Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

The Social Construction of Masculinity and The Second Wave

Gender theorists argue the ideas and attitudes existing about women and men are the result of the how society socially constructs identity. The social construction of masculinity is composed of beliefs and attitudes about men that are taken as true about all men at all times. Much of the construction of masculinity is built on a foundation of male sexuality, and its connection to male aggression, and the need to prevent men from acting on either.

Men are understood to have a rabid sexual appetite, divorced from romance, care, tenderness and love that they are unable to control through their own will. Social restraints that limit a man’s ability to act on his sexual desires, including criminal punishments for even the slightest sexual transgressions, aim to help men behave in a socially appropriate manner. Despite the fact that children are commonly believed to be asexual until the onset of puberty, prepubescent boys are still held accountable for any expression of sexual curiosity.

Furthermore, it is widely believed that men have an innately propensity for aggressive, violent and dangerous behavior. Not only that, but they lack the emotional depth to fully appreciate the consequences of their actions. The are expected to be easily provoked to anger and to not possess the same high level of empathy and compassion a woman is able to attain.

Men are stronger and bigger, and most believe their physical prowess can be an asset, but only if it is used in socially acceptable ways to protect and safeguard women and children from the brutality of other men. Because of their defenseless, exposed external genitalia and their propensity towards aggression, men must be constrained and their aggressive energy expressed in positive ways. Boys in American society are encouraged to participate in positive activities that will alleviate the internal pressure caused by both their sex drive and their aggressive tendencies. They are introduced to individual sports – such as running and swimming – at a very young age and once they enter puberty, most are encouraged to lift weights and to strengthen their muscles in order to better enable them to act as protectors. Given that they possess greater physical abilities, men are socially pressured into using their strength and force only against other men. There are severe legal and social consequences for any man who uses his strength against a woman or a child, especially those to whom he is related.

This is believed necessary because men are held to be in a retarded state of permanent adolescence, unable to mature to the full emotional capacity of a women. For this reason, they are constrained, controlled and disciplined stringently not only during childhood but throughout their lives. The methods of this limitation and oppression change as a boy grows into a man from the external discipline of being punished for playing rough or acting out pretend scenes of violence to the internalized messages of doubt, insecurity and self-hatred most men spend their entire lives trying to manage and overcome. In the end, most are unsuccessful because even a non-masculinist man, who agrees with the construction of his masculinity and behaves in the socially prescribed manner, will spend a considerable amount of his time in a never-ending cycle of feeling sexual desire, shaming himself for this natural response, becoming frustrated and angry by the inability to act on it and berating himself when his level of frustration produces the urge to resort to violence. That even chemical castration cannot eliminate the biological need for sex means that most men spend their lives ashamed of their bodies and afraid of accidentally stepping out of line. For the man who dares to express his sexuality or aggression in non-acceptable ways, there are swift and unmerciful legal, economic and social reprisals.

More than being sexually repressed, men are physically limited. Most of the restrictions placed on men are based on the need to protect men’s reproductive abilities. Because their sexual organs are external and, therefore unprotected by bone, tendon or muscle, it is believed men are more vulnerable to injuries that would render them sterile. As fatherhood is prized, and a good father will earn social rewards in the form of praise and admiration, the fear of male sterility has forced nearly all men into complete compliance.

As soon as they are potty trained and the protection offered by a diaper is removed, boys are fitted with a genital guard (commonly referred to “the strap.”). This guard resembles female underwear save that it has a plastic-covered metal plate in the front to protect the penis and testicles.

In the late 1960s, youth culture as a whole abandoned the strict sexual mores of the larger conservative society. In 1969, a group of men at the University of Michigan held a protest rally to raise awareness about masculine oppression. Included in almost all of the speeches was a rejection of the notion of the innate male tendency toward violence, of the idea that men are unable to control their sexuality and of the of supposed vulnerability of men’s reproductive organs.

As the speakers vented their frustrations, and the rally grew increasingly more intense, worried University officials called in police to monitor the situation and ensure the men did not act on their anger. The critical moment came during an impassioned speech by one of the organizers of the event, Chris Leevy. Dramatically, in the middle of a rant arguing the strap is the symbol of male oppression, Leevy dropped his pants before the entire crowd and removed it. Several of the men on stage and a number of men in the crowd followed suit.

The police on the scene immediately arrested them for indecent public exposure. Later, Leevy and the other organizers of the rally were charged with a number of violations including disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment, disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly and, most incredibly for a rally that remained peaceful and at no time even threatened to become violent, inciting a riot because prosecutors argued the intent of organizing the rally was to incite a riot. Fourteen men in the audience were charged with indecent public exposure for removing their pants in public. All of them plead guilty, were sentenced to 30 days in jail and paid a fine of $150.

The seven organizers opted for a trial. The trial lasted the entire month of June 1971 and became a media circus. The men argued they were being unlawfully persecuted and that their arrest and subsequent detainment constituted a violation of human rights. During the testimony of several of the key witnesses, the men became unruly and intentionally disrupted the proceedings. At one point, Leevy carried on an open verbal argument with an expert in male pathology whom the prosecution had called to testify that individually the men’s behavior met the medical standard for a diagnosis of “anti-social disorder.”

From the beginning of the trial, Judge Mary Sammuels struggled to maintain order in the courtroom, at first issuing warnings and then proceeding to have two of the men physically restrained with handcuffs and gags. The men persisted and Sammuels ultimately removed from the courtroom.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the men presented evidence documenting the inequalities in the laws under which the men were charged and in the police and prosecutors application of them. They grilled prosecution witnesses on the lack of scientific evidence proving a causal relationship between biology and behavior. After the men were removed, their counsel held a press conference declaring the trial “a mockery” and insisting that because of the attitudes and prejudices against men that were prevalent in society and recreated in the courtroom their clients were unable to obtain a fair trial. They verbally attacked Judge Sammuels, holding her personally responsible for failing to remain and insist on the ideals of objectivity and “innocent until prove guilty” in the proceedings before her. Holding court before the press, they catalogued evidence of what they called the “obvious and undeniable sexism” of Judge Sammuels, the prosecuting attorney and several key witnesses.

Judge Sammuels responded by holding lead attorney Henry Glass in contempt and sentencing him to thirty days in jail. Immediately following the reading of the verdicts, Glass was arrested and lead out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

As the courtroom spectacle of the men’s behavior was given dramatic press coverage, the trial disseminated the arguments and ideals of positive masculinity and began what is now known as the second wave of the masculinist movement (the first wave having come in the late 1800s when men began to advocate for the right to vote. This wave saw its success in 1920 when Congress granted voting rights to men). Ultimately, all seven of the men were convicted for at least one of their offenses and served prison terms ranging from nine months to twelve years. Only Leevy was convicted on all charges and was sentenced to twenty years behind bars. In 1982, Leevy was murdered by another inmate in a prison yard fight.

In the years after the trial, Glass and his associates went after Judge Sammuels, the prosecutor and arresting officers, as well as the city of Ann Arbor and the State of Michigan by suing them in civil court for damages relating to the violation of their clients’ constitutional right to a fair trial. The case was thrown out of court and, though Glass, his associates and supporters and the American Civil Liberties Union lobbied to have it taken up by federal prosecutors, their efforts were unsuccessful.

Originally, the national debate sparked by these events focused on the question of the necessity of the strap, but soon spread to highlight all areas of male oppression. The second wave won many important social and legal victories for men, but ultimately did not meet Leevy’s prime objective. Despite the fact that there is virtually no scientific data proving that men’s genitals are vulnerable to damage or that the strap will protect them from it, most men today continue to voluntarily wear it on a daily basis.

The ripples of the second wave are still felt in a society struggling between forward progress and
traditional values. Due to the harsh economic realities we live with, most families need two incomes just to be able to provide for themselves. The days when it was expected that a man would stay home to provide protection and security both to the home and to the children have long since passed. However, men still face societal pressures to live up to the ideal of the strong man who anchors his family in a turbulent world. From the time they are very young, men are given two conflicting roles and expected to fill both of them: they must be the home-bound protectors while simultaneously enacting the spirit of the free, unencumbered and independent New Man.

The ideals of the New Man are founded in the belief of equality. The New Man is supposed to be able to do it all: work, care for his children, and participate in a society that both limits and persecutes him. Individually struggling to embrace both home and public life, men are caught at the vortex of family pressure and social and legal expectation. With the advent of blogs like Jeff's and the raising public debate about gender, some have called for an end of the War On Men. The third wave has begun.

Introduction

Jeff Raynard has wavy black hair, light blue eyes and a broad, masculine face.  He is six-foot-two, with a strong body and seemingly limitless physical power.  He can bench press two hundred pounds, run a mile in  five minutes, and is medically and socially in top physical form.  He is thirty-eight, married, and a father of two children, a 10-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl, for whom he is the primary caretaker.  Jeff arranges doctor appointments, makes breakfast, plans snacks, organizes extra-curricular activities, and is responsible for almost all of his children's needs -- travel, caretaking, and socialization.  His wife is the president of a bank and for their children, though he has a master's degree in engineering, Jeff and his wife, Christy, decided he forgo work to be a stay-at-home dad..  For him, this was a simple decision.

            "My kids come first," he explains simply.  We meet in his comfortable living room, which his wife has decorated in a Southwestern theme.  The walls are sienna, the couch is multi-colored with triangles of deep green and purple and a rich, warm terra-cotta.  The art on the walls is of cacti and desert scenes.  The carpet is a muted coffee brown.  While we talk, Jeff tells me he decided none of this.

            "As a man, my responsibilities are clear -- to tend to our children.  My wife decides our social calendar, our decorations, how and where we live.  My job is follow through on her plans.  She makes the decisions and I follow them through.  It's that way for all men."

            For Jeff, the arrangement feels natural, but some years back, he began to question why that is.  "Do I really enjoy this way of living or do I think this is the way it should be because all marriages are like this?" 

            The answer came one morning shortly after his daughter was born.  "When Laura was born, I had responsibility for Drake, but as a nursing mother, Christy took total control over Laura.  I barely got to hold my newborn daughter.  Christy was frantic whenever I watched her, thinking I wouldn't know what to do if she cried or that I wouldn't understand how to nurture her if she fussed.  That morning, she was taking a break from the pressures of having a newborn and went to have brunch with some friends.  In three hours, she called me twenty-two times, supposedly to check on Laura, but really checking on me.  The level of trust she had in my ability to care for a female infant was nil."

            When Jeff and Christy talked about it, it became clear the problem was not that she didn't trust him, it was that she didn't believe a man could have a strong emotional connection with a baby, especially a girl-baby.

            "That was an eye-opener.  That's when I started questioning everything.  That's when I started talking to other men, other fathers," Jeff tells me, his voice soft, but laced with determination.  "I realized that at a basic level, women, even my wife with whom I have devoted myself and with whom I have made this life, believe all men -- all men -- incapable of deep emotional responses.  On a basic level, we're not as human as they are."

            Now, a leader in the fast-growing masculinist movement, Jeff says the realization came as a shock to both him and Christy.  "We felt driven to make sure our son would be viewed and accepted as a full human being, capable of the entire range of feeling, and able to communicate, to nurture and to love as deeply as any woman.  The more we got into it though, the more we realized how intrinsic the belief that men are incomplete human beings goes."

            For Jeff, the social ramifications of male oppression are ever-present, and the more he struggled with them, the more he realized how omnipotent these beliefs are in our institutions, in our systems, and in our daily lives.  "The fabric of life is based on this idea that men are less than," he tells me.  "We see it in our social lives very clearly, but it's also very easy to see in legal, health and educational systems.  It's easy to see in the differing ways we raise girls and boys.  It's everywhere.  It's in our advertisements and our TV shows.  It's in the plot of every movie.  It's in the choices we make individually and institutionally.  It's so pervasive that even now, until you point it out, most people -- men and women -- are unaware of it.  We have accepted it as a fundamental fact of life and we neither see it nor question it."

            Through his blog, which has thousands of hits everyday, Jeff has been "lifting the veil" and asking the questions, "that plague (me)."  He blogs about his son's participation in sports, in school, and in play.  He writes about our legal system, in which men are presumed guilty and have to be proven innocent.  He writes about our educational system, in which boys are shoved to the back, continually under-performing girls in every grade until college.  He writes about the work force in which he does not participate, but through which male oppression is fully woven.  He writes about the cost of oppression on men -- financially, medically and psychologically.

            "Why should my son accept less from life than my daughter?  Why should his choices and opportunities be limited?  Why should he be thought of as forever potentially dangerous because he has the misfortune of having a penis -- which society views as both a weapon and a toy.  Why should the fact that he's a man circumscribe his entire life?"

            It's a question that's being asked more and more.  On blogs, on Twitter, in books and in articles, men are challenging the notion that they are less than women, less able to achieve the emotional range of a woman, less able to communicate effectively, less able to participate fully in society.

            Jeff's questions raise important issues in American society and galvanize the public.  While he does have support, some readers of his blog accuse him of betraying traditional American values.  The notion that American society is upheld and functions through the act of depriving men of financial, social, legal, educational and sexual power is so basic to us that the mere questioning of it threatens the status quo and rocks the foundation of all we hold near and dear.

            "While some people hold me up as a leader, I am the recipient of a lot of anger, from women and men, who find my questions, who find my quest to ensure equality for my son, challenging at best, and downright unpatriotic at the extreme.  The only thing that protects me is the First Amendment, but even still there are those who try to silence me.  We've had death threats.  We've had to move four times in the last seven years.  We've come to accept the constant stream of hate mail, of harassment, of abuse from those who feel threatened by my demand for equality.  The level of rage I encounter, just for asking questions, just for writing a daily blog, for making people aware of the fundamental oppression they both live with and enact themselves, is dangerous.  But for our son and for our daughter, Christy and I are dedicated to this mission.  Nothing can sway us from it."

            Jeff's voice in the emerging masculinist movement is clear and, though he is among the first to openly challenge male oppression as it works in American society, he is far from alone.  Growing discontent with the status quo can be seen in the emerging national gender debate we hear from politicians, from judges, from doctors, from teachers and read on the editorial pages of our newspapers.  Gender equality is an rising issue, and one central to the fabric of our lives.

            For me, the question of gender equality is academic and, of course, personal.  As a journalist, I was shocked to discover that nearly every story I covered in my ten years on the metro desk at a major metropolitan newspaper had an element of gender oppression.  The realization that every story my paper printed could have been written with an eye toward male oppression prompted me to research and write this book.  My aim is not only to document the emerging masculinist movement, but to support the validity of Jeff's questions. 

            "Change is coming," Jeff says.  "Everyday, more and more people become involved in this discussion.  The lines of division were formed long ago.  Most surprising to me is that there are -- in my experience -- equal numbers of men and women on each side.  Though this is a gender issue, it is not divided down gender lines.  This is not men against women.  It's conservatives against liberals.  The political is personal."