{"id":1130,"date":"2004-09-30T12:47:41","date_gmt":"2004-09-30T20:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/30\/is-manhood-a-vessel-a-minor-disagreement-with-hugo-schwyzer\/"},"modified":"2004-09-30T12:47:41","modified_gmt":"2004-09-30T20:47:41","slug":"is-manhood-a-vessel-a-minor-disagreement-with-hugo-schwyzer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1130","title":{"rendered":"Is Manhood a Vessel? A minor disagreement with Hugo Schwyzer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hugo Schwyzer is discussing prostitution<\/a>, and in particular a proposal to “punish U.S. servicemen who visit overseas prostitutes.”<\/p>\n

Rep. Chris Smith – who is the worse enemy of women’s rights in Congress on issues like abortion rights, UNFPA, same-sex marriage, and the global gag rule – is a leader in congress when it comes to opposing International Trafficking of women. This is, as Hugo points out, one of those rare cases where right-wing evangelicals and feminists agree on a topic. (Bean tells me that she read that funding for fighting International Trafficking has gone up significantly since Bush took office).<\/p>\n

I certainly agree with Hugo when it comes to prostitution (actually, I agree with Hugo about virtually every issue, except for abortion). In particular, I like this new law, because it focuses on punishing johns (in my opinion, prostitution should be decriminalized, but being a john should be a frequently-enforced felony). However, I’m actually posting because a comment Hugo made in his post points out a difference between his view of masculinity and my own. Hugo wrote:<\/p>\n

Real men never exploit other human beings for their own pleasure. Real manhood — not puerilty — is accompanied by a mature sexuality that doesn’t wound.<\/div>\n

Implicit in Hugo’s writing is the idea that “real manhood” and “masculinity” can be positive constructs. To Hugo, masculinity is a vessel. The problem is that the vessel has been filled with bad ideas, such as “to be a man, get laid a lot” or “to be a man, you better be able to physically beat down fags and women, at the very least.” If the “masculinity” vessel were to be instead filled with positive ideas, then the conception of “real manhood” would become a tool for progressive, pro-feminist change.<\/p>\n

I disagree. No matter what you try to fill it with, talking about who is and isn’t demonstrating “real manhood” is implicitly setting up a hierarchy of “real men” and “non-men.” And when boys are told they aren’t “real men,” they learn to hate themselves; and meanwhile, other boys who are desperate to remain “real men” will do almost anything to defend their manhood. (I’ve written previously<\/a> about my theory that this need to protect masculinity is a major motivation for date rape.) It would be better, in my view, to try and teach boys that manhood is nothing that can be lost, and therefore nothing to feel insecure about.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, when you set up a hierarchy with “real men” at the top of it, inevitably – no matter how good the intent – it is implied that girls and women rank low on that hierarchy. What, after all, could be less like a “real man” than someone who is not a man at all?<\/p>\n

Finally, if there are positive virtues we ascribe to “real men” and masculinity, aren’t we implicitly saying that men have some special claim to those virtues, or that women are less likely to embody them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hugo Schwyzer is discussing prostitution, and in particular a proposal to “punish U.S. servicemen who visit overseas prostitutes.” Rep. Chris Smith – who is the worse enemy of women’s rights in Congress on issues like abortion rights, UNFPA, same-sex marriage, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}