Life In A Man's World: Letter to a Married Feminist
By A.Z. Foreman
Dear Mrs. Nemo
I must say your main question came as a surprise. It is the sort of thing people don't ask, because they either believe they know the answer already, or do not consider it worth knowing. What is it like being a man? The proper answer, or rather, the proper place to go searching for one, will depend on what I choose, or what you wish, the question to refer to. I will assume you do not merely mean for me to expound on what my life as a man has been like, what sex is like when you have a penis, what experiences are common to men, or similar. Rather, I choose to proceed under the assumption that you meant all of the above. I presume that all aspects of men's experience are potentially relevant not only to the issues you brought up regarding how miserable your husband has seemed, but the reasons why he seems so unable to talk about it even though he seems to want to.
You mentioned that he seemed to become unhappy and despondent when he was laid off, but that the real misery began when you made partner at the firm, even though by all rights that should've eased his mind since it now means you can support him and the kids on your own. I do not know him, but I suspect that you may be doing him an injustice by assuming that he is not happy for you, or that he is jealous of you. From what you say, it seems that he is trying to be supportive and do his part by pitching in. My intuition is that he not only does not want to feel what he feels, but probably blames himself for feeling it. Although your subsequent behavior toward him cannot have helped any. But I will get to that in good time.
There, needless to say, is no handbook explaining how men work. I can only try and give you some idea of the forces and feelings that are a part of many men's lives but are often not discussed in more than a superficial way when gender issues come up. Moreover, I can only offer you my experience of having lived as a man, augmented by a modest amount of information furnished by the social sciences.
It is, of course, the case that because the world has been swindled into believing that what is associated with men is more important and more worthy of respect, being a man gives me abundant privileges. Aside from not facing street harassment, it helps me to be taken seriously by others when I state my opinion. It allows me to routinely enjoy some measure of acceptance in traditionally male spheres of activity, an acceptance that women can never be sure of getting. In much of the world, being a man and not a woman means that society is not conspiring to shame you if you are caught seeking to gratify your sexual needs. In some ways, as a friend once put it to me so accurately, women just aren't treated as people to the same degree that men are.
To you, having weathered the maelstrom of lawschool and contended with the legal system and its agents, I assume that this aspect of being a man is what is most evident, offensive and in need of challange. I admit that I as a man too seldom am aware, in any given situation, how my being a man made things go easier. It would not surprise me if your husband has a hard time noticing such things as well. It's not because I'm blind to privilege, mind you. It is simply hard to be conscious of all the wrongs that are not being visited upon you, whereas it is just as hard to ignore the ones that are. This goes for men as well as women, I should mention. Being mindful of the misery one is not experiencing does not come very naturally.
With that in mind, let me relate to you, and focus on, another aspect of what it is like to be a man, one that perhaps is less familiar, or at least less salient, to you.
I must put it to you plainly, my dear sister: being a man is not easy, and it is often unpleasant and restrictive. At least, I experience it thus. I am sure you've heard the "Woe-Is-Me-The-Male" line countless times from men who simply weren't informed enough to have any business debating gender issues with you. Let me assure you that I'm not going to harp on about how women are afraid of strange men, how women get all creeped out when someone hits on them, or anything of the kind.
Being a man carries with it certain indignities which women do not have to face as often or as alone. Thankfully, however, it is nowhere near as painful, perilous or pathetic to be a man as it once was millennia ago, when being the one who got to leave the home meant, without exception, taking your life in your hands in facing lethal predators, or even other human beings who might decide it was a good idea to kill you, an age where one was safest and most comfortable being at home with the kids rather than out in the dangerous outdoors, or taxing one's physical capacities bringing in the harvest. Now, since agency to move about and work outside the home has become less risky and more rewarding, men have gained much, far too much indeed, at women's expense. Yet, the essence of the problems one faces because of being a man remains the same.
Part 1. Disposable Dudes
To be a man is, as it has always been, to be expendable, to live in a world that deems it your imperative to take risks, to put yourself in harm's way, to seek no protection but rather to be a protector of others, to fail while in control rather than be safe in good hands. Last of all, to be a man is to be force-fed the toxic idea that, as a male, you should be ashamed not to conduct yourself according to this imperative, and that humans are deficient, inferior or dangerous to the extent that their role in life deviates from it or their behavior challenges the notion of its preeminence.
The very way in which we English-speakers talk about men shows a presumption that it is less of a tragedy, less heartbreaking when men die than when women die. I need but say the words "women and children" to call to mind the very sort of situation in which the deaths of adult men simply don't sadden or haunt us as much as the deaths of children and adult women. Otherwise, the phrase would have no meaning. Injury to adult men is also less heartrending. Indeed, society rewards men for minimizing the degree to which they let themselves show signs of being in pain, physical or psychological. It helps reassure us that men "can take it," and are better suited for situations that could result in death or injury.
Expendable people who "can take it" are required for tasks that are usually not easy, and for which a considerable amount of physical strain, physical strength and sometimes specialized knowledge may be necessary.
So it may happen that men must be coaxed into somehow aspiring and volunteering to be expendable. Many human cultures are very good at getting men to treat their lives like frisbees. They've been doing it for thousands of yearss. Mind you, not all societies do this or have done so. The Hopi indians, for example, did not. To say that "it's just in men's nature to want to see action and be willing to go out in a blaze of glory, what with all that testosterone" is sexist, just as it would be sexist to say that women are biologically wired to not want casual sex as much as men because men have evolved to spread their genes and women face the chance of pregnancy and have evolved to seek a father-protector.
(This too is quite false, if you're curious. Much evidence shows women express almost as much interest in casual sex as men if you structure the study -and elicit the data- in such a way that maximizes anonymity, and only have female subjects interact with female researchers, so that women have no reason or chance to feel like they might be judged or labeled "easy" or "loose" by men. Bisexual women who report disinterest in casual sex very frequently report lots of interest when asked specifically about casual sex with a woman. It has to do with how men shame and judge women, more than hormones and evolution. I can show you the studies if you like.)
While there is some evidence that men's neurology on average may be more suggestible in ways that facilitate risk taking, sexually dimorphic neurological diferences likely vanish into insignificance when you compare individual men with individual women, rather than averages. As for testosterone, that involves aggression which can be -and likely is- significantly linked to a susceptibility to violent behavior in response to threatening stimuli. But higher levels of testosterone are also associated with higher amounts of selfish behavior, and with less of a tendency toward selflessness. Testosterone may make you more susceptible to aggressive impulses, but it should make you less willing to sacrifice your life for a greater cause. You cannot get swathes of men dreaming of being heroes in deadly situations without cultural pressure and glorification of valiant death, just as you cannot simply get people to agree to be suicide bombers very easily unless you can draw on a society of which certain segments routinely talk about such bombings as righteous acts of justice in a grand struggle between the forces of good and evil.
Making expendability in combat attractive is the job of war stories, epic poems, action films, 3D shooters, and the like. There is a reason why much of the oldest surviving oral literature concerns heroes who found glory in battle and adventure, why early Indo-European societies put such a high premium on the "imperishable fame" won by warriors who accomplished some act or other of celebrated carnage, and then fell in battle, as an expendable man ought to. Societies that can make men more willing to head to war are more able to maintain armies, better able to defend themselves and expand their territory. Today, when physical strength is somewhat less of an issue on the battlefield or in support positions, having women armed forces in large numbers does not, of course, pose the problem it once seemed to. Yet the one place where even many modern nation-states with mixed-gender militaries are most reluctant to have women is in combat infantry, and special forces. i.e. the thick of danger.
In many low-wage jobs that involve high personal risk and/or manual labor that are not, and cannot be made to be, prestigious, it can be almost exclusively men who tow the line. In fact, even as women enter the workforce, and much effort is expended to prevent women from being discriminated against by employers, there are many areas of the labor market where nobody is pressing to see more women represented. Since you live in Baltimore, why not go to the waterfront and see how many of the dock-workers are women. Did you know that a woman is more likely to be a lawyer than she is to be a city garbage-collector? Who's pressing to see more women as cole-miners? This is part of the reason why men are 93% more likely than women to be killed or injured on the job.
There's lots of discourse about how to get more women represented in the army, in academia, in finance and all manner of white-collar professional roles, and I wouldn't have you think that I didn't believe that much more needs to be done in this regard. Women have harder times getting promoted, getting job interviews and the like all over the white-collar world. Yet that world has more female representation in the US than cole-miners, garbage-collectors, dock-workers, or cab-drivers. If it's male-domination of the workforce feminists want to end, then why not at least turn some energy there?
The answer seems to be that low-prestige, working-class, and potentially dangerous jobs that lie outside of traditionally female spheres of activity just…aren't where feminist activists seem to really want women to be. Prestigious, respected, high-income, and/or white collar occupations are where their attention seems to be directed. In large measure, American society is STILL content to have mainly men embodying disposability in a significant way. Now, don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm suggesting that society is structured this way simply out of regard for women's well-being. Once upon a time, before urbanization, when women needed to be protected from predators and invaders as the limiting factor in reproduction, keeping women out of danger probably was a strategy that maximized survival. At this point, though, it's just because there is no will to change the status quo.
I know one woman who used to be a dock-worker for many years, Talking to her was quite illuminating. It was not a female-friendly environment. Misogyny was rampant, she has dealt with much harassment which no one did anything about when she reported it, and essentially had to purge her workplace persona of anything markedly feminine. She had to basically act and talk like a working-class man in a working-class woman's body. She had to earn her coworkers' respect by not only being good at her job, but by being one of the guys, essentially proving that she was enough of a man for them to respect her. Now, wouldn't it be great if women were encouraged to take more blue-collar jobs, rather than working-class women being essentially forced into housewife status whilst the man goes and does a man's work? Wouldn't it be great for the men to have to engage with, and take seriously, female coworkers in such environments? After all, having female officers does seem have a positive effect on gender attitudes in militaries.
2. The Sissy Taboo
Speaking of militaries and glory, again: modern militaries award posthumous medals, and cooperate with film creators routinely so as to facilitate a glorious depiction of military life and combat. Indeed, we are exposed in all sorts of ways to depictions or descriptions of people "Dying for something/someone/someplace" in a way that encourages society to think highly of such individuals. Men more so than women. Whole stereotypes are in place to provide ways for men to see some appeal in volunteering to be expendable, and for women to come to regard men as sexy for doing so. Notice how the word "coward" does much more damage to ego and status when it is levelled at a man than when it is applied to a woman. And it's especially cutting when it's a woman saying it to a man. Interestingly enough, several corpus studies of English prose have shown that the word "coward" is almost never used or represented as being used by men to demean a woman. "Coward" just isn't something men call women. If a woman is being called a coward, odds are it's a woman calling her that.
Protagonists in fictional media routinely risk their lives to save and/or win the heart of the love interest. Our societies much prefer that such dashing protagonists be male. When creators deliberately flout convention and reverse the roles, they don't get quite the same response from their audience. The men don't see the female savior as appealing in her strength and ability to protect. Women don't see the male daniel-in-distress as being particularly appealing either. They just see a man so helpless he needed a girl to come hold his hand and save his sorry ass.
Imagine yet another Tomb Raider movie. (Forgive me if you aren't familiar with the franchise. It is easily googlable.) In this one, Lara Croft rescues a man named John from some Lovecraftian horror in a cave. She takes him under her wing, risking her life multiple times to keep him alive as they make their escape. The cave begins collapsing just as they're about to finally get out to Lara's waiting helicopter. But a falling piece of rock knocks John out, and she must carry him the rest of the way in her arms, running to her chopper as huge chunks of rock rain down around her. In the last ten minutes of the movie, we see him leaning his head on her shoulder as they sit on a beach in Bora Bora. Her arm squeezes him close and he looks into her eyes saying "don't ever leave me, Lara. Take me with you wherever you go." She smiles and kisses him, easing his body to lie him down as she gets on top of him and the camera fades out.
A film like that will not be made. Ever. Nobody would fund it, because it's clear that audiences wouldn't react especially well to it. But note that audiences don't have a problem with female protagonists kicking ass. The character of Lara Croft does do well, after all. Plus there's Wonderwoman, Xena, Kira from SciFi's "Continuum" etc. What really would gall them is the idea of the man being the stunningly attractive love interest whose heart is won by a dashing woman 20 years older than him who in turn falls for him. Plenty of fictional media have heroines saving men's lives. But when was the last time you saw a hollywood movie where the man rescued by the heroine was also the adoring love interest? At best, you have the two saving one another's lives in equal measure.
What I"m attempting to illustrate with this is that a strong independent woman is not nearly as problematic as an imperiled man falling for a woman who rescues him bravely. It isn't the woman's role that is so jarring to audiences. It would be the man's.
This brings us to one of the few features that seem to be nearly universal to all human cultures and societies, one that is seldom noticed even by most people who are concerned with gender-problems- partly, I suspect, because the overwhelming majority of people concerned with gender problems are not men. I call it the Sissy Taboo. No matter how deeply-entrenched and rigidly maintained a society's gender-role divisions may be, it is always more acceptable and permissible for a woman to perform traditionally male activities and roles than it is for a man to perform traditionally female ones. This is obvious in American society. We don't think a woman is deficient for "wearing the pants" in a relationship. We think of the man as pitiful for letting her wear them. Women wearing suits and ties? Sure, why not. Men wearing skirts and dresses? OH MY GOD WHAT A FUCKING FAGGOT!
Imagine a couple whose circumstances are in some ways akin to you and your husband's, where the man is a stay-at-home dad, and the wife is an investment banker who makes all of the family income, makes all family financial decisions, and she is the one who popped the question to him. Don't believe it's possible? Well believe me, sister. I'm not describing a hypothetical. I'm describing a couple I actually am friends with. As I'm sure you know, it's not just you.
You may be interested and unsurprised to know that people's immediate assumption is often that this must be something that she is doing to him, that he's been somehow broken by her, that she uses her monty to push him around. (We still don't think of her as deficient, though. On the contrary, we think of her as going overboard.) The possibility, which is in fact the truth, that this is the way both of them like their relationship to work seldom occurs to anyone, and if mentioned is met with "Well, then he's a pussy-whipped pushover" or "Come on, who would like that treatment?" To be fair, the fact that there are now a growing number of men collecting alimony is proof enough that this isn't entirely a static situation.
Progressive Americans can and do encourage women to enter the workforce, have careers, fight sexism and workplace harassment. The general sentiment from women and from progressive men is "you go, girls!" Granted, many men can feel threatened by this. There's a reason why female Harvard graduates use the phrase "dropping the H-bomb" (and Yale graduates call it "the Y-bomb") to describe the moment when they tell a man whom they're dating where they went to school. On the flipside, even many feminists see no problem in a woman being a stay-at-home mom if that's what makes her most fulfilled, and actively chide extremists who heap abuse on women who chose that role. So women's possibilities in society are being expanded, effectively, at least in the middle and upper classes in the US.
On the other hand, men are still inundated with all sorts of messages about how sewing isn't for men, how being a man is about taking charge, about how being dependent on a woman to support you is just pathetic…and society is much more okay with shaming and humiliating men who don't fall in line. Trust me, I know. As a very young kid I played with Barbie dolls as well as action figures, wanted to wear dresses some days and pants other days, and sometimes wanted to pretend to be King Arthur and sometimes wanted to be Guenivere. My parents, thankfully, were quite okay with it. Other kids, however…well…not so much. Tomboys got a lot better treatment than I did. As an adolescent who was into poetry, played the flute, had mostly female friends and simply didn't understand or feel the need to play along with the whole "boys vs. girls" schtick…it got really bad.
When lip-service is paid to breaking out of traditional gender roles, often what is meant is mainly girls getting to do guy stuff. Many men who would actually be happy as house-husbands can't bring themselves to admit that fact to themselves, let alone other people. Indeed, many men who actually find it strikes a positive chord somewhere are often the most threatened by independent, successful career-minded women precisely because they feel shame about liking the idea. I've known, and been confided in by enough such men in my life to be pretty sure this is a somewhat widespread phenomenon.
This brings me to another point, that will hit close to home. And by "home," I mean your home, Mrs. Nemo. Even as more and more wives start leading career-oriented lives, studies show that their husbands are not pitching in at home to match. Domestic responsibilities are still shouldered by the women disproportionately. "How do you balance a career and kids?" Is a question many women ask because of this imbalance. Spending time with the kids is often construed as a selfish thing for men to do, rather than "real" work. Focusing on one's career at the expense of time with the kids is often construed as selfish when women do it. This, I'm sure, you've experienced professionally. But people also wonder why it is that even when men are the ones staying at home, they just seem to pitch in less than they should. In light of what I have just expounded upon, does this seem all that surprising?
The disproportionate Sissy-Taboo is making it lopsidedly difficult and psychologically onerous for men to perform tasks and roles traditiontally associated with women, because so many people -even a large number of feminists- presume that roles associated with women are somehow demeaning or marginal, that the traditionally male gender roles are where the worthwhile happenings are to be had. They are wrong.
As a result, not only are many men being effectively denied the possibility, should it suit them, of being house-husbands who are supportive of their wives and have dinner waiting when she gets home- but it means that there are all sorts of emotional hangups and completely pointless insecurities that must be confronted for many men to be comfortable staying at home with the kids…and not feeling trapped or even emasculated. One can no more blame men, of whom your husband may be one, for having these hangups than one can blame women for feeling insecure about their bodies due to unrealistic idealizations of the female form in visual media.
3. Violence Against Men
Yes, that's right. Violence against men. No, I'm not saying that violence against women isn't a pressing problem. It is. But it could hardly be more obvious that the overwhelming majority of physical assaults all over the world are committed against men - and usually by men, as it happens. If you get into an argument with a man in public over something misogynistic he said, and a crowd forms around you, it will be uncomfortable no doubt. But you have not, cannot have the experience of having that crowd chanting Fight! Fight! Even if they did, how likely is it that the man would really allow himself to be seen hitting a woman in front of so many witnesses? Even if he did that, I do not believe it would be long before someone restrained him in an attempt to protect you from such unchivalrous behavior.
I, however, can attest that in many cases, the more attention is focused on such an animous exchange between me and another man in public, the more he will feel the need to save face and not back down, lest he appear to be, as it were, a pussy. Men do not feel the need to refrain from hitting other men in the same way they do with women.
Indeed, violence by men against women is perceived very differently from, say, violence by women against men. If you see a man slap a woman's face in a parking lot, what will be your gut-reaction? If you see a woman slap a man's face in a parking lot, what then? Only one of these is likely to be recognized as abusive behavior.
Indeed, violence by men against women is perceived very differently from, say, violence by women against men. If you see a man slap a woman's face in a parking lot, what will be your gut-reaction? If you see a woman slap a man's face in a parking lot, what then? Only one of these is likely to be recognized as abusive behavior.
I'm sure that by now you've realized where I'm going with this. What your husband said to you in his outburst was absolutely inexcusable. But your response was even more so. it is very important that you understand and take to heart the fact that when you slapped his face, you committed an act of spousal abuse. It is no more acceptable or justifiable when a woman gets violent with her husband than a man with his wife.
I feel compelled to mention that in the US and many other societies, most partner-violence is actually committed by women against men. It is simply not recognized as abuse, not taken seriously, and many men -for reasons already mentioned- would have a hard time telling a cop that he needed help because a girl hit him. It is part of the "men can suck it up and take it" fallacy, in a way. This is serious. You should talk to him about it, and treat what you did as seriously as you would want had he been the one to slap you.
(Note: The reason why partner-violence against women is a pressing issue is not because it is more common than that against men. It is because when men commit violence against women, they usually do far more damage. To some degree, this has to do with the way men are socialized, but I cannot escape the sense that it's mainly because of how our species evolved - males are larger and stronger. Most men are walking around with the ability to physically overpower most women. I am not trying to say that male-on-female is more or less serious than female-on-male violence. Such comparative massacrology is pointless and counterproductive.)
I hope this letter finds you well, and, though it certainly will not solve your problems, perhaps it will at least help to clarify their nature. By way of final musing, let me offer you my unbending belief: that the final liberation of women will never see triumph unless societies come to understand, in full and at long last, that men too must be allowed and encouraged to go beyond the meaning of their gender. Yet that, my dear older sister, is a goal that we men will never fathom, never strive for, and never seize, without women like you showing us the way.
