History is a narrative. He who weaves the threads of its story wields considerable power. And virtually without exception, it's been men who've delineated these narratives. Only in the last century or so have female voices been elevated from under the oppressive patriarchal thumb to something that - whilst hardly equal in volume or status - can at least be heard. The reason for the lack of status is because of the enduring momentum of centuries of male-centric historical narrative. Ultimately, this has skewed the perception of history for many to a perspective that believes the role played by women over the last few millennia is comparatively peripheral compared to those of men. Despite the best efforts to subjugate women, the feminine has endured; it has resisted attempts to deny its importance. The distillation of the idea of the feminine itself is an othering act, in that male-centric ideologies always seek to differentiate between male and female attributes and virtues as a means of controlling and containing their influence on the desired male order. The dichotomous definition of women into the pure, virginal ideal or the whorish corruption had one purpose; to contain women within the ignorance and dependences valorised by de-sexualised notion of purity or justify the shaming and shunning of those women who dared to defy these limitations. Notably, Christianity and Islam offered (and still offer) a self-serving veneer of legitimacy to this forced division, by naturalising the neutralisation of the female presence in their iterations of religious functionality and theology. Even the figure of Mary - a largely neglected biblical figure until the rise of the rather cultish Marian theologies of the third century - maintained the chaste ideal despite the inconvenience of birth.
The fact that it is women who give birth rather than men is the defining resentment and insecurity at the heart of patriarchal ideology. Men cannot give birth, so they strive to control the lives of the women who do. It's ironic that Freud spoke rather foolishly of penis envy when arguably the defining characteristic of history as it exists in practical and narrative form is one of womb envy. It's illogical for genealogy to pass down the male line because for millennia, the male parentage was impossible to verify, whereas the evidence for female parentage is always irrefutable. The 'logic' for behind male superiority in the gender dynamic and the history that recounts it is an enduring extrapolation of male physical strength relative to that of women. As a biological reality, it cannot be discounted. But in all manner of ways, interpersonal dynamics have long transcended the merely physical; increasingly, battles were won through strategic and technological superiority, the attainment of leadership became an exercise in charismatic appeal, and as a result, singular physicality became largely irrelevant. At no point in the near future will Vladimir Putin challenge Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a duel. And yet, the argument for maintaining certain gender divides hinges on an effectively defunct biological reality.
The 'emasculation' of maleness continues to be distorted and exploited. In much the same way that the beauty industry exploits women, so too do the industries that valorise the muscularisation of men. Both are toxic in their own ways, but it's the latter that's far more dangerous because of the insecurities it imbeds and the misogyny it enshrines. It does so in two ways: it creates the sense within those men who pursue and attain the bastardised hypermasculine physical ideal a sense of their own value and status that can very easily turn toxic, due to the belief that this superiority must be asserted and defended, coupled with the drug use often entailed in pursuing so physically unnatural a shape. Worse, however, is the deep sense of insecurity that the 'success' of this group can create in those who aspire with equal fervour to a comparable position of esteem, only to live with the shame and humiliation of falling short. What's left for these males is a feeling of profound inadequacy, not just in relation to other men, but to women themselves. These are the men for whom the historicity of masculine 'superiority' is the foundation of their self-esteem. It's genuinely tragic that so many find themselves in so precarious position, because the price paid by literally billions of men and women around the world as a result is calamitous.
So much of what creates conflict within the male/female gender dynamic is the clash between the desire for control and the need for acceptance. Put simply, men and women want to be accepted on their own terms, which is the binary opposite of a true relationship. Relationships don't work this way on a personalised level, nor does the collective relationship between genders. That gender is a far more pluralised concept than this binary suggests is important and irrelevant, because the sheer size of the male and female gender groups will perennially tilt the dynamic in their favour, largely underpinned by the most simplistic of gender constructs, which are invariably the most traditional. This helps explain the resistance in some sections of society to accept or normalise minority genders. To call them non-traditional might imply a newness to their existence, which would be incorrect; the two majority genders have always overlapped like a Venn diagram, and there have always been people in the that overlapping space. The issue was always one of acceptance rather than existence.
The admission of women into the process of generating an historical narrative is one that has occurred slowly and from the perspective of those charged with facilitating it, very reluctantly. Men have disproportionately occupied position of political, economic, intellectual and cultural power for millennia, and have actively sought to maintain an exclusionary divide between the roles they occupy and the women who could just as easily do so. It's true that the issue is simply one of control, but what that doesn't offer is the kind of nuanced understanding required to break down its ramifications or its origins.
It all comes back to the fact that men don't create life. Yes, they are fifty percent of the genetic equation, but they cannot of themselves secure the future of humanity. This is one of the reasons as to why in some of the world's most divided nations that the question of abortion is as polarised as it is. One of the enduring myths in the United States, for example, is that it is a religious issue. It isn't. Like so many gendered issues, it rests on the twin notions of power and control. The majority of America's extremist Right is male. Even though many women are ideologically opposed to abortion, their reasons for being so are profoundly illogical from a scriptural perspective. Life is not considered sacred at any point in the Old or New Testaments. Killing is frequently a legitimate - even obligatory act. And it isn't just the fickle or the faithless who can be acceptably killed, but innocent babies. The notion that life within the womb has been so definitively sanctified but life outside of it so cheap cannot possibly be sufficient grounds for the politicisation of birth control to be so significant an issue for so many. In part it is due to the weaponisation of religious absolutism as means to control an increasingly under-educated America; by conditioning millions to view the termination of pregnancies creates the impression that adherents to the position feel entitled to claim ownership of a morally unimpeachable position, even though when viewed in a broader context, no such claim can be made.
It is the fact that it is women who determine whether or not a child is born is unacceptable for those men who see their primacy as an essential component of the societal status quo. It reduces them - in their eyes - to a secondary role that their collectively dependent identity construct cannot withstand. Psychologically, men are wired to win or to lose - at least on a primal level – and this near-genetic disposition affects practically the entirety of male thinking and male behaviour. As male babies become boys, their relationship with their mothers becomes increasingly complicated by the confusion over gender roles. Men struggle - under the weight of biological and cultural history - to cope being in an equal position, let alone a subordinate one. It's as likely as not that the biological reality of sexual penetration endows the man with a sense of his active importance compared to the woman's more passive role. That the man emerges from the woman seems to be something that some men cannot reconcile. They become consumed by an emotional need that from the point of maternal detachment that a spouse or female partner cannot hope to fulfil. The desire for a kind of nurturing partner sits uncomfortably alongside the desire for dominance, which ultimately generates that need in many men to feel in control of having their needs met. When men see their acts (for example) of domestic violence as the woman's fault, they genuinely believe this. It is an emotional and psychological immaturity of devastating consequence.
Given the challenges experienced by many men in coming to terms with their masculinity, it is perhaps no wonder that when these men become fathers, they transfer many of their own shortcomings onto their children. Boys learn more by copying than by thinking, simply because boys are more likely to be kinaesthetic and visual/spatial learners. They seek to emulate adult males in a quest for affirmation. Boys look to males for nurture as well, but along different lines. Boys long to be able to hold their own in context of other men, a world in which the feminine is commonly viewed as an inferiority. Men are still meant on some level to be able to fight, which sits uncomfortably alongside the kind of emotional maturity required to avoid the need for fighting. An acceptable alternative to the traditional physical male construct is to be intellectual, but whereas the majority of men can become physically capable or imposing, intellectual superiority requires abilities in far rarer supply. This likely why there's been such a proliferation of junk science, conspiracy-theories and gender-mangling cult figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. These figures present just enough pseudo-psychological claptrap to allow those men and boys who find women a threat to their own fragile senses of self to embrace the embrace of an ideology that tells them that - just as they'd always suspected - they are right to see themselves as dominant, and that the embrace of anything that seems remotely feminine is the antithesis of what it means to be male, and that it's really just part of a female plot to ruin them that stems from a pervasive hatred of men. Again, it's that binary sense of reality; if men aren't dominant, women will be. That pushes men back into a childlike space in which they feel defined by their need for protection and succouring love. The true source of their fear is actually the dominance of other men. Men are greatly susceptible to the fear that other men will violate them if they are not strong enough. Prison culture does lend some credence to this; after all rape primarily about power rather than sexual gratification, particularly when the rapist and the raped are both heterosexual males.
Men rape women out of feelings of anger, insecurity and failure. They are violently abuse and perpetrators of gendered murder for the same reasons. What they have failed to do is accept that they are measuring their sense of self-worth against a poisonous delusion capable of turning them into creatures capable of carrying out the most monstrous of acts. It's an important fact that the majority of perpetrators of domestic violence are not sociopathic; nurture failings have led them to places where these acts become not only viable, but essential. It will take generations to unpick this kind of trauma.
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