So I take a break from working
on lie detection and the unconscious minds ability to detect deception because
somebody on national radio said “Masculinity is behind a lot of the problems in
the world.”
I let myself be bated, shame on
me.
What we have here is an “appeal
to the in-group.” A person has arbitrarily decided that attributes should be associated
with a characteristic and therefore the characteristic is bad. To associate
with this badness is to be sick, and a blight on society, to cry out against it
is to be good and virtuous! Won’t you join my in-group? You wouldn’t want to
stand beside those evil (masculine) people would you?
“Toxic Masculinity” as the
feminist call it, is a nice little way of encapsulating this labeling, and I haven’t
really covered it in detail because sooo many other “Social Activist” have done
it for me. I have covered “Toxic Femininity” in the way-back with my Princess Jay post, but I did that because frankly? It’s something people don’t talk
about much, unlike its fraternal twin that seems to get coverage on the radio.
So is masculinity toxic?
No more than femininity is. It’s
a noun. End of story.
Okayokayokay, I’ll give a little
more detail.
Social Sciences have this idea
of “privilege” the notion that all of us carry a nebulous power within us to
influence society and those around us. To an extent they are correct, we
respond better to certain things dependent on superficial traits of others. Beautiful
people for example have an incredible social power to elicit help and/or
compliance, as well as escape negative consequences of their actions, dubbed “The Halo Effect” in psychology. But to
expand on this notion; If I were to stand up and talk about the problems with
Islam, I’d probably not be taken seriously, if I did so as a Pakistani man, I’d
be taken more seriously by the Islamic crowd (for good or ill) and if I did it
as a Pakistani woman, I’d be taken more seriously by the non-Islamic crown (partially
those critical of islam). So in this instance, I have very little power to
influence others by virtue of my race, now I’ll give you an example from my
life.
I
was asked recently to act as a spokesperson for a charity I am working with,
the alternatives were, a young Asian male, and a young Italian woman. I conceded
that I was probably the best person to act as a spokesperson simply because when
discussing mental health people feel more comfortable receiving information
from an (apparently educated) white male, I actually asked them to give me
notice to grow a beard because this information would be better received from a
man in his late 40’s and a beard makes me look older.
So
where does this all come from? Well Stereotypes certainly play a role, but it’s
deeper than that: Seeing my pasty white face and smooth enunciated tones (I’d
even make my accent more “educated and crisp” for this purpose) would tie in
with what people expect to see when they hear somebody speaking as an academic.
Were we making an appeal to an emotion, we’d likely have picked my Italian
female colleague, as the young female features instill feelings of
protectiveness and allow for a greater likelihood of emotional resonance. If we
were making an appeal to millennials then my young Asian college would have
been chosen as his appeal would have been greater then my own with that
demographic. How we view others is based on dozens, if not hundred of tiny
factors that differ from person to person and culture to culture, attractiveness,
race, gender, sex, and to an extent sexuality are big ones, but it can also be
influenced by things like, Glasses, wardrobe, accent, facial symmetry, and so
on…
When
this “privilege” is abused, it becomes toxic, which leads us back to
masculinity. “Masculinity” is defined differently from everyone who you ask,
but essentially in the positive it is a strong notion of self-reliance,
emotional control, and self-sacrifice. If viewed negatively it is selfishness,
dead emotions, and control of others. When I stand up and make my appeal as a
white male academic, I appeal to the former, the notion everyone has in their
head of benevolent masculinity. Should I use abuse that position of authority
then I have become toxic. It means I am a bad person, (like Princess Jay was)
but not that the tools I am using are bad themselves. As I said, it’s just a
noun. A lot of this appeal is unconscious, and honestly it’s not uncommon to
find that you have been taken in by it, it’s the foundation of how we think
after all, and it’s hard to escape.
So frankly?
Anyone standing before you and declaring that you should vilify, or pledge your
allegiance to a noun is suspect, because the descriptions of nouns change and
you may find yourself on the wrong end of that description when you find issues with the party line.
Or
as I like to put it: The more I agree with somebodies argument, the more
suspicious I become of both the argument, and their motivations.
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