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Why The Hobbit shows we still think it’s OK to laugh at men who are afraid

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There are a lot of ugly characters in the latest and last of Peter Jackson’s over-blown adaptation of The Hobbit, but one of the most repellent isn’t an orc or a goblin, he’s a man.

At the heart of the film’s opening sequence, in which the dragon Smaug lays fiery waste to a lake-side town, is the comical greed and cowardice of the town’s despotic chief and henchmen as they try to escape with coffers of the town’s gold.

The chief soon meets a satisfyingly grizzly end, but one of his henchmen, Alfrid, is washed up alive and goes on to become a source of derision throughout the film. The reason? He’s a man who is an unrelenting coward.

Now let me be clear, I loved the first three Lord of The Rings films, in which evil is defeated by loyal friendships, high ideals and shining deeds – there are heroes and cowards in all of them. But unlike slippery villains such Wormtongue, the sole purpose of Alfrid’s character is for us to jeer at his cowardice.

Hate figure

With hunched back and revolting yellow teeth, Alfrid is essentially a gendered hate figure – it’s because he is a man and a coward that we’re invited to hate him. Even the goblins and orcs, revolting as they are, command more respect as fierce warriors.

Or to put it another way, Alfrid’s character could not have been played by a woman. Firstly, our culture does not shame women who are afraid and run away – in this sense cowardice is a uniquely male shame. Secondly, two hours of ridiculing and vilifying a female character simply wouldn’t be funny, it would be offensive.

But it’s when you see Alfrid in light of the female characters, that it’s clear this isn’t just an expression of outdated gender roles, but something altogether more complicated and unpleasant.

To be sure, most of the primary characters are male, but of the female characters, there are those who are heroic – such as the elves Tauriel and Galadriel – and those who are afraid and deserving of protection, such as the townswomen; but none are shamed or ridiculed. The women can be either strong or weak, while the men have only the age-old choice between bravery or humiliation.

‘You’re not a man, you’re a weasel’

All of this was dawning on me in a peripheral kind of way, until one completely contrived scene threw the whole tangled knot right in my face.

We are suddenly shown a group of townswomen huddled in a corner, before another woman charges in and declares they are as brave as the men and should go and fight alongside them. One woman however stays bent over and whimpering, refusing to go. The other woman pulls her round, only to reveal it’s the villain Alfrid dressed in women’s clothing. She spits in his face: “You’re a coward. You’re not a man, you’re a weasel.”

In one short scene, the film simultaneously celebrates a woman for emancipating herself from the traditional female role of being weak and in need of protection, while at the same time she shames a man who doesn’t conform to the traditional role of brave protector.

But The Hobbit isn’t the only recent piece of light entertainment set in a mythical past that argues both ends at once. In the first episode of the second series of the BBC series The Musketeers, a show based almost entirely on the male characters maintaining their honour by wise-cracking in the face of fear, we’re suddenly offered a soliloquy by one of the female characters on the unique shame faced by unwed women.

‘Chickens’

“If I left my husband, my family would cut me off and my friends would cross the street to avoid me. I would be nothing more than your whore… I’m a woman, d’Artagnan, a woman in a world built for men.”

OK, fine, but what about the two dozen-odd men that just got slaughtered rather than face the shame of cowardice? Why didn’t the writers invite us to have a look at that through the lens of gender too?

But the most astonishing example of all is Sky’s comedy series, Chickens, about how a village of women treat the only three men from their town who have not gone to fight during WW1.

The show is essentially a series of set pieces in which the three men – a conscientious objector, a man who is medically unfit to fight and man who is simply afraid – are shamed, laughed at and humiliated by scores of empowered and emancipated women.

Clunking double standards

In one scene, after a woman demands that Cecil – who incidentally is the one discharged as medically unfit – justifies why he hasn’t enlisted, he says: “I really believe in this war and I’m really keen to help.” She replies: “Rubbish, if you were really keen to help you would have killed yourself to raise morale.”

The writers describe Chickens as “a quasi-feminist sit-com” and according to one of the lead actresses: “What’s great is to see a village full of women who are just really getting on with it, just couldn’t give a toss that the men have gone, really, except for basic plumbing issues and the occasional need for someone to shag them.”

The thing that’s frankly bizarre, is that the people who wrote each of these clumsy dramatic expositions on gender, seem to think they’re actually making a stand for equality. It seems they don’t even realise the clunking double standards and ethical inconsistencies of what they’re saying.

There’s an old saw that says science fiction tells you a lot more about the values and prejudices of the present, than it does about the future. It seems the same can be said for stories set in the past.

By Dan Bell

— Picture credit: PinkMoose

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

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How wearing trousers went from a symbol of freedom, to a straight-jacket for masculinity

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Look closely at the gentleman in the foreground of this picture. He’s the head of this 1720s aristocratic household. He wears a wig, a dress, lacy underclothes, stockings and high heels – and there’s no doubt he’s a man.

Today it’s almost unthinkable that men in public wear anything but trousers. This entirely arbitrary and very recent limitation on acceptable dress for men, has implications that go deep into both the psyche of each individual as well as into the very structure of democratic society.

— This is article #89 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

When we wear clothes, the fabric drapes about our limbs, touches our skin, and gives us constant feedback about the position and attitude of our body. The garments we wear also need to bear on our bodies at specific points so that they stay in place and don’t fall off: the shoulders and collar of a shirt, the waistband of trousers, the cuffs of a jacket, the snug fit of shoes. With these familiar areas of pressure and weight we develop an internal map of our body which is part of feeling ‘at home’ in our own body.

Clothes tell us how to feel about our bodies

Finally, the structure of the garments themselves – the way the panels of fabric are cut and sewn into shapes – provide subtle pressures which suggest certain movements and restrict other movements.

So the experience of wearing clothing is like providing ourselves with a portable feedback loop which gives us a specific relationship with our body and offers a specific range of movements.

When we wear only trousers on our lower body, we experience our body in only one way and we tend to practice a limited range of movements. In effect when we wear the same garments all the time we affirm a cultural story that our male body has only a very limited capacity to feel and to express, and that our relationship with our body is simple and unvaried.

Of course wearing trousers doesn’t actually prohibit us doing things like expressing affection or receiving touch. Rather, the body-level experience of being in trousers supports certain familiar and culturally acceptable ways to express ourselves – so that other forms of expression don’t feel right and don’t look right.

‘Gender vertigo’

Beyond this personal experience, trousers are a symbol of social legitimacy and appropriate democratic participation. Trousers and democratic citizenship emerged at the same time. The Great Reform Act of 1832 was hailed at the time as a turning point in democratic participation, massively increasing the number of people able to vote. At the same time trousers and a simple military-style jacket, became de rigueur for men in public life. Trousers symbolised equality: the divide between the peasant in his smock and our 1720s aristocrat in his wig and silk stockings, was swept away by a garment available to all, elegant for all and practical for all.

Back then, trousers were an epochal step towards freedom and social participation. But now, nearly 200 years later, the cultural rejection of anything but trousers is an appalling straight-jacket. The 19th Century realisation that peasant and aristocrat are all the same under the skin has become an oppressive trap for men as we intensely and minutely police each other in to ensure we all appear the same and act the same. Variations from the norm are fiercely put down, emotionally through ridicule and humiliation or physically through violence.

Wearing unfamiliar garments, like this Bloodwood skirtsuit from 2013, raise terrors at the intimate level of our relationship with our bodies. We are suddenly confronted with new possibilities of pleasures beyond our habitual patterns of proper ‘masculine’ body movements and flows of touch. It is common to experience ‘gender vertigo’ at this point: a dizzying questioning along the lines of “if I enjoy this so much, does that mean I am gay/a woman/transvestite?”

Just do it!

Alongside the personal level we are also confronted with the potential to be excluded from social participation at work, in our family, among friends and on the street. The fears arising at the level of our own bodies can be engaged through both growth work and play. But the fears around social exclusion have a very real basis; as recently as 10 years ago men were still being killed for transgressing gender norms.

Thankfully the risk of physical violence in Western countries has almost entirely receded, but inevitably people will be puzzled, and significant people like bosses or clients may make decisions which disadvantage you. So it’s helpful to have a simple package to explain verbally what you are doing and why it’s important.

Moving beyond trousers moves us beyond trousers masculinity – the template of maleness of the last 200 years. Other garments are our license to explore our relationship with ourselves and our own body, and to explore other ways of engaging in social life beyond the restrictions on men’s self-expression and interaction with others.

At the moment it’s challenging for men to wear skirts and dresses on the street. But that’s only because it’s still very unusual. The best way to make it common is to claim it’s perfectly legitimate and acceptable by simply doing it!

— Picture credit: Joseph Van Aken, An English Family at Tea (circa 1720)

Dr Arian Bloodwood brings a unique perspective on masculinity through wearing “gender non-conforming” clothing since the 70s.  Initially joining men’s groups in Australia in the early 80s, he has been part of a wide range of approaches to men’s issues, including experiential workshops, ritual work, political activism, and a PhD in men and progressive change.  His driving theme is the massive opportunities for men to step beyond gender to enrich our lives and create new selves. He currently lives in London where he offers a spiritually-oriented accounting service. Visit his website here

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You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

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Is your masculinity a product of nature or nurture?

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Photo courtesy: sdminor81

What is it that makes a man masculine asks Glen Poole?

Last week we explored the Seven Stages of Masculinity that men experience at different stages of life and history. But what creates these different stages of masculinity? Is it good old mother nature or the nurture of the “man’s world” we live in?

If you view masculinity from an integral perspective then there a four distinct forces that shape your masculinity:

  • Your biology
  • Your psychology
  • The cultures you inhabit
  • The society you live in

These four distinct forces interact at every stage of masculinity to shape your experience of being a man. In simple terms biology and psychology represent the forces of nature while society and culture represent the forces of nurture. The importance your place on each of these four forces will be governed by the side you take in the nature vs nurture debate? Or maybe you don’t take sides, maybe you believe that masculinity is a bio-psycho-socio-cultural construct…….!?

THE BIOLOGY OF MASCULINITY

Maleness is formed at a biological level in the XY sex chromosomes found in every cell of our bodies. The small proportion of men born with an XXY chromosome are less masculine in a variety of ways—they have less testosterone, smaller testes, less public hair, less facial hair, a lower sex drive, are less muscular, may have man boobs and can be shy and lack confidence in childhood.

By contrast, children with the condition congenital adrenal hyperplasia are exposed to higher levels of male sex hormones such as testosterone. Boys with the condition can enter puberty early leading to increased body hair and an enlarged penis at an early age, while girls with the condition may have unusual looking genitalia (such as an enlarged clitoris) and a tendency towards more masculine behaviours such as a preference for playing with “boys’ toys”.

The impact of biological factors like chromosomes and hormones on our masculinity has been observed by researchers studying the journals of men undergoing testosterone replacement. What they discovered was that as men’s testosterone levels rose they used fewer words in their journals and wrote less about people and more about objects.

The apparent masculine interest in objects, more than people, has also been observed at a neurological level. According to Simon Baron-Cohen’s Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory the female brain is more often hard-wired for empathy while the male brain is more often hard-wired for understanding and building systems.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY

The nature of masculinity changes over time in parallel with the common social systems that define a culture or historical era. In the agricultural age, for example, the invention of the plough revolutionized food production. The plough relied heavily on male upper body strength and required men to work away from their family while women stayed close to home. To this day the hard-working dad and the stay-at-home are still recognized as archetypal masculine and feminine roles.

As countries evolve from agrarian to industrial to post-industrial systems of economic production, the nature of masculinity and femininity also evolves. In modern industrial nations, women can reach the top of their field by adopting masculine traits. As post-modern, post-industrial nations emerge, feminine skills become more valued as we explored in our post: 10 reasons more male graduates end up jobless.

It is no coincidence that the UK’s modernist, industrial Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was considered to be the “best man” in her Government while the U.S.A.’s post-modernist, post-industrial leader, Barack Obama, has been repeatedly described as the country’s first female president.

The laws that govern sex and gender are also part of the social systems that shape our masculinity. In countries where men and women have generous and equal parental leave rights, women earn more and men do more childcare.

Is this because the men in these countries are more feminine, nurturing and caring naturally, or is their masculinity being nurtured in a new direction by the country’s parental leave laws?

THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY

The values and beliefs of the communities we are born into play a huge role in defining our masculinity. Last week we talked about the Seven Types of Masculinity. These stages can be observed at a collective level as cultures progress through seven distinct stages of development as follows:

  • Cavemen and Cavewomen
  • Tribes
  • Warriors
  • Rules and Roles
  • Explorers
  • Peacemakers
  • Integral Men and Women

Each stage brings a new set of values and beliefs. For traditional “rules and roles” cultures, social order is preserved by men and women conforming to set norms that restrict expressions of masculinity and femininity within limited confines. In simple terms men (and their masculinity) rule the public realm and women (and their femininity) rule the private realm.

At the “explorer” stage of cultural evolution women are usually granted equal rights and equal opportunities with men in the public realm. As high-flying women like Margaret Thatcher show, women who learn to play by masculine rules can reach the very top, but for most women equality of outcome is not possible.

Explorer societies tend to be competitive and individualistic and are divided into the “haves” and the “have nots”. When “peacemaker” societies emerge, they have a strong focus on the “have nots” and the pursuit of equal outcomes. The public realm becomes increasingly less masculine (as do men and boys) and the social shift towards a post-industrial economy sees a rise in the value of feminine qualities like empathy. The “peacemaker” wave of cultural evolution also sees men having a greater role in the private realm with the emergence of the “househusband” and the “stay-at-home-dad”.

The dominant values and norms of the cultures we live in have a strong influence on our masculinity. It’s hard to imagine young men today, who are mostly at the explorer and peacemaker stages of masculinity, accepting mass conscription in the way millions of men did in 1914-1918, when most men and women were operating at the “rules and roles” stage of their masculinity and femininity.

Similarly, in peacemaker Scandanavian countries it has become the norm for men to share in the feminine, nurturing role of raising children and women to share in the masculine, provider role of providing a household income. It’s difficult to image men and women in 1914 sharing the roles of nurturer and provider. Of course many women did take on “men’s work” at home while men went to war, but when those men returned, men and women generally returned to their distinct nurturer and provider roles.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MASCULINITY

The psychology of masculinity is perhaps the most interesting aspect to explore as it is in our own psychological world that we experience being a man, being manly and being masculine. Our psychological world is where our gender identity is formed and where we personally experience the influence that biology, society and culture have in shaping our masculinity.

Some biological determinists see gender differences in society as being the result of men’s and women’s psychological preferences and choices. For social and cultural determinists, the choices and preferences men and women express at the micro level are the result of coercion at a macro level. For example, If we don’t give fathers equal rights and opportunities as parents through laws and policies at a macro level, then this will effect the preferences and choices that individual fathers make at the micro level.

So is our masculinity shaped entirely from the outside by the social norms and cultural values that surround us? Or is it our nature that makes us masculine with our male hormones and choromosomes and neuro-biology simply triggering characteristics that have evolved over millennia and are now deeply embedded in the male psyche?

According to the Psychologist Martin Seager who chaired the UK’s first male psychology conference last month, there are three ancient rules of masculinity that create the “male script” that shapes and informs our experience of being a man. These rules are:

  • Men should be fighters and winners
  • Men should be protectors and providers
  • Men should retain mastery and control

It has also been argued that men and women evolve psychologically through three similar stages of development (ie egocentric, ethnocentric and worldcentric),  albeit in a different masculine or feminine voice.

Masculine psychological development is driven by rights: i.e. my rights, our rights, everyone’s rights. Feminine psychological development is driven by care: i.e. my care, our care, everyone’s care.

As you consider whether your masculinity is shaped by nature or nurture you may also reflect on your own masculine and feminine development.

From a masculine perspective do you assert your own rights? Do you take a stand for the rights of people in the groups you belong to, e.g. your family, your country, your gender? Do you recognize the rights of all human beings?

From a feminine perspective do you make sure your needs are taken care of? Are you mindful of the needs of people in groups you belong to, e.g. your family, your country, your gender? Do you recognize the value in taking care of the needs of all human beings?

Finally, what do you think shapes masculinity? Is it the biological differences that make us male? Is it the social systems like technology, the economy and the laws that affect men’s lives? Is it the gender norms and values of the cultures we live in? Or is it all down to male psychology? We’d love to hear your experiences and beliefs about masculinity so please leave us a comment.

Written by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men