On Masculinity

As one might glean from the title, Getting Off is not just about pornography. There is another message that Jensen promulgates throughout the book.

Simply put, Robert Jensen hates masculinity.

This is, in essence, a slightly more radical version of what people have been arguing for a long time: machismo is stupid. Men that are quick to anger, quick to fight, never (admit they) cry and objectify women is no longer the always-desirable male archetype. That said, it is still a huge, huge presence in our culture. Jensen hates this, and has good reason to. A popular opinion on the matter is that we need to change the entire meaning of the term to not include the traditional machismo silliness. This is the camp in which I sit. One can be a man and talk about feelings. One can be a man and not play sports or lift weights. Most importantly, one can be a man and be a feminist. This is a concept that makes a lot of sense to me. However, he has a different take on the solution.

Bill Kaulitz: a man for the ages.

What Jensen proposes is not the restructuring of the term, but instead the abolition of it. He thinks the term itself is toxic, and only serves to feed into the gender roles that have plagued us thus far. He thinks we need to literally remove the term from our lexicon if there's any chance for us to move past this as a culture. I have a few basic problems with this. I think that there are certainly a lot of things that do in fact separate the genders, and that's okay. It is not a step forward to pretend that men and women are the exact same in every way. So to get rid of the term masculinity in the hopes that we will all just be considered humans seems not only improbable, but not even particularly desirable.

More than disagreeing with the concept for theoretical reasons, however, I think it's simply not a reasonable goal. Namely, that I don't want to do it. I like being a man, and I like being able to think of myself as masculine. If someone like me doesn't want to let go of that title, even though I dislike all of the things traditionally associated with it, I can't imagine most other men comfortable with the idea either. There's simply no way we can get rid of the concept of masculinity entirely, and it is a hindrance on the movement to work towards that end.

Something tells me this guy won't want to discard the term "masculine".

Men? Do you want to give up the term? Women? Do you care either way?

Images via sodahead.com, circusfreaks.org