Modern Masculinity: A Guide for Men

By Allen Frantzen

Modern Masculinity seeks to help men of all ages build a strong masculine identity. This book describes the basic elements of modern masculine life. It explains how you can get respect for masculinity in a culture that constantly devalues it. It also outlines ways in which you can have productive conversations in which you and other men are treated with respect.
Part I assesses the state of modern masculinity and outlines three steps to help you develop confidence in yourself as a masculine man. Part II is about walking the walk and describes short-term and long-term strategies for building and strengthening your masculine identity.
Part III is about talking the talk and suggests ways in which you can shape discussions that build masculine identity and promote respect for men. Part IV relates masculinity to traditions about men and trends in discussions of gender. The book concludes with a brief summary, acknowledgments, and references.
This is a short book on a big topic; it is as a guide rather than a comprehensive account. It provides handy references to a wide range of recent posts, articles, and books about men and masculinity. Modern Masculinity aims to help you stand up for men in the modern world by standing up for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483576121

Book preview

References

Preface

Modern Masculinity seeks to help you build a strong identity as a masculine man. We have all heard about the sorry state of modern men and the crisis in masculinity. This isn’t a book about how we got here. It’s a book about where we go next.

This book describes the basic elements of modern masculine life. It explains how you can get respect for masculinity in a culture that constantly devalues it. It also outlines ways to have productive conversations in which men are treated with respect.

Part I assesses the state of modern masculinity and outlines three steps to help you develop confidence in yourself as a masculine man.

Part II is about walking the walk. These chapters outline short-term and long-term strategies that will remind you of your masculine identity and help you strengthen it.

Part III is about talking the talk. These chapters suggest ways in which you can participate in discussions that build masculine identity and promote respect for men.

Part IV takes the form of a Q & A. These chapters relate masculinity to traditions and trends, asking questions about modern masculinity and outlining informed responses.

Part V includes a summary, acknowledgments, and references (which are given in the text by author and page number).

Modern masculinity is a big topic, and this is a short book. It has been designed as a guide, not a comprehensive account. It provides handy references to a wide range of recent posts, articles, and books about men and feminism. Modern Masculinity aims to help you stand up for men in the modern world by standing up for yourself.

Part I. Getting started

1. Modern masculinity

In the old days—before 1990, let’s say—you could say you weren’t a feminist and nobody noticed. You sounded like a moderate. If you say it today, you sound like a reactionary.

It’s not the old days any more. The world has become what blogger Rollo Tomassi calls a feminine primary environment in which men are subject to a feminine imperative. As Tomassi puts it, a woman’s existential imperative, her happiness, her contentment, her protection, her provisioning, [and] her empowerment, are encouraged socially and even mandated by law (Fem-centrism). It has become a man’s responsibility to ensure a woman’s happiness.

This is a form of climate change for which many men are not ready, even though it has already taken place. Luckily, a few men have been paying attention, including Warren Farrell, who published The Myth of Male Power in 1993, and Roy F. Baumeister, author of Is There Anything Good About Men? (2010). Baumeister once called himself a feminist. He believes that feminism has changed since the 1970s, when it promoted equality and challenged entrenched wisdom. He writes that feminism today is promoting women at the expense of men and even deploring men. He concludes that feminist views have now become the standard, conventional wisdom (pp. 8-9). Farrell and Baumeister, among other authors, have taken a close look at men in the age of feminism. Modern Masculinity is written in the positive, forward-looking spirit of their work.

Baumeister is not alone in detecting a change in feminist thought. Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young have also identified a shift. They call the form of feminism most people are accustomed to egalitarian. It is concerned with equal treatment of men and women, that being a noble ideal from the 1960s (and before). The newer, less familiar form is what these authors call ideological feminism, which is dualistic and antagonistic, employing a dynamic of us against them and following a model of class conflict (Legalizing, pp. xi-xii). I refer to this form as progressive feminism, since any informed point of view, egalitarian or otherwise, has an ideological basis. Nathanson and Young write that the cumulative results of ideological feminism have become conventional wisdom (Legalizing, pp. xii-xiii).

We might want to qualify the claim that there are only two kinds of feminism; nothing complicated comes in only two forms. But distinctions are useful and differences are real. Progressive feminism resembles what Tim Goldich calls the shadow side of feminism (p. 93), an idea that is informed by work on archetypes by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette and by the psychology of Carl Jung. The shadow side of an archetype is immature and insecure. The archetype of the king, for example, manifests leadership that affirms and respects others’ power. The shadow of this archetype seeks domination and fears others’ achievements and happiness (Moore and Gillette, pp. 9-11, p. 63). The shadow side of feminism seeks control, not co-existence.

After they published Spreading Misandry in 2001, Nathanson and Young discovered an important difference between adherents of the two kinds of feminism they describe. Egalitarian feminists were willing to admit that feminist reforms had been carried too far and were creating injustices for men and boys. This generous spirit did not prevail in the other form of feminism, which is characterized by inflexible views, including the conviction that women are victims, that women’s collective rights outweigh the rights of individual men, that only men’s views should be regarded with skepticism, and that the end justifies the means (Legalizing, p. xii).

Nathanson and Young believe that the negative consequences of feminist reforms were already apparent in the 1990s. Elite culture was watching for signs of discrimination against women; signs of discrimination against men were ignored or dismissed. In response to Spreading Misandry, voices in the media treated the idea of anti-male bias or misandry (contempt for men) as a novelty and even used it as a publicity stunt. Pioneers in assessing the effect of feminism on men, Nathanson and Young have found that, no matter what they say, some readers will accuse them of attacking all feminists or even all women (Legalizing, pp. xii-xiii), an obviously false assertion.

Given the account of ideological feminism offered by Nathanson and Young, it makes sense to associate this form of feminism with the general aims of the political movement called progressivism. Writing about American progressivism in the last century, James W. Ceaser remarks that, Even as progressivism’s actual influence expanded to cover more and more aspects of American life, progressives continued to disclaim responsibility for any of the ills that plagued society. These were all the fault of the system. Like Peter Pan, progressivism will not grow up. By its own self-conception, it cannot (p. 28).

Progressivism seeks to appear as the innocent outsider or wayfarer begging at the door for admittance to the system, Ceaser writes (p. 28). Feminists also present themselves as being on the outside, excluded from a system dominated by men, even from an educational system in which, for more than two decades, women have been the majority. Progressives, Ceaser writes, don’t accept their role in the status quo. It’s time to ask if postmodern, progressive feminists accept their contribution to the status quo.

Traditional progressivism has now spawned what Kim R. Holmes calls postmodern progressivism, a blend of left-wing politics and lofty cultural theory (p. 39). Holmes surveys the history of this new progressivism and describes the rhetorical strategies of postmodernism concisely (pp. 37-41). Men who want to learn how to deal with progressive (or ideological) feminism might want to consider three approaches described by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn, Sr., who talk about responses to progressive ideas in Passing on the Right. Those who stand up for conservative ideas but stress civility and encourage discussion take the assimilative approach. Those who are evasive try to avoid controversy. Those who are combative take the challenge to their opponents (pp. 110-11).

Since it is important to try to get along with your opponents, I recommend the assimilative approach, which is the one most likely to lead to a productive exchange. Stand up for your views, but be polite. If you choose the assimilative route, however, don’t assume the good faith and collegiality of your progressive opponents. Remember that calls for civility are sometimes devices for suppressing dissent. Today, the dissenters are those who stand up for men.

For a long time women were secondary. Now, according to Baumeister, American culture is conditioned by the WAW effect, meaning that people think women are wonderful human beings, at least in comparison with men. He documents the WAW effect by using the work of Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic, scholars whose research was based on mountains of data that, Baumeister believes, reflect the thinking of multiple samples of mostly young people today (p. 25; see also p. 283, and Goldich, p. 383).

In a world conditioned by Baumeister’s WAW effect, and in Tomassi’s feminine primary environment, where do men stand? Traditional masculinity was built around physical strength, silence, sacrifice, and toughness. I see these as the