Construyendo nuevas masculinidades: la representación de la masculinidad en la literatura y el cine de los Estados Unidos (1980-2003)

Proyecto de Investigación del Ministerio de Trabajos y Asuntos Sociales - Instituto de la Mujer Exp. Nº 62/03

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MESA REDONDA
A Men’s Studies Approach to American Literature: Theory into Practice

Publicada en las actas del XXVII Congreso Internacional de AEDEAN, Salamanca 2003
ISBN 84 7455 103 X

MODERADORA
ÀNGELS CARABÍ, Universitat de Barcelona

PARTICIPANTES
RODRIGO ANDRÉS GONZÁLEZ, Universitat de Barcelona
JOSÉ MARÍA ARMENGOL CARRERA, Universitat de Barcelona
 
 

I

Masculinity Studies: An Overview
 

ÀNGELS CARABÍ
  

This brief overview aims to trace the emergence of masculinity studies since its origins (1970s) and to highlight some of its current theoretical inquiries.
 

 In the past decade, masculinity studies has consolidated as a field of critical analysis which seeks to rethink the meanings of masculinity. Men’s studies scholarship emerged in the United States in the 1970s as a response to second wave feminism and to the questioning of traditional male behaviors stimulated primarily by World War II, its aftermath, and the Vietnam war (Jeffords). First wave men’s studies scholarship (1970s-1980s) centered its attention on the experience of white, middle class men, giving birth to movements like the profeminist movement which sought gender equality by deconstructing male privileges and by changing men. Other types of movement were the mythopoetic movement (Bly) and the Promise Keepers who wanted to reconstruct masculinity from an essentialist perspective. However, notions of unified identities were challenged by the emergence of postmodernism and poststructuralism in the 1980s and 1990s which brought new research perspectives on masculinity studies. Just as feminism had initially interrogated fundamental concepts such as woman, femininity, women’s experiences, and patriarchy and the sex/gender division, current studies of masculinity are exploring how men are constituted as gendered social subjects. To move away from the universalized notion of man, second-wave masculinity studies has shown that masculinity has multiple meanings which vary over time and across cultures (Rotundo, Petersen). Moreover masculinities, rather than fixed identities, are open to produce new configurations in changing intercultural contexts (Petersen). Recent investigation has been focusing on the socially constructed differences existing between men, a position which undermines previous notions that differences only exist between men and women; this analysis sustains that men’s realities are plural, that men create their identities with the perception of other men and that hierarchies have been determining men’s relationships (Brod, Kaufman, Kimmel). One of the most radical advances in studies of masculinities comes from the feminisms of the 1980s-1990s and by queer studies which have transformed the critical inquiry by not only fostering alternative masculinities but by seeking wide rearticulations of masculinity. Eve Kovsofsky Sedgwick’s interrogations into male sexuality has turned gay studies into one of the most significant analytical fields of masculinity studies. The contributions of Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam have helped to relocate the notions of masculinity and identification which defy patriarchal constructions of men (and women) (Wiegman). 
Since the late 1990s masculinity studies has also been paying attention to issues of ethnicity. Race masculinity studies emerged out of the concerns raised by men of color who feel absent from the emerging body of criticism on this field. These male critics (Awkward, Eng, Mirande) as well as female critics (Anzaldúa, hooks) claim that masculinities are not exclusively constructed within men’s power over women but in structures of exclusion based on hierarchies which subordinate racialized men (Robinson). The insights of race studies are stimulating an innovative field of analysis which focuses on the need to explore white masculinities as racialized identities as well as  to reflect on the concept of whiteness as a political construction (S. Robinson). As scholarly masculinity studies is progressively being influenced by a wide range of feminisms, queer studies and race studies, there is a growing need to advance new dialogues between masculinity studies and these other disciplines.
The aim of the panel “A Man’s Approach to American Literature: Theory and Practice” is to show how a rereading of American literature from the perspective of  masculinity studies can enrich the interpretation of the text.
Rodrigo Andrés argues that men’s studies have only recently incorporated an analysis of male homosexualities. Whereas some women critics have considered gay men as pioneers in the creation of new attitudes amongst men and between men and women, most heterosexual men doing men’s studies still show a strong homophobic bias in their analysis and even appropriation of the historical experience of gay men.
Josep Ma Armengol’s article argues that analyzing literary texts of different social and historical periods can show how American society’s dominant ideals of masculinity have changed over the past two centuries. He also contends that masculinity studies shift the focus of criticism from universal and abstract dilemmas to men’s intimate and personal concerns, especially those related to their perceptions of masculinity.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria 1987: Borderlands. La Frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
Awkward, Michael 1995: Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender and the Politics of Positionality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bly, Robert 1990: Iron John. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Brod, Harry, ed. 1987: The Making of Masculinities: the New Men’s Studies. Boston: Allen and Unwin.
Butler, Judith 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge.
DiPiero, Thomas 2002: Why Men Aren’t. Durham and London, Duke UP.
Halberstam, Judith 1998: Female Masculinity. Durham, Duke University Press.
hooks, bell 1995: Killing Rage. Ending Racism. New York: Henri Holt.  
Jeffords, Susan 1989: The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 
Kaufman, Michael  and Harry Brod, eds. 1994: Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kimmel, Michael, ed. 2000: The Gendered Society. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mirande, Alfredo 1997: Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Petersen, Alan 2003: “Research on Men and Masculinities. Some Implications of Recent Theory for the Future”. Men and Masculinities 6: 54-69.
Robinson, Phil 2004.03.05: http://europrofem.org/02.info/22contri/2.04.enmasc/46en_mas.htm
Robinson, Sally 2000: Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia.
Rotundo, Anthony E. 1993: American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books.
Sedgwick, Eve Kovsofsky 1985: Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wiegman, Robyn 1995. “Unmaking: Men and Masculinity in Feminist Theory”. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory. New Directions. Ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press. 30-59.
 

II
 

RODRIGO ANDRÉS
 

 Over the last two centuries, Western cultures have worked hard to undo the figure of the homosexual man with power, creating instead the figure of the effeminate homosexual, understanding as “feminine” aspects such as weakness and passivity, both at the physical and at the emotional level. The intention behind this strategy has been to neutralize an important threat to the hierarchies of gender, based on the correlation of the binary pair “masculine”/”feminine” with that of “active”/ “passive”. The figure of the homosexual male has been excluded from the realm of masculinity and included instead in the non-privileged component in the category of knowledge of gender. In this way, masculine heterosexuality has eliminated from its midst a type of masculinity that can be interpreted as being more flexible because, among other things, it accepts a relational, and therefore, non-essentialist sexuality which challenges “active” and “passive” roles, and which dares explore the power, the agency and the pleasure that exist in so-called masculine “passivity”. Institutional discourses have been crucial in the de-masculinization of the gay man. According to Lynne Segal, 
For over a hundred years now scientific and popular belief has held that male homosexuality derives from and expresses something >feminine= in men - the absence of appropriate levels of masculinity... - The connection made between gender inversion and homosexuality served not only to control and punish homosexual behaviour, but also to define and maintain appropriate definitions of masculine and feminine behaviour (Segal Slow 135-38).

 Towards the end of the twentieth century, the media and some academics have begun to discuss an incipient “crisis of masculinity”. Men’s studies all over the Western hemisphere have even begun to present “man” as a new victim of patriarchy who, lost in a new cultural order and without clear role models to follow, should start thinking of himself, like women, as co-victims of patriarchy. 
 This new debate about the epistemological crisis of masculinity makes us consider the following questions: Are we going to keep using the term “masculinity” as an equivalent of “heterosexuality”? If we do, chances are we are condemning masculine homosexuality, once again, to the space in between that we have not yet been able to fully define. A second question could be: are we going to ask the “new man” (heterosexual by definition) to undergo a profound revision and renegotiation of the values historically and culturally ascribed to the “masculine” and the “feminine” without contemplating in this analysis the experience of those men who historically  have been forced to negotiate - both at the personal level and as a community - between those two concepts, given the pressures of a society that is both patriarchal and heterosexist? And, finally, can we start any analysis of the culture of men and of its interaction with the culture of women without incorporating an analysis of the culture of gay men? 
 We have to admit that over the last few years, the field of men’s studies has begun to incorporate male homosexuality as an intrinsic component of any analysis of masculinities, given that, according to Lynne Segal: 
From the point of view of understanding and changing masculinity, however, the really important thing is that gay men have once again had to pioneer new attitudes amongst men - this time, the idea of more open, imaginative and responsible attitudes to sex, and of men nursing and caring for each other (Segal 164).

 This openness in some female critics of masculinities needs to be contrasted with the much more ambiguous attitude in the writings of heterosexual men who theorize about the new masculinities. In the following pages, we will try to argue that the writings of some men in men’s studies can, in some cases, show decades of delay in their assimilation of concepts that have long been debated by the different feminist movements. It is revealing how only as late as 1994 Michael S. Kimmel concluded that “manhood is socially constructed” (Kimmel 120). This conclusion led both M. Kimmel and M. Kaufman to assume that, if the traditional notion of masculinity had been socially constructed, it can now be socially deconstructed. This, in its turn, becomes an invitation to social activism and a celebration of the agency of the citizens of today in bringing about a major social change. The two critics, however, never consider that the notion of traditional masculinity could be not only a social construction but a category of knowledge or a parameter through which we understand gender and gender binary oppositions. The fact that neither M. Kimmel and M. Kaufman contemplate this possibility even if it is just to reject it leaves these critics and their writings in the margins of some of the most interesting questions in the contemporary debate on gender in the academia.
 In some cases, the writings of men in men’s studies shows not only a reluctance to fully engage in contemporary debates but also an attitude that may strike us as homophobic. As an example, let us read closely these fragments of an article written by M. Kimmel, paradoxically, on homophobia: 
‘The lives of most American men are bounded, and their interests daily curtailed by the constant necessity to prove to their fellows, and to themselves, that they are not sissies, not homosexuals,’ writes psychoanalytic historian Geoffrey Gorer (1964). ‘Any interest or pursuit which is identified as feminine interest or pursuit becomes deeply suspect for men’ (p. 129)... Our real fear ‘is not fear of women but of being ashamed or humiliated in front of other men, or being dominated by stronger men’ (Leverenz, 1986, p. 451)... Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. ‘The word faggot has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears of homosexuals,’ writes David Leverenz (1986). ‘It comes out of the depths of manhood: a label of ultimate contempt for anyone who seems sissy, untough, uncool’ (p. 455). Homophobia is the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men. We are afraid to let other men see that fear... The fear of being seen as a sissy dominated the cultural definitions of manhood. As adolescents, we learn that our peers are a kind of gender police, constantly threatening to unmask us as feminine, as sissies. The stakes of perceived sissydom are enormous - sometimes matters of life and death. We take enormous risks to prove our manhood, exposing ourselves disproportionately to health risks, workplace hazards, and stress-related illnesses. Men commit suicide three times as often as women (Kimmel 130-33).

 These fragments show a tendency of heterosexual men in men’s studies to appropriating for their own purposes the experience of being a victim of homophobia. They do it in such a way that the suffering of gay men becomes, actually, the experience of all men, thus universalizing a reality and, interestingly enough, eliminating from their analysis the subjectivity of the victimizers. Whereas it would be impossible for any critic to state without difficulties that racism makes white people suffer and that domestic violence makes men the victims of that violence, both M. Kimmel and M. Kauffman seem to get away with the idea of making straight men the victims of homophobia. 
 One more aspect that needs examination is how the voice of men doing men’s studies is becoming more and more heteronormative in their equation of “us” with “men” and, one more time, with “heterosexuals”. This is evident in the writings of M. Kimmel: 
The fear - sometimes conscious, sometimes not - that others might perceive us as homosexual propels men to enact all manner of exaggerated masculine behaviours and attitudes to make sure that no one could possibly get the wrong idea about us... How many of us have translated those ideas and those words into actions, by physically attacking gay men...?... This perspective may help clarify a paradox in men’s lives, a paradox in which men have virtually all the power and yet do not feel powerful (see Kaufman, 1993) (Kimmel 135).

 The argument in this quotation seems to be based on two important premises: The first one is that we men are not gay men, and the second one is that we attack gay men. My personal difficulties in following Kimmel’s argument (who seems to move back and forth between his identifications with the victims of homophobia and with the attackers of gay men) become even more serious when, in a footnote to his article on homophobia, Kimmel suggests the privileges inherent in being gay and powerless: 
Such are the ironies of sexism: The powerful have a narrower range of options than the powerless, because the powerless can also imitate the powerful and get away with it. It may even enhance status, if done with charm and grace - that is, is not threatening. For the powerful, any hint of behaving like the powerless is a fall from grace (Kimmel 139).

 A brief glimpse at the literature written on homosexual masculinity by some of the most prestigious theoreticians of men’s studies in the English speaking academia leads us to conclude that the absolutely necessary incorporation of gay masculinities in the analysis of masculinities is not necessarily exempt from a still strong and not so subtle homophobic bias.

Works Cited

Kimmel, Michael S. 1994: “Masculinity as Homophobia. Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity”. Theorizing Masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod & Michael Kauffman. Thousand Oaks: Sage. 119-41. 
Segal, Lynne 1990: Slow Motion. Changing Masculinities, Changing Men. New Brunswick: Rutgers.
 

III

A Men’s Studies Rereading of American Literature
 

JOSEP M. ARMENGOL
 

While gender has long been related to women (and, more recently, to gay men), gender studies has only recently begun to explore heterosexual masculinity. However, gendering the heterosexual man remains one of the main challenges of this new century. Hence the need for Men’s Studies, which Harry Brod defines as Athe study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and varying social-historical-cultural formations@. Men’s Studies is a small, though growing, and recent field of study, which analyzes masculinities as socially constructed (and so as liable to be socially de-constructed and changed), context-specific, and culture-bound. Even though the first masculinity studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s were mostlywritten by psychologists and sociologists, from the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in the analysis of literary representations of masculinity. Following the work of scholars like James D. Riemer, this study will show how a Men’s Studies rereading of American literature can prove beneficial for several reasons.       

 Traditionally, gender studies have been associated with women. Politically, this is as should be. It was women who underwent -and still undergo- the most detrimental effects of patriarchy and so it was women who had to make gender visible for the first time (Kimmel, p. c.).
However, gender does not only affect women. For example, the growing body of gay studies has shown how patriarchy also oppresses homosexual men. While gender has long been related to women (and, more recently, to gay masculinities), gender studies has only recently begun to explore heterosexual masculinity. And yet gendering the heterosexual man remains one of the main challenges of this new century. 
In this sense, American sociologist Michael Kimmel suggests that (heterosexual) “American men have no history”, as they remain largely invisible from a gender studies perspective. In his own words, “American men have no history of themselves as men” (Kimmel 1996: 1-2).
It is already common knowledge that invisibility is a precondition for the perpetuation of male dominance. In this respect, Sally Robinson reminds us that “one cannot question, let alone dismantle, what remains hidden from view” (2000: 1), while Judith Butler (1990) and Donna Haraway (1991) also talk about the privilege of inhabiting an unmarked body that has been the patrimony of white Western man. 
It seems, then, that in order to question the privileges of unmarkedness, one needs to make the normative visible as a category in gender terms. In other words, in order to do away with universalizing notions of (heterosexual) masculinity, one needs, first of all, to gender it and to render it visible. Hence the need for Men’s Studies, which Harry Brod defines as 
The study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and varying social-historical-cultural formations. Such studies situate masculinities as objects of study on a par with femininities, instead of elevating them to universal norms. (1987: 40)  

In fact, Men’s Studies is a small, though growing, and relatively recent field of study, which analyzes masculinities as socially constructed (and so as liable to be socially de-constructed and changed), context-specific, and culture-bound. So Men’s Studies no longer treats masculinity as the universal and unchangeable “referent against which standards are assessed but as a problematic gender construct” itself (Kimmel 1987: 10). 
Even though the first masculinity studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s were mainly written by psychologists and sociologists, from the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in the number of works on literary representations of masculinity. As James D. Riemer (1987) suggests, a Men’s Studies rereading of American literature can prove beneficial for several reasons. First, just as the erroneous assumption that male experience equals human experience affected literary criticism’s treatment of women as characters and authors, so has it limited our perceptions about men in literature. Therefore, Men’s Studies can help transform “supposedly universal human experiences into ones that are distinctly masculine” (Riemer 1987: 289).
A second implication of rereading American literature from a Men’s Studies perspective is the “possibility of viewing a significant portion of American literature as social documents reflecting our society’s ideals of masculinity” (Riemer 1987: 290). In this way, these studies show how “there exists a multiplicity of ideals of American manhood, some of which at times conflict with one another, and how” American “society’s predominant ideals of masculinity have changed over the past two centuries” (Riemer 1987: 290).
Sociologically, one should also avoid restricting the analysis of American manhood to literary texts that focus on the values of the white middle class, which Riemer indentifies as a common “limitation characteristic of a majority of the research and scholarship in men’s studies” (1987: 291). By studying literary works that depict men’s lives beyond the bourgeois experience, we could see how masculinity may vary according to a man’s social, economic and/or racial-ethnic environment. Moreover, we could also analyze how these environments have created or influenced those ideals (Riemer 1987: 291).
Depite the undeniable value of literature as a social document reflecting our masculine ideals, one should insist that such literary analyses cannot be taken as sociological, psychological, or anthropological studies on American masculinity. As Riemer insists, they 
cannot be expected to give the whole Atruth@ about manhood in relation to a particular social, economic, racial-ethnic environment, but they can offer valuable insights into areas for further, potentially corroborating research by sociologists, psychologists, and social anthropologists. (1987: 291)

 It seems, then, that the relationship between literary studies on masculinity and the larger field of Men’s Studies is “a reciprocal one” (Riemer 1987: 291). Just as rereading American literature for what it says about social conceptions of masculinity widens the base of men’s studies knowledge, information gathered from other fields, such as sociology or psychology, “can illuminate our rereading of American literature in new and meaningful ways by affecting the nature of literary criticism itself” (Riemer 1987: 291). While, traditionally, literary criticism by males has viewed the dilemmas of male characters from an abstract perspective, a Men’s Studies approach to American literature shifts “the focus of criticism from the manner in which men’s lives reflect universal concerns or dilemmas to a more intimate, personal concern with how cultural values, particularly those connected with ideals of masculinity, affect the lives of men on a personal level” (Riemer 1987: 293- 294). Since a Men’s Studies approach to American literature focuses on the personal, it can reveal, for instance, “the central role that women play in developing the male sense of masculinity” (Riemer 1987: 295-296). 
Finally, one should not forget that a Men’s Studies approach to American literature starts off from a feminist agenda. In other words, “attitude and ideological approach, not the sex of characters, authors, or critics, delineate the men’s studies perspective” (Riemer 1987: 289). So one could conclude, borrowing a term from feminist literary criticism, that the aim of a Men’s Studies approach to American literature is “re-vision: a revision of the way we read literature and a revision of the way we perceive men and manly ideals” (Riemer 1987: 298). It is a revision that seeks to analyze traditional but also new alternative models of masculinity. As James D. Riemer puts it:
to change men=s lives [one needs] more than recognition of the limitations and negative effects of our present ideals of manhood. There also must be a recognition and reinforcement of positive alternatives to traditional masculine ideals and behaviors. (1987: 298)

  Riemer complains about the “astonishing infrequency with which such alternative images occur” (1987: 299). However, a number of writers -especially, though not exclusively, ethnic American women writers such as Toni Morrison, Leslie Silko or Louise Erdrich- have begun to redefine masculinity through their fiction (Carabí 2003: 99-114). Of course, the positive images of masculinity in these fictional works should be taken as models for reflection, not as a recipe. As Nobel-Prize-winning-novelist Toni Morrison has rightly suggested, fiction 
should have something in it that enlightens; something in it that opens the door and points the way. Something in it that suggests what the conflicts are, what the problems are. But it need not solve those problems because it is not a case study, it is not a recipe. (Evans 1984: 341)  
 
 

Works Cited
Brod, Harry 1987: “The Case for Men’s Studies”. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin. 39-62.
Butler, Judith 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge.
Carabí, Àngels 2003: “Algunos hombres buenos: Escritoras norteamericanas”. Hombres escritos por mujeres. Ed. Àngels Carabí and Marta Segarra. Barcelona: Icaria. 99-114.
Evans, Mari, ed. 1984: Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. New York: Anchor.    
Haraway, Donna 1991: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York and London: Routledge.  
Kimmel, Michael, ed. 1987: Changing Men. New Directions on Research on Men and Masculinity. Newsbury Park: Sage.
----- 1996: Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press.
Riemer, James D. 1987: “Rereading American Literature from a Men’s Studies Perspective: Some Implications”. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Ed. Harry Brod. Boston: Allen and Unwin. 289-299.
Robinson, Sally 2000: Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press