Week 4 critical analysis

59

6    Masculinity as Homophobia Fear, Shame, and Silence in the

Construction of Gender Identity

Michael S. Kimmel

We think of manhood as eternal, a timeless essence that resides deep in the heart of every man. We think of manhood as a thing, a quality that one either has or doesn’t have. We think of manhood as innate, residing in the particular biological composition of the human male, the result of androgens or the possession of a penis. We think of manhood as a transcendent tangible property that each man must mani- fest in the world, the reward presented with great ceremony to a young novice by his elders for having successfully completed an arduous initiation ritual. . . .

In this chapter, I view masculinity as a constantly changing collection of meanings that we construct through our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with our world. Manhood is neither static nor timeless; it is historical. Manhood is not the manifestation of an inner essence; it is socially constructed. Manhood does not bubble up to consciousness from our biological makeup; it is created in culture. Man- hood means different things at different times to different people. We come to know what it means to be a man in our culture by setting our definitions in opposition to a set of “others”—racial minorities, sexual minorities, and, above all, women. . . .

Classical Social Theory as a Hidden Meditation of Manhood

Begin this inquiry by looking at four passages from that set of texts commonly called classical social and political theory. You will, no doubt, recognize them, but I invite you to recall the way they were discussed in your undergraduate or graduate courses in theory:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole re- lations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social condi- tions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast- frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable

Republished with permission of Sage Publications, Inc., from Theorizing Masculinities, Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman, eds., Men’s Studies Association (U.S.), pp. 119–141. Copyright © 1994; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. I am grateful to Tim Beneke, Harry Brod, Michael Kaufman, Iona Mara-Drita, and Lillian Rubin for comments on earlier versions of the chapter.

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 59 2/22/16 11:34 AM

60 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new- formed ones become antiquated be- fore they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relation with his kind. (Marx & Engels, 1848/1964)

An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. . . . At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it. (Tocqueville, 1835/1967)

Where the fulfillment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport. (Weber, 1905/1966)

We are warned by a proverb against serving two masters at the same time. The poor ego has things even worse: it serves three severe masters and does what it can to bring their claims and demands into harmony with one another. These claims are always di- vergent and often seem incompatible. No wonder that the ego so often fails in its task. Its three tyrannical masters are the external world, the super ego and the id. . . . It feels hemmed in on three sides, threatened by three kinds of danger, to which, if it is hard pressed, it reacts by generating anxiety. . . . Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super ego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it; and we can understand how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry: “Life is not easy!” (Freud, “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality,” 1933/1966)

If your social science training was anything like mine, these were offered as de- scriptions of the bourgeoisie under capitalism, of individuals in democratic societies, of the fate of the Protestant work ethic under the ever rationalizing spirit of capital- ism, or of the arduous task of the autonomous ego in psychological development. Did anyone ever mention that in all four cases the theorists were describing men? Not just “man” as in generic mankind, but a particular type of masculinity, a defini- tion of manhood that derives its identity from participation in the marketplace, from interaction with other men in that marketplace— in short, a model of masculinity for whom identity is based on homosocial competition? Three years before Tocqueville found Americans “restless in the midst of abundance,” Senator Henry Clay had called the United States “a nation of self- made men.”

What does it mean to be “ self- made”? What are the consequences of self- making for the individual man, for other men, for women? It is this notion of manhood— rooted in the sphere of production, the public arena, a masculinity grounded not in land ownership or in artisanal republican virtue but in successful participation in marketplace competition— this has been the defining notion of American manhood.

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 60 2/22/16 11:34 AM

6 Kimmel / Masculinity as Homophobia 61

Masculinity must be proved, and no sooner is it proved than it is again questioned and must be proved again— constant, relentless, unachievable, and ultimately the quest for proof becomes so meaningless that it takes on the characteristic, as Weber said, of a sport. He who has the most toys when he dies wins. . . .

Masculinity as History and the History of Masculinity

The idea of masculinity expressed in the previous extracts is the product of his- torical shifts in the grounds on which men rooted their sense of themselves as men. To argue that cultural definitions of gender identity are historically specific goes only so far; we have to specify exactly what those models were. In my historical inquiry into the development of these models of manhood1 I chart the fate of two models for manhood at the turn of the 19th century and the emergence of a third in the first few decades of that century.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, two models of manhood prevailed. The Genteel Patriarch derived his identity from landownership. Supervising his estate, he was refined, elegant, and given to casual sensuousness. He was a dot- ing and devoted father, who spent much of his time supervising the estate and with his family. Think of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson as examples. By contrast, the Heroic Artisan embodied the physical strength and republican virtue that Jefferson observed in the yeoman farmer, independent urban craftsman, or shopkeeper. Also a devoted father, the Heroic Artisan taught his son his craft, bringing him through ritual apprenticeship to status as master craftsman. Eco- nomically autonomous, the Heroic Artisan also cherished his democratic com- munity, delighting in the participatory democracy of the town meeting. Think of Paul Revere at his pewter shop, shirtsleeves rolled up, a leather apron— a man who took pride in his work.

Heroic Artisans and Genteel Patriarchs lived in casual accord, in part because their gender ideals were complementary (both supported participatory democracy and individual autonomy, although patriarchs tended to support more powerful state machineries and also supported slavery) and because they rarely saw one another: Artisans were decidedly urban and the Genteel Patriarchs ruled their rural estates. By the 1830s, though, this casual symbiosis was shattered by the emergence of a new vision of masculinity, Marketplace Manhood.

Marketplace Man derived his identity entirely from his success in the capitalist marketplace, as he accumulated wealth, power, status. He was the urban entrepre- neur, the businessman. Restless, agitated, and anxious, Marketplace Man was an absentee landlord at home and an absent father with his children, devoting himself to his work in an increasingly homosocial environment— a male- only world in which he pits himself against other men. His efforts at self- making transform the political and economic spheres, casting aside the Genteel Patriarch as an anachronistic feminized dandy— sweet, but ineffective and outmoded, and transforming the Heroic Artisan into a dispossessed proletarian, a wage slave.

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 61 2/22/16 11:34 AM

62 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

As Tocqueville would have seen it, the coexistence of the Genteel Patriarch and the Heroic Artisan embodied the fusion of liberty and equality. Genteel Patriarchy was the manhood of the traditional aristocracy, the class that embodied the virtue of liberty. The Heroic Artisan embodied democratic community, the solidarity of the urban shopkeeper or craftsman. Liberty and democracy, the patriarch and the artisan, could, and did, coexist. But Marketplace Man is capitalist man, and he makes both freedom and equality problematic, eliminating the freedom of the aristocracy and proletarian- izing the equality of the artisan. In one sense, American history has been an effort to restore, retrieve, or reconstitute the virtues of Genteel Patriarchy and Heroic Artisan- ate as they were being transformed in the capitalist marketplace.

Marketplace Manhood was a manhood that required proof, and that required the acquisition of tangible goods as evidence of success. It reconstituted itself by the exclusion of “others”—women, nonwhite men, nonnative- born men, homosexual men— and by terrified flight into a pristine mythic homosocial Eden where men could, at last, be real men among other men. The story of the ways in which Market- place Man becomes American Everyman is a tragic tale, a tale of striving to live up to impossible ideals of success leading to chronic terrors of emasculation, emotional emptiness, and a gendered rage that leave a wide swath of destruction in its wake.

Masculinities as Power Relations

Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American mascu- linity. It describes his characteristics— aggression, competition, anxiety— and the arena in which those characteristics are deployed— the public sphere, the mar- ketplace. If the marketplace is the arena in which manhood is tested and proved, it is a gendered arena, in which tensions between women and men and tensions among different groups of men are weighted with meaning. These tensions suggest that cultural definitions of gender are played out in a contested terrain and are themselves power relations.

All masculinities are not created equal; or rather, we are all created equal, but any hypothetical equality evaporates quickly because our definitions of masculinity are not equally valued in our society. One definition of manhood continues to remain the standard against which other forms of manhood are measured and evaluated. Within the dominant culture, the masculinity that defines white, middle class, early middle- aged, heterosexual men is the masculinity that sets the standards for other men, against which other men are measured and, more often than not, found want- ing. Sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) wrote that in America, there is only “one complete, unblushing male”:

a young, married, white, urban, northern heterosexual, Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports. Every American male tends to look out upon the world from this perspective. . . . Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways is likely to view himself . . . as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior. (p. 128)

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 62 2/22/16 11:34 AM

This is the definition that we will call “hegemonic” masculinity, the image of masculinity of those men who hold power, which has become the standard in psy- chological evaluations, sociological research, and self- help and advice literature for teaching young men to become “real men” (Connell, 1987). The hegemonic defini- tion of manhood is a man in power, a man with power, and a man of power. We equate manhood with being strong, successful, capable, reliable, in control. The very definitions of manhood we have developed in our culture maintain the power that some men have over other men and that men have over women.

Our culture’s definition of masculinity is thus several stories at once. It is about the individual man’s quest to accumulate those cultural symbols that denote manhood, signs that he has in fact achieved it. It is about those standards being used against women to prevent their inclusion in public life and their consignment to a devalued private sphere. It is about the differential access that different types of men have to those cultural resources that confer manhood and about how each of these groups then develops their own modifications to preserve and claim their manhood. It is about the power of these definitions themselves to serve to maintain the real- life power that men have over women and that some men have over other men.

This definition of manhood has been summarized cleverly by psychologist Robert Brannon (1976) into four succinct phrases:

1. “No Sissy Stuff!” One may never do anything that even remotely suggests femi- ninity. Masculinity is the relentless repudiation of the feminine.

2. “Be a Big Wheel.” Masculinity is measured by power, success, wealth, and status. As the current saying goes, “He who has the most toys when he dies wins.”

3. “Be a Sturdy Oak.” Masculinity depends on remaining calm and reliable in a crisis, holding emotions in check. In fact, proving you’re a man depends on never showing your emotions at all. Boys don’t cry.

4. “Give ‘em Hell.” Exude an aura of manly daring and aggression. Go for it. Take risks.

These rules contain the elements of the definition against which virtually all American men are measured. Failure to embody these rules, to affirm the power of the rules and one’s achievement of them is a source of men’s confusion and pain. Such a model is, of course, unrealizable for any man. But we keep trying, valiantly and vainly, to measure up. American masculinity is a relentless test.2 The chief test is contained in the first rule. Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, being a man means “not being like women.” This notion of anti femininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is.

Masculinity as the Flight from the Feminine

Historically and developmentally, masculinity has been defined as the flight from women, the repudiation of femininity. . . .

6 Kimmel / Masculinity as Homophobia 63

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 63 2/22/16 11:34 AM

64 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

The drive to repudiate the mother as the indication of the acquisition of masculine gender identity has three consequences for the young boy. First, he pushes away his real mother, and with her the traits of nurturance, compassion, and tenderness she may have embodied. Second, he suppresses those traits in himself, because they will reveal his incomplete separation from mother. His life becomes a lifelong project to demonstrate that he possesses none of his mother’s traits. Masculine identity is born in the renunciation of the feminine, not in the direct affirmation of the masculine, which leaves masculine gender identity tenuous and fragile.

Third, as if to demonstrate the accomplishment of these first two tasks, the boy also learns to devalue all women in his society, as the living embodiments of those traits in himself he has learned to despise. Whether or not he was aware of it, Freud also described the origins of sexism— the systematic devaluation of women— in the desperate efforts of the boy to separate from mother. We may want “a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad,” as the popular song had it, but we certainly don’t want to be like her.

This chronic uncertainty about gender identity helps us understand several obses- sive behaviors. Take, for example, the continuing problem of the school- yard bully. Parents remind us that the bully is the least secure about his manhood, and so he is constantly trying to prove it. But he “proves” it by choosing opponents he is abso- lutely certain he can defeat; thus the standard taunt to a bully is to “pick on someone your own size.” He can’t, though, and after defeating a smaller and weaker opponent, which he was sure would prove his manhood, he is left with the empty gnawing feel- ing that he has not proved it after all, and he must find another opponent, again one smaller and weaker, that he can again defeat to prove it to himself.3 . . .

When does it end? Never. To admit weakness, to admit frailty or fragility, is to be seen as a wimp, a sissy, not a real man. But seen by whom?

Masculinity as a Homosocial Enactment

Other men: We are under the constant careful scrutiny of other men. Other men watch us, rank us, grant our acceptance into the realm of manhood. Manhood is dem- onstrated for other men’s approval. It is other men who evaluate the performance. Literary critic David Leverenz (1991) argues that “ideologies of manhood have func- tioned primarily in relation to the gaze of male peers and male authority” (p. 769). Think of how men boast to one another of their accomplishments— from their latest sexual conquest to the size of the fish they caught— and how we constantly parade the markers of manhood— wealth, power, status, sexy women— in front of other men, desperate for their approval.

That men prove their manhood in the eyes of other men is both a consequence of sexism and one of its chief props. “Women have, in men’s minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it’s useless to define yourself in terms of a woman,” noted playwright David Mamet. “What men need is men’s approval.” Women become a kind of currency that men use to improve their ranking on the masculine social

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 64 2/22/16 11:34 AM

scale. (Even those moments of heroic conquest of women carry, I believe, a current of homosocial evaluation.) Masculinity is a homosocial enactment. We test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood. . . .

Masculinity as Homophobia

. . . That nightmare from which we never seem to awaken is that those other men will see that sense of inadequacy, they will see that in our own eyes we are not who we are pretending to be. What we call masculinity is often a hedge against being revealed as a fraud, an exaggerated set of activities that keep others from seeing through us, and a frenzied effort to keep at bay those fears within ourselves. Our real fear “is not fear of women but of being ashamed or humiliated in front of other men, or being dominated by stronger men” (Leverenz, 1986, p. 451).

This, then, is the great secret of American manhood: We are afraid of other men. Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. “The word ‘faggot’ has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears of homosexuals,” writes David Leverenz (1986). “It comes out of the depths of manhood: a label of ultimate contempt for anyone who seems sissy, untough, uncool” (p. 455). Homophobia is the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men. We are afraid to let other men see that fear. Fear makes us ashamed, because the recognition of fear in ourselves is proof to ourselves that we are not as manly as we pretend, that we are, like the young man in a poem by Yeats, “one that ruffles in a manly pose for all his timid heart.” Our fear is the fear of humiliation. We are ashamed to be afraid.

Shame leads to silence— the silences that keep other people believing that we actually approve of the things that are done to women, to minorities, to gays and lesbians in our culture. The frightened silence as we scurry past a woman being hassled by men on the street. That furtive silence when men make sexist or rac- ist jokes in a bar. That clammy- handed silence when guys in the office make gay- bashing jokes. Our fears are the sources of our silences, and men’s silence is what keeps the system running. This might help to explain why women often complain that their male friends or partners are often so understanding when they are alone and yet laugh at sexist jokes or even make those jokes themselves when they are out with a group.

The fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood. It starts so early. “Boys among boys are ashamed to be unmanly,” wrote one educator in 1871 (cited in Rotundo, 1993, p. 264). I have a standing bet with a friend that I can walk onto any playground in America where 6- year- old boys are happily playing and by asking one question, I can provoke a fight. That question is simple: “Who’s a sissy around here?” Once posed, the challenge is made. One of two things is likely to happen. One boy will accuse another of being a sissy, to which that boy will respond

6 Kimmel / Masculinity as Homophobia 65

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 65 2/22/16 11:34 AM

66 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

that he is not a sissy, that the first boy is. They may have to fight it out to see who’s lying. Or a whole group of boys will surround one boy and all shout “He is! He is!” That boy will either burst into tears and run home crying, disgraced, or he will have to take on several boys at once, to prove that he’s not a sissy. (And what will his father or older brothers tell him if he chooses to run home crying?) It will be some time before he regains any sense of self- respect.

Violence is often the single most evident marker of manhood. Rather it is the will- ingness to fight, the desire to fight. The origin of our expression that one has a chip on one’s shoulder lies in the practice of an adolescent boy in the country or small town at the turn of the century, who would literally walk around with a chip of wood balanced on his shoulder— a signal of his readiness to fight with anyone who would take the initiative of knocking the chip off (see Gorer, 1964, p. 38; Mead, 1965).

As adolescents, we learn that our peers are a kind of gender police, constantly threat- ening to unmask us as feminine, as sissies. One of the favorite tricks when I was an ado- lescent was to ask a boy to look at his fingernails. If he held his palm toward his face and curled his fingers back to see them, he passed the test. He’d look at his nails “like a man.” But if he held the back of his hand away from his face, and looked at his fingernails with arm outstretched, he was immediately ridiculed as sissy.

As young men we are constantly riding those gender boundaries, checking the fences we have constructed on the perimeter, making sure that nothing even remotely feminine might show through. The possibilities of being unmasked are everywhere. Even the most seemingly insignificant thing can pose a threat or activate that haunt- ing terror. On the day the students in my course “Sociology of Men and Masculinities” were scheduled to discuss homophobia and male- male friendships, one student pro- vided a touching illustration. Noting that it was a beautiful day, the first day of spring after a brutal northeast winter, he decided to wear shorts to class. “I had this really nice pair of new Madras shorts,” he commented. “But then I thought to myself, these shorts have lavender and pink in them. Today’s class topic is homophobia. Maybe today is not the best day to wear these shorts.”

Our efforts to maintain a manly front cover everything we do. What we wear. How we talk. How we walk. What we eat. Every mannerism, every movement contains a coded gender language. Think, for example, of how you would answer the question: How do you “know” if a man is homosexual? When I ask this question in classes or workshops, respondents invariably provide a pretty standard list of stereotypically effeminate behaviors. He walks a certain way, talks a certain way, acts a certain way. He’s very emotional; he shows his feelings. One woman commented that she “knows” a man is gay if he really cares about her; another said she knows he’s gay if he shows no interest in her, if he leaves her alone.

Now alter the question and imagine what heterosexual men do to make sure no one could possibly get the “wrong idea” about them. Responses typically refer to the original stereotypes, this time as a set of negative rules about behavior. Never dress that way. Never talk or walk that way. Never show your feelings or get emotional. Always be prepared to demonstrate sexual interest in women that you meet, so it is impossible for any woman to get the wrong idea about you. In this sense, homophobia,

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 66 2/22/16 11:34 AM

the fear of being perceived as gay, as not a real man, keeps men exaggerating all the traditional rules of masculinity, including sexual predation with women. Homopho- bia and sexism go hand in hand. . . .

Homophobia as a Cause of Sexism, Heterosexism, and Racism

Homophobia is intimately interwoven with both sexism and racism. The fear— sometimes conscious, sometimes not— that others might perceive us as homo- sexual propels men to enact all manner of exaggerated masculine behaviors and attitudes to make sure that no one could possibly get the wrong idea about us. One of the centerpieces of that exaggerated masculinity is putting women down, both by excluding them from the public sphere and by the quotidian put- downs in speech and behaviors that organize the daily life of the American man. Women and gay men become the “other” against which heterosexual men project their identities, against whom they stack the decks so as to compete in a situation in which they will always win, so that by suppressing them, men can stake a claim for their own manhood. Women threaten emasculation by representing the home, workplace, and familial responsibility, the negation of fun. Gay men have historically played the role of the consummate sissy in the American popular mind because homosexuality is seen as an inversion of normal gender develop- ment. There have been other “others.” Through American history, various groups have represented the sissy, the non- men against whom American men played out their definitions of manhood, often with vicious results. In fact, these changing groups provide an interesting lesson in American historical development.

At the turn of the 19th century, it was Europeans and children who provided the contrast for American men. The “true American was vigorous, manly, and direct, not effete and corrupt like the supposed Europeans,” writes Rupert Wilkinson (1986). “He was plain rather than ornamented, rugged rather than luxury seeking, a liberty loving common man or natural gentleman rather than an aristocratic oppressor or servile minion” (p. 96). The “real man” of the early 19th century was neither noble nor serf. By the middle of the century, black slaves had replaced the effete nobleman. Slaves were seen as dependent, helpless men, incapable of defending their women and children, and therefore less than manly. Native Americans were cast as foolish and naive children, so they could be infantalized as the “Red Children of the Great White Father” and therefore excluded from full manhood.

By the end of the century, new European immigrants were also added to the list of the unreal men, especially the Irish and Italians, who were seen as too passionate and emotionally volatile to remain controlled sturdy oaks, and Jews, who were seen as too bookishly effete and too physically puny to truly measure up. In the mid- 20th cen- tury, it was also Asians— first the Japanese during the Second World War, and more recently, the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War— who have served as unmanly templates against which American men have hurled their gendered rage. Asian men were seen as small, soft, and effeminate— hardly men at all.

6 Kimmel / Masculinity as Homophobia 67

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 67 2/22/16 11:34 AM

68 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

Such a list of “hyphenated” Americans— Italian-, Jewish-, Irish-, African-, Native-, Asian-, gay— composes the majority of American men. So manhood is only possible for a distinct minority, and the definition has been constructed to prevent the others from achieving it. Interestingly, this emasculation of one’s enemies has a flip side— and one that is equally gendered. These very groups that have historically been cast as less than manly were also, often simultaneously, cast as hypermasculine, as sexu- ally aggressive, violent rapacious beasts, against whom “civilized” men must take a decisive stand and thereby rescue civilization. Thus black men were depicted as rampaging sexual beasts, women as carnivorously carnal, gay men as sexually insa- tiable, southern European men as sexually predatory and voracious, and Asian men as vicious and cruel torturers who were immorally disinterested in life itself, willing to sacrifice their entire people for their whims. But whether one saw these groups as effeminate sissies or as brutal savages, the terms with which they were perceived were gendered. These groups become the “others,” the screens against which traditional conceptions of manhood were developed. . . .

Power and Powerlessness in the Lives of Men

I have argued that homophobia, men’s fear of other men, is the animating condi- tion of the dominant definition of masculinity in America, that the reigning defini- tion of masculinity is a defensive effort to prevent being emasculated. In our efforts to suppress or overcome those fears, the dominant culture exacts a tremendous price from those deemed less than fully manly: women, gay men, nonnative- born men, men of color. This perspective may help clarify a paradox in men’s lives, a paradox in which men have virtually all the power and yet do not feel powerful (see Kaufman, 1993).

Manhood is equated with power— over women, over other men. Everywhere we look, we see the institutional expression of that power— in state and national legisla- tures, on the boards of directors of every major U.S. corporation or law firm, and in every school and hospital administration. . . .

When confronted with the analysis that men have all the power, many men react incredulously. “What do you mean, men have all the power?” they ask. “What are you talking about? My wife bosses me around. My kids boss me around. My boss bosses me around. I have no power at all! I’m completely powerless!”

Men’s feelings are not the feelings of the powerful, but of those who see themselves as powerless. These are the feelings that come inevitably from the discontinuity between the social and the psychological, between the aggregate analysis that reveals how men are in power as a group and the psychological fact that they do not feel powerful as individuals. They are the feelings of men who were raised to believe themselves entitled to feel that power, but do not feel it. No wonder many men are frustrated and angry. . . .

Why, then, do American men feel so powerless? Part of the answer is because we’ve constructed the rules of manhood so that only the tiniest fraction of men come to believe that they are the biggest of wheels, the sturdiest of oaks, the most virulent repudiators of femininity, the most daring and aggressive. We’ve managed to disempower

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 68 2/22/16 11:34 AM

the overwhelming majority of American men by other means— such as discriminating on the basis of race, class, ethnicity, age, or sexual preference. . .

Others still rehearse the politics of exclusion, as if by clearing away the playing field of secure gender identity of any that we deem less than manly— women, gay men, nonnative- born men, men of color— middle- class, straight, white men can re- ground their sense of themselves without those haunting fears and that deep shame that they are unmanly and will be exposed by other men. This is the manhood of rac- ism, of sexism, of homophobia. It is the manhood that is so chronically insecure that it trembles at the idea of lifting the ban on gays in the military, that is so threatened by women in the workplace that women become the targets of sexual harassment, that is so deeply frightened of equality that it must ensure that the playing field of male competition remains stacked against all newcomers to the game.

Exclusion and escape have been the dominant methods American men have used to keep their fears of humiliation at bay. The fear of emasculation by other men, of being humiliated, of being seen as a sissy, is the leitmotif in my reading of the history of American manhood. Masculinity has become a relentless test by which we prove to other men, to women, and ultimately to ourselves, that we have successfully mastered the part. The restlessness that men feel today is nothing new in American history; we have been anxious and restless for almost two centuries. Neither exclusion nor escape has ever brought us the relief we’ve sought, and there is no reason to think that either will solve our problems now. Peace of mind, relief from gender struggle, will come only from a politics of inclusion, not exclusion, from standing up for equality and justice, and not by running away.

NOTES

1. Much of this work is elaborated in Manhood: The American Quest (in press). 2. Although I am here discussing only American masculinity, I am aware that others have located this chronic instability and efforts to prove manhood in the particular cul- tural and economic arrangements of Western society. Calvin, after all, inveighed against the disgrace “for men to become effeminate,” and countless other theorists have described the mechanics of manly proof (see, for example, Seidler, 1994). 3. Such observations also led journalist Heywood Broun to argue that most of the attacks against feminism came from men who were shorter than 5 ft. 7 in. “The man who, whatever his physical size, feels secure in his own masculinity and in his own relation to life is rarely resentful of the opposite sex” (cited in Symes, 1930, p. 139).

REFERENCES

Brannon,  R. (1976). The male sex role— and what it’s done for us lately. In  R.  Brannon &  D.  David (Eds.), The forty- nine percent majority (pp.  1–40). Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley. Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Freud, S. (1933/1966). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (L. Strachey, Ed.). New York: Norton.

6 Kimmel / Masculinity as Homophobia 69

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 69 2/22/16 11:34 AM

70 PART I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gorer, G. (1964). The American people: A study in national character. New York: Norton. Kaufman, M. (1993). Cracking the armour: Power and pain in the lives of men. Toronto: Viking Canada. Leverenz, D. (1986). Manhood, humiliation and public life: Some stories. Southwest Review, 71, Fall. Leverenz, D. (1991). The last real man in America: From Natty Bumppo to Batman. American Literary Review, 3. Marx, K., & F. Engels. (1848/1964). The communist manifesto. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx- Engels reader. New York: Norton. Mead, M. (1965). And keep your powder dry. New York: William Morrow. Rotundo, E. A. (1993). American manhood: Transformations in masculinity from the revo- lution to the modern era. New York: Basic Books. Seidler,  V.  J. (1994). Unreasonable men: Masculinity and social theory. New  York: Routledge. Symes, L. (1930). The new masculinism. Harper’s Monthly, 161, January. Tocqueville, A. de. (1835/1967). Democracy in America. New York: Anchor. Weber,  M. (1905/1966). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New  York: Charles Scribner’s. Wilkinson, R. (1986). American tough: The tough- guy tradition and American character. New York: Harper & Row.

03_ROT_7866_P1_05_098.indd 70 2/22/16 11:34 AM

p a u l a s . r o t h e n b e r g

T E N T H E D I T I O N

A N I N T E G R A T E D S T U D Y

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN THE UNITED STATES

r o

t h

e n

b e

r g

T E N T H

E D I T I O N

R A

C E , C

L A

S S

, A N

D G

E N

D E R

IN T

H E U

N IT

E D

S T A

T E S

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN THE UNITED STATES, Tenth Edition Paula S. Rothenberg This best-selling anthology expertly explores concepts of identity, diversity, and inequality as it introduces students to race, class, gender, and sexuality in the United States. The thoroughly updated Tenth Edition features 38 new readings. New mate- rial explores citizenship and immigration, mass incarceration, sex crimes on campus, transgender identity, the school-to-prison pipeline, food insecurity, the Black Lives Matter movement, the pathology of poverty, socioeconomic privilege versus racial privilege, pollution on tribal lands, stereotype threat, gentrification, and more. The combination of thoughtfully selected readings, deftly written introductions, and careful organization makes Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Tenth Edition, the most engaging and balanced presentation of these issues available today.

Readings new to the Tenth Edition include:

• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

• How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage

• Immigration Enforcement as a Race-Making Institution by Douglas S. Massey

• Domestic Workers Bill of Rights by Ai-jen Poo

• The New Face of Hunger by Tracie McMillan

• My Class Didn’t Trump My Race by Robin DiAngelo

• Intersectionality: An Everyday Metaphor Anyone Can Use, Kimberlé Crenshaw interviewed by Bim Adewunmi

• Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream by Christina Greer

• Transgender Feminism: Queering the Woman Question by Susan Stryker

• Debunking the Pathology of Poverty by Susan Greenbaum

• The Transgender Crucible, reporting on the life and imprisonment of transgender activist CeCe McDonald, by Sabrina Rubin Erdely

• Neither Black nor White, on the racialization of Asian Americans, by Angelo Ancheta

• “You are in the dark, in the car…” from Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

• When You Forget to Whistle Vivaldi by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Instructor’s resources to accompany Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Tenth Edition, are available for download. Instructor’s resources include Reading for Comprehension Questions, Writing Assignments, Article Summaries, Research Proj- ects, Recommended Media, and Data Activities.

6 × 9.25 SPINE: 0.8125 FLAPS: 0

www.macmillanlearning.com Cover photo: Silberkorn/Shutterstock

New York

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN THE UNITED STATES A N I N T E G R AT E D S T U DY

Tenth Edition

Paula S. Rothenberg

with Soniya Munshi Borough of Manhattan

Community College

01_ROT_7866_FM_i_xx.indd 3 2/25/16 10:30 AM

Publisher, Psychology and Sociology: Rachel Losh Associate Publisher: Jessica Bayne Senior Associate Editor: Sarah Berger Development Editor: Thomas Finn Assistant Editor: Kimberly Morgan Smith Executive Marketing Manager: Katherine Nurre Media Producer: Hanna Squire Director, Content Management Enhancement: Tracey Kuehn Managing Editor, Sciences and Social Sciences: Lisa Kinne Senior Project Editor: Kerry O’Shaughnessy Photo Editor: Robin Fadool Permissions Associate: Chelsea Roden Director of Design, Content Management: Diana Blume Senior Design Manager: Vicki Tomaselli Cover and Interior Design: Kevin Kall Senior Production Supervisor: Stacey B. Alexander Composition: Jouve North America Printing and Binding: RR Donnelley Cover Photo: Silberkorn/Shutterstock

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932674

ISBN- 13: 978-1-4641-7866-5 ISBN- 10: 1-4641-7866-6

© 2016, 2014, 2010, 2007 by Worth Publishers

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First printing

Worth Publishers One New York Plaza Suite 4500 New York, NY 10004-1562 www.worthpublishers.com

01_ROT_7866_FM_i_xx.indd 4 2/25/16 10:30 AM