Masculinity and History - Part I

We look at masculinity and the role of men, today and in the past in this two part series.  

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Masculinity and History – Part I

August 2023 

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Just be one!”

— Marcus Aurelius Meditations, 10.16

“The men I date seem more like the little boys that I used to babysit rather than the dads that would drive me home.” Unknown author

Marcus Aurelius is remembered for many things. He was the last of the “good” Emperors ending an eight-decade era of unprecedented prosperity for the Roman Empire. He was the first of the good Emperors to bequeath the Empire not to a carefully chosen heir but to his son, the unworthy, and later deposed and murdered Commodus. He fought Germans and put down rebellions during his 20-year rule. He has also been played in movies by some of the most noteworthy British actors, such as Alec Guinness and Richard Harris. 

But if he is remembered today, it is that of the ideal Platonic ruler, the Philosopher King, having written down his thoughts of Stoicism in his Meditations. It might seem an odd place to begin for a podcast on historical masculinity, but the precepts of Stoicism have often been a stand-in for manly virtue. Aurelius notes, “If it is not right, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say it.”  

Of course, there are many writers, too many, who get it wrong. Aditi Murti wrote a piece entitled, “Stoicism Has Become a Masculine Ideal That Values Repression, Indifference. What Could Go Wrong?” “The popularity of the ‘Keep Calm’ cliché today speaks to the current appeal of repression and Stoicism. Considering how society has always either disregarded or dismissed male emotion, it is no surprise stoic behavior has now come to be viewed as an attractive masculine ideal. Stoic-ness exists as a pillar of traditional masculinity alongside competitiveness, dominance, and aggression. The ‘ideal’ man is supposed to be rational and indifferent to crises at all times. However, the emotional labor of portraying a stoic, masculine ideal is a ticking time bomb for physical and mental distress.”  

Uh, no. Murti manages to get history, stoicism and the Keep Calm ethos wrong, in a single piece which is an achievement of a sort I guess. Society has not always disregarded male emotion.  Alan Alda won a bunch of Emmys for going against this grain.  But Aurelius himself would reject this combination. “Never value anything so profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains.” 

The confusion of this philosophy for writers such as Murti is the inability to separate repression from virtues such as calm and purpose, as if keeping calm in a crisis is dire. Aurelius is not saying to deny one’s nature or repress negative thoughts. He is saying to embrace the good ones and recognize those who cause one, and those around him, harm. Aurelius would have recognized the difference between emotions and emoting, something very common in males of today. Here he is on the first, “If thou boldest to this, fearing nothing, expecting nothing. But satisfied with the present activity according to nature, and with the heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy.” The emotion of these words and activities leap off the page (heroic!). But one wonders whether a child, or a man-child for that matter, and we will meet a few later, can aspire to this state. Meditations is not a book about dominance but rather a book for, you know, grown-ups. And right now, we are having a bit of an issue with imposed and chosen male infantilism in our Republic.  

One does not have to be a devotee of Jordan Peterson to note that traditional roles of men and women are changing. The impetus for this change is not rocket science, but it does have to do primarily with machinery. For about the first 99% of our Homo sapiens time on this planet, the physical advantages of being a man were paramount—everything from being able to fight off a pack of wolves to out-hunt and out-gather women for food. 

The agricultural revolution in about 14,000 BCE did not help. Plowing a field and gathering crops, the focus of work for about 90% of the population, again favors physical strength. Then there are armies. Though wars had been fought since, probably from the beginning of humanity, wars changed in the 2nd millennium BCE. In the 15th century, we have The Battle of Megiddo. It was fought between Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III and a large rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by the King of Kadesh. It is the first battle recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail. The movement from bands of humans living in small enclaves to nations with armies meant grouping large groups of young men in single locations and an exceptional value on their power.  

There were, we will call them, unique forms of birth control before our time. Though the focus was the prevention of venereal disease, ancient Egyptians and Romans would use animal bladders as proto-condoms. The efficacy of these tools is suspect. So in the pre-pill days, sex would likely result in pregnancy, further physically limiting women, especially in the final trimester. 

Today that is changed. In the industrial age, tractors and combines managed the fields. Assembly lines and later robots built things. And the information age removes the physical advantages of strength, speed, and height. Instead, the ability to sit in classrooms for hours on end, to focus on the minutia of information, and (spoiler-gross generality coming) multi-tasking, favors women.  

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, boys are three times more likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis than girls. And to the healthcare source HealthLine, “Research has shown that boys with ADHD usually show externalized symptoms, such as running and impulsivity. Boys also tend to be more physically aggressive, while girls are more verbally aggressive.” These traits level out if you use children to milk cows, gather eggs, or work alongside adults in the field. If you confine children to desks or a single room for 8 hours, with little recess (it is being phased out), guess who wins.  

Those physically demanding manufacturing jobs are either being shipped overseas, or being increasingly automated.  Our manufacturing output is not so much less than in the past, it is just that though men are stronger than women, robots are infinitely stronger than men and never tire.  Growing numbers of working-age men have detached from the labor market, with the most significant drop in employment among men ages 25 to 34. For those in a job, wages have stagnated everywhere except the top. Meanwhile, women are surging ahead in school and the workplace, putting a further dent in the “provider” model that has long been ingrained in our conception of masculinity. Men now receive about 74 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 awarded to women, and men account for more than 70 percent of the decline in college enrollment overall. In 2020, nearly half of women reported in a TD Ameritrade survey that they out-earn or make the same amount as their husbands or partners — a considerable jump from fewer than 4 percent of women in 1960.  

Then there’s the domestic sphere. Last summer, a Psychology Today article caused a stir online by pointing out that “dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise.” No longer dependent on marriage as a means to financial security or even motherhood (a growing number of women are choosing to create families by themselves, with the help of reproductive technology), women are “increasingly selective,” leading to a rise in lonely, single young men — more of whom now live with their parents than a romantic partner. Men also account for almost 3 of every 4 “deaths of despair,” either from a suicide, alcohol abuse, or an overdose.

And while the past 50 years have been revolutionary for women — the feminist movement championed their power, and an entire academic discipline emerged to theorize about gender and excavate women’s history — there hasn’t been a corresponding conversation about what role men should play in a changing world. At the same time, the increasing visibility of the LGBTQ+ movement has made the gender dynamic seem less stable and less defined.

And yet, the pile-on continues. Our popular culture’s assaults on masculinity and traditional male roles continue. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is not about introducing female superheroes but replacing men. We now have female versions of Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, and, most interestingly, Black Panther. With the death of the great actor Chadwick Bosman, they opted instead of replacing a strong black male with another; they chose a woman, two actually. 

And one of the truisms that have existed since the time of the Sumerians is that lots of young men coupled with too much downtime almost always ends badly.  

In a recent Washington Post op Ed entitled “Men are Lost, Here is a Way out of the Wilderness,” writer Christine Emba looks into this issue. “I started noticing it a few years ago. Men, especially young men, were getting weird. It might have been the complaints from the women around me. “Men are in their flop era,” one lamented, sick of trying to date in a pool that seemed shallower than it should be. It might have been the “incels” who first caught my attention, spewing self-pitying venom online, sometimes venturing out to attack the women they believed had done them wrong.” Adds Emba

I have to do a bit of cultural Research for this one. I had heard the term incels and knew it to be both aimed at men and of a derogatory nature. I have only since learned that it is short for involuntary celibates. But rather than be something applicable to nerds who cannot get dates (though that has changed). The Incels are an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.

In 2018 Jia Tolentino wrote in the New Yorker, “In the past few years, a subset of straight men calling themselves “incels” have constructed a violent political ideology around the injustice of young, beautiful women refusing to have sex with them. These men often subscribe to notions of white supremacy. They are, by their own judgment, mostly unattractive and socially inept. (They frequently call themselves “subhuman.”) They’re also diabolically misogynistic.” 

I see. Not just anti-women but diabolically so. It would have been difficult to see in 1984, the year the movie Revenge of the Nerds came out, to realize that some 40 years later, the likes of billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk would be challenging each other to a contest of physical prowess. The Earps vs. the Clantons, this is not. But there it is again. Wyatt Earp, whether the actual historical figure or the one played by the likes of Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, and Kurt Russell (each of whom is eminently capable of winning a fair fight against the combined efforts of Musk and Zuckerberg), comes across as the typical picture of masculinity. Not because he boasted of his prowess in fighting or with women, but instead, he didn’t because he knew he could win fights and get the girl. There used to be this term, the strong silent type.  

But anxieties around masculinity aren’t unique to this moment. As early as 1835, Washington Irving lamented the new American upper class’s tendency to “send our youth abroad to grow luxurious and effeminate in Europe.” Curse you Europe and by Europe I am certain Washington meant France because he could not have meant Bulgaria.  I found that one funny. Ichabod Crain never struck me as He-Man material, but I digress. 

And in 1958, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that “the male role has lost its rugged clarity of outline.” He wrote in Esquire magazine, “The ways American men affirm their masculinity are uncertain and obscure. There are multiplying signs that something has gone badly wrong with the American male’s conception of himself.”

At their best, these influencers, notably Jordan Peterson, highlight positive traits traditionally associated with maleness — protectiveness, leadership, emotional stability — and encourage them, making “masculinity” a real and necessary thing and acquiring something honorable and desirable. And the fact that they’re willing to define it outright feels bravely countercultural. But there are other influencers afoot.  And, unfortunately we come to Andrew Tate.  

In a recent piece by Liam SIEGLER, the author writes, “It is easy to understand why so many are fascinated by Tate. He has grown wildly popular over the past two years for talking about issues plaguing young men, issues many people on the left either scoff at or ignore. He rightly recognizes the current crisis of masculinity. Far too many men lack purpose, a reality that shows up in statistics about drug overdose, pornography consumption, suicide, and education. He is filling a void.  Adds Siegler, “whatever virtuous qualities he possesses are easily outmatched by his wholehearted embrace of sexual promiscuity, vapid materialism, and his power-centric vision of masculinity. According to Tate, true freedom means “being able to do whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.” As Siegler notes, Tate is filling a void.  But historically we have seen what happens when a void is filled with the wrong thing. 

I tend to approach Post Op-Eds (The Times) with a warning label. But Emba did a decent job in her piece though I wish she mentioned the pernicious influence of rap and hip-hop culture on young males of all races and I would say Tate is an exemplar of much of this ethos. Now consider Marcus Aurelius and the condemnation of Stoicism in many corners when we sample a few lines from leading rap artists, including this line from Eminem.  

“Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore/’ Til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more?!/Shut up slut, you’re causin’ too much chaos.”

AND

“Oh, now he’s raping his mother, abusing a whore/Snorting coke, and we gave him the Rolling Stone cover?/You god damn right bitch, and now it’s too late/I’m triple platinum and tragedies happen in two states.”

Finally,

“I’m tired of the games, I just want her back/I know I’m a liar/

If she ever tries to fuckin’ leave again, I’m a tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.”

Now there is part of me that likes some of Eminem’s works. His “Without Me” is a funny critique of the entire hip-hop world and the chase for fame. “I’ve created a monster; ’Cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more, they want Shady; I’m chopped liver.”  

And part of his work is dealing with his crappy upbringing. His “Lose Yourself” can even border on the triumphant as the hero who seizes his opportunity for something better.

To formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot

Success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failure’s not

Mom, I love you, but this trailer’s got

To go, I cannot grow old in Salem’s Lot

So here I go, it’s my shot; feet, fail me not

This may be the only opportunity that I got

But the search for positivity in Eminem does not change the fact that young men listen to all of his other work, and if you think that influencers such as Andrew Tate or Bronze Aged Guy, known by his handle BAP, do not have a significant influence on young men I have Eminem’s 220 MILLION records sold as a counter to that argument. And as for the pain and the victimology espoused by the likes of Tate, or Trump for that matter. That used to be the purview of the left. But the left acts, and the right reacts.  

And maybe, just maybe, a little Aurelius would be an improvement over some of the lines we just spewed forth.  

Per the history of masculinity itself, this was not a field even contemplated until the late 1970s, and much in response to the new women’s studies programs. These arose in turn as a response to 2nd wave feminism.  

Historical scholarship on masculinity can be traced back to the late 1970s in the work of Peter Filene and Peter Stearns. There was a distinctly liberationist tone. Indeed, historicizing masculinity can be regarded as one of the last historical manifestations of the 1960s. Filene, for example, prefaced his study of sex roles in modern America with a confession of his commitment to personal authenticity and egalitarian values. This was a ‘New Men’s History’ for edifying the ‘new man.’ Quite suddenly, the historical record began to be seen as a largely unexploited resource to critique what was generally regarded as natural and fixed in men’s lives. History was expected to offer inspiration and guidance in the reformation of masculinity.

In the introduction to her work “The History of Masculinity, circa 1650-1800, written in 2005, a work we shall see more of in part II of this series, historian Karen Harvey noted, “The History of masculinity, relatively new on the historical stage, is an increasingly popular subject. But it is not welcomed by all. Some forms of gender history have been denounced as a “male tool used in an attempt to dissipate women’s power.” The thought is that here we go again; the patriarchy reasserts itself. Masculine history “allows us to forget the material working of power in the past.”  

The problem with this critique is threefold: how can we have feminist history and not a masculine history? If one is invalid, so is the other, regardless of what power dynamics have been maintained over the centuries. The other issue is all of the content I have just provided. As a detective, I talk of the historian trying to find as many facts as possible and then finding the historical narrative. 

Somewhere in the history of masculinity lay possible answers to our current dilemmas and thus should be researched. 

Finally, I like to play the “opposed to what” game in these critiques. To say sexual conquests are the exemplar of masculinity, I would say, as opposed to monogamy? In Jobbins case, a man who is ‘strong, virile and stoic is worse than one weak, impotent and emotional? Not certain I am ready to embrace that ideal.   

Today we talked about the historiography. In part II, I will provide examples from the history of masculinity going back to the Assyrians, we will hear from the Greeks, Chinese, the Japanese and the Victorians.  

But before that a little Bel philosophizing since we began this with a philosopher. What Aurelius was trying to explain, and that which gets so distorted around Stoicism, is that it is not about controlling others but about controlling oneself. The concept is that sometimes we do not act on our desires or say whatever we want or are thinking. Control is not repression; it is channeling. Acting out whatever desires we have, often to the detriment of those around us, is as bad as repression.  

There is an incredible (if apocryphal) scene in the mini-series The Crown, a sometimes historical, sometimes not, take on the Windsors ranging from the early 1950s to today. 

King George VI, the father of future Queen Elizabeth II, and who helped lead Britain through World War II, has a heart-to-heart with his son-in-law. The King notes what Prince Phillip’s role will be in the coming regime, as George knows his days are numbered. He says, “You understand the titles, the dukedom. They’re not the job. She is the job. She is the essence of your duty. Loving her. Protecting her. Cause you will miss career, doing this for her, doing this for me, there is no greater act of patriotism, or love.” And I would add to that children as well. Loving and protecting the family is still the job. We no longer live in an era of saber-toothed tigers or bringing in a harvest with our bare hands. And most of us (unfortunately not all) live in an era in which providing physical protection is not as vital as it was prior to the 20th century and yet protection can mean many things. That does not change the fact that this was, and still is, what men do. And it is a role that can be staffed regardless of whether a man is operating on an oil derrick, or building a marketing plan. 

You hold your baby daughter or baby son and realize that they are totally, utterly dependent on you. That you are there to love them and, yes, protect them. Nothing is more masculine, more in control, more in touch with what Aurelius was trying to say. You know at that moment you are both, through animal instinct, and cognitive realization, the best version of yourself when you do those things.