A Rant About “Positive Masculinity”

(At a NOMAS Mid-Winter meeting in 2013, the Council discussed a sentence in our by-laws that stated, “Traditional masculinity includes many positive characteristics in which we take pride and find
strength, but it also contains qualities that have limited and harmed us.” During that discussion Council member David Greene went on a rant and said the following):

Some human beings are born with a penis and a scrotum; some are born with a clitoris and a vagina; and some with parts that are less easy to name. The way that the gender system works is that gender get parceled out depending upon your genitals. The society and the culture say, “alright, if you have a penis, this is who you are supposed to be—and we are going to try to make you be that. If you don’t have a penis, that is who you are supposed to be—and we are going to try to make you be that. If you have indeterminate genitalia, we don’t know what you are supposed to be. But since there are two and only two sexes,  we might try to physically change you into one or the other so we can tell you who you are supposed to be—and then we’ll try to make you be that.”

And then the gender system says, OK, the people with the penises are men and have a thing called masculinity. So from the whole long list of possible human traits, here are the particular ones that you are supposed to develop–and here are the ones that you are not supposed to develop—and we are going to reinforce that. And if you don’t have a penis, you’re a woman—so here is the list of feminine things. Because you don’t have a penis, you are supposed to be nurturing—but you are not supposed to be rational or in control of your emotions—and we are going to reinforce that.

Now some people want to turn around and say that there is something called positive/healthy masculinity; that masculinity is a real thing; that there is a whole category of human characteristics that are, in fact, part of being a man—and we just have to make sure that you recognize the healthy ones and avoid the ones that cause trouble.

But there is no “f-in” characteristic in the world that only men have or only women have. There are human characteristics—period. And to reify the idea of masculinity—even a positive/healthy masculinity stands in the way of really attacking the gender system. Once you agree that femininity and masculinity are real things, you open the door to comparison, to othering, to devaluation and to enforced gender conformity. You can’t end gender-based oppression if you don’t attack the system itself. We shouldn’t collude with the gender system. We just can’t!