As his posts usually do these days, this post of Figleaf’s got me thinking about personal needs, how we provide for those needs, and how those needs become needs in the first place. In it, he says:
Just as we indoctrinate men to strive so mightily to provide that they/we never come home, so we also indoctrinate women so thoroughly to believe men won’t even see them unless they’re starved, then scraped bare, then repainted that some of them/you are afraid to be seen by your partners after a night of roaringly good sex. The real thresholds for being sexy, being a good provider, being a man or a woman, are surprisingly easy to meet. However to embody sexiness, or worthiness, or manliness, or femininity is a fools errand[…]
(His thought-provoking post was inspired by none other than this eloquent post of Calico’s, which is also worth a read. So are the rest of both their blogs, by the way, which each have posts that are almost always equally eloquent.)
Acquiring an accurate understanding of my personal needs has always been the central focus of my life and, sadly, I fear that I still have a long way to go. Having needs that are (or, equally bad, feel as though they are) unfulfilled is the obvious source of a lot of sadness, anger, resentment and jealousy in my life.
When it comes to social and sexual relationships, in fact, jealousy is the word most often associated by most people to indicate a lack of fulfillment of some need in some way. This explains why the polyamorous community and their resources, writings, and issues seem to deal squarely with discovering personal needs and understanding the needs of one’s partners in order to overcome that jealousy.
When reading Figleaf’s observation that men are indoctrinated “to strive so mightily to provide” I saw myself in his words. In most typical instances, what men are indoctrinated to provide is “a living” for their family, which in more concrete terms is often defined by mainstream gender roles as “a dependable source of financial income for the nuclear family unit.” Everyone knows that it’s the man’s job to bring home the bacon, and he’s expected to sacrifice everything—his time, his happiness, his independence, his freedoms, and ultimately himself—in the pursuit of this noble, self-sacrificing, almost holy endeavor.
This is masochism perverted into martyrdom—”no pain, no gain.”
Indeed, there can easily be satisfaction and emotional fulfillment to be found from this goal. I have always absolutely loved to buy Eileen dinner, or treats at Starbucks, or spontaneous gifts—big gifts like several-hundred-dollar jewelry—or to treat the two of us to a night at the movies. All of this all on my dime. I enjoy that because my dime signifies my hard work and spending money on the things that make me happy is something I’ve earned.
Something that makes me happy is providing good experiences to Eileen, which is also the cornerstone of many components of submission. Feeling as though I am capable to provide good experiences for my partner is one thing that is necessary for me to feel submissive. This relationship between being submissive and being a provider and each of their connection to masculinity is most obvious in service-related kinks (sissy-maids and men-turned-”homemakers” are two prime examples that come to mind), and equally obvious in stamina-related kinks (in which men are tortured but, because they are MEN! GRR! they do not whimper or scream and only display a stoic pride), both of which is the (frustratingly) universal representation of male submission everywhere.
Could this be the root of men’s “chivalrous nature”? We are certainly taught that chivalry is a good thing. These activities and the feelings that come from them is both the hegemonic masculine view of how a man should behave towards a woman and an accurate description, at least in parts, of how I want to feel about the way I treat my partners, men and women alike (though the expression of this is, interestingly, different in my relations with men than they are with women).
And that, now that I think about it, may be the first time on this blog in which I have actually described myself as fitting nicely into the masculine gender role stereotype.
Moreover, there’s nothing wrong with this that I can see. Providing for another person makes me happy, and it simultaneously makes me feel strong. Is this not, in fact, the epitome of the knight submissive concept? The knight submissive is a representation of a man who is at once powerful, who uses this power in a way that is courageous, honorable, and makes the lives of those he chooses to effect better, and yet—contrary to the accepted display of hegemonic masculinity—is also submissive to his partner. One might even say he is dominated by his partner, or perhaps in other words that may provide for more insight, is guided, steered, or advised by his partner.
In other words, “behind every good man, there is a good woman.” To me, this sounds as though the knight submissive is the hegemonic masculine man that women read about in romance novels.
Only, because gender stereotypes are idealized versions of atomic characteristics of gender and the masculine gender role has been elected as “the one who provides” whereas the feminine gender role has been elected as “the one who needs,” men are disallowed from needing and women are disallowed from providing—period. End of story.
The classic examples provide evidence of this dichotomy in abundance. What happens if the wife of a heterosexual married couple makes more money than the husband? Suddenly, the husband feels bad because his perceived “manliness” is threatened since she provides more financial income to their family unit than he does. What happens if the wife has a love affair? Again, negative feelings and a perceived threat to his manliness because he is not the one providing her with sexual satisfaction and some other (presumably) man is. This is even true in the way many conservative men respond to vibrators, or, god forbid, pornography intended to be consumed by women.
Any remotely emotionally functional individual will recognize that this system in which women only need and men only provide is harmful to both men and women. Women are expected to need only what men can provide and men are expected not to need anything except, of course, the needs of women. Thanks to the prevailing viewpoint that monogamy is the One True Way to Love® this set of needs is further restricted to include only, for women, the things your one man can provide and, for men, the needs of your one woman.
I see it as self-evident that both men and women have component needs that are irrelevant to their specific partner(s). In other words, a need is intrinsically born of oneself, not of one’s partner. Otherwise, whose need is it, really? Academically, this concept seems as though it can, broadly speaking, be contained within the greater need for self-actualization.
It seems nothing if not utterly ridiculous to function day by day under the rigid and false pretense that only a traditional understanding of the gender model allows. There’s simply no way that I can see being able to squeeze fulfillment and happiness out of being a man whose sole need is to fulfill all his other partner’s needs because, obviously, need-fulfillment is by my earlier definition not actually possible to obtain from a single source. It may, perhaps, be possible and even healthy to seek to fulfill the specific needs of a partner that can be fulfilled by other people, but ultimately there is going to be something, no matter how small that your partner is going to have to do on their own to feel fully fulfilled. (And, if you’ll take a word from the wise, it’s never something that small.)
That piece, no matter how much you or I strive to provide it, being the good, otherwise capable, and self-sacrificing men that we are, is not ever something we can succeed in. Not recognizing that fact leads invariably to codependency of one form or another and then, inevitably, to unhappiness in at least something, be it our work, our social partnerships (of which sexuality and pair-bonding is a form), or—worst of all in my opinion—one’s ability to think effectively and to make good personal choices in one’s private life.
In other words, by focusing so strongly on the experience of our partners, men end up being unable—forbidden, even!—to live our own lives. We need, as a friend said wisely to me the other day, to find a way to disconnect from the experience of our partners, but not disconnect from our partners themselves.
Finding submission with Eileen, for me, has been a major component in being able to connect with another person on a sexual (and thus at least one piece of a social) level that, finally, feels good, and right, and fulfilling. Being submissive meets one of my needs—specifically the need to have fulfilling social interactions. However, in becoming submissive, I must also allow myself the freedom to disconnect from her experience, to allow her the capability to provide for her own needs.
Submission, or masculinity or being a “man”, is not in reality the rigid, narrow thing society tells us being a man is. Being a man is not about providing everything for our partners. It can be about providing for them, but it’s also about providing for ourselves. And guess what? That’s what being a woman is about, too.
I think I understand what you’re saying, but I have a bit of a problem with the connections of masculinity with need fulfillment and femininity with having needs. Easily, a lot of the scholarship I’m involved in understands an opposite direction. Think of the homemaker whose job it is to take care of everything in the house so that her husband does not have to. Historically, while men are drawn as the providers, it is usually stereotypically the woman who is in charge of fulfilling needs to the detriment of her own. So in the model you are talking about, it is not the woman’s needs the man is fulfilling, but the woman carried over needs for the rest of the family. And what it comes down to is that this heteronormative exchange of needs and providing fulfillment for them is based on a family model where everyone is sacrificing their desires for the needs of the next generation.
This is the problem in general with ever stating that someone is expected to put aside their needs for others and another specific someone can safely expect their needs to be met by the other. Everyone has needs and everyone feels that they sometimes have to put them aside to fulfill someone else’s. Even getting away from the family, I’m think of some of the reasons women fake orgasms – because they would rather their partner feel the satisfaction of believing they have pleased her. Her sexual “need” has been waived in order to create an orgasm that might have actually occurred if the situation were discussed, and to avoid having that conversation that would have lessened the partners’ satisfaction.
In short, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it goes both ways – and in the heteronormative model that we both draw upon, it seems that both partners suffer some of the time from the pressures put on both men and women.
Tyler, that is an excellent point. I had a whole paragraph in here about the classic 1950’s imagery of the woman as the homemaker and the man in what I’ve described above in the woman’s role, but took it out because I found it took away from the focus on men that I wanted to spotlight.
Simply, you are absolutely correct: both men and women have needs and are taught to provide for the needs of others over themselves. The feminist movement has done wonders for showcasing the hypocrisy and double-standards that are forced upon women, and that should continue. Now, I believe the time has come for men to begin to speak out against the restrictive nature of hegemonic masculinity today in much the same way as women have done in the past.
Simply talking about women’s needs and how they are unfulfilled, frankly, does little to abate the pressures men face. And the point of my last sentence in this entry is exactly that: men and women are not so different, and much of feminist theory can be applied rather successfully to masculinity. Femininity is now much better understood than it once was. We need to do the same thing for masculinity, or neither men nor women will end up feeling happy.
I absolutely agree. I was thinking about it more after I commented. The problem is really that in this system we have in place which dictates peoples’ roles by their genitals rather than their personal desires or abilities, everyone is forced into boxes which cause unnecessary sacrifice and dissatisfaction.
There’s been a ton of feminist work on deconstructing masculinity. As I come across it, I’ll be sure to keep sending it your way.
Thanks! Please do!
I very much agree that it is very important for men to begin taking gender studies more seriously. The field has, in my mind, been deprived because a lack of diverse perspectives (it should be noted, though, that it is not for lack of trying among women to get men involved!).
I have done a fair bit of reading and teaching about masculinity, primarily from a feminist perspective. My experience with that literature has been mixed. A significant portion of feminist writing about men takes a very second-wave angle, where men are oversimplified to fit within the larger the theoretical concept of patriarchy. That being said, feminist and pro-feminist writers seem to be the only ones producing any literature on the topic at all that is worth reading.
For those who are interested in exploring these issues further, I would strongly recommend this book as an introduction: Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity: Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society by Kenneth Clatterbaugh. He takes a theoretical approach to outline the different general perspectives on masculinity. He explains conservative, pro-feminist, men’s rights, mythopoetic, socialist, gay, and african american perspectives on masculinity, along with their strengths and weaknesses. It is fairly clear, and although he does chatter on a bit in some sections and it is slightly outdated, it remains one of the most useful books I have come across.
Other ones that may be helpful are:
Men’s Lives, eds. Kimmel Messner
Between Men and Feminism, Ed. Porter
Rethinking Masculinity: Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism, Eds. May, Strikwerda, and Hopkins
Women Respond to the Men’s Movement, Ed. Hagan
and for a look at a pro-feminist activist perspective:
Men’s Work, Kivel
And finally (partially in response to the recent post on flirting) I found some of my most revealing reading in a somewhat poorly written, pragmatic, and highly chauvinist book: How to Succeed with Women by Louis and Copeland. After reading piles of feminist theory, it was almost as useful to see a depiction of the “rules” from a “guy guy” perspective.
Wow, Chris. That is an awesome selection of resources. Thanks for the references. This is precisely why I know that I lack so much education on the topic, even though, it seems, I seem to intuitively understand much of what these authors probably are saying already. Always good to learn more from others’ perspectives, though. Again, thanks.
Agreed that feminism has a lot to say about the standard views on masculinity as well as femininity. The current patriarchal system is bad for *everyone*.
I’m also interested by what you’re saying further down about allowing people to provide for their own needs. I’ve increasingly come to the belief that individuals taking responsibility for their own needs and the meeting of those is possibly the only way that relationships can work happily in the long term. Which isn’t to say that it’s not OK to see your partner’s need and strive to meet that – that’s nice, and (as long as you’re not damaging yourself) it’s a good thing. But, when we’re talking about adults, it’s not the *responsibility* of anyone other than oneself to look after one’s needs.
(sorry, this comment has no content, I just forgot to click the email followup button)
Exactly what I was going for.
And also, to all the other comments above, this is exactly why more men need to take gender studies classes (and women’s studies class). One of the reasons my program and others like it get so little funding is because people don’t take it seriously, but think about this: how many people live unhappy lives, ruin their relationships with other people, and generally feel lost because of this system that forces everyone to behave differently than they would like to. There is no one I know that wouldn’t benefit from thinking these types of issues through seriously.
Perhaps more men would be interested in such classes if they could find classes that were termed Men’s Studies? The obvious irony of learning about masculinity at a women’s studies class is beyond humorous, it’s sad.
there are schools with men’s studies programs. the problem with that is that they take away from efforts to focus on gender instead enforcing the dichotomy that those who study gender as fluid would like to avoid. Arguably, women’s studies sounds as if it does the same, but actually women’s studies programs did not begin as a place to study gender, but instead to supplement every other field which ignored contributions by women (for example, history). Most history is already men’s history. Studies of gender have only come more recently, and because they were not large enough to constitute an entire department at first, they fell under women’s studies because it was one of the only departments that considered it something worthy to study. Something about the observation that the labeled group is the one with less power (meaning that men don’t usually appear to have gender because they are THE gender, in much the same way whites have been historically seen as “without” race). There in fact was a huge split over whether to change the names of such departments to women’s and gender studies or just gender studies or to make separate departments altogether. Each institution kind of goes their own way about it.
But on that note, while you think it is sad that learning about masculinity in a women’s studies class, I think it absolutely appropriate. It further emphasizes a gender theory that I embrace: that if society is going to insist on female/male dichotomies then it is necessary to understand that there is NO masculinity without femininity and vice versa. This is why I don’t believe in Men’s studies programs personally.. because if they are conducting studies of masculinity they belong with studies of femininity and all other gendered traits, in gender studies. If they are going to be the male version of women’s studies, well.. that already exists in pretty much the rest of any college’s curriculum.
In addition, the fact that men are so unwilling to participate in anything labeled “women” while women are constantly forced to participate in a world that invisibly labels itself “men” is sad. Many women study masculinity, as do many men, but you don’t see the same thing happening for femininity – which is why such programs exist. From what I’ve heard about men’s studies, they are still overwhelmingly filled with women.
Sorry for the rant, but you hit upon something that is already a very hot subject right now, though I’m not sure I presented all the issues, there is a lot more going on. I would suggest that you read up on it more. It’s hard to come into a debate halfway through.
Thanks for that info, Tyler. A lot of what you described about the politics of Gender/Womens/Men’s studies programs was new to me. The vast majority of my exploration concerning these issues began for me as a senior in college, when I only had time to begin exploring the Women’s Studies program. Therefore, most of my encounters with the field I have cobbled together on my own or absorbed through friends (self-learning is a mixed blessing… you get to pursue your own ideas, but frequently miss out on important background or unifying concepts). I have been similarly interested in why men are so resistant to studying gender issues. I agree with Maymay that the concept of involving oneself is Women’s studies courses is a fairly major leap for most men. This is particularly true because I don’t think that many men get introduced to gender issues in a way that engages them. But, that isn’t entirely an excuse. Women have been trying for decades to get men to take these issues seriously, and… well… look at where we are now. This is part of why I think that it is essential for men to take leadership in making these changes. There have been a few interesting examples. The National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) has done some interesting work (although I don’t know what their current status is), as has Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR). But these are just drops in the barrel. This is why I am curious about your stance on Men’s studies programs. It seems to be rather radical to flip the tables and make men the subject of investigation (rather than being the invisible force that is just assumed to exist). While I personally like the idea of gender studies (since I’d prefer to see the whole system undermined rather than reified), I would very much like to see more visible academic efforts that try to address masculinity as a construct. I come at this from the perspective of someone who has tried very hard to comunicate with men to engage them in this topic, and had only mixed success. If further research or an opening of gender as an appropriate topic of study for men would improve this effort, I’d be delighted.
Tyler, that’s very interesting indeed; thanks for the background and the perspective! Also, yes, it doesn’t make sense to study femininity without masculinity or vice versa. More than anything else, however, it makes me distasteful of academics and the current system under which people are expected to learn these things, which I think is more than just broken, it’s harmful. Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of background information on women’s versus men’s studies courses specifically, but it seems to me that if what you say is true then the only viable solution is first a radical education reform, not only a re-focusing on gendered studies. The latter only seems possible after the former is complete.
I linked to this in one of my next posts (The Sexism of Sex and Smarts), but in case you missed it I think you would be captivated by this relevant video about education and creativity if you have not already seen it.
Thanks again for your comments! They’re absolutely wonderful!
[...] How an outdated view of masculinity ignores the needs of all men [...]
[...] worthy. I plan to court my mates. I will court them with my skills, my wit, and my body to prove I can provide for them. But if someone wants to court me, then they better lay a deer at my feet, knit me a sweater, or be [...]