masculinity is dead

today i was on a panel talking about masculinity and zine making. it was an interesting experience. as usual, i came away thinking about all the things i wanted to say but didn't. things to fill in the gaps. that's always the way.

to some extent it felt like i was on the wrong panel. the other boys had no difficulty talking about 'dominant masculinity' and how they tried to reject it. i was unable to speak to this. i could have said i had a problem with this concept (which i said of many other statements made), but i didn't. i wanted to say there's no such thing as dominant masculinity. i wanted to challenge the binaries that were being thrown about, the sense of them vs us - gay/straight, male/female.... but i didn't. or maybe i kind of attempted to, but i don't think i was understood (which could be my fault).

i was most comfortable when we strayed from the topic. yes, let's talk about sex instead. and porn. i can talk about that! only at the end when someone asked a question relating to zines did i realise that zines should have been the focal point of this panel. talking through our zines to discuss our grapplings with gender. rather than the sometimes-macho assertions and grand statements that fell effortlessly into microphones.

a statement was made that there have been no good books on masculinity since the 60s. i was a little fucked off about that. but i'll channel this into something positive (and rebuke this statement in the privacy and comfort of my armchair) by now giving some recommendations for some decent summer masculinities reading.

female masculinity - judith halberstam (1998)
i think this is my favourite book about masculinities because it challenges the idea that masculinities only belong to men. it refers to masculinity as embodied, performed, and sometimes female. nice.

the end of masculinity - john macinnes (1998)
this book nicely frames masculinity as ideology, a fantasy, an uninhabitable space. here, masculinity does not (and cannot) belong to individuals, so challenging it as an individual level (as r.w. connell does) is problematic.

white - richard dyer (1997)
not specifically about masculinity, more about whiteness, but nonetheless a critique of the masculinity of whiteness, and a good investigation of how racial, sexual, gender ideologies tend to support and strengthen each other, and the privilege of rational disembodiment.

male matters - calvin thomas (1995)
draws from irigaray, hegel and others to look at male anxiety, particularly around the body, and its relationship (and knowability) through language and desire.

homosexual desire - guy hocquenghem (1972)
hocquenghem believes the centre of the male body is the anus - a site of eroticism and anxiety. an argument furthered by leo bersani's 'is the rectum a grave?' again, a discussion of masculinity (like all the best ones) that doesn't set out to define it, but question it through discussion of what might be considered non-masculine (in this case homo desire) but indeed is.

perhaps i should have read an excerpt from the above macinnes book at today's panel. something along the lines of:

"...masculinity does not exist as the property, character trait or aspect of individuals. This means that trying to define masculinity, or masculinities is a fruitless task, and also that explanations of how men came to have much greater power, resources and status than women in the modern world which rely upon the concept of masculinity used in this way are unlikely to be helpful. I argue that masculinity exists only as various ideologies or fantasies about what men should be like, which men and women develop to make sense of their lives."

but alas, i did not. and i was very conscious of keeping it non-academic, given that most people (panelists included) did not view gender through the lens of theory. as a result, i was somewhat speechless, or conscious that my words would not be heard in the way i want them to. i'm yet to get a handle on translating my theory-speak to everyday conversation.

not that there weren't some interesting things said, because there was. and maybe this isn't my audience anyway.

but anyway, my day improved. i got some nice feedback about my new zine by a friend whose words mean a lot to me. so the panel was quickly forgotten. except it wasn't. because there are good books on masculinity, dammit! and there's likely to be a thousand more that i don't know of.