Lecture 5 - 2/14/2001
Gender roles are not natural - they are historically and culturally based.
1. Masculinity is not a fixed, biological essence of men or femininity a biological essence of women, but, rather, a social construction that shifts and changes over time as well as between and among various national and cultural contexts.
2. Power is central to understanding gender as a relational construct, and the dominant definition of masculinity is largely about expressing difference from - and superiority over - anything considered "feminine."
3. There is no singular male gender role or singular female gender role; rather, at any given time there are various masculinities and femininities. Who gets to play what type of male gender or female gender role will be influenced by where they are positioned in the stratification system. The articles and the film "Rosie the Riveter" provide examples to support the above statements.
E. Anthony Rotundo's History of American Manhood. He points out that what is considered masculine has changed through the years. Northern, white, middle-class males have defined manhood.
Communal Manhood - Colonial New England. There a man's identity was inseparable from the duties he owed to his community. He fulfilled himself through public usefulness more than his economic success, and the social status of the family into which he was born gave him his place in the community (ascribed status) than his individual achievements did. Through his role as the head of the household, a man expressed his value to his community and provided his wife and children with their social identity.
A man's failure in his family were a matter of deep concern to those beyond his household. People understood manhood not only in terms of its social setting but also in terms of its contrast with womanhood. The fundamental belief about men and women before 1800 was that men were superior. In particular, men were seen as the more virtuous sex. They were credited with greater reason, which enabled them to moderate passions like ambition, defiance, and envy more effectively than women could. This belief in male superiority provided the foundation for other forms of inequality before the law and in the household.
Self-made Manhood - This communal form of manhood lingered on through the first decades of the nineteenth century, but it was eclipsed by a self-made manhood, which had begun to grow in the late 18th century. The new manhood emerged as part of a broader series of changes: the birth of republican government, the spread of a market economy, the concomitant growth of the middle class itself. At the root of these changes was an economic and a political life based on the free play of individual interests. In this New World, a man took his identity and his social status from his own achievements (achieved status), not from the accident of his birth. Thus, a man's work role, not his place at the head of the household, formed the essence of his identity. And men fulfilled themselves through personal success in business and the professions, while the notion of public service declined.
"Male" passions were now given freer rein. Ambition, rivalry, and aggression drove the new system of individual interests, and a man defined his manhood not by his ability to moderate the passions but by his ability to channel them effectively. Reason, still viewed as a male trait, played a vital role in the process of governing passion, but important new virtues were attributed to men.
In the new era of individualism, the old male passion of defiance was transformed into the modern virtue of independence. Now a man was expected to be jealous of his autonomy and free reliance on external authority. In this world where a man was supposed to prove his superiority, the urge for dominance was seen as a virtue.
Women took their social identities from their husband. "The chief end of women is to make others happy." Woman's nature was sharply redefined; she was now viewed as the source of virtue. Since women's moral sense was considered stronger than man's was, females took on the tasks of controlling male passion and educating men in the arts of self-denial.
Passionate Manhood - arising in the late 19th century- was in some respects an elaboration of existing beliefs about self-made manhood, but it stretched those beliefs in directions that would have shocked the old individualists of the early 1800s. The most dramatic change was in the positive value put on male passions. In the closing years of the century, ambition and combativeness became virtues for men: competitiveness and aggression were exalted as ends in themselves. Toughness was now admired, while tenderness was a cause for scorn. Even sexual desire, an especially worrisome male passion in the 19th century, slowly gathered legitimacy. Indeed, the body itself became a vital component of manhood: strength, appearance, and athletic skill mattered more than in previous centuries.
A new emphasis on the self was essential to these changes. In middle-class culture, "the self" came to mean that unique core of personal identity that lay beneath all the layers of social convention. Whereas 19th century view had regarded the self and its passion suspiciously as objects of manipulation (self-control and self-denial) 20th century opinion considered them as the source of identity and personal worth (self-expression, self-enjoyment). Play and leisured entertainment - once consider marks of effeminacy - became approved activities for men as the 19th century ended, and consumer choice became a form of male self-expression. A man defined his identity not just in the workplace but through modes of enhancement and self-fulfillment outside of it. Examples: the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Rockefellers.
The contrast between men and women - sharp in the 1800s - blurred from "opposite" to merely "different" and the goal of marriage began to change from a union of opposites to a union of unique selves. With the passing of the 20th century, even the sense of difference between the sexes has been replaced in some circles by a new emphasis on their underlying similarity. Under these circumstance the subordination of a woman's identity to that of her husband has grown more difficult to justify.
So many of our institutions have men's needs and values built into their foundations, so many of our habits of though were formed by male views a specific points in historical time, that we must understand gender in its historical dimension to understand our ideas and institutions. Rotundo gives the example of law and medicine being two institutions that are based on this ideal of masculinity.
Manhood in the 20th century - According to Rotundo men are still perceived as more aggressive, more primitive, more lustful, more dominating and more independent than women. What outlets are there for the "male passions in the 20th century."?
The team player - Based on an ethic of sublimation, this ideal takes competitive athletics as a model for fitting aggression and rivalry into the new bureaucratic work settings of the 20th century. While a man struggles to reach the top within his own organization through fierce competition with his teammates, he also cooperate with them in the contest between his organization and others. In this way, the old investment of aggressive, selfish passions in economic competition has gained new life in the modern world.
Existential Hero - this ideal grows out of a belief that there is, in fact, no proper place for true masculine impulse within modern society. If he would be true to the purity of his males passions and principles he must and can only live at the margins of society - example, Clint Eastwood's characters.
Pleasure seeker - this is a man who works hard at his job so that he can afford as much satisfaction of his passions after work as possible. Example - the playboy, the player.
Spiritual warrior - the spiritual warrior believes he has lost touch with those passion sand lost his ability to connect directly with other men. Examples - Robert Bly's mythopoetic movement, the Million Man March, the Promise Keepers. This ideal was born of dissatisfaction with the other ideals and images of men that have recently dominated American culture. It grows from a direct conscious focus on the passions that its advocates assume are naturally male. They express anxiety about the dangers of a boy learning his vision of manhood through the eyes of mothers and other women.
There is one important trait that all four ideals share, however: each of them signifies a turning away from women. The ideal of the spiritual warrior represents a ritual guest for manhood in an all-male setting. The ideal of the pleasure seeker may treat women as objects of pleasure or as accessory companions in his pursuit of enjoyment, but considers them largely irrelevant to the fulfillment of his yearnings. The ideal of the existential hero endorses separation from the confinement of civilization and the halter of permanent, personal commitment - and, given our cultural associations between women and the bonds of civilization, it is no surprise that adherents of this ideal view women's world with suspicion. The world of the team player is less intrinsically exclusive of women than that of the other ideals.
Rotundo feels that men are harmed by their gender role- they lose access to stigmatized parts of themselves - tenderness, nurturance, the desire for connections, skills of cooperation which are helpful in personal situations and needed for the social good.
Second article: R. W. Connell "Masculinities and Globalization."
This article examines how local masculinities have been shaped by historical and current influences such as imperialism and globalization. It discusses how globalization has created multiple local masculinities while simultaneously providing resources for dominance by particular groups of men.
Masculinities are shaped by : geopolitical struggles, labor migration, global markets and transnational media. There is a transnational business masculinity - the hegemonic form of masculinity associated with those who control its dominant institutions: the business executives who operate in global markets, and the political executives who interact (and in many contexts merge) with them. This masculinity is increasing egocentric, has conditional loyalties even to the corporation and certainly no personal commitments except to the idea of accumulation itself.
The transnational business masculinity has had only one major competitor for hegemony - the rigid, control-oriented masculinity of the military and military-style bureaucratic dictatorships.
Six elements in looking at masculinity.
1. Plural masculinities - in multicultural societies, there are varying definitions and enactments of masculinity. Different cultures and different periods of history construct gender differently. More than one kind of masculinity can be found within a given cultural setting or institution
2. Hierarchy and Hegemony - These plural masculinities exist in definite social relations, often relations of hierarchy and exclusion. There is a generally a hegemonic form of masculinity, the most honored or desired in a particular context. Hegemonic masculinity refers to: a white, middle class, heterosexual and physically dominating form of masculinity. The most valued form of masculinity, and a masculinity that subordinates other masculinities. The hegemonic form need not be the most common form of masculinity. Many men live in as state of some tension with or distanced from, hegemonic masculinity and are required to live up to it strenuously. The dominance of hegemonic masculinity over other forms may be quiet and implicit, but it may also be vehement and violent, as in the important case of homophobic violence.
3. Bodies as Arenas - Men's bodies are addressed, defined and disciplined (as in sport) and given outlets and pleasures by the gender order of society.
4. Active Construction - Masculinities do not exist prior to social interaction, but come into existence as people act." They are actively produced, using the resources and strategies available in a given milieu.
5. Contradiction - Masculinities are not homogeneous. There are contradictory desires and conduct. The bodybuilder who engages in homosexual prostitution to support his bodybuilding is an example.
6. Dynamics - Masculinities created in specific historical circumstances are liable to reconstruct and any pattern of hegemony is subject to contestation, in which a dominant masculinity may be displaced.
Film "Rosie the Riveter"
WWII - Women have consistently taken on expanded role in wartime, by choice as well as necessity.
Office of War Information (1941) monitored public opinion to determine the degree of commitment and willingness to sacrifice for the war - women were less enthusiastic about the war. So, there was a coordinated effort to convince women that the war effort was necessary and that women should actively participate in war production.
The War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission were set up to convert to a wartime economy, coordinate labor for the various sectors of the economy, and allocate workers both war and civilian production.
At first defense employers were reluctant to hire women, but the production needs were so great and the propaganda so convincing that by July 1944 19 million women were employed, an increase of over 5 million at the start of the war.
The war allowed African-American women access to employment in defense plants that paid much more than the jobs like domestic work or food services jobs that they had held prior to the war.
Near the end of the war married women outnumbered single women in the labor force. By the close of the war 32% of women who worked in the major defense center had children under the age of 14. Day-care centers, foster home programs, and other variations of childcare were developed throughout the country. The Federal Works agency administered a program that enrolled 13,000 children in over 3,000 centers.
Rather than viewing such options as a menace to children and indictment for their mothers, such provisions were praised for allowing mothers of young children to enter the work force where they were needed.
However, the goal was to win the war and to return to the previous gender arrangements. Propaganda campaigns promoted the idea that women were in it only "for the duration" and they would reassume their domestic duties after the war, gladly giving up their jobs to the returning men. As we saw from the film, many women were not interested in giving up their jobs; they were in fact, fired from them. Because they were working-class women before the war, they continued to work after the war. Unfortunately, the jobs then that were available to them were low paying, unskilled labor. They could not play the dominant post-war female gender role.
The propaganda now portrayed women who wanted to work as selfish, egotistical women and "bad" mothers.
When you view the film, look for the justifications that encourage women to work and the justifications that discouraged women from staying in the work force after the war. Look at the images that promoted war production. Contrast the music, posters, and professionals against the words of the women interviewed.
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