A renewal of socialist politics is unthinkable without a simultaneous reworking of conventional masculinities. In the ways we talk and think about politics many men's assumptions about 'natural' male behaviour and what counts as really serious politics (and what is 'diversionary'), get in the way of moving towards a new, more energised, form of socialist politics.
In some ways, the difficulty is about the invisibility of men's power. On one hand, some men don't seem to notice that they're hogging the show or blocking other perspectives from coming through. They don't notice because they seem to automatically accept their privileged right to speak for others while hiding their personal lives away from the public glare. It's only when they begin to develop some more searching way of looking at themselves as men, that things begin to shift. Only then can traditional assumptions about the naturalness of masculine behaviour begin to be questioned.
On the other hand, some men are beginning to become uncomfortable within the old, traditional, patriarchal relations. They are becoming aware of how much they have benefited from these, and want to stop seeking power and control over others. These anti-sexist or pro-feminist men, who are often grappling in their own ways towards personal and social change, are blocked by the absence of an outward-looking organisation for public action. In these restrictive circumstances, some men retreat from the bewildering variety and contradictoriness of diverse perspectives, into individual isolation or, at worst, into an anti-feminist backlash.
At the moment, the masculinist Labour movement imposes a dominant definition of politics (the politics of class and economy) upon a wide spread of personal and social struggles of great diversity and difference. It also sustains its power through hanging on to a set of male-dominated, institutional relations and practices (through branch meetings, party organisations and trade unions) and competitive, ego-tripping activities (through platform performance, talking for victory, electioneering and destroying the Enemy).
What is being left out, in this version of the political, is the very thing that can connect it with the fresh energies alive in the new social forces today - a concern with sexual politics, personal and social identities, and our daily fears, fantasies and desires. It is this puritan tradition of self denial, at the heart of most political parties in Britain today, that makes many people' turn away from a politics that can't deal with what is crucially significant to people in their everyday lives. Indeed, they often withdraw from politics because it leaves their longings, pleasures and anxieties untouched.
This is not in any way to ignore the shaping power of class politics. Rather it is a way of acknowledging relations of subordination (especially in the new, social movements) which cut across class lines and that, in doing so, broaden out our traditional approaches to class.
One of the most widely used ideas on the left, and in socialist debates, is the overriding importance of economic class in the last analysis., While class is certainly one major form of oppression, we do not think it is helpful to see it either as the prime explanation of people's experience, or as something that can be easily separated off from other oppressions. There are all sorts of connections between class, age, ethnicity, gender and other forms of oppression. In addition, when we talk of economic class, we are also simultaneously referring to gender and sexuality - varied forms of relations between people, between women and men, between women, and between men.
Economic class can be understood as being about gender and sexuality in another sense, namely the way in which class is reproduced through families and family property. As families and family property are based predominantly on gender and sexual relations economic class is necessarily also about gender and sexuality. To put it crudely, for a man to show he is working class or middle class involves using definite forms of masculinity, which are themselves forms of sexuality.
Traditional class politics also brings with it its own historical and cultural problems. We've inherited a form of industrial conflict politics that has also produced accompanying masculine, political identities that were up to standing up to the arrogance of bosses and winning battles against great odds. But these pugnacious, confrontational forms of masculine identity are increasingly outmoded today. Also, as Ken Livingstone suggests: "It's that very macho style which has meant we've done so poorly with women voters".[1]
In a world of rapidly changing patterns of employment, and power relations, for both women and men, we still need strength and determination of political purpose, but now more inner resources of strength rather than external forms: We now desperately need the wider skills of argument, analysis, organisation as well as action within a new masculine style of negotiating, discussion and learning rather than 'being' historically frozen into an archaic, confrontational style.
There's a great deal of suspicion about bringing 'Changing Men' issues and methods into socialist politics, both from some members of the women's movement and from many socialist men. Some women are sceptical of what sounds like another male club, modernising and updating masculinity for new times, but still clinging on to structural power over women. On the other hand, some socialist men imply that the best that they can do, in response to the women's movement, is to be passive feminists, 'giving women the moral authority to speak, while neatly side-stepping the implications for themselves'. [2]
Although men need to give continuing and uncompetitive support to women's issues, a related personal and social action that critically focuses on men as men is also needed. Men cannot become feminists, not only because their interference would reduce the autonomy of the women's movement, but also because 'feminism is a politics which defines only women as both agents and subjects of its action.'[3] Instead what is needed are separate but linked investigations and transformations of gendered relations and inequalities. It's no longer possible for socialist men to focus on social change out there, without, at the same time, considering and changing their own personal involvement in the forces of domination.
Another crucial area of misunderstanding is the illusion that masculinity is a single, uniform and innate form. Instead we want to emphasise here the sheer variety of masculine forms. These complex and often contradictory forms and relations are there in the specific histories of black,. gay, bisexual, class-related, disabled, able-bodied, young and old and regional masculinities. The complexity is there in the way many of these forms inter-relate and exist at different levels of a personal history. And in a more personal sense, but not apart from the social, there is the daily antagonistic clashing between diverse masculine identities - like child-carer, authoritarian father, loving supportive friend, single parent father, 'macho' manager, depressed unemployed worker, strong leader - struggling for overall supremacy.
Political choice and change come from our ability to dissociate our maleness (biological inheritance) from our masculinities (social and historical constructions), and through developing a critical understanding of (and linked social action) our diverse histories of gendered identities as men.
We need to understand more clearly how we all are shaped by the institutional practices (family, schooling, peer group, clubs, sports arenas, workplace) that are regularly repeated every day of our lives. Investigating, becoming aware of, and then trying to change these practices and social relations must be at the heart of a new socialist politics.
Then we all need to find ways of working with and on the psychological forces and emotional investments that often make us willing to be trapped within existing structures. We also need to be aware of the huge pressure of ideological and cultural messages that shout at us to keep up our tough defences and to guard our backs as men.
All these varied factors have made us into the men that we are now. We are only just beginning to realise on how many different levels and fronts we need to contest some of these shaping forces. If we are going to move forward politically, we have to acknowledge the full power of feminist arguments in helping us to challenge some of these shaping forces. We can only do this when we stop being so defensive and guilt-ridden around feminist perspectives.
Some of these perspectives can help us to see how all men aren't innately or 'naturally' fixed as monolithic oppressors of women. Yes, it's true that men do, oppress women, and important. to recognise the unequal relations between men and women within a patriarchal system. But it's also extremely important to point out the contradictory, shifting relations of many men to patriarchal structures. For example, it's certainly true that gay men can be oppressive to women, but they are also routinely oppressed by dominant, heterosexual norms. Working class fathers in the home can be very authoritarian, but in their daily work they are often economically weak and powerless.
Conventional socialist politics are seen by many men as a constant striving for a Heroic Fighter identity. This striving often single-mindedly follows one, correct path to the Promised Land. It's almost as if some men believe that through their strenuous activities and disciplined targeting on future goals they will be able to wrench socialism into existence through their own heroic efforts.
Many socialist men view any attempt to bring the personal and the social more closely together as navel-gazing. The only political tradition they seem to find credible is one built on emotional self denial and self-sacrifice. These men have a vested interest in keeping their politics remote, detached and heavily generalised because they sense that a politics that started to break down the boundaries between the self and society, in their own everyday lives, would not only threaten the system of male power but would also question the very foundations of their masculine identities.
In their customary forms of organisation, the masculinist Labour movement is still deeply attached to a vanguardist, hierarchical structure. Even though there are efforts being made to move towards more open forms of participatory democracy, the traditional Labour movement is still locked into masculinist assumptions that effective leadership styles in politics are about passing down the sacred, Revolutionary tablets from on high to the benighted masses.
Along with this exclusive, pyramidal mode of organising often go competitive ways of talking and relating in meetings. Loud and pushy argument is a common feature of many socialist men. Through abrupt invasion of the rules of turn-taking, sudden subject shifts, frequent interruptions, some socialist men seem to be more intent on making their point than in building conversations. Through a long monologue or a well rehearsed statement, their focus is on indicating their superiority to the speakers who went before.
Indeed, there are some men who seem to feel more secure in entering the political arena through a language of masculine control (arguing, asserting, lecturing, advising, interrogating and debating) than trying to, develop a more effective style of communication through understanding and exchange. As a result, meetings on the Left often turn into militaristic confrontations (with their own rhetorical rituals and strategies for 'smashing' the Enemy), rather than working towards an alternative climate of greater personal vulnerability and tentativeness, where discussion and learning can have a greater chance to develop.
'Changing Men' politics can't isolate itself from the other new social movements - in this country, race, ecology, gender relations, peace, sexual orientation, disability old age, etc. It is only through linking itself to the interlocking network of anti-oppression campaigns currently alive in the new social forces that 'Changing Men' issues will be able to play a part in challenging forms of inequality.
At the moment the anti-sexist men's network in Britain has largely concerned itself with the setting up of men's groups. As a part of the strategies for change, these men's consciousness-raising groups have done valuable work in helping some men to deal with the psychological blockages tied into conventional masculinities. However, by themselves C.R. groups are not enough. They can often lead to obsessive preoccupation with individual emotional change at the expense of wider structures. Any possibility of moving towards a linked inner and outer change is often stymied because of the pressing, emotional distress of many men.
Locating 'changing men' issues firmly within the network of the new, social forces also means facing up to' some of the problematic, common features of these changing relations. First, instead of searching for some totalising concept of revolutionary action (another patriarchal habit of mind?), with linked guidelines, action plans and priorities laid out by the select Vanguardist few, a desire to explore the different principles of dispersal, fragmentariness and even mutual equivalence between diverse movements is needed.
Viewed from this perspective, 'Changing men' politics has a great deal to learn from the women's movement and gay liberation (especially in contesting heterosexuality). In a changing climate of collaborative learning and discussion, 'Changing men' politics has a great deal to gain from critical cross-currents of this kind. Learning to live constructively with difference doesn't just mean chaos. It also means recognising the common features of structural subordination as well as the shared personal experience of being put down, while at the same time acknowledging the differences between campaigns and movements. From these understandings can come broader, more collective alliances, perhaps based on the political strategy of, 'unity-within-diversity'.
The final point is the hegemonic/cultural, approach to politics to be found in the new social movements. Here the struggle to achieve popular consent for leading ways of looking at the world are as, important as economic matters. This hegemonic focus is crucial to 'Changing Men' politics. In this context the actual tensions and insecurities facing many men today are concealed by the false unity and coherence of hegemonic, heterosexual masculinity. For example the traditional, masculine power of the Breadwinner, the Head of the Household and the Strong Leader are all present in the repressive, Thatcherite, approach to family values over the last eleven years. The way that popular consent for these hegemonic, masculine values is manufactured is through masking over the real contradictions that are gnawing away at conventional masculine identities - changing patterns of employment and unemployment, changing domestic relations etc. - and presenting a unified front for these ideas.
The division and contradictions between biology and culture, and between nature and history, allow men to challenge what seems most normal and 'natural' within white, heterosexual middle class masculinities. Men can become actively anti-patriarchal at the point where they can critically expose their fake universality (i.e. man = human being), begin to see through their taken for granted privileges, and start to change their habitual practices. Instead of seeing themselves as compulsively driven by 'natural' forces' they can actively place themselves back into history and culture. At that point political change and choice become possible because masculinities stop being just a 'natural' drive or urge that we are stuck with for the rest of our lifetimes. Rather, they start to open themselves up to an anti-patriarchal political practice (building alliances with women, gay, bisexual and effeminate men etc.) because their social and historical origins are seen as not permanent features, but open to change.
The more we change our social practices, and relations, and excavate the historical layers, the more we can become aware of the social production of masculinities. We are then in a better position to change and reconstruct something which isn't fixed and eternally given, but something which has been shaped within particular social relations, psychological forces and masculinising practices the daily institutional routines and rituals of sporting activities, family relations, violence and bullying at school, heterosexual relations and various paid workplace contexts.
Too often socialist men avoid the spotlight being turned upon themselves by concentrating on the problems that seem to be outside themselves - blacks, women,, gays, disabled etc.
The time has come for anti-sexist/pro-feminist men to start making proposals, inviting speakers and drafting motions that put the problem of men on the political agenda. We have to start making visible some of these pressing issues:
1. Leadership styles
Some of the dominant models of leadership in socialist politics are still based on assumptions of patriarchal authority and powerful, charismatic presence. A more exploratory form of politics would want to move beyond these alienating, top-down organisational structures to shared leadership styles - from single, male leaders holding power, over others to alternative ways of shared empowerment.
To do this effectively we have to break through our either/or thinking that veers from fears about autocracy to the other extreme of structureless chaos. Some, of these suggested tactics [4] are:
2. Small group methods for discussion and learning
3. Changing patriarchal habits of language behaviour in mixed group interactions
Many socialist men use language as a defensive weapon. If a new politics is to work by building understanding through dialogue, then many men need to improve their communication skills. Practical action might look something like this: [5]
Slowly, networks of men learning to confront and support each other through these issues are emerging. Often this is occurring in professional work areas like youth work, the probation service, social and community work, counselling, equal opportunities work and gender relations in some schools, rather than in a more explicitly political way. Workshops and training programmes have begun, but often lack the political analysis and direction needed to confront the hegemony of patriarchy.
The urgent business of socialist men who want to change is to pull together the diverse experiences from these networks, the women's movement, feminist learning, the historical experiences of men organising on these issues and integrating them into our daily lives and struggles.
We need to take them into what we do and don't do in our homes, at work, in our friendships and in our changing men's initiatives.
Only we can change men in partnership with women. We can no longer remain silent in the hope that all oppressions can be eliminated through the old ways of doing politics. Now is the time to take a few risks and to go public in' our imperfections and contradictoriness. Above all, we need to trust in, and work with, our emotions as motivating sources of positive energy in our difficult efforts to move towards personal and social change.
[1] From an article 'Mr Livingstone' that appeared in The Guardian, March 24th 1990.
[2] F Mort (1988) 'Boys Own? Masculinity, Style and Popular Culture' in R. Chapman and J Rutherford (editors) Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, Lawrence and Wishart.
[3] P. Middleton (1989) 'Socialism, Feminism ,and Men' in Radical Philosophy 53
[4] See B. Kokopeli and G. Lakey (1983) Leadership for Change: Towards a Feminist Model, New Society Publishers.
[5] See B. Kokopeli and G. Lakey (1983) Off their Backs - and on Our Own Two Feet, New Society Publishers.
| The Men, Masculinities and Socialism Group is an autonomous policy group of The Socialist Movement |
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