Repeatedly told it’s unmanly

While browsing a gay bookstore in Sydney, Australia I came across the book How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb. The little blurb on the back “Robert Webb tried to follow the rules for being a man: don’t cry, drink beer, play rough and don’t talk about feelings. Looking back over his life he asks whether these rules are actually any use. To anyone.” That was enough to hook me. The whole book is quite good.

Robert Webb is an actor on and writer for television in Britain. By age 43 he acquired some understanding of how patriarchy has messed up his life and relationships. This book is an examination of his life with his commentary on how patriarchy screwed things up. He writes about having a father who is abusive when drunk, which seems to be often. Then his mother remarries and his stepfather isn’t abusive, but doesn’t have much incentive to actually work. His mother dies when he is 17. After a struggle he gets into Cambridge University where he treats a succession of girlfriends rather poorly. It is only after his marriage in his 30s and the deaths of his father, stepfather, and grandfather that he begins to see that even a liberal like him can still be upholding the patriarchy.

He won’t agree that he is a model husband and father, but he has identified that the patriarchy is a cause of many problems and that it harms boys and men just as much as it harms girls and women. It harms the boys by forcing them to be something they are not. As examples of that Webb titled each chapter with such things as: Boys Aren’t Shy, Boys Love Sport, Boys are Brave, Boys are Not Virgins, Boys Don’t Cry, Men Don’t Need Therapy, Men Understand Women, Men Know Who They Are.

Some excerpts from the book. Webb mentions that every so often there is a segment on TV “Is Masculinity in Crisis?”

I’m tempted to say that masculinity is in crisis, but that’s suspiciously neat. Still, as soon as I try to rescue the word I find myself wondering – why bother? What’s it for? ‘He has masculine qualities.’ Like what? Bravery? Honesty? Stoicism? That’s great, but I’ve also seen various women exhibiting these qualities all my life. ‘He’s proud of his masculinity.’ OK, well, good for him, but – what? He’s got a leather wallet? He’s glad he isn’t a woman? He’s better at doing man-things than other men seem to be? What is this word doing apart from conjuring a bunch of stereotypes about driving gloves and body odour?

And ‘femininity’ – what’s that? Having hair? I mean, long hair on your head but none on your legs, or under your armpits? Taste in scarves? A sense of colour? The capacity to shut … up when men are talking? What is this stuff?

I promise I am not being wilfully dense about this. I don’t know what the words ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have to offer. Avoiding them, we still have a massive language of more precise words to describe individuals and their behavior which somehow manage not to come pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century.

A few chapters later Webb says he hears the voice “Act like a man!” all the time. He got it from his father, who got it from his father.

It’s no coincidence that this is the language frequently used by men who believe that we live in a ‘feminized’ society where men (particularly white men like themselves) have become victims of discrimination.

Men look at their plight and blame it on feminism. Webb responds:

No, sir. No, Lads, No, Daddy. That won’t help us and it won’t help anyone else. Men are in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help, something we have been repeatedly told is unmanly. We are in prison because the traditional breadwinning expectations of manhood can’t be met, or the pressure to conform is too great, or the option of violence has been frowned upon but implicitly sanctioned since we were children. We are dependent on booze when we … try to change the chemistry [of our moods] in a way that is harmful, counter-productive and, of course, widely accepted as tough and manly, irrespective of whether the impulse comes from conformity or rebellion, from John Wayne or James Dean.

Men don’t go to the doctor, don’t maintain same-sex friends for emotional support, aren’t plugged into the community, and think having a job is man’s work even if it gives them an ulcer.

Feminists didn’t create these circumstances. Neither am I saying that men have gone along with this stuff like a bunch of passive idiots. I’m saying it’s difficult to resist because it hides in plain sight. It’s everywhere: a system of thought and a set of invented and discriminatory practices in our law, culture and economy that feminists call the patriarchy. Feminists are not out to get us. They are out to get the patriarchy. They don’t hate men, they hate The Man. They’re our mates. The patriarchy was created for the convenience of men, but it comes at a heavy cost to ourselves and to everyone else.