masculinity – Chad Comello

A BoyDad reads ‘BoyMom’

I recently read BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman, a journalist and mom of three boys who wrestles with her own fears, frustrations, and biases as an avowed feminist raising boys in a world with conflicting views of modern masculinity.

As the father of two young boys myself, I found the book deeply relatable, validating, challenging, and illuminating. It facilitated a lot of great discussions with my wife as we try to envision a better, more wholehearted life for our wild and wonderful boys.

Here are some random thoughts and takeaways.

The ‘buddy’ system

Whippman shares an anecdote of her preschooler’s male teacher welcoming students into the classroom, greeting the girls with nicknames like “sweetheart” but the boys with “buddy.” It’s such a small thing, but it’s an example of how language can create emotional distance with boys compared to girls from a very early age, and set an expectation for which terms of endearment are acceptable for each gender.

After reading that, I realized I too call our 5 year old “buddy” (and our 1 year old “mister”) almost unconsciously. So I’ve resolved to start training myself to use different nicknames that aren’t gendered (Bun and Muffin) so that they know they’re much more than my buddies.

Breaking the wheel

A key point Whippman makes is that the movement to counteract “toxic” masculinity with more positive alternatives like “healthy” or “aspirational” masculinity is, though well-intentioned, a kind of half-measure that still perpetuates the expectation of fulfilling prescribed masculine ideals. Instead:

Boys don’t need more masculinity, but freedom from that paradigm; they need permission to be fully human without the pressure to conform to oppressive masculine norms.

This idea reminded me of the Daenerys Targaryen line in Game of Thrones: “I’m not going to stop the wheel—I’m going to break the wheel.”

Stopping the wheel isn’t enough, because it can always be restarted or rebranded using the same structure. We need to break it altogether and offer alternate modes of transportation, so to speak.

Too much of a good thing

There’s a book called Too Much of a Good Thing: How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us by Lee Goodman, and it lays out why some of humanity’s behaviors and biological functions helped us thrive as hunter-gatherers but are detrimental for the sedentary office workers we’ve become:

Overeating was good when every calorie mattered, but now causes obesity.
Preferring salty foods helped retain water, but now causes high blood pressure and heart disease.
Blood-clotting saved us from bleeding to death from injuries, but now can cause heart attacks and strokes.
Hyper-vigilance and aggression saved us from predators and enemies, but now make us destructive to others and ourselves.

I think about gender in a similar way. Whatever combination of nature and nurture that modern masculinity and femininity entail, they contain evolutionary adaptations developed over tens of thousands of years. That’s not something you can fundamentally alter or remove overnight. (As E.O. Wilson wrote: “The real problem of humanity is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.”)

What are the good and useful elements of masculinity that helped us survive and evolve as a species? Which of those elements can still be used for good today? And which are now too much and have become detrimental—to both men and women? How we answer those questions will determine what masculinity will look like for current and future generations.

August 29, 2024 Add Comment

Towards a better masculinity

The Washington Post essay by Christine Emba called “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness” has made the rounds over the last month, and for good reason. Emba takes stock of the currently tenuous state of American masculinity, with insightful commentary from Of Boys and Men author Richard Reeves and professor Scott Galloway.

Here’s a key passage on what “good masculinity” should look like:

Reeves, in our earlier conversation, had put it somewhat more subtly. “I try to raise my boys” — he has three — “to have the confidence to ask a girl out, if that’s their inclination; the grace to accept no for an answer; and the responsibility to make sure that, either way, she gets home safely.” His recipe for masculine success echoed Galloway’s: proactiveness, agency, risk-taking and courage, but with a pro-social cast.

This tracked with my intuitions about what “good masculinity” might look like — the sort that I actually admire, the sort that women I know find attractive but often can’t seem to find at all. It also aligns with what the many young men I spoke with would describe as aspirational, once they finally felt safe enough to admit they did in fact carry an ideal of manhood with its own particular features.

Physical strength came up frequently, as did a desire for personal mastery. They cited adventurousness, leadership, problem-solving, dignity and sexual drive. None of these are negative traits, but many men I spoke with felt that these archetypes were unfairly stigmatized: Men were too assertive, too boisterous, too horny.

But, in fact, most of these features are scaffolded by biology — all are associated with testosterone, the male sex hormone. It’s not an excuse for “boys will be boys”-style bad behavior, but, realistically, these traits would be better acknowledged and harnessed for pro-social aims than stifled or downplayed. Ignoring obvious truths about human nature, even general ones, fosters the idea that progressives are out of touch with reality.

On how to create a positive vision of masculinity:

Recognizing distinctiveness but not pathologizing it. Finding new ways to valorize it and tell a story that is appealing to young men and socially beneficial, rather than ceding ground to those who would warp a perceived difference into something ugly and destructive.

Emba’s vision:

In my ideal, the mainstream could embrace a model that acknowledges male particularity and difference but doesn’t denigrate women to do so. It’s a vision of gender that’s not androgynous but still equal, and relies on character, not just biology. And it acknowledges that certain themes — protector, provider, even procreator — still resonate with many men and should be worked with, not against.

But how to implement it? Frankly, it will be slow. A new masculinity will be a norm shift, and that takes time. The women’s movement succeeded in changing structures and aspirations, but the social transformation didn’t take place overnight. And empathy will be required, as grating as that might feel.

It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.

August 2, 2023 Add Comment

Mad Max on the Feminism Road

Really enjoyed this post from Freddie de Boer about his frustration with the common misinterpretation of Mad Max: Fury Road as “Furiosa replaces Max in a Mad Max movie”—a take that’s entirely false:

It’s important to understand that Furiosa doesn’t replace Max because the entire movie demonstrates the failure of dictatorship and the superiority of communal leadership. It’s not about men being erased in deference to women; it would be totally bizarre for a movie with that intent to place so much agency in its male characters. (Nux’s sacrifice saves the lives of the remaining characters, to pick an obvious example.) It’s about the superiority of democracy and shared governance and diversity over the the whims of an individual autocrat.

He then links this framework to how a “new masculinity”, embodied by Max, can be “unthreatened by the strengths and abilities of others” while joining with the ideal version of feminism:

Feminism is not about women replacing men in an equally stratified and undemocratic structure as the patriarchy that preceded it; that’s a parody of feminism. Feminism is about equality, diversity, communalism, and radical democracy. Indeed, the movie models consensus and communal deliberation for us. When they stop and discuss whether to continue on the salt flats or turn back for the Citadel, Max and Furiosa do most of the talking, but everyone weighs in and is heard. Furiosa doesn’t lead by fiat. She listens and becomes convinced, as do the rest, and they all make a plan together. Max isn’t erased; he’s a valued and essential part of the whole, just as white men will be in the new world of democracy and equality we are building.

In that group discussion on the salt flats—one of the few quiet moments of the movie—Max concludes his case to Furiosa thusly:

Look, it’ll be a hard day. But I guarantee you that 160 days riding that way, there’s nothing but salt. At least that way, we might be able to, together, come across some kind of redemption.

What a great metaphor! The path towards a better world is hard and painful, but retreating away from it is worse in the long run. “The obstacle is the way,” as Ryan Holiday would say.

Might be time for a Fury Road rewatch.

July 12, 2021 Add Comment

The Big Country

William Wyler’s 1958 film The Big Country is many things you’d expect from an epic western of its era. Nearly three hours long. A plot about families feuding over land and pride in the Wild West. Two vastly different men with vastly different styles vying for the same woman.

But what took me by surprise was just how resolutely the film subverts many of the expected tropes of its genre.

This is epitomized in one scene between the two leads. Gregory Peck, handsome as ever, plays the genteel New Englander McKay who arrives in the “big country” of the western plains to marry the local honcho’s daughter Patricia. Charlton Heston, laconic and smoldering as ever, plays the tough-guy ranch foreman Leech, whose own ambitions for Patricia put him at immediate odds with McKay.

But McKay isn’t interested in fighting, for her honor or his. He repeatedly refuses to be goaded into a fight, whether by a posse of ruffians from the rival family or by Leech, who brands McKay a liar in front of Patricia to try to shame him into fisticuffs.

It doesn’t work. Says McKay:

You aren’t going to prove anything with me, Leech. Get this through your head. I’m not playing this game on your terms, not with horses or guns or fists.

He’s only half-right. After Leech successfully spooks Patricia away from McKay due to his seeming unmanliness—”I’ve never been so humiliated” Patricia tells him—McKay decides to settle things with fists, but not as we’ve come to expect from westerns.

He wakes up Leech in the middle of the night, saying he’ll be leaving in the morning but had in mind a farewell. He says this so evenly and without anger that it’s a wonder Leech even got the meaning. The two of them amble out into the twilight and duke it out.

We get our “epic” fight, but it’s in the dark, without horses or guns, without spectators, without any music whatsoever, let alone anything heroic. Just two men silently slugging each other because they feel they have to, and they don’t even look cool while they do it. They’re like drunks brawling in an alley. Wyler pulls the camera way back, the high and wide framing exposing them as insignificant specks against the infinite plains.

They finally wear each other out. McKay:

Now tell me, Leech, what did we prove?

This is merely a subplot in a larger story of rival clans in a lawless land and the consequences of revenge. But it’s a powerful illustration of a new path being forged within the lives of these characters and, metatextually, within the genre of American westerns at large.

There are many more Wyler films I’ve yet to see, but The Big Country—along with The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver, and Roman Holiday—make him an all-timer in my book.

October 10, 2019

Queer Eye and Straight Guys

Karamo Brown of Queer Eye recently gave a free talk nearby, so I availed myself of the opportunity to see him in the flesh. He was the same as you see on the show, except this time he made himself cry. He got emotional as soon as the talk began because an old college friend of his was in the audience, someone who reminded him of how far he’d come in life. He then briefly told stories from the show and about being a dad.

Unsurprisingly, he was very open with feelings and implored us not to make fear-based decisions. His sons probably do not appreciate when they bring girls home and Karamo pulls them aside and asks “Have you done anything out of fear lately?” But that’s something youths can only appreciate in hindsight (and something only a therapist/motivational speaker like Karamo could get away with).

I never watched the original Queer Eye, though vaguely remember its cultural impact. But while I was in Denver for a wedding last fall, my straight-dude friends were effusive in their praise for the new version. It’s so much more than fashion, they said. They were right. It’s fun to see the Fab Five work their magic: Bobby remodeling homes and Jonathan transforming hair and Antoni inspiring cooking and Tan remaking wardrobes and Karamo shepherding the show’s “heroes” to a new self-awareness.

But, like Karamo, I think I’m most interested in seeing what makes the subjects cry, or at least be vulnerable. Those moments are water wells, openings to the deep reserves of emotional underground that’s usually in darkness. Drawing from that space, for me anyway, involves work and risk but almost always reward. It happened for me that weekend in Denver, which is why I’ll always associate that time with the show. The ability to be vulnerable among friends—straight male friends, no less—and to do it so easily when it’s otherwise so daunting, meant it was good in the richest sense of the word.

That inspiring of goodness is one of my takeaways from the show. The Fab Five dedicate themselves to new and challenging experiences around Georgia for the first two seasons, and in doing so demonstrate their goodness to everyone. Being willing to share their expertise for the betterment of strangers, prodding when necessary but remaining open to being changed themselves—that’s good. That takes guts, and vulnerability. And that’s what I look forward to seeing even more of in season 3.

January 14, 2019 2 Comments

Man Bookers

This New York Times story about all-male book clubs was not as inflammatory as I knew it would be taken in certain spheres. It turns out (wait for it…) some men are in book clubs just for men.

The reaction from one of the groups to the NYT story is worth reading for important context that didn’t get into the piece: that they do in fact read books by women, and that the group was started out of a desire to get back into reading after kids and life had intervened. The group’s mission: “to leave our day jobs behind, to find meaning and enjoyment in literature, and to know each other better in the process.” What a bunch of misogynist pigs!

They also correctly point out people start exclusive book clubs of every conceivable theme and parameter. To prohibit men from this privilege out of some anti-patriarchy crusade would be misguided, obtuse, and contrary to the spirit of reading.

As a librarian, I cheer anyone who joins a book club at all, or even just starts reading for fun again. And since men participate in book clubs and discussions much less than women, civic groups like this one ought to be applauded, not snickered at. (Although, yes, the International Ultra Manly Book Club has a silly name and some cheeky masculine posturing in the article.)

The morals of the story: Read! For fun! At whim! And do whatever it takes to do so. I didn’t start reading for fun until right after college, when I realized I didn’t have to take notes or ~~bullshit~~ write a critical essay on the material anymore. I could just read what looked interesting. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

May 12, 2016 Add Comment

Twilight Bites: How Dazzling Vampires Distort Masculinity

Published in the North Central Chronicle on April 24, 2009.

Let’s pretend I’m a teenage girl and that you’re my best friend. I’ve just told you about this guy I started dating. He’s perfect in every way, I say. He stares at me while I sleep, he alienates me from my friends and, among other things, he drives a wedge between me and my single dad.

Wait…what?

Oh, you mean that those aren’t actually good things? Edward Cullen, the lead vampire from Twilight, does all of those things to Bella, the main character in the film, and yet women swoon over him. Why?

Let’s start with the superficial. The novel describes Edward as “impossibly beautiful,” his body as hard and cold as marble. He’s impossibly smart too: he plays and composes classical music and has two degrees from Harvard. And, like any good bad boy, he drives really, really nice cars really, really fast.

Bella goes on and on about how mysterious and seducing and perfect he is. But once they actually get together, she wholeheartedly submits herself to his every whim. The fact that Edward can read people’s minds (though not Bella’s for some reason-presumably because she doesn’t really have that much going on up there) shows that he is all about control. This becomes evident as the two grow closer;they become inseparable (though not in the cute way), and when a rival vampire clan jeopardizes Bella’s life, Edward tells her to abandon her sweet, thoughtful and lonely dad to skip town. Bella was indeed in danger, but Edward didn’t have to force her to blow off her dad.

What makes me cringe more than the film’s lessons is the viewer response to them. We talk so much about how pornography and advertising and television are giving young girls unrealistic expectations about body image and relationships, but what about crazes for a novel that promotes the suppression of self-confidence and identity and creates a steamy hero out of a cold and brooding vampire?

My sisters are obsessed with the series; one so much so that she read one of the books in church, hiding it in the hymnal she was supposed to be using. And she’s not alone. Fan groups and forums have sprung up all over the place with readers confessing their undying love and unhealthy addiction for Edward and the vampire saga. On one such site called “Twilight Moms,” a poster admitted: “I have no desires to be part of the real world right now. Nothing I was doing before holds any interest to me.”

Granted, it’s not just vampire romance novels that can pull people in so seductively. But the fact that some women may expect, if only secretly, that their boyfriend or husband will start acting like Edward is alarming and wholly unfair. It’s like when a man expects his girlfriend or wife to perform like a porn star in bed. Pornography is not real sex, and Edward is not a real man.

I don’t want to completely destroy what many women see as an ideal man. It’s good for men to look out for what is best for their significant other. But I still struggle with the thought of trying to become someone like Edward Cullen, because he’s really not someone any man should want to be, or any woman should want to love.

A blogger at Salon.com summed up well the lesson being told to young men through the movie:

“Don’t be fun, thoughtful, quirky or smart if you want to get the girl. Be a d—. But be a d— who can stop cars with your bare hands. And look depressed. But be good looking while you’re depressed. And express your desire to be with the girl of your dreams but be vague about why you can’t be with her. Confuse her, make her crazy, change your moods by the hour and make sure your hair looks like Johnny Depp in the mid-90s.”

I don’t have two Harvard degrees or chiseled, marble-like features. I don’t drive sports cars or live in a mansion. I don’t have immortal life or superhuman strength. What does that mean for me? If I want to be in a relationship with a girl but I know that when she thinks of the “perfect man” she thinks of Edward Cullen, I lose. Because I am impossibly imperfect.

But who isn’t? That’s why unrealistic expectations, even if they are gleaned from fiction, are so destructive: they don’t allow us to be real, to be human.

But then, Edward Cullen isn’t human. He’s a vampire. So, ladies, dream away, I guess. But when you wake up, don’t tell me what you dreamt about. I have a feeling I will be sorely disappointed.

April 24, 2009 3 Comments

The ‘Rite’ Of The Male Gaze

Published in the North Central Chronicle on September 28, 2007.

Imagine: John Q. Student is sitting on a bench outside the Science Center with his friend Billy. John spots a voluptuous, scantily-clad young woman walking their way and takes a long look at her behind his sunglasses. He says to Billy: “Dude, check out that chick’s…personality.”

You mean you’ve never heard that before? Well, replace “personality” with a part of the female anatomy and you’ve got what is commonly referred to as the “male gaze.”

The male gaze, according to Dr. Jonathan Schroeder, “signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.”

It’s about having “the power” to look a woman up and down, see what we want to see, and then move on. Century upon century of male superiority has made this act commonplace and even encouraged. It’s considered a badge of honor within the Brotherhood of Man. But that doesn’t make it right. In fact, it’s something that needs to be changed.

Perpetual use of the male gaze degrades women to mere objects of a man’s desire – pieces of meat, essentially. When we as males check a girl out, be it mindfully or not, we’re saying to the woman: “You are only worth what I’m looking at right now.” That’s quite a message to be sending to a fellow human being.

The male gaze has in a way become a rite of passage into modern manhood. In order to impress our buddies, we have to talk about how hot a girl is or how nice her breasts are. Ladies, odds are you’ve never heard this talk before, but it’s very real. It can happen as soon as you pass a group of rambunctious guys, or as soon as you leave the room at a party, or even right before your eyes. Think Glenn Gulia in The Wedding Singer: “that’s Grade-A top-choice meat.”

The fact that the male gaze has been accepted as normal male behavior disturbs me greatly. Take a typical beer commercial for example: A man is caught checking out a good-looking woman by his girlfriend, but he just shrugs it off. His girlfriend is then forced to surrender to the notion that it’s “just a guy thing.” He will continue to size women up, and she will continue to feel powerless and undesirable. How painful.

A big reason why men utilize the Gaze is because we know women like being desired. The depth of the desire isn’t important so long as it’s desire. That could be a gross generalization, but I know for a fact that many women eat up the attention. Trust me; that attention is fleeting. Your self-esteem cannot survive on lustful looks you absorb from the guy across the room. Do you really want all the good things about you ignored simply because they’re hidden from view?

You are worth more than the looks you receive. Put your self-worth somewhere else, somewhere worthwhile. Guys are admittedly very easy to bait, but I’m challenging you to give us something more than a mini-skirt to value about you. There’s a part in every one of you that deserves to be shared with the world; I dare you to show us that part. Be a mystery that we men have to solve. Flaunt your gifts, not your G-string.

I issued a challenge the women, so I will issue one to my fellow men as well: It’s time to clean up our act. No matter how we try to justify it, the male gaze is just not cool. Just imagine seeing another guy check out your sister, or your mom. That’s no different from what you just did with that girl sitting next to you in class. The women we’re ogling are sisters and mothers as well, so let’s treat them as such. They deserve nothing less.

September 21, 2007 Add Comment

the fall

Ever since The Fall, we’ve been in denial of our true purpose. As men, we were brought into this world as the likeness of God, made to make and lead. But ever since The Fall, we’ve doubted ourselves in that task. We think, I can’t lead. I’m not strong enough. I’m afraid of being exposed as the fraud I am.

Then women, also created in the likeness of God as a companion and nurturer, fall into doubt. They think, I’m not good enough. He doesn’t value me.

Where does this get us? I guess we can’t get any farther away from God, so why now pursue him?

August 30, 2007 Add Comment