Contents
What does it mean to be a man today? How are models of masculinity changing in the modern world? The answers were given by a psychoanalyst, a philosopher, a religious scholar and a psychotherapist.
“You don’t have to be a cowboy to be a man”
When Freud created psychoanalysis, Europe was patriarchal and masculinity was understood as synonymous with strength and power. The internal task of the man was considered to be the suppression of the feminine in himself.
Today, the Western world demonstrates tolerance, recognizing different types of femininity, masculinity, sexuality. This is reflected on the intrapersonal level as well. Women still expect masculinity from a man, but at the same time he must express emotions, show empathy – in fact, he is required to manifest the female part of his psyche.
We are going through a transition from the old rigid male identity to something new. But neither society nor men themselves know what to do with it. The blurring of boundaries in sexuality is one of the manifestations of this transitional period.
The defensive response to this chaos is often the desire for an even more rigid masculinity than before. The evolutionary development seems to be that a new male sexuality and identity will arise that will not be as rigid as before and will be able to integrate female components without losing masculinity.
You don’t have to be, relatively speaking, a “cowboy” to be a man. This is a challenge for every man and for the entire society. We cannot be omnipotent. Mentally, a man will never become fully a woman, and vice versa. But none of us will become something in between, equally combining male and female. Trying to fully satisfy both sides of our psyche, we begin to split.
The conflict of male and female principles in a person cannot and should not be overcome. Freud talked a lot about penis envy in women. But later they began to talk about the envy of men for the feminine – for the secret hidden in the vagina, for the ability to give birth to a new one. This envy prompts a man to allow himself to feel, to show his feminine “I”. It becomes a resource for development, allows a man to discover new depths in himself.
For psychoanalysis, one of the most important functions of a man is to be a father, the third in the relationship between mother and child, a force that separates them and creates space for the development of everyone in this triad. The concepts of “mother” and “father” are replaced in some countries by “partner-1” and “partner-2”. Such a structure, where there is no third, is fraught with unpredictable consequences for the development of the individual. Therefore, in the new male identity, the special role of a man in the mother-child-father space will be preserved.
“Feminization is a male way of mastering modernity”
The history of relations between the sexes suggests the gradual elimination of inequality, which still persists, despite tolerance and political correctness.
The general trend towards female emancipation gives rise to new forms of misogyny, which has its own mythological and cultural roots. The simultaneous deification of a woman and the fear of her are well known to anthropologists and researchers of archaic cultures. We find echoes of this attitude in modern times.
A woman is either “clean” (mother, sister, nun) or “dirty” (prostitute, suffragist, feminist). She is both a source of pleasure and a threat. These stereotypes are due to the dominant male principle of strength and power, associated with the world of stability and stability, the embodiment of which is the concept of “truth”.
Today the world is different. The peasant cult of strength, practical mind and family hierarchy is a thing of the past. The dynamics of the city, the diversity and instability of the socio-economic ties of modernity turn out to be much more consistent with those qualities that have long been perceived negatively and acted as attributes of the “feminine” – inconsistency, emotionality, windiness, weakness. Today they look like dynamism, the ability to communicate and overcome conflicts.
The feminization of men is simply their way of mastering modernity, where there is no place for warriors, heroes, geniuses, or leaders. The complexity of relationships turns out to be effective, and the simplicity of “eternal truths” turns out to be comical. The male ambition is gradually coming to an end. And no matter how much male culture (mainly in politics) asserts itself, it becomes more and more noticeable how ridiculous, infantile and cruel it is in this infantilism.
“The Church Supports Gender Stereotypes”
At one time, one of the pillars of the Reformation, Martin Luther, abandoned the division into clergy and laity and put forward the principle of the priesthood of all believers.
Luther can hardly be called a supporter of women’s equality, but this step helped such take root in Protestantism. If the priesthood extends to everyone, then women should not be an exception. Thus was laid the foundation for their ordination. It is clear that the conservatives meet the changes with hostility. Some Lutheran churches still do not recognize the female priesthood, but for the most part, traditionalists are in the bosom of Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
The logic of their reasoning is as follows. Gender differences are deep and concern not only physical, but also metaphysical things. No wonder Christ chose the apostles from men and did not include his mother among them. But, objecting to the penetration of women’s equality into church life, even zealous conservative Catholics do not encroach on it outside the church walls. Moreover, the Catholic Church cooperates with feminists in their fight against domestic violence or forced prostitution.
In Russia, the church supports gender stereotypes. For example, we can hear from a priest that women themselves are to blame for becoming victims of rape. What is called male chauvinism in the West is on the rise in our country, so talk of “new masculinity” can only be heard among educated urban youth.
Meanwhile, the social role of women in the country is rapidly changing. Sometimes this leads to a paradoxical situation: women make a career, work several jobs and manage the household, while men do not work too hard, do nothing at home, but are nostalgic for the times of Domostroy.
“It can be different depending on the circumstances”
The modern anxiety about the lack of clear models of masculinity and femininity is the result of an increasing number of different situations in which we find ourselves and circumstances that we have to respond to.
Some of these situations and circumstances require us—both men and women—to be strong and dependable. Others encourage sensitivity, sensitivity, openness. And our task is to respond to these differences. And at the same time maintain stability and balance, and if it is disturbed, then quickly restore it. To do this, we need such a property as plasticity. But it is precisely this that modern man loses.
This is clearly seen if you look at the bodily plasticity: the bodies of contemporaries are mostly clamped, constrained. In order to compensate, we try to ensure stability for ourselves with the help of external means in relation to us, we invent rigid models and rules of behavior, we try to become even more immobile, like an iron safe. But if the safe does tip over, it will not stand up on its own, and it will be difficult to pick it up.
This is the danger of rigid definitions of “male” or “female” – focusing on the rules, we cease to focus on reality and become helpless where the rules do not work. Dichotomous, polar, dual models, with the help of which humanity tries to describe and explain the world, are rigid.
And the world is plastic, mobile, variable. With this in mind, we can expand the range of our behavioral possibilities and learn to use them according to circumstances. That is, to be not “this or that”, but “both”. Trying to be always only strong is weakness. Strength lies in being able to be both strong and weak.