We should be giving boys as much attention, not less

First Published on TimesLive | 13 June, 2012 11:19

http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2012/06/13/we-should-be-giving-boys-as-much-attention-not-less-ilive

What’s up with all this attention and resources given to boys and masculinities, an associate and the head of a non-governmental organisation said to me a few months ago after I informed her about a talk on boys I was preparing to give a few days afterwards?

The person who asked me this, it’s significant to note, is a sexuality and gender equality activist with a specific interest in children and youth rights, meaning a likely ally.

Complaints about the funding and space given to the “fashionable topic” of masculinities are nothing new to me. I still find them disquieting though.

There is little confusion in my mind, however, about the significance of gender and sexuality as analytical categories in studying boys’ and men’s lives, as well as of course in trying to understand the societal subordination of girls and women.

I am also clear that, as in the case of white representation of black bodies and lives, as a self-avowed scholar on boys and men within feminist spaces, mine is both an invited and privileged position. Since I depend on their camaraderie, but also their on-going critique of my thought, I remain indebted to many African women, feminists, women’s liberationists, and womanists for their philosophical hospitality.

Such solidarity is especially important as some students, activists like my associate and researchers on gender and women have, from the beginning, raised their eyebrows at my interest in the subject of gender. They see this as usurping the space carved out by women’s liberation movement and feminism. And thus, perhaps like all self-aware white teachers of black children, I have experienced myself as both a stranger and comrade at being invited to teach within women’s and gender studies.  

I do appreciate why there is some reservation against men and women studying and working with boys and men. Much in the history of disciplined enquiry has been studies of men’s knowledge, actually.  

However I am convinced that the general argument that tends to support sentiments against a focus on boys is misplaced.

There is cause to bemoan the dwindling resources for NGOs working on women’s and girls’ issues. But to blame those working on masculinities is not to see the forest for the trees.

It is also incorrect to think that there have been buckets of money specifically allocated to the quality education of impoverished black boys for a productive, creative and meaningful life. Where money has been thrown at black boys from deprived homes, there still isn’t the kind of close and attentiveness that is required to radically change the world around them.

I was reminded of my associate’s displeasure about the attention given to boys when I read the Department of Basic Education’s report on the ‘2009-2010 Annual Surveys for Ordinary Schools’ released last month.

Two numbers that generated several media stories are 109 and 45 276. The first is the number of Grade 3 learners who fell pregnant in 2009 in South Africa, a dramatic increase from 17 in 2008. The second is the number of learners who fell pregnant, which was down from 49 599 in 2008.

These are unbelievable numbers. What they are suggestive of is that, in spite of the rhetoric about women and children, post-apartheid South Africa continues to desperately fail its girl-children. And it’s about much more than schooling.

None but a miracle girl begets herself pregnant while still in Grade 3 or at any other time. There is a boy somewhere in the background. More often it is a boy in the body of a grown man. And there’s the rub.

In turn, sex in Grade 3 suggests rape.

No girl wants to be sexually violated, however economically desperate, skimpily dressed or drunk she may be. The main cause of all sexual violence is a gender traditionalism that underpins men’s social psychologies of sexual entitlement over female bodies.

It is true that in many countries girls and women continue to confront violence and unjust discrimination on daily basis on the basis of age and gender.

It is true too that in many societies, China being the prime but not only example, there is still a preference for sons over daughters.

Furthermore, in many families and societies around the world girls and women still tend to enjoy less self-determination than the other sex. Unlike the latter, they can’t play as freely, get coerced into sex, may be forcibly married at an early age, are unable to take a walk without being harassed, are prohibited from leaving their homes unaccompanied by males, and can’t dream too big.

It is out of such conditions which characterise girlhood and women’s existence that schoolgirls get left with the baby.

Unless there is an empowering feminist sexuality and gender education for girls, their sisters and mothers, together with appropriate laws and their enforcement, they will continue to be preyed upon by males.

Yet, it is ludicrous to believe that male-children are in the same boat as older males. Boys are not men. They are developing beings. Rather than be punished for the sins of their fathers or unfairly advantaged, they ought to be educated for an egalitarian and compassionate society.

Failure to mould boys into fans of equality falls on the shoulders of adults.

Very few boys are born dictators, and none runs the world. Usually it is patriarchal traditionalism, with the complicit support of the majority of men and women, which creates the rules and norms that allow heterosexual men as a group to dominate the gender and sexual order.

While they may get some benefit from men’s gendered sexual power, boys also suffer great consequences from the social order. Like girls, boys in many countries face the ravages of social and economic inequalities.

The gender order is not geared to make boys live happier, healthier, and longer lives. In fact, being a boy, especially a black boy from a poor neighbourhood, puts one at heightened risk of premature death from accidents and violence.

By educating a girl for a feminist, educated, confident, happier and healthier life, without empowering a boy with progressive education to make them egalitarian, democratic, non-violent and healthier life does not just mean we will be faced with the problem of pregnant children for the foreseeable future. It retards the general quality of life in our society.

It would make girls’ present and future lives better if we also gave boys the kind of education that makes them more caring about girls’ needs and aspirations. 

Naturally, to work with boys and men only without due regard to the negative effects of the gender order on girls and women is to tacitly support the status quo. 

Instead of asking “what’s up with all this attention given to boys”, we ought to be asking, what kind of attention shall we give to boys to make their own lives and as well as girls’ full of worth?  

The kind of attention we need to give boys, especially black boys, is one that turns them, in their hearts and brains, into true believers of women’s and girls’ rights to their bodies and ambitions. If we don’t, we will continue to fail many girls, but also persists in underachieving as a culture.

Tammy Shefer, scholar of sexuality and gender, at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, Ethiopia 28-30 November 2011

Here is a short video clip of sexuality and gender scholar Tammy Shefer, former director of Women's & Gender Studies Department and Deputy Dean of Arts at the University of Western Cape, South Africa. Professor Shefer was a delegate at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011, where she spoke on the paper 'Caring for Change'. She was asked to express her reflections on the event by feminist peace scholar and clinical psychologist Shahnaaz Suffla of the University of South Africa-Medical Research Council's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit. The video edited by Mandisa Malinga.

Ethiopian feminist Netsanet Gebremichael, then director of Addis Ababa University’s Gender Office, after giving a talk at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, Ethiopia 28-30 November 2011

Here is a short video clip of Ethiopian feminist Netsanet Gebremichael, then director of Addis Ababa University’s Gender Office, after giving her talk at Traditions 2: Everyday Lives of African Men, held in Ethiopia on 28-30 November 2011. She is being interviewed on her impression of the conference and the debates that took place by peace scholar and psychologist Shahnaaz Suffla of the University of South Africa-Medical Research Council's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit. Video edited by Mandisa Malinga.  

Being looked at by others, along with looking at others, is an important source of pleasure and pain around which a self and culture is built

The idea of how individuals feel when looked at or looking at others is one that I have been troubling myself with. The first piece was on branded clothes and identification. While that piece was the first in the order of writing, it will only be published by HSCR Press later this year, in a edited collection by Moletsane, Mitchell and Smith under the title Was It Something I Wore?

Agenda published the second piece I have done on the subject in its latest issue. I received a hard copy of the issue this past week. The issue is guest edited by the black feminists Desiree Lewis and Mary Hames under the theme Gender, sexuality and commodity culture. 

The piece I did, which was severely edited and shortened, argues that seeing or being seen by a sexual object – we are always objects of the sexual order aren't we? – is an important source of libidinal pleasure and pain around which a self and culture is built. Consequently, in late racialised capitalist culture looks (and inevitably subjectivities), cannot but become commodities. The possibilities that have opened up in focusing on dressed and undressed looks are terribly exciting. The abstract/paper can be found here. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2011.630518. I expect that I will do another, more readily useful, piece in this year on the matter, bringing into sharper focus generative masculinities.

The emergence of the metrosexual: producing acceptable forms of feminine masculinities

by Sherianne Kramer

Traditional constructions of men evoke images of wealth, strength, psychological and physical power, aggression, lack of emotion, patriarchy and virility. Young boys are presumably socialised into sex roles that embrace these characteristics. Moreover, the media has historically drawn on these constructions to demonstrate traditional representations of masculinity as a desirable point of reference for men. These images most usually imply wealth, power and status as opposed to the traditional representation of women as weak or ‘sexy’.

Traditional cultural definitions of gender equate femininity with passivity and objectification while masculinity is associated with activity and the subjectification. Additionally, men’s authority in knowledge-making practices rests on their capacity to objectify others while remaining invisible or disembodied. As such, traditionally, men are meant to be uninterested in ‘superficial’ and ‘feminine’ things such as appearance or emotions and those men who are overly focused on their appearance have historically been accused of being weak or homosexual.

During the 1990s the term ‘metrosexual’ was utilised as an ironic reference to heterosexual men who had an inordinate interest in grooming and appearance. Metrosexuality did not align to the circulated discursive practices about what it means to be a ‘real’ man. Women (traditionally constructed as falling somewhere along the madonna-whore spectrum) were the only images offered up for the desiring gaze- women were portrayed as sexy, as housewives, as fashionable and elegant and as desirable objects. While images of masculinity did exist, these were not commodofied in the same way as their feminine counterparts.

During the twenty-first century the media took up the image of the metrosexual as a new type of masculinity that could be objectified and commodofied. The media used the term as a new tool for marketing various products for men which has resulted in the emergence of a metrosexual cohort of masculine identities. In fact the metrosexual man can be defined as, “a commodity fetishist: a collector of fantasies about the male sold to him by advertising”[i]. He arose in the 80s, grew in the 90s and achieved monumental popularity in media, popular culture, and marketing by 2000. While the term has a number of connotations, Flocker’s definition broadly outlines the primary aspects of the metrosexual – he is a twenty-first century male trendsetter straight, urban man with a heightened aesthetic sense[ii]. He spends time and money on appearance and shopping and is willing to embrace his feminine side.


The metrosexual, according to Anderson, has materialised through four distinct areas of commodification[iii]:

1. Fashion: He is a trendsetter, fashion conscious, young, urban male concerned with his appearance and he accessorises. He chooses aesthetic home décor and shops at designer stores.

2. Food and Beverage: He is health conscious, eats only at the best restaurants and is often known for hosting dinner parties.

3. Grooming: He uses the ‘best’ available products for better skin, hair, and nails. He practices hair removal, shaving, and styling. He is concerned with fitness and will work out or undergo surgery to achieve the ‘perfect’ body.

4. Emotions:    He is ‘in touch with his emotions’ and is not afraid to allow others to see that.

Metrosexuality, by virtue of its characteristically feminine traits, is seemingly a potential threat to the hegemonic and traditional productions of masculinity. However, despite this threat, metrosexuality is not only produced and reproduced through the media but it is also consumed by a large number of men who regard themselves as masculine subjects. Furthermore, the production of metrosexual images in the media has resulted in the traditionally male subject being transformed into a commodofied object of the gaze- a space most often reserved for female subjects.

The production of metrosexuality has therefore resulted in a socially acceptable as well as desirable feminine male subject. For example, male commodification in the media 30 years ago would have been shunned and rejected however, in 2011, we barely react to these images. Additionally, men frequently shop, visit spas and spend hours grooming. Thirty years ago this type of behaviour was reserved for women or homosexuals only. Most significantly, ‘sexy’ and desirable images of men are available as objects for everyone’s consumption – as desirable objects for homosexual men and heterosexual women and as role-models and points of identification for heterosexual men. As indicated by Simpson, “metrosexuality is such an integral part of a mediatised and consumerist world…the metrosexual trend, whereby the male body is transformed (‘transfigured’ if you work in the fashion industry) into an aesthetic commodity, is apparently irreversible[iv].” In other words, a recoding of the masculine body has taken place whereby the masculine subject is constructed and reconstructed according to historical and sociological shifts in the public consciousness. This has implications for body politics, hegemonic masculinity and the apparent divide between hetero and

homosexuality.

In terms of body politics, metrosexuality threatens the very definition of the male body. For example, if the male body is the foundation for the definition of masculinity, can any male-sexed body exerting any behaviour be defined as masculine? Grooming the body versus the body in a wrestling match encompass two very different versions of masculinity. Meterosexuality therefore demonstrates that the body is not as reliable in defining sex, gender and sexuality as we are constructed to believe. Traditional constructions imply that sex role differences are presumably based upon ‘natural’ body

differences. However, the metrosexual body inverts sex roles. Accordingly, the metrosexual body clearly demonstrates that an entrenched ontology of gender exists and that gender can and often does surpass naturalised norms and discursive practices. However, this said, metrosexual masculinity is just one of the many types of multiple and competing forms of masculinities that together surface gender fluidity.

Meterosexulity also has implications for patriarchal hegemony. Hegemony, in this sense, should be understood with regards to the institutionalisation of power and its ability to silently relay knowledge through socially constructed and accepted discourse. That is, male power is not simply held by individual men but rather, it is institutionalised in social structures and ideologies that support the gender order in favour of men. In fact, it may be that very few men actually occupy the hegemonic position. Additionally, men are not only organised hierarchically in relation to women, but also to each other in relations of marginalisation and subordination. This said, all men receive a patriarchal dividend, even if they are excluded from the dominant definitions of masculinity. This, in turn, allows for resistance on the part of men who are subordinated or marginalised by the hegemonic form. For example, metrosexual men have a subordinate relationship to hegemonic models of masculinity in some societies, but have exercised social power to resist their marginalisation and to claim a legitimate social and political space.

Finally, meterosexuality may threaten the divide between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Traditionally, homosociality; relations between heterosexual men regulated by fear of homosexuality; has characterised male relationships. However metrosexuals demonstrate that gay and straight men may not be as different as homosociality implies. Metrosexuality therefore demonstrates that changes to men’s embodiment and social practices challenge ‘traditional’ notions of heterosexual masculinity. This is significant as heteronormativity, which is sustained by definitions of masculinity (and relations between men) that are based on homosexuality as the ‘other’, becomes threatened in the face of the metrosexual.

In conclusion then, meterosexuality can be treated as a gender deconstruction tool that challenges the binaries which limit our understanding of gender and sexuality (man/woman, male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, subject/object). Metrosexuality provides a model example of how the body and the practices of embodiment are performative of multiple and competing masculinities. It therefore seems that while a gendered ontology exists, body performances and practices often negate this ontology, thus demonstrating the existence of fluid gender forms. Identity is therefore dynamic and malleable whilst simultaneously a product of social, historical and cultural forces.

Notes

[i] Simpson, Mark (2006, 3 October). Here Comes the Mirror Men. The Independent. Retrieved July 25, 2011 from Mark Simpson Website:

http://www.marksimpson.com/pages/journalism/mirror_men.html

[ii] Flocker, M. (2003). The Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

[iii] Anderson, K. L. (2008). From meterosexual to reterosexual: The importance of the shifting male gender role to feminism. Thinking Gender Papers, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UC Los Angeles.

[iv] Simpson, (2006, 3 October)

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Everybody needs someone to look out for them, but the social fabric around young white men doesn't need as much repairing

Earlier this month I was asked during a public conversation why white young men do not die at the rates of black young men. Who is protecting them? Or is that what's protecting them?

I am experiencing some kind of Groundhog Day. I feel as if I said this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. If you have heard, don't stop reading.

As you may know, levels of violent death are never uniformly distributed across the sexes. That's a well-established finding from research. Males die from violence at much higher rates than females. You may also be aware that age is a significant predictor of dying from violence.  

But here are other variables that put an individual at risk of dying from violence: how much money you have, where you live, and race among others. There are studies from the United States and from Europe, and a few from Africa, in support of this. In South Africa you are more likely to die violently, on average, when you are male, in your late teens or early adulthood years, when you are black or coloured as opposed to white and Indian, live in a poor and low-income neighbourhood, live in a metro than in the more rural municipalities, live in Cape Town in comparison to Tshwane. Those are only some of the variables.

However, the question I was asked though is why: why are young white men at a decreased risk from dying prematurely? One of the major reasons is because men who do not achieve socially respected masculinity are likely live in or get into violent situations. Say that again? They are likely to live in or get into violent situations. That is to say, an attempt to achieve culturally valued manhood is interwoven with other reasons. Some of these are structural and others personal.

Studies show that, for instance, Khayelitsha has higher levels of homicide than Constantia. Why is this so? Because young men who live in Constantia are better protected against assaults or murder. It’s not only because of the alarms, spikes, and barbed wires. It’s because of conditions in the two areas. It’s because of their life circumstances, which in the end reduces the choices available to them to make something of themselves, that young men in Khayelitsha, most of whom are unemployed, will put themselves at greater risk of victimisation while trying to get recognition and success as men.

It's a damning situation. You can die slowly and on your feet from poverty, hunger, and distress. Or you can go out, in a world that says risk is good, take your chances and be shot to death.

Of course the risk a stock market trader takes is different from the risk a would-be bank robber takes. They are all trying to get money. But the risks for the latter can be deadly. The one with his qualifications has a lawful space to take risks with other people's monies; the other, whose education has left him standing at the corner with few prospects, has very few opportunities this side of the law and so steps outside of it. 

This is not to condone criminality. It is to explain the difference between young white men and young black men. The difference, which looks like one of race, like it is essentially racial in nature, is actually about historical economic advantages and the legacies of inequality. Social and economic advantages mean life advantages. It contributes towards a longer, safer, and happier life. Historical socio-economic discrimination imply that young black men today will find it harder to enjoy a happy, protected and long life.

But they were born after apartheid, I have heard it said. Their parents were not. Those parents raised them, for better or worse. Those parents may not have jobs today. If they have, those parents are not able to support them to go to university or with connections to get an internship into a good company. And most of those young men who die still live with the abjection that their parents experienced under apartheid.    

In societies that are racially and economically highly unequal the odds to get respect are stacked against young poor black men then. Whereas young middle-class and rich white men live in conditions that offer them protection, young poor black men have decreased safety nets. The conditions that make some young men better protected include things like a having a room of one's own instead of living in a small crowded house. Being able to spend time surfing the net as opposed to standing at the corner also helps. Surfing the net will keep you off the street. Having a job as opposed to standing at the corner will keep you out of trouble for a chunk of the day. Having a car instead of walking past a group of young men standing at the corner will get you past the corner. If that corner is next to a place where people drink, that adds to the risk. If you like to get drunk, it does not help: alcohol tends to make some people more likely to get into fights. If you are a teenager or young adult and your own father and mother are drinkers or even just disengaged from you, that removes a layer of social protection. All these factors multiply the risk as they interact. 

There are other factors that put some and not other young black men at increased risk of premature death. These are psychosocial.  They are gendered. Because of their psychosocial vulnerabilities and feelings of not being valued by society, young men may lash out at those nearest to them. The historical gender system denied their fathers their manhood which the sons are trying to regain, the traditionalist cultural system of gender has miseducated them, the education system has warped their sense of social equality, and the economic system excludes them. Men’s violence, then, often enough functions towards deflecting their internal states of vulnerability of being a surplus group. They get violent with women or engage in fights with other men to deal with feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, abandonment or insecurity. Some of this violence will go unremarked or have any visible consequence. Yet this violence is what puts a man at risk of dying violently. In a situation where another man is unwilling to walk away or talk things over, the ensuing argument is likely to result in injury or death of one of the protagonists. As the South African police have said, over 50% of what they call “social fabric-related murders and attempted murders result from arguments which subsequently deteriorate into fights”.

White young men don't die at the same rates as black young men because they have much better protection. They have far more opportunities to achieve culturally successful manhood without resorting to physical violence. And unlike young black men, the socio-economic fabric around young white males does not need as much repairing.