Masculinities Between Men And Women Essay

We need to stop generalising and stereotyping men and focus on the understanding of masculinities as a more complex model and one that not only relates to relations of power between men and women but between men themselves.

Just as there are many different feminisms there are also multiple types of masculinities. The dominant from of masculinity in society is hegemony – the idealised notion of the ‘real man’ – the ‘bread-winner’, the ‘provider’, the strong, emotionless ‘power-holder’. This rigid cultural ‘norm’ has multiple pressures associated with it and has many negative effects. As Kimmel states in his paper on masculinity in global development: “Not all men are equally privileged by patriarchy, and some are marginalised due to inequalities connected to class, sexuality, ability and ethnicity”. This means that this view of masculinity can lead to the marginalisation of those who do not fit into this narrow categorisation (this is another form of masculinity called marginalised masculinity), such as homosexual men (who also fall under the category of subordinate masculinity as they may

This power structure and its associated marginalisation of those who don’t conform is the main contributor to the occurrences of gender based violence. While there are many factors contributing to GBV, such as personal childhood experience of violence (once again due to strict social ‘norms’ and ‘traditions’), economic and work stress (thanks to the hegemonic view that the man is the provider) and alcohol abuse, one of the main ones we should be focusing on in order to bring about any sort of positive change is the attitude towards gender equality. We need to focus on creating ‘gender- awareness’ and to look into and understand the complexity of masculinites and to develop alternative male identities, to change the social constructs of what it means to be a man (that don’t equate with violence) and to focus on gender equality and having good male role models in the community who believe in the basic human right of equality for

So why are so many women (and men) hesitant to admit that they are feminists themselves? Feminism has somehow gotten a bad rep lately, mostly thanks to extremists: ‘man-haters’ and ‘bra-burners’. But these women are not feminists they are misandrists. Studies such as that done by Anderson, Kanner and Elsayegn (2009) have shown that those who don’t identify as feminists tend to be more extreme and hold more hostile views towards men. Some would say that this therefore false accusation that feminism is about hating men is a ploy used by men to reinforce the patriarchal, male-centred culture. It is true that there are a certain number of male extremists who are now trying to label women as the “problem” while they undergo a role reversal to become the new victims such as when the patriarchy seek to “minimise male violence by exaggerating men’s experience of violence at the hands of women”. For this reason, amongst others, women are reluctant to wholly include men in the feminist movement. It also comes from a real concern that hard-fought-for and scare resources used in working from gender equality would be redirected to men who globally already control the majority of resources and the. Some feminists also claim that men cannot be feminists as they can never truly know what gender inequality feels like for a woman. This may be true or this may be unfair, but either