The Masculinist Nightmare: In Homer's Odyssey the amorous enchantress, Circe, transforms Odysseus's lustful crew into swine. Mastery being the essence of masculinity, men are expected to demonstrate at all times that they are in control of both themselves and their lives. Aaron Smith's sin was his failure to control of his desires. As an All Black, the epitome of Kiwi masculinity, such a display of weakness was a kind of betrayal. He let the side down.
MASCULINITY – can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Well, that’s half true. A world in which masculinity no longer dominated human affairs
would probably be much improved. What went on in airport toilets between
consenting adults would count for much less. And the ideas espoused by female
candidates for high political office – rather than what they were wearing and
how often they smiled – would count for much more.
New Zealand’s problems with masculinity are deeply embedded
in its social and cultural history. New Zealand men are notorious for being overly
repressed and emotionally unavailable: tightly-wound machines with an aversion
to mechanics. Trained from birth to value self-reliance above all other
virtues, their responses to vulnerability and complexity range from dismissive
impatience to outright hostility. Their most prized quality is mastery. Mastery
of what? Well, just about anything: the world’s highest mountain; the British
Lions; women.
It’s why so many Kiwi males are furious with Aaron Smith.
Not because he had sex in an airport toilet with someone who wasn’t his partner,
but because he was willing to risk everything to do it. As an All Black, he was
expected to master his lustful urges. Succumbing to temptation in the way he
did marked him down as a man not in control of himself. Weak.
As something constructed and in need of constant
maintenance, masculinity is forever being scrutinised and assessed by those who
feel in need of its protection. For most Kiwi men, achieving All Black status
represents something pretty close to perfection in the masculinity stakes. That
Aaron Smith was willing to risk it all for a quick shag wasn’t just reckless
and stupid, it devalued the currency of masculinity itself.
That the woman involved in the incident is accorded no real
agency or consequence shows just how peripheral living, breathing, autonomous
human females are to the construction of masculine identity. For so many men a
woman is just one more thing to master, and all-too-often her presence at a
man’s side is valued only for the indisputable proof it offers of his competitiveness
in the masculinity stakes.
It’s why so many men turn nasty when “their” woman decides
she no longer wishes to remain in the relationship. By walking away she is
stripping him of one of the key proofs of his status as a “real” man – the ability
to attract and “keep” a woman. Very little is more threatening to masculinity than
a woman who refuses to devote her life to shoring-up her man’s identity. By forcing
him to acknowledge her as something more than a mere adjunct to his ego, she is
challenging him to move beyond the self-imposed limitations of masculinity and
become fully human.
Many men accept their partner’s challenge to break out of
the character armour in which they have encased themselves – and are better
people for it. But, many men do not. The price of their failure is revealed in
New Zealand’s shocking levels of domestic violence.
What happens in the domestic environment finds its
reflection in the public domain – most particularly in men’s reaction to women
who seek and attain political office. The ideology of masculinity is
fundamentally hostile to the very notion of women exercising power over men. Such women are
perceived as having abandoned their “natural” social role in much the same way
as the woman who deserts her husband. Instantly, she becomes a “bitch” –
someone who, by asserting her humanity has forfeited her right to be treated
with the “courtesy” and “respect” reserved for women who accept the masculine
code.
This masculinist viciousness was fully on display in the
latter years of Helen Clark’s prime-ministership. No epithet was too vile to hurl
at this woman who had crushed three National Party leaders in a row. Even more
telling was the way in which Clark’s opponents sought to paint her as being both
criminal and sinful – as if, by stepping away from her assigned role in the
masculine universe, she had broken not only the laws of men, but of God.
Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House has elicited an
equally overheated response from the white, working-class defenders of American
masculinity. Writing in the October issue of The Atlantic, Peter Beinart, records of his astonishment at the
unrestrained misogyny he encountered at the Republican National Convention in
Ohio:
“Inside the hall, delegates repeatedly broke into chants of
‘Lock her up.’ Outside the hall, vendors sold campaign paraphernalia. As I
walked around, I recorded the merchandise on display. Here’s a sampling: Black
pin reading DON’T BE A PUSSY. VOTE FOR TRUMP IN 2016. Black-and-red pin reading
TRUMP 2016: FINALLY SOMEONE WITH BALLS. White T-shirt reading TRUMP THAT BITCH.
White T-shirt reading HILLARY SUCKS BUT NOT LIKE MONICA. Red pin reading LIFE’S
A BITCH: DON’T VOTE FOR ONE … White pin advertising KFC HILLARY SPECIAL. 2 FAT
THIGHS. 2 SMALL BREASTS … LEFT WING.”
If this is what American men were saying about Hillary
before she so comprehensively trounced their masculinist avatar, Donald Trump,
in the first debate, one can only imagine what they’re saying now. And God
alone knows how they’ll cope if (or should that be ‘when’) she wins!
What a world of torment men consign themselves to in this
hopeless quest to attain perfect masculinity. Their desire for women is matched
only by their fear of becoming its slave. They are allowed to be tempted, but
must never surrender to temptation on anything other than their own terms. And
those terms must never include anything which undermines their standing in the
eyes of other men. That was Aaron Smith’s true sin: not only to have allowed
his desire for a woman to master him, but to have made the whole world privy to
his weakness. He let the side down. Not just the All Black side, but the side
to which every worshipper of masculinity belongs – and can only leave in
disgrace.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Sunday, 9 October 2016.
