I trust it will be the stronger for it.

Meanwhile, what about this blog? I imagine developing here, in a less formal way, some of the ideas that are in my draft manifesto and other essays I have written to date. There is so much that needs to be explored. I will also invite some of the wonderful people I have met in gender studies and in feminist politics to join me here with their ideas and comments. I invite your thoughts, dear reader, and will post those I judge to add something meaningful to a mutual exploration of promising new gender space. Write me at otherbeyond(at)gmail.com.

C.D.Knight