The tendency is often to see men as inherently privileged by patriarchy, as every position they are in as automatically better, and every position women are in as automatically worse.
What if we looked at beauty and exhibitionist sexual tendencies as something that men are denied by patriarchal culture, and women are allowed? After all, we know men are denied many things by patriarchal culture, so what if taking pleasure in our own beauty (and we are all beautiful) and taking pleasure in being looked-at is not a submissive position at all, but a freedom, like the freedom to cry and to express emotions, that women claimed for themselves and men have not?
Thoughts?
This post reminds me of this book that I have called “Kickboxing Geishas” about women in present day Japan. Japan gets a lot of flack for how women are treated there, and most of it is deserved, but this particular book focuses on the things women can do in Japan that men can’t do. Men are expected to work sometimes 18 hour days, be reserved, and do what they’re told. Women are now a little more able to work the less traditional jobs (since they can’t get ahead in the traditional ones) and have a lot more time to enjoy their lives - shopping, traveling, and so on. Because less has been expected of Japanese women, they’ve actually managed to get more out of their 20s and 30s than the Japanese men.
And you have a point in our culture. A man who whipped out his junk would most likely be arrested, even if he had been asked to do so by women. Obviously lots of men take pride in their dicks but there are tons of them who are much less confident in their bodies especially as something that is sexy. Women have been sexualized since… well, the beginning of time. Men are sexual but that doesn’t mean they feel sexy or take pleasure in how they look. I honestly think that being able to enjoy our bodies and feel sexy is a win.
You are of course 100% right about this. My issue with most feminism is that it denies the realities of what masculinity does to men. I know many men that feel these pressures and they manifest in their lives in deeply complex and painful ways. Thank you for bringing up this important topic.
There are definitely elements of truth in that. It’s a really hard thing to defend though. The gaze in principle is an extremely weak theory; its sheer vagueness and “ready-made” feminist theory quality makes it easy for people who don’t understand what they’re saying to throw those words around with little consequence, whereas a dissenter will have to do considerably more work in pushing it somewhere new.
Gaze theory symbolizes the infancy of feminism for me. There are a lot of thruths in there, and it’s certainly a useful way of thinking through systems of power, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s supplanted with a more solid theory.
I’m hugely influenced by Eric Lott’s work on blackface minstrelsy. It’s too overwhelming an argument to summarize here, but the general idea he manages to prove is that what often seems as transparent racism (or sexism) is in fact an incomprehensible network of meaning production that can veer toward contradictory aims. He uses Mulvey’s gaze theory, but adds to the male gaze, “the pale gaze”, and basically flips the notion that in this process power flows one way, completely on its head. We’re able to imagine that blackface isn’t just the vulgar racism that it’s billed as. An extraordinary feat to pull off!
His book is called “Love and Theft” if you’re interested. It’s not “it”, but Lott is on to something. As are you. Keep thinking it through!
“What if we looked at beauty and exhibitionist sexual tendencies as something that men are denied by patriarchal culture, and women are allowed?”
Worth considering, but I think it’s also important to recognize that women aren’t simply “allowed” them, but rather are often required to have and use them, and often in particular ways, too.
Very interesting subject I think. I’ve thought a lot about this over the years.
Any absolute social standard will impose itself on all who don’t fit it. Patriarchal culture did, does. As do Matriarchal ones. Feminism when militant does often lead to other forms of imposition as well, particularly for those branches and practitioners that have lost track of the movements roots in universal equality and treat it more as an uprising. For them masculinity has been cast as the other, an enemy, instead of a fellow oppressed group that suffered and benefited along side others under the old Patriarchal rules of conduct and place. Woman who played their roles to script and dodged misfortune did as well as men then, gained influence and status, and were even allowed to brake some of the rules if seemed what they had to offer was desirable. Limited rebellion has always been sexy. But under a strict social rule, cast roles are always imposed, so seldom was anyone truly ‘allowed’ to be anything that deviated too far without paying a price. All were expected to meet the standard and failure was punished by being considered lower in rank amongst your pears and undesirable to mates. We were all required to use the gifts we were perceived as having and still are. All that has changed is that many women are expected to use all of them, all at once and achieve like the great Patriarchs of the past did who sacrificed family and life for carrier and wife. And men are expected to be all they once were, but without stepping on anyone’s’ toes, being too aggressive, or male, be sensitive enough to others to match women in that, but still be tough enough to absorb all the stuff they once were when being hard and cool was desirable. And please don’t remind us you’r male unless it’s sexy in which case please do and keep that all strait ok?
For me I feel this was one of the real issues I grew up with as a man, raised almost exclusively by women, all of who were ardent feminists. The absence of a clear roll for masculinity in the new world order they had in mind. So much emphasis was put on damming and combating old school male roles, and casting them as the sole culprits in a culture wide historical oppression that in truth required the complicity of most people in it regardless of gender or prosperity to exist.
Now while women were being encouraged to think them selves capable of anything, and unfortunately also made to feel the lesser if they didn’t try and succeed at everything. Men are expected to be little more than shells of some vague and purposeless ideal passive and caring but still strong basically week shadow of the Patriarchal male. Often we were told what we could not be anymore, but seldom are new structured roles set out for us.
It’s starting to evolve beyond that point but so far a lot of what I’ve seen for myself is rooted in the material world – men are claiming a right to beauty and sensitivity, but still the shape of the male identity has become much less defined and what has tended to replace it is more aspects of the cult of self than a real working model of modern masculinity.
Sorry for the verbosity, I’m prone to it I’m afraid.
Felt like developing the last thing i said there. What bugs me now is how much identity, roles, including gender seem to be getting defined by accessory and style. It’s kind of the clashing of issues, more abut pop culture materialism and superficiality eating at the collective mind. And there’s a lot of anger and dissatisfaction that is at risk of being directed at ‘others’ in our worlds. Feels like a bad balance.
probably at risk of being the grumpy old man, but i feel like it’s not helping. Wish for greater philosophical thought all over about how people relate to each other and show respect for their fellow humans than is at times apparent.
I’ll just note that there are -reasons- why crossdressing and femdom are as popular as they are. and why the whining MRA’s do about pampered “princesses” has a sort of poignant note under all the really unpleasant entitled/hateful crap. i mean, way, way, way under, but still.
Except that men are participating in the beauty ritual…the meterosexual man was “invented” to give a label to it. Look at all the men getting hair plugs, dying their hair, manicures, teeth whitening and many different plastic surgeries that include botox, chest lifting. You could even include penis enlargement under this category. We just don’t take the time to think of the ways in which men do beautify themselves.
True. A lot of that–not all–is fairly recent, though. And it’s still sort of–well, I think, again, until very recently, not -fun-, you know. At most it’s a kind of maintenance: just -don’t- have paunch, yellow teeth, thinning hair, etc. (Where ageism and class and other shit intersects, there). But playing dressup, say, or being overtly sexy in a come-hither way, is still pretty limited for men in comparison.
SS: yeah, well, this is where a critique of corporate/capitalist commodification comes in handy; clearly gender -alone- isn’t enough. Yeah, basically, sooner or later, if you can brand it, market it and sell it, it becomes at least sort of O.K. I don’t even necessarily think this is completely evil, just…it’s kind of overwhelming, and any viable alternative isn’t very clear at all.
More in response to the first post…
“so what if taking pleasure in our own beauty (and we are all beautiful) and taking pleasure in being looked-at is not a submissive position at all, but a freedom, like the freedom to cry and to express emotions, that women claimed for themselves and men have not?”
…it’s an absurd notion to me, that being appreciated was ever oppressive. It’s illogical.
Being beautiful is not oppressive, being told how you can be beautiful is. To a point it’s a mater of choice for us to like what we like. But when the whole of society sets a limited fixed standard of what is normal you inherently rule out the natural diversity of the world.
But good god, it’s crazy to reject beauty fundamentally.
to belledame222 : It started as a short post, but…well…*shrug*
In North America, for the first half of the last century men had a very specific aesthetic standard to conform to, the same thing but more uptight and in a grey suit as a beauty standard.
And as someone who flaunted it at the time as a teen in the 80’s, even post the age of Aquarius, braking with the mainstream did put you at risk of someone trying to kick your ass right up until recently and still in some places I hear. So it’s pretty oppressive sometimes. One time all that saved me was a thug’s uncertainty about if I had my earring in the gay ear or not – I did and I’m not so whatever.
Thanks to my taste in vintage duds, I learned to be quick on my feet. And now thanks to the times, now I seldom feel at risk at all and have gotten slow too! And I feel even a bit tame really next to some. It all is changing one way or another and it has been improving over all I think so count me optimistic over all.
But we seem as a society to find it easy to forget that Box’s are just stupid in the end. Doesn’t matter who you put in them. It was simpler so people liked that, and still do. I feel that pull sometimes; I think it would be easy to fall into it. I work at not letting myself.
I remind myself what we get to ware really does not tell you everything you need to know about a person in order to make a real informed judgment of them. Nor does knowing whom they like to have sex with or what gender they see themselves as. It speaks to some things, but it’s far from the whole story.
So often people remark on this stuff about ‘others’ and say to me, ‘what does that say about someone?!’ and yes it’s interesting to speculate about that, but what about speculating for a moment about what it does Not say? And yes the point is to put off judging; it slows things down.
Not a silly head game, it’s a really good self-checking question I find.
If you read up on fashion history a tiny bit (which is how much I have so there is probably lots of work I don’t know about in this realm), there is lots of talk of the masculine “renunciation” of ornament, usually placed in like the 18th century (I think?). Prior to that, at least for the aristocrats, men were, at least, just as elaborately dressed as women were. So at the very least beauty being denied to men (well, to all men, obviously this wasn’t really an issue for most men even at the time) is a historical phenomenon, not a given.
What it means that men “gave up” all these aspects of self-presentation, and are only now starting to get some of that stuff back (in metrosexual-ness?), I don’t know.
@Trin–exactly what I meant about mardi gras-it’s not free space for exploration, it’s often quite coercive.
@sam–it is absolutely interesting to look at what kinds of beauty men are ‘allowed’ to indulge in.
@brenda–i don’t know a lot about fashion history other than yeah, there were definite periods of time when men were as elaborately dressed as women. That’s one of the reasons critiques of clothing bother me–though women suffered through corsets and footbinding, the idea that beauty and such are restrictions purely on women…yeah.
@belle–absolutely, ‘metrosexuality’ and such are recent and saying something interesting here. Not sure quite what, yet. But while male beauty and fashion were restricted to gay men and subcultures (yay goth boys) recently, they are definitely getting more common.
I think it’s important to maintain a sense of fun about these things, to not let them become coercive, but really–to think that women had no place in shaping fashion and beauty standards is to give women far too little credit for strength, resistance, and knowledge of their own pleasures.
That’s a ‘you have no agency’ argument, and y’all know how I feel about those.