More on Manliness (or the lack thereof)

My colleague, Christian_Left, shows himself to be ahead of theZeitgeist in his previous post on manliness, and how hyper-masculinity has polluted American politics. The recent issue of the American Prospect has a cover story on the same topic, complete with a roughed-up G.W. standing next to a flaccid missle. Subtle, huh?

The cover article, by (Mr.) Francis Wilkinson, is not a critique of the idea of manliness so much as an account of the demise of GOP dominance of testosterone politics. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess. But the final paragraph does hint at a different model of American manliness that might be more useful for a progressive political movement:

But after having wallowed in our fear these last five years, maybe what we need next are leaders who will raise us above it. The one man who taught us better than any other to conquer fear was no Governor Terminator. His muscles were unimpressive. He had no physical swagger to him at all. His military experience was a desk job. He wore no cowboy gear. He smoked cigarettes not like a Marlboro Man but filtered through a slender, feminine holder that could have been a prop from the Follies Bergere. He didn’t promise to protect us. He made us believe we could protect ourselves -- from the violence of fascism and the vicissitudes of capitalism alike. And he handed us the tools to do the job. We built the better part of the American century on the back of an aristocratic, polio-addled cripple. Now that was a man.

Christian_Left wants us to go a few steps beyond this, of course, to a masculine-less politics rather than just a different version of masculinity. If that can be done, then our politics and our society will be better, but I don't see such archetypes going away any time soon. A useful short-term strategy, then, is to look for other archetypes of masculinity, ones that fit better with a sane and progressive foreign and social policies.

In Philadelphia, ex-SEALS 'hunt' future Christian warriors

I'm very late on posting this, but it's just too weird to pass up. Via DailyKos diarist lapin comes this account of a rally for Christian youth in Philadelphia:

After Franklin "Islam is a Wicked Religion" Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s.

I can't think of anything to say about this--it's just too amazingly bizzare. And in Philadelphia? Be sure to check out Lapin's diary for pictures. The diary also links to a first-hand account by another Kos diarist, WorldCantWait, and more thorough coverage of BattleCry by Sunsara Taylor at Truthdig.

And in other news related to the death of satire, the stalwart supporters of Tom Delay have found a new, powerfull ally in their battle against the liberal media: Stephen Colbert.

New CD Recommendation: Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions

I don't think I've ever used this blog to recommend a music CD, although I have plugged books. At the risk of seeming to contradict my previous post, however, I would like to urge everyone to try out the latest offering from one of the enduring icons of (less harmful?) masculinity in the entertainment industry: Bruce Springsteen. In his new album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," Bruce teams up with several other talented musicians in covers of a dozen or so traditional American songs recorded at one time or another by folk legend Pete Seeger. It is a hybrid album of Springsteen-ized roots music: part blues, bluegrass, gospel, old time folk, and social movement folk. All the songs were recorded over a few days, most of them apparently in Bruce's living room. The result is an exceptionally enjoyable and lively re-interpretation of the American folk tradition.

Even though it only took a few days to record (by design), this is a well-crafted album. Its basis is a kind of grassroots populist sensibility--evident in so much of Bruce's music--with just a few brief but unmistakable touches of direct political commentary. Mostly, the album is just a pure listening pleasure and celebration of the old American musical traditions. There's a lot of New Orleans sound on the album, a timely and fitting statement, I think, of solidarity with the city's vibrant musical tradition. Moreover there are some GREAT gospel and spiritual numbers on this album (maybe not a surprise since Bruce is one of the best putatively secular revival preachers out there!) While this may not be the album to satisfy the purists of any particular musical tradition--acoustic folk, gospel, or even E-street band style rock--it is one of the best American roots music compilations ever produced, in my opinion. It's hard to classify this album as anything other than simply "great music"--or maybe "solid-gold Bruce!"

The Case Against Manliness

I try to keep up with the sharp and often boldly unconventional writings of Robert Jensen, who is a journalism professor in Austin, Texas. I'm sure that I've linked to his essays before on this blog. Recently I came across another one of his thoughtful writings, an op-ed piece co-authored with Gail Dines for my old hometown's leading newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dines and Jensen offer a nice, brief synopsis of the case against manliness, arguing that the pursuit of "masculinity" harms both men and women. This perspective is certainly nothing new, but in a period when belief in hard and pervasive biological and psychological differences seems on the rebound, it seems a good idea to re-open the subject.

My friend Tess over at Arch Words often posts thoughtful blog entries on parenthood, gender, and child development, especially at it relates to how she and her partner Tom struggle to raise their young son in a more gender neutral way. (See, for example, her recent posting on toy kitchens.) Parenting well is a strongly counter-cultural activity, and I certainly admire anyone who tries to avoid the modern-day corruptions of childhood such as commercialism and reinforced masculinity.

However out of 1970s it may seem, I think Dines and Jensen are right to identify the pursuit of manliness and the modern conception of "masculinity" as fundamental problems that we must continue to struggle to overcome. I say this as someone who was a young boy in the 1980s, when G.I. Joe and confident superheroes came roaring into mainstream culture. Who can look at our last U.S. presidential election--with a reckless GOP cowboy squaring off against a tough Democrat war fighter--and not sense the crippling hold that manliness continues to hold on our society and its political options. I realize that it is tempting to look around the world and see men being aggressive and violent against women, children, and each other, and to conclude that boys will always be boys, and nothing more. But I, for one, still believe that another world is still possible, and confronting modern masculinity is an important part of it.

Mobocracy Update

Courtesy of Third Party Dreamer, who talked to a restaurant owner:

The restaurant owners (see ambiv’s post, below) are fighting back, but it’s clearly a losing battle. In front of each of the restaurants now hangs a protest banner, white with black characters: “High Honesty Supermarket, give back our blood-sweat money!” “You illegally cut off our electricity, and treat tax-paying people like convicts!”, and so on. Next time we go we’ll try to remember to take the camera so we can post some photos on the website.

Today, when I was ordering some take-out from our usual restaurant (and, just like the last two times we ate there, there were no other customers), I asked one of the owners who it was that wanted to tear down the buildings. The protest banners all accuse the High Honesty Supermarket, but that folded (or moved out, anyway) a few months ago, so I was confused. Well, it turns out that the land belongs to the railroad bureau, and is managed by a company (High Honesty) that is a subsidiary of the railroad department. When they signed the contract to rent the property all the business owners were told that that row would be torn down, but not before the end of 2008. There are about six restaurants on that row, plus a bunch of other small-scale shops clinging to the edges of the old warehouse that was the High Honesty Supermarket, now just an empty shell. Well, the business owners took that assurance in good faith and signed a contract, but apparently one that didn’t specify in writing that the buildings would be useable until the end of 2008. Something (perhaps the skyrocketing prices and, presumably, profits in the area) made the company change its mind and decide to develop the property into luxury apartments NOW rather than later.

Unforunately, in the contract there is no stipulation that matches what the business owners were promised orally, and “we didn’t tape-record what they said at the time; we trusted them,” the owner of our usual restaurant says. So the lawyer they’re consulting says they don’t have much of a legal leg to stand on.

The lawyer did inform them that there is nothing illegal about snipping the bailing wire that closed off the main gates to their compound, though, so they went ahead and did it, and now we can go through the gates nearest our apartment, just like before. Another of the railroad company’s underhanded tactics had been to shut off the electricity all over the compound; in response, the restaurant owners have banded together and bought a generator.

So far the situation has not brought out the most typical and dramatic feature of China’s mobocracy, namely stick-wielding thugs. But it may only be a matter of time. I have read plenty of newspaper articles that begin with a dispute such as this one– developers want a family or a small business to get off of profitable land so it can be made into housing for rich people– and end with a gang of stick-wielding thugs (sometimes in the hundreds) scaring the little people off if they prove insufficiently malleable.

When we first arrived in Beijing there was an article about a family-run pheasant farm outside of Beijing that developers desperately wanted to remake. They offered the family some paltry compensation, but not nearly enough to pay for them to move the entire farm to a new location. The family refused, and the developer refused to offer more compensation. Both sides dug in their heels. Then one October midnight, out of nowhere 100 guys with lead pipes showed up at the pheasant farm. They broke in to the yard, bludgeoned every last one of the pheasants to death, and left. No one claimed responsibility, and no one seemed to know where the thugs had come from or who they were, but conveniently, they family no longer had a pheasant farm that would require extra compensation.

Anyway, fortunately this hasn’t devolved to that level yet, but it certainly has the makings of an ugly and all-too-typical conflict between small business owners and big companies backed (or entirely owned) by the state.