Rethinking masculinity: Teaching men how to love and be loved
Many masculinity critics speak of the dangers of traditional gender ideologies, rape culture or toxic ways of being male.
- Many masculinity critics speak of the dangers of traditional gender ideologies, rape culture or toxic ways of being male.
- I live in a world that shows more than enough hatred to Black and Indigenous men.
- I want to focus more on how Black and Indigenous men can love and be loved.
Patriarchy, ‘interlocking’ oppressions
Many of the ways of being male that are under scrutiny or that some men are trying to reclaim are connected to patriarchy. The late Black feminist philosopher bell hooks defines patriarchy as:
…"a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence"
…"a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence"
- As hooks and other Black feminists have also noted, patriarchy, racism, sexism and homophobia can be interlocking systems of domination.
- For these reasons, my work on masculinity also comes out of an anti-racist teaching practice.
Lesser-discussed forms of masculinity
- As Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice notes in Why Indigenous Literatures Matters, the stories settlers tell about Indigenous communities often amplify toxic stories of lack and deficit.
- Too often, such stories presume the perverse success of colonialism.
- Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story by white settler scholar Sam McKegney explores “Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.” Likewise, Black feminist scholars like hooks have encouraged men to be better and suggested a central task of feminist criticism ought to be articulating less dominating ways for men to preform their masculinity.
Contempt and politics
- While I take the point of writers like Pauline Harmange or Blythe Roberson
that misandry (contempt or dislike) can be politically useful, I fear the language of “hating men” is unproductive — even when meant humourously — and can turn men away from the very feminist work that aims to help them become better lovers, fathers, friends and brothers. - Stories we tell about Black and Indigenous men can create fear of them, and this can serve as a justification for racism.
Love and tender feelings
- Love can be a tool of anti-racist and decolonial education, but only if we encourage men (and women and non-binary people) to take the risk of expressing tender feelings for others.
- In these books, the characters Michael and French are imperfect men who struggle to show tender emotions.
- Through trying to process their feelings within found families, these men are healing themselves.
Speaking of these men in terms of the struggle to love is, in itself, an anti-racist practice. Almost all of the young men I work with struggle to express tender emotions, and seeing these characters struggle helps them see Black and Indigenous men as emotional role models.
Encouraging flourishing
- Love cannot come from places of domination or abuse, nor can it be maintained through cultures of power and control.
- As analytic philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues in The Reasons of Love, love is an orientation to the beloved, whereby I care about doing thinks that encourage their flourishing as human beings.
Taking responsibility for thinking, loving
- In poet Adrienne Rich’s essay “Claiming an Education,” she distinguishes between the passive act of receiving an education and the active act of thinking of education as a responsibility to oneself.
- This works best, I have found, when it comes from a loving disposition.
Jamie Paris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.