I have to say I’m a little irked by this op-ed piece.
I won’t discount the possibility that the “crisis of boys” is in part a backlash against the women’s movement, but the authors just seem to automatically assume dark forces are at work.
Sorry ladies, it’s not always about you. Read Michael Kimmel’s “Manhood in America” or Peter Stearns “Be a Man!” and you’ll discover that “manhood” has almost always been in “crisis” for well over two centuries, with much public lamentation and wringing of hands. (Which in fact the authors allude to at the beginning of her piece—and yes, I’m sure the latest spasm is overblown.) Public insecurity about “being a man” goes back waaaay further than that, arguably to the hunter-gather stage of civilization. But usually it’s been men being anxious about their masculinity regardless of what the women are up to.
Kimmel put it well:
There have been some attempts to tell the story of American manhood—by woman. But many feminist analyses failed to resonate with men’s own experiences. Not a surprise, since women theorized about masculinity from their point of view, from the way women experience masculinity. And women theorized that men’s relationships were the pivotal relationship in the lives of both women and men. Masculinity, we were told, was defined by the drive for power, for domination, for control….But the historical record has revealed a somewhat different picture. Manhood is less about the drive for domination and more about the fear of others dominating us, having power or control over us. Throughout American history American men have been afraid that others will see us as less than manly, as week, timid, frightened. And me have been afraid of not measuring up to some vaguely defined notions of what it means to be a man, afraid of failure….
In large part, it’s other men who are important to American men; American men define their masculinity, not as much in relation to women, but in relation to each other. Masculinity is largely a homosocial enactment….
Such a bold claim does not mean that woman are incidental to men’s efforts to prove their manhood. Far from it. As I will show in the pages that follow, men often go to elaborate lengths and take extraordinary risks to prove their manhood in the eyes of women. Women are not incidental to masculinity, but they are not always its central feature either….
American men have been haunted by the fears that they are not powerful, strong, rich or successful enough. And many of our actions, on both the public and private stages, have been efforts to ward of these demons, to silence these fears. I argue that there have been certain patterns to these actions: American men try to control themselves; they project their fears onto others; and the feeling too pressured, they attempt an escape.
Incidently, it turns out the authors of the op-ed piece are the authors of “Same Differences,” which argues that men and women are essentially the same and that any differences are due to socialization. Now I’ll be the first to say the socialization plays a big part, but based on some critical reviews of the book, it sounds like the authors are more interested in tilting at straw-men then actually wrestling with the nature/nuture question. As one reviewer put it, they’re “confusing the sensible claim that men and women as a group tend to behave in particular ways, with the clearly false idea that each and every man and woman behaves in those gender-specific ways.”