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Recently, the term "masculinity" has sparked a heated discussion.
Regarding the "Proposal on Preventing the Feminization of Male Adolescents" put forward by the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in May 2020, the Ministry of Education replied on January 28 that it will "moderately improve the teaching methods and forms of physical education education, pay more attention to the cultivation of students' masculinity," and continue to add new physical education teachers through various channels." In the above proposal, Szev believes that China's young people now have weakness, inferiority, timidity and other phenomena, and pursue "small fresh meat" type of "cream small students", and also said that if this trend is not effectively governed, it will inevitably endanger the survival and development of the Chinese nation. Words such as "weakness, inferiority, timidity" are not only negative, but are also associated with "femininity", revealing the gender stereotypes implicit in the proposal.
It is also worth noting that the Ministry of Education regards physical education as the main means of cultivating "masculinity", which is reminiscent of the emphasis on male power and sportsmanship in Victorian British society. In the 19th century, british schools first introduced physical education, which is considered an important part of the overall development of boys. Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), an Anglican pastor and social reformer, one of the main promoters of sports on campus, argued that "the virtues that boys can acquire on the playground cannot teach them virtues; not just guts and endurance, but also more calmness, self-control, justice, honor, a sincere appreciation for the success of others, and the spirit of reciprocity and reciprocity that good men need when they enter society." According to Josephine Jobbins, a history student at Queen Mary College, University of London, between 1860 and 1880, British public schools were mandated to hold sports competitions, and boys' physical fitness and masculinity were cultivated from an early age.
In fact, the Victorian era (1837-1901) was also an era of great emphasis on "masculinity", and is considered by later historians to be one of the periods of the longest peace in British history – in the midst of various economic, social and cultural changes, a new male ideal replaced the previous definition of masculinity associated with the image of "warrior" and continues to influence it today. Its definition, causes and reflection of the psychology of social groups give us a sense of déjà vu. Looking back at this history, it is not difficult to find that the era of drastic changes often causes men to be anxious about "gender failure", and there is often always a gap between the ideal and reality of "shaping male models".
<h3>The Industrial Revolution, the Women's Movement, and Imperial Expansion: Reinventing Masculinity</h3>
What was Britain like from the 19th century to before the First World War? John Tosh, a professor of history at Roehampton University in the United Kingdom, argues that three aspects characterize Britain's era from 1800 to 1914: rapid industrialization, imperial expansion, and increasingly sharp gender segregations. In this increasingly urbanized, market-oriented, and industrialized society, a whole new set of demands on masculinity began to emerge: the masculinity of what Tosh called "bourgeois masculinity" originated in the middle-class male group and gradually became the ideal male model of society as a whole.
Tosh notes that 19th-century masculinity embodied its "modernity" in two ways. First, professional pride and work ethic are increasingly seen as a core component of masculinity – having a decent, paid job first became an ideal for middle-class British men, and a generation later, working-class men embraced the idea. In the era when husbands support the family and wives are in-house, the responsibility of providing for the family is constantly justified and sublime into a moral obligation and self-realization channel for men.
Second, the family was given a higher meaning by men, and the Victorian period was therefore referred to by historians as a period of "the cult of home." People began to see the family/private sphere and the work/public sphere as two very different fields, and the family was seen as a refuge for men – after fighting in the market, they returned to their warm (and wife-taken care) homes, escaping the hustle and bustle of ugly city life and brutal market relations.
There was also an aspect of 19th-century masculinity that was less concerned by later generations, namely that violence was no longer a respected masculine trait. Until the 18th century, male violence was commonplace in public places such as streets and taverns, and any alleged denigration and insult to male dignity could lead to fists and kicks. However, under the admonition and influence of evangelicals, the middle class began to reform male values, and the 19th century witnessed a significant decline in male violence. By 1850, gentleman's duels had largely disappeared, and it was widely believed that duels were an act of disrepute and that only rough working-class men could solve problems with their fists. From 1850 to 1914, the number of indictable trials fell by 1/3, although the population of England and Wales doubled over the same period.
The general consensus among gender scholars is that a binary gender model of "male and female distinction" was enshrined in the Victorian era: masculine traits were associated with dynamism, strength, decisiveness, and reason, and they were also the masters of the public sphere; all traits that opposed to the above were "feminine".
Why did gender essentialism prevail in Victorian Britain? Tosh argues that the increasingly fierce "gender antagonism" and "othering" of women may be aimed at erasing class differences in a way that creates a "masculine" identity shared by all men— that is, defining what is "masculine" and "really man." "Bourgeois masculinity" is actually difficult to penetrate into the working class and become the code of conduct for lower-class men – dual workers are the norm in working-class families, which means that both working-class men and women can hardly conform to the gender norms of the upper middle class of society. However, as a top-down ideal of gender order, the consciousness of "male community" established on the premise of excluding women can divert the attention of lower-class men from class conflict.
Citing the American historian and sexologist Thomas Laqueur, Tosh suggests another reason for the prevalence of gender essentialism: men subconsciously respond in self-defense in the face of a political climate that emphasizes equality. The democratic political concept of "natural human rights" pioneered by the French Revolution not only broke the traditional concept of social hierarchy, but also impacted the traditional gender order.
"Polarization theories about gender differences, designed to stifle the wave of women's empowerment, refuse to acknowledge that women have the same mental and moral qualities as men as they do to play the public role of society." Men are fit to take on responsibilities in the public sphere – while women are not – which is considered predestined by their nature... Men in this period had to deal not only with the revival of feminist polemics, but also with the weakening of men's privileges brought about by the improvement of women's material living standards. In the 1870s and 1880s, the reduction of husbands' powers at the legal level, the increase in women's educational attainment, and the increasing independence of young single women (represented by "new women") all exacerbated the discourse of gender differences. ”
"Therefore, we have reason to believe that men's emphasis on gender differences is a self-defensive response to women's advancement." Tosh wrote.
In a way, the expansion of the British Empire provided an outlet for male anxiety that had nowhere to go. In popular culture and the collective imagination, the colony is an adventure paradise that is not bound by local social norms, which is particularly attractive to men who aspire to make a career overseas. Of particular note is the fact that, despite its growing popularity on British soil, the legitimacy of violence in colonial affairs has not been questioned. Popular adventure novels set overseas—such as those by Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925)—almost invariably had long depictions of violence. Tosh found that the British people at the time were particularly sensitive to news of colonial riots or mutinies, which he believed meant a desire to vent their pent-up impulses for punishment and revenge at home in a less regulated colonial world. "Britain's 'process of civilization' was built on the price of a growing appetite for killing in the colonial world."
Tosh also found that British imperialism was particularly attractive to men when they found it difficult to obtain recognized masculinity labels in Britain — for example, the staunchest supporters of armed foreign policy in the 1890s were male clerks of lower middle-class origin. With the rapid rise in the number of female clerks (by 1911 women accounted for 1/3 of the commercial clerks' group), male clerks feared layoffs or declining gender status. Supporting the British Empire's foreign policy of force was a way of asserting masculinity to itself and others, and for the most part it did not involve any risks—in times of general peace, even conscription was rarely actually involved in combat. In Tosh's view, this dual mentality of normalizing war with a lack of practical knowledge of reality was one of the reasons why Britain fell into patriotic militarism in August 1914.
<h3>Homophobia, popular literature and the flu: the inherent conflict of masculinity</h3>
The emphasis on gender differences has also created conflict within the male population. A polarized view of gender has created a sharper distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality, which is increasingly seen as an act of betrayal. This intolerance of behavior that does not conform to mainstream masculinity is most clearly reflected in the prejudice and denigration of "effeminacy" (femininity). Tosh points out that in the 18th century, "feminine" referred to men who liked to be with women, loved luxury and ostentation, but did not pay attention to the cultivation of physical and military achievements. In the 19th century, however, the scope of the accusation of "femininity among women" was greatly reduced by the clearer signs of gender differences. As The Trial of Oscar Wilde demonstrated, "femininity" at the end of the 19th century referred primarily to homosexuality, and it was seen as a moral depravity, a "nother" that threatened society.
Although the Victorian period placed great emphasis on "masculinity" and "masculinity", scholars point out that in the public discourse of the time, the representations of masculinity almost always emphasized its ambiguous and uncertain aspects, thus hinting at the inherent ideological conflict of 19th-century masculinity. Taking 19th-century literature as an example, Ralf Schneider, a professor of English literature and culture at Bielefeld University, found that the male figure of "Wei Guangzheng" was not pleasing to novelists, and that there were few positive reflections in realist fiction of male characters who were valued by the traits of "bourgeois masculinity" (strong body, fatherhood, and career success).
This is most evident in the "Bildungsroman" that detail the protagonist's upbringing: many novels in which the protagonists are orphans or cut off from their families — such as Oliver, the protagonist of Orphans of the Mist, and Jane, the protagonist of Jane Eyre — so that their fathers played no major role in their upbringing. Even when father roles do appear, they are often portrayed as questionable, personally crisis, powerless, and incompetent characters, rather than the reliable breadwinners of the dominant masculinity or the male role models of strength and determination.
In Schneider's view, popular literature is a more important text to examine the reproduction of Victorian masculinity: given the large readership of popular literature, one of its main functions is to express the anxieties and desires of the masses, and the male characters they present are therefore more interesting. Such texts include sensation novels that emerged in the 1860s, late Victorian Gothic novels (such as Bram Stoke's Dracula in 1897), and detective novels (such as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Detective Collection).
Schneider found that one of the novels in common was the exploration of the destruction and reconstruction of the middle-class value system, but throughout the story, beneath the surface of the story was an undercurrent of the shaking foundations of mainstream ideology—the threat to family life and the crisis of masculinity on which family security depended. In both bizarre and detective novels, crime incidents seem to be a natural part of family life, and although 18th-century Gothic novels tended to set the story in faraway places, Victorian Gothic novels almost always placed horror events in England. Victorian readers can see murder, arson, theft, embezzlement, fraud and other crimes that threaten the economic and personal safety of the middle class in these novels; they can also see bigamy, abduction, abandonment of husbands/children and other evils that destroy the foundation of married family life.
Crime plots call for the emergence of "problem solvers", so these novels often feature male characters in the "amateur detective" genre, who are responsible for thinking, acting, successfully solving problems in the story, and more importantly, becoming a symbol of Victorian manhood. But Schneider points out that these male characters almost always have self-doubt and some aspects of inadequacy, they tend to hesitate at first, or be troubled by the interruption of their quiet and leisurely life, and only driven by curiosity, a awakened sense of responsibility and a sense of justice will they cheer up as the plot progresses, solve difficult problems, and thus prove themselves to be a more mature and more suitable family man at the end of the story.
So a meaningful phenomenon arises: there are almost no real ideal men in popular fiction, who at first glance may meet the expectations of mainstream masculinity, but as the story progresses, the reader can always find ambiguities in them. In Dracula, for example, Jonathan Haack, a young and ambitious real estate agent, may seem to be a model of a positive middle-class man, his weakness is evident in the presence of dracula, a powerful, charming, and energetic vampire earl. Sherlock Holmes is also an interesting example of de-idealizing male characters, with author Conan Doyle pointing out the eccentric and absurd side of the brilliant detective through the mouth of Dr. Watson. Holmes would have admired a woman (Irene Adler) for her intellect, and did not meet the requirements of Victorian masculinity, after all, reason and wisdom were considered exclusive to men at the time. In Schneider's view, the lack of ideal male characters in popular fiction shows that ideal masculinity is largely considered to be difficult for real men to achieve, and the denial of male gender ideals in novels is actually an indirect recognition of male defects in real life.
In the last decade of the 19th century, as concerns about moral decay, national efficiency, and the fate of the British Empire intensified, a renewed emphasis on masculinity became increasingly imminent, but the public health crisis of the same period forced people to confront the fact that "men are not invincible" – that is, the flu. In the book "The Great History of the Flu", mark Honigsbaum, a British medical historian, pointed out that the flu relapsed significantly in 1895, 1898 and 1899-1900, and as the news of the illness of celebrities such as Prime Minister Rossbury was widely reported, people began to change the general idea of how men should respond to the flu.
Until then, men's health was thought to depend on mental and physical perseverance or courage, and men claiming to be suffering from the flu, or expressing concern about the flu, raises character questions. When the flu was widespread, doctors began to realize that "strong physique" could not prevent the flu, and men were even more likely to get the flu than women, because their occupation made them more susceptible to fatigue and therefore more susceptible to germs, and male patients were no longer often regarded as suspects or pretenders, on the contrary, public information materials began to warn people of the threat of influenza. At the height of the epidemic in 1895, Fun magazine published a cartoon of a London policeman lying on the ground and a demon lying on his chest. The headline of the comic read: "According to the newspaper, 1,000 strong London policemen have been knocked down by this demon, how likely are ordinary people to escape?" In Honisbaum's view, the comic's author juxtaposed demons with strong policemen, symbolizing justice, perhaps inadvertently exploiting the end-of-the-century anxieties that pervade the divided male subject in Victorian Gothic novels.
<h3>End</h3>
Masculinity is uncertain, and in order to maintain a "masculine" image, men need to constantly hone themselves — according to The State University of New York at Stony Brook anthropology professor David M. Thompson. Discovery by David D. Gilmore. In His book Inventing Masculinity, he argues that there is a recurring notion at all levels of socio-cultural development that "true masculinity differs from masculinity in the simple anatomic sense, the former not a state of nature that accompanies the masturation of the organism, but an uncertain or man-made state in which boys must overcome powerful adversity." Masculinity is difficult and a key threshold that boys must pass in the test. ”
This explains why we can see the inherent conflicts of masculinity in popular literature and public discourse in Victorian England. Masculinity is not innate, but a culturally imposed ideal that men must follow, and which in turn strengthens the discipline of men when the external environment in which this ideal is achieved tends to be harsh. In this sense, we can see the similarities between the strong gender discipline of British society in the 19th century and Chinese society today: both societies are witnessing the improvement of women's social status and the gradual disintegration of traditional gender roles.
Yet this history also tells us that pure "masculinity" can only exist in fantasy at best. We may need to remember this passage from Freud in The Three Treatises on Sexology:
"In human beings, pure masculinity or femininity, both psychologically and physically, cannot be found. On the contrary, each individual exhibits a mixture of characteristics that include those of the sex that belong to the individual and those of the sex opposed to him; he shows a mixture of positive and negative characteristics, whether or not these characteristics coincide with his physiological characteristics. ”
Resources:
Tosh, John. “Masculinities in an Industrializing Society: Britain, 1800-1914.” Journal of British Studies, vol.44, no.2, 2005, pp.330-342.
Schneider, Ralf. “The Invisible Center: Conceptions of Masculinity in Victorian Fiction — Realist, Crime, Detective, and Gothic.” Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present. edited by Stefan Horlacher, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.147-168.
“Man Up — The Victorian Origins of Toxic Masculinity,” The Historian
https://projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/thehistorian/2017/05/12/man-up-the-victorian-origins-of-toxic-masculinity/
“How Victorian Masculinity Still Influences Modern Manhood,” Goodguyswag
http://goodguyswag.com/victorian-masculinity-modern-manhood/
Mark Honisbaum. The Great History of the Flu: A Plague Apocalypse. Gezhi Press.2021.
[American] David D. Gilmer. Inventing Masculinity. Zhejiang University Press.2021.