by Liz Plank
The same masculinity scripts are exploited by neo-Nazi groups. Beutel notes that there is a common narrative with white supremacist groups, with recurring messages like “White men built this nation.” He mentions the “muscular men holding hammers, looking up in the horizon” and the “serial gaze of this archetypal male there who is strong, robust, a hard worker and a constructed ideal.” He explains that “these are the guys who are held up as ideal of strong white males, these Chads—attractive white men—they are the ideals that even white women are supposed to be attracted to.” Neo-Nazi propaganda is also very often premised on the control of white women’s bodies, a toxic trope of hegemonic masculinity. “The insecurities and fears of white men are projected on white women’s bodies, and the antagonists typically make people of color shown as rapists, sexual beasts, so the protectors of women’s bodies are archetypal white males,” Beutel said. “It’s embedded in a lot of our political discourse, the tropes that will often be used, then be dog-whistle politics.” Of course, in the last few years, dog whistles have turned into full-on dog marching bands, with Donald Trump referring to Mexicans who are “rapists” of American (i.e., white) women. Beutel described it as a direct and deliberate way to exploit and “play on those fears.”
One group that’s been part of this swift expansion in emerging radical men’s rights groups is the Proud Boys. The group, which only admits men, was founded during the 2016 election by Gavin McInnes (who claims he has now abandoned the group). McInnes is a far-right activist who has called me a FILF (feminist I’d like to f***) in a video he created for his YouTube channel. We once were on a Fox News panel together where he called women who go on spring break “human garbage whose parents don’t love them.” I wasn’t very surprised when I heard that he had started a group that is boastfully anti-female and pro-white, primarily made up of white men whose religion appears to be toxic masculinity. To be admitted, male recruits reportedly have to wear an official uniform of Fred Perry polo shirts (previously associated with skinheads) and declare, “I am a Western chauvinist who refuses to apologize for creating the modern world.” The second part of the initiation reportedly involves being repeatedly physically punched by the other members and beating up militant anti-fascist leftists who label themselves as “antifa.” A sister chapter, called the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK), has been called the “tactical defense arm” of the group, to support and intensify the group’s physical confrontations at rallies. The group was founded by Kyle Chapman, who was arrested and charged with felony possession of a leaded cane at a peaceful progressive rally opposing Trump. Shortly after that incident, at a “Make Men Great Again” event, he bragged about spanking his son “because he fears me, he respects me.” He has also said that white people “are the least racist and most generous ethnicity on the planet” and “the worst sufferers of racism in the world.”
Although many alt-right groups are proliferating online, it hasn’t stopped them from transforming their online organizing into real-life hate. They have organized numerous rallies. At its first “White Lives Matter” rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee, attendees shouted slogans like “Your daughter is being f——d by n——s!” Others turned violent. One neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a crowd primarily made up of young white men screamed in unison “Jews will not replace us,” killed a young woman and injured dozens. It’s even inspired acts of domestic terrorism across the border. A young man who shot up a mosque in Québec, killing six Muslims and injuring nineteen, consumed a steady diet of far-right American websites and pundits like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and conservative radio host Ben Shapiro. In the month before the attack, he had made online searches about Donald Trump no less than eight hundred times. Technology has made the organization and sophistication of these extremist groups more effective. In 2017, which so happens to be the year after the election of Donald Trump, was the deadliest year for white extremist violence in decades. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, white nationalists killed twice as many people in 2017 as they did the previous year.
There is no quick fix to ending terrorism and organized violence, but disregarding the way that false definitions of manhood are used to prey on marginalized men who end up joining those groups is ignoring one of the potentially most cost-effective paths to a rigorous and global terrorism reduction strategy. Willfully ignoring these links is rendering obscure a solution that could shed light on one of the greatest problems of our time. While it may seem logical to deem any man who joins an extremist group bad to begin with, what if we assumed that they were vulnerable to begin with instead? Could assuming the best in men help us prevent the worst in them?
Anything that isn’t masculine is feminine, and … it’s not something that black men do.
—D’ARCEE CHARINGTON NEAL
AMUSE-BOUCHE:
D’Arcee’s Story
D’Arcee knows he doesn’t meet the mainstream ideals of masculinity, and frankly, he doesn’t care. As a black gay man who uses a wheelchair because of his cerebral palsy, he’s spent most of his life being reminded that he is different. He knew early on that he wasn’t like other men in his family. He describes his grandfather as hard to know. “People in the 1940s were not nice to black people, so my grandfather had a hard shell,” he says. Growing up in the Jim Crow era encoded in his grandfather a rational reluctance to show any weakness. In fact, when black men showed vulnerability it had been used against them systematically. Although more genteel, D’Arcee’s father learned everything about what it meant to be a man from his own dad and passed on those lessons. “My dad has a rigid idea of masculinity [where] anything that isn’t masculine is feminine, and that it’s not something that black men do.” D’Arcee explained that although his grandfather was an incredible cook and enjoyed it immensely, he refused to do it in front of the men in the family. “I don’t do this; it’s women’s work,” he would say to D’Arcee when he was growing up. Similarly, his father failed to develop passions in fear that it was perceived as a feminine pursuit. “My dad is a really good artist, but he chose to ignore that path because he thought it was not becoming of a black man.” D’Arcee told me he was presented with no choice but to be tough as nails:
We’re not slaves anymore, but the repercussions are still there. The only way to get through is to be strong and resilient and pass it onto our children. I was taught over and over again: “don’t let these people break you.”
When he came out to his family, it was perceived as a major affront to this ideal of black masculinity. “Of course being gay is an erosion of that. Being gay was a direct transgression of everything I had learned about being a man,” he said. He was desperately looking for acceptance, but all he received was rejection. “I hear about people who say they had a support network and friends and family, and I didn’t have that.”
D’Arcee recalled one incident where he had come home from college for the holidays and one friend had been drinking and couldn’t drive, so he decided to spend the night. When D’Arcee’s father returned, he was boiling with rage. He threw out the friend in the dead of night, shouting at D’Arcee, “If you think we’re getting soft because we’re getting older, we’re not. You know I think being gay is disgusting. You have a mental illness and refuse to get help. The bottom line is, I don’t appreciate faggots in my house.”
D’Arcee was shaken from that experience but assumed this was just what he should expect as a gay man, because that’s all he knew. When he left home to go to college and made friends with other gay black men, he realized how different life could be. “I had never met black gay people whose families were fine with them being gay until college. I got their version of acceptance. I credit them.”
But again, the intersection of his multiple identities complicated things. Although his friends were always supportive, they weren’t always understanding of what it meant to have a disability. He recalled going to clubs where his friends just pulled him ont
o the dance floor, not realizing it wasn’t accessible and that his presence would make other people in the club feel awkward. He recalled one night when “a drag queen came over and said, ‘Who the fuck let a cripple in here?’” and he felt really ashamed. “My friends started yelling at the drag queen. They had no idea that people had been doing this to me all night. I appreciated them trying to include me, but they don’t really understand it’s very awkward. You can’t force people to accept this.”
The sense of belonging D’Arcee had been craving when it came to his sexual identity didn’t apply to his disability. “The gay community act like people with disabilities don’t even exist. You don’t see people with disabilities dating in public and you don’t see them in the club.” He explained that something as mundane as dating for his able-bodied friends is a real struggle for him. It’s already rare to see public displays of affection between gay men, but add disability to the mix and it’s like affection barely exists. D’Arcee recalled the first time he engaged romantically with someone in public after a date with a man in London as they were riding home in the tube. His date asked if he could kiss him, and although D’Arcee hesitated, they started kissing. It felt both liberating and stressful. “I’ve seen plenty of straight people kissing, but I have never seen a person with a disability kissing in public and it felt so self-conscious.” He recalled feeling like the subject of so much staring. “One woman whispered, ‘That’s so nice.’” D’Arcee rolled his eyes.
D’Arcee blames this lack of visibility for gay men with disabilities on the fact that gay male culture can be “image obsessed.” He feels like his “wheelchair is an immediate and permanent reminder of so-called ‘imperfect’ bodies.” Because there is such a high value on appearance, any kind of deviation from that model is seen negatively. “People don’t want to be associated with that,” D’Arcee explained.
Using a wheelchair is also a direct transgression of what we expect from men. “Men are supposed to be providers, and if you have a disability it’s often perceived that you can’t work. There’s a ridiculous idea that says, ‘How you gonna be a breadwinner and also not be able to walk?’” D’Arcee said. Although he is employed, 80 percent of people with disabilities aren’t. It’s also still legal to pay people with disabilities less than the minimum wage. Just as much as there is an outdated version of masculinity in society, there is an archaic understanding of disability as well. D’Arcee sees them as inextricably connected. “I hadn’t thought about it until talking to you, but I feel like being masculine and the idea of masculinity has a big effect on how society treats people with disabilities,” he said. “When I was sixteen years old, my dad told me when he thought I was dating girls, ‘Your life is going to be rough because girls will think that half of you is broken.’” Because men are still expected to protect women, men with disabilities are seen as inherently lacking.
Although D’Arcee’s father won’t really talk about his homosexuality, he still talks as if he blames it on his disability:
A lot of the issues intersect when it comes to my dad, who views being homosexual as a negative side effect of my disability. It’s a constant battle and my dad had told me, “You’re gay because women rejected you” as a side effect of my disability. He told me that numerous times. “I don’t think you are gay, but you think you are because women rejected you.” My father is a computer programmer, so everything is logic based. My parents know that I’m attracted to men with nice legs, and he basically told me that I only liked them because mine don’t work properly. My dad was trying to logically explain how his son could be a fag, and yet here I was saying, “I get what you’re doing,” but I told my parents if God could give me cerebral palsy, why is being gay any different?
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together.
—LILA WATSON
Conclusion: The Case for Mindful Masculinity
When I emailed Michael Kimmel about toxic masculinity with the subject line: “do u think we need a new term?” I received a response right away. “I think so,” he immediately wrote back. I was worried about the term “toxic masculinity,” anxious it wasn’t capturing the root of the problem I was so eager to tackle. Michael was, too. He shared a compelling exercise that he’s performed with thousands of men all over the world that always gets almost the exact same response no matter where he would do it. When he asks male participants to describe a “good man,” they would answer “integrity, honor, being responsible, being a good provider, protector, doing the right thing, putting others first, sacrifice, caring, standing up for the little guy.” It’s beautiful, right?
But something striking would happen when he would ask them to describe a “real man.” This is when the men would start talking over each other and even shouting: “never cry, be strong, don’t show your feelings, play through pain, suck it up, win at all costs, be aggressive, get rich, get laid.” In other words, the pressures the men would face to prove they’re a “real man” would conflict with their capacity to be a good man. So masculinity wasn’t toxic, it was the monster masquerading as masculinity that was. In other words, masculinity is not the problem, it’s the solution.
The conversation we need to have about men is not distinct or separate from the one we’ve had and will continue to have about women. In fact, the gendered expectations holding girls back are born out of the same system that creates limitations for boys. Those oppressions aren’t only connected; they’re born out of the same ideology. This requires a fundamental shift in the framing of our conversations about gender, where we don’t assume whether someone is the victim or perpetuator based on their gender. Although issues affecting men and women have been framed as a “gender war,” with losers and winners, a more mindful conversation about gender only has winners. Women have been approaching their gender consciously for some time, and men can do it that way, too, by practicing mindful masculinity.
I know this radical shift away from conformist notions of masculinity will be scary to many, as it will be construed as an attempt to overthrow the entire system. But I want to be specific: freeing ourselves of gender rules doesn’t mean we have to remove it entirely from our lives, but rather that we take and leave the parts that make sense, and that we all are afforded the personal freedom to make those decisions personally and privately.
This isn’t an attack on gender; it is an improvement on it.
This isn’t an attack on personal freedom; it’s an extension of it.
Conservatives who are interested in individual responsibility should feel excited about the prospect of this conversation, not frightened by it. I’m not trying to tell men who to be; I want them to become free to become who they truly are.
We must reject the framing of the so-called gender war, because it’s misleading us into believing we are more different than we are alike. It has made us believe that if women win, then men lose, and vice versa. This framing doesn’t just dictate conversations in the media; it’s also embedded in the way we approach community organizing and even policy making. Initiatives or new laws are framed as either focused on women or focused on men, rarely acknowledging the way they can impact and benefit each other, because we’re all part of the same interdependent gender ecosystem. The gender wars myth has warped the conversation and led us to believe women’s and men’s problems are not connected and that spending time or resources on one doesn’t help the other when, in reality, it’s challenging the big overarching system that harms all genders that allows us all to thrive.
Although pitting women against men may have been a useful way of organizing the gender debate in the past because we often saw women as the only benefactors, the most radical change that I believe we will be seeing unfold in the next decade is a move away from the clearest factions of the gender conversation being women and men to the emergence of two new categories: those who believe in the imposition of a constraining gender
system and those who don’t. In other words, the most prominent opinion divide will no longer be between women and men; it will be between those who are interested in radical freedom from the traditional framing of gender and those who would like to preserve it. The new gender war will no longer be defined by one’s gender identity; it will be split between those who recognize that gender is made up and those who do not.
To convince skeptics that we need a radical change in the way that we raise our boys, the framing of the conversation will be vital. For far too long, we’ve focused on the risks of a fundamental shift in the way we raise boys when what we need to do is talk about the consequences of not doing it. When we talk about the way gendered stereotypes or sex discrimination discourages women from pursuing careers in STEM, we’ll often hear people point to the fact that the first person to cure cancer could be a girl who is being discouraged from pursuing science because she is getting the message that it’s just for boys. We need to have that same curiosity about the missing men and boys and their stifled destinies and their unfulfilled purpose. The opportunity cost of not overthrowing the current system in which we raise our sons is all the positive missing male contributions in fields from nursing to caretaking to education. There are boys who will never become the men they were meant to be. There is too much unfulfilled potential for us not to take on this challenge of the gender reset for boys.
Not interrogating how our current masculinity ideals stifle boys and men is not only feckless; it’s also irresponsible. It’s like smelling a gas leak and trying to fix it by looking the other way. Given how many men’s and women’s psychological and physical safety and lives are at stake, our inaction is criminal. If questioning the falsehoods women absorbed about themselves has led to so much social progress, imagine what reimagining the ones we hold about men could do. We don’t know enough about what a world without toxic notions of masculinity could look like to be pessimistic about it.