Masculinity

Many scholars, such as Gail Bederman and Michael Davitt Bell, have noted the ideological, aesthetic and performative variations and inconsistencies underscoring the cultural terms that define American manhood. At the same time, these and many other scholars (including George Chauncey E.Anthony Rotundo, Michael S. Kimmel) recognize a persistent historical anxiety that drives the vigorous activity of the masculine enterprise. As these scholars see it, the anxietyproducing agent that enables the historical concepts of masculinity is the perceived threat of cultural effeminization. The rise of the new woman at the turn of the nineteenth century and her entry into the industrial-age workforce triggered a considerable cause for worry. The rapid development of industrial capitalism spawned paradoxical response since, on the one hand, the industrial age promised a virile and efficient world. On the other hand, the very same notions of progress ushered in quite a few unmanly and thereby undesirable social elements. One might suggest that the hyper-virile antics of American men at this time (weightlifting, sport) served as an activity to contain cultural excess, i.e. the feminine. Thus, the discourse of cultural conditions was often framed along gender lines: “effeminacy” was the sweeping generalization assigned to the cause of any ill-effect attending modern society. Sloth, “neurasthenia,” homosexuality and other purported weaknesses observed in/ on the male body were paradigmatic dysfunctions directly related to the “effeminizing” of American culture.

American artists, statesmen and religious individuals took to the cause of mastering the cultural parameters of masculinity that were apparently put at risk by cultural and corporeal effeminization. Ironically, the rigor with which men engaged the physical and emotional reconfiguration of manhood was often demonstrated with comical if not cartoon-like effect. “Sandow the Strongman” in Edison’s film shorts (c. 1896) or the steel-like men that dominated the 1930s paintings of Thomas Hart Benton highlight the hyperbolic work involved with the presentation of virile American manhood. Arguably, movies have been most instrumental in the shaping of an American consciousness of a masculine ideal during the twentieth century. Hollywood masculinity, however, is as varied as the cultural conditions that manufacture masculine identity Shifting between the likes of Sandow and Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Fred Astaire, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Leonardo DiCaprio, Hollywood’s representation of masculinity allows multiple, conflictive readings.

One thing remains certain: if the terms of masculinity are varied and are established relative to the contemporary (and mobile) discourse of “femininity” the bête noir of culture is an uncontained effeminacy of masculinity that announces itself as homosexual. It is no surprise, then, that some American men have practically made a career out of defending their perceived unmasculine dispositions as differential masculinity Politician Theodore Roosevelt’s aristocratic upbringing ushered in charges of dilletanti politics by not a few New York State assemblymen in 1882, who calculatingly called him an “Oscar Wilde”; dancer/choreographer Gene Kelly produced a television program in 1958 entitled Dancing, A Man’s Game to prove that ballet and baseball were really carved out of the same manly tradition; actor Kevin Spacey told the world that he intends to have children in hopes of refuting Esquire Magazine’s claims that he is gay The inability to define a true American masculinity cuts across issues of race as well (although the terms that define American manhood usually find themselves organized around white man’s Judaeo-Christian principles). Black men in particular have been viewed as threats and temptations by whites, while their masculinity has been shaped by economic, political and social repression. A contemporary example of the inter-section of these themes is the emergence of the Christian Conservative Men’s Movement, “The Promise Keepers.” Established in 1990, the group proudly embraces (and is embraced by) Asian American, African American. WASP and Latino men who bond under the auspices of Christian (masculine) brotherhood. Multiculturalism is paradoxically useful in the conservative rhetoric that seeks to homogenize cultural identity. More importantly masculinity is defined here as a sacred promise that defends family and women. Writers such as Eve Sedgwick-Kosofsky and Donna Minkowitz have pointed out the perfidy (i.e. misogyny and homophobia) that underlies the sentiment of this sort of “kinder, gentler”

masculinity.

The contemporary American political arena has also witnessed discomfiting shifts in the ways that masculinity is approached and discussed in relationship to family and homosexuality. In the 2000 Republican presidential primary candidate John McCain found himself awkwardly defending his utterance regarding his “gaydar” that effectively allowed him to detect homosexuals in the military during the Vietnam War. Both the conservative right and gay lobbyists raised issue with McCain’s provocative remarks. In the White House, Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades certainly made him a prime candidate for the Promise Keeper’s “Reconciliation” program of prayer and devotion to family and wife. In the Monica Lewinsky affair, Clinton’s masculinity presented not the dangers of effeminate manhood as much as he demonstrated too much masculinity; too much heterosexuality. Balancing gender is a central goal of an ideal masculinity The fluctuating yet certainly tightly managed social dicta that seeks balance and defines the cultural “effeminate” (woman, homosexual) as the cultural obverse of the masculine also functions to maintain the necessary binary structures, like heterosexual marriage, so central to a capitalist economy But the ever-changing terms of the “masculine” (which perforce define the “feminine”) put women, in particular, in the most impossible of positions. If one is too feminine (according to a strain of masculine tradition), one embodies the debilitating characteristics of the atrophying state. If one is too masculine, one is suspect of non-normative sexual desire. Yet Judith Butler, Leslie Feinberg and Riki Anne Wilchins have troubled the calm of these masculine waters that seek to keep sexuality and gender under such bifurcated logic. Films such as Boys Don’t Cry (1999) have brought the uncertain state of masculinity (and its often violent resolution) into popular consciousness. American masculinity like much of American culture, is one of the contradictory discourses that simultaneously appears concrete and indefinable.

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