Masculism

Masculism or masculinism may variously refer to advocacy of the rights or needs of men and boys; and the adherence to or promotion of attributes (opinions, values, attitudes, habits) regarded as typical of men and boys. The terms may also refer to the men's rights or men's movement.

Terminology

Early history

According to the historian Judith Allen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman coined the term masculism in 1914, when she gave a public lecture series in New York entitled "Studies in Masculism". Apparently the printer did not like the term and tried to change it. Allen writes that Gilman used masculism to refer to the opposition of misogynist men to women's rights and, more broadly, to describe "men's collective political and cultural actions on behalf of their own sex", or what Allen calls the "sexual politics of androcentric cultural discourses". Gilman referred to men and women who opposed women's suffrage as masculists—women who collaborated with these men were "Women Who Won't Move Forward"—and described World War I as "masculism at its worst".

Definition and scope

The Oxford English Dictionary (2000) defines masculinism, and synonymously masculism, as: "Advocacy of the rights of men; adherence to or promotion of opinions, values, etc., regarded as typical of men; (more generally) anti-feminism, machismo." According to Susan Whitlow in The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory (2010), the terms are "used interchangeably across disciplines". Sociologist Robert Menzies wrote in 2007 that both terms are common in men's rights and anti-feminist literature: "The intrepid virtual adventurer who boldly goes into these unabashedly mascul(in)ist spaces is quickly rewarded with a torrent of diatribes, invectives, atrocity tales, claims to entitlement, calls to arms, and prescriptions for change in the service of men, children, families, God, the past, the future, the nation, the planet, and all other things non-feminist."

Nicholas Davidson, in The Failure of Feminism (1988), called masculism "virism": "To grasp the inherent inadequacy of feminism as a universal philosophy, it is helpful to consider its mirror image, a point of view that can be termed 'masculism', or with greater etymological precision, 'virism'." Arguing that this point of view was widespread in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, he wrote: "Where the feminist perspective is that social ills are caused by the dominance of masculine values, the virist perspective is that they are caused by a decline of those values. ..." Ferrel Christensen, a Canadian philosopher and president of the former Alberta-based Movement for the Establishment of Real Gender Equality called virism "an extreme brand of masculism and masculinism".

Sociologist Arthur Brittan described masculinism in 1989 as "the ideology that justifies and naturalizes male domination ... the ideology of patriarchy." Masculinism maintains that there is "a fundamental difference" between men and women, he wrote, and that men should be dominant in public and private matters. It rejects feminist arguments that male–female relationships are political constructs. According to Christensen, writing in 1995: "Defining 'masculism' is made difficult by the fact that the term has been used by very few people, and by hardly any philosophers." He differentiated between "progressive masculists", who welcome many of the societal changes promoted by feminists, while believing that some measures to reduce sexism against women have increased it against men, and an "extremist version" of masculism that promotes male supremacy. He argued that if masculism and feminism refer to the belief that men/women are systematically discriminated against, and that this discrimination should be eliminated, there is not necessarily a conflict between feminism and masculism, and some assert that they are both. However, many believe that one sex is more discriminated against, and thus use one label and reject the other.

In 2008 the political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti distinguished between masculism, which expresses the ethos of the early gender-egalitarian men's movement, and masculinism, which refers to the ideology of patriarchy. In 2012 sociologists Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-Déri equated masculist and masculinist, attributing the former to Warren Farrell. The most common term, they argued, is the "men's movement"; they wrote that there is a growing consensus in the French-language media that the movement should be referred to as masculiniste. According to Bethany M. Coston and Michael Kimmel, the mythopoetic men's movement identified themselves as masculinists.

Topic areas of interest

Main article: Men's rights movement

Custody

Main article: Fathers' rights movement

According to David Benatar, head of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, "Custody law is perhaps the best-known area of men's rights activism", as it is more likely in most parts of the world for the mother to obtain custody of children in case of divorce. He argues: "When the man is the primary care-giver his chances of winning custody are lower than when the woman is the primary care-giver. Even when the case is not contested by the mother, he's still not as likely to get custody as when the woman's claim is uncontested".

Education and employment

Many masculists oppose co-educational schooling, believing that single-sex schools better promote the well-being of boys. Other masculists and equity feminists say that boys lag behind girls in educational achievement.

Data from the U.S. in 1994 reported that men suffer 94% of workplace fatalities. Masculist Warren Farrell has argued that men do a disproportionate share of dirty, physically demanding, and hazardous jobs.

Violence and suicide

See also: Violence against men

Masculists cite higher rates of suicide in men than women. Masculists express concern about violence against men being depicted as humorous, in the media and elsewhere.

They also express concern about violence against men being ignored or minimized in comparison to violence against women, asserting gender symmetry in domestic violence. Another of their concerns is that traditional assumptions of female innocence or sympathy for women, termed benevolent sexism, may lead to unequal penalties for women and men who commit similar crimes, to lack of sympathy for male victims in domestic violence cases when the perpetrator is female, and to dismissal of female-on-male sexual assault and sexual harassment cases.

South African masculist evangelical movements

In the wake of the abolition of apartheid, South Africa saw a resurgence of masculist Christian evangelical groups, led by the Mighty Men Conference and a complementary Worthy Women Conference. The Mighty Men movement harkens back to the Victorian idea of Muscular Christianity. Feminist scholars argue that the movement's lack of attention to women's rights and the struggle for racial equality makes it a threat to women and to the stability of the country. Scholar Miranda Pillay argues that the Mighty Men movement appeal lies in its resistance to gender equality as incompatible with Christian values, and in raising patriarchy to a "hyper-normative status", beyond challenge by other claims to power.

The Worthy Women movement is a auxiliary to Mighty Men in advocating menism, a belief in the inherent superiority of men over women. Their leader, Gretha Wiid, blames South Africa's disorder on the liberation of women, and aims to restore the nation through its families, making women again subservient to men. Her success is attributed to her balancing claims that God created the gender hierarchy, but that women are no less valuable than men, and that restoration of traditional gender roles relieves existential anxiety in post-apartheid South Africa.

Gender studies

Gender studies, which have frequently focused on woman-based or feminist approaches, have also examined oppression of men within a masculist society and from a masculist perspective.

See also

• Identity politics
• Manosphere
• Masculine psychology
• Men's liberation
• Men's movement
• Men's studies

Men's organizations

• Fathers 4 Justice
• International Men's Day (19 November)

Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Australia, India, United States, Singapore, United Kingdom, Malta, South Africa, Hungary, Ireland, Ghana and Canada

• Save Indian Family

Notable people associated with masculism

• Warren Farrell
• Robert Bly

Further reading

• Malmi, Pasi (6 February 2009). Discrimination against Men: Appearance and Causes in the Context of a Modern Welfare State (PDF) (Thesis). University of Lapland. ISBN 978-952-484-279-2. ISSN 0788-7604. LCCN 2009447401. Retrieved 19 May 2019.