We stood in a back-alley bar facing a wall of whiskey. The decorator’s brief was surely ‘build a shrine to manliness’, with an emphasis on luxurious beards. When asked which of the whiskies we wanted, we admitted defeat and sought the bartender’s recommendation.
We found a quiet booth to enjoy our beverages and, after our second or third round, began to question whether a gaggle of over-educated modern men belonged here? Not so much ‘were we not manly?’, but ‘is this place even manly in the 21st century?’ Being Gen-Y, we were taught from birth to despise inequality and close the gender gap. How were we expected to celebrate our masculinity without acknowledging the differences between men and women? Despite my best efforts, I could only surmise that masculinity is more than a four scotch conversation.
I hadn’t thought about that night until GitHub developer and designer Julie Ann Horvath quit over sexist behaviour. This sparked debate on a scale that penetrated even my isolated corner of the internet. Specifically, although we all acknowledge further work is needed to combat sexism, there is disagreement over the details. I don’t have anything substantive to add to the sexism debate, except to offer the most apposite cliché I can muster
The standard you tolerate is the standard you uphold
As is often the case, the news at the time wove its way into an ongoing conversation with my girlfriend. She and I both agreed that feeling respectively feminine and masculine was important in a relationship, but we were unsure how to define those terms in the 21st century. In my typical ham-fisted way, I postulated that feeling masculine might be a hormonal response to a tickling of my manliness-ness1 — I feel a rush of hormones on the rare occasions I become the de facto alpha-male in a group, or when I perform some super-human feat of strength, like loosening a jar. Perhaps the feeling of masculinity is important to me because it satisfies some basic human instinct.
I believe happiness stems from satiating our basic genetic programming, including sexual attraction. Admittedly, I also believe that our happiness is not really important in the grand scheme of the universe, and that we should generally just get over ourselves. But I digress. In discussing how best to shape society for our children, there are many issues of gender that need addressing. The first would be: if we admit there are difference between men and women, what is the standard of equality?
Equality sounds like the realm of ethics, so I’ll crack open my wikipedia-level comprehension of Kantian ethics, specifically the principle of universalisability, which is obviously a made up word that can mean whatever I want depending on the context and is therefore perfect for the present discussion. At this juncture I’ll take it to mean that it is ethical to behave in a way that, should others be presented with equivalent circumstances, it would be practical for them each to mimic your behaviour. I’m pretty sure the focus-group-erati have workshopped this particular piece of 18th century wisdom into the condensed form ‘equal opportunity’, which is satisfyingly digestible but impractically vague: Is it ethical for a man to give birth to a child? Without a serious dollop of science he doesn’t have the opportunity. Is it therefore unethical for women to give birth? This is the sort of horseshit counter-argument Kant suffered, though it’s plainly obtuse.
I’d prefer to discuss the differences between men and women that more obviously complicate the concept of equal opportunity. If we apply the principle of universalisability, or even equal opportunity: Should men and women have the right to vote? Absolutely. Be paid equally? Absolutely. Equally represented in the upper echelons of business and politics? Absolutely. Have the right to leave work to care for their newborn child? Aaaand.. that’s where we start losing people. Society still finds it more acceptable for women to leave work to care for children, citing some practicality of physiology, or a special bond between mother and child. My meta-point is that the line is still blurred on a great many issues, and the side you choose seems to be largely a product of your upbringing.
We can agree there are differences between men and women, and that sometimes those differences are obvious. I’m less certain about whether it is ethical to draw attention to such differences, much less celebrate them. For example, the IQ of men and women tends to be roughly equal, but several studies have shown the IQ of men to be more variable, with gender biases in spatial reasoning, etc. Is it ethical to celebrate the strength of men’s spatial reasoning? Or the varience of men’s IQ? Some might view this as sexist, even when stated impartially and backed by a proper statistical analysis.
What about luxurious beards? Who would object to celebrating a luxurious beard? Well, fashion notwithstanding, this topic seems comparatively benign. Although there are certainly women who grow facial hair, we are generally more comfortable with men sporting beards and, if they feel so inclined, doing so with a certain level of pride. What about muscular shoulders, or a deep voice, or being tall? These are irrefutable, physiological differences between men and women that we seem willing to acknowledge. Is it therefore ethical to celebrate these differences? Is this how we should define masculinity, in these small discrepancies in physiology between genders?
Again we get bogged down in statistics — not every man is taller than every woman — but we can use these topics to explore the morality of celebrating our differences. By drawing attention to ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ features, we highlight the underpinnings of sexual attraction. Alas, this quickly devolves into my previous post about the basest human instinct for survival of the species, which was regrettably dull and simplistic.
I guess I can only conclude that Gen-Y still considers it acceptable to celebrate masculinity, although the agreed upon set of masculine qualities is rapidly shrinking to physiological differences between men and women, lamentably sugar-coated by an ironic fashion sense. And progress being what it is, I hope our children will balk at what we considered progress.
no, not my manhood ↩