Somebody To Lean On
One issue about masculinity that intrigues me revolves around the experience
of dependence. Traditionally in America, dependence was dishonorable for men;
women were allowed to be taken care of, as part of caring for others; men
instead have been pushed to become self-reliant. Manly equals self-reliant. In
fact, this traditional image of masculinity is nonsense. Imagine, for instance,
someone at the beginning of an affair declaring, "Don't worry, I can take care
of myself, I will never lean on you." You would soon lose interest; after all,
you wouldn't really matter in the other person's life. But American men, in my
experience, have a great deal of trouble saying "I need you." It seems weak,
and so shameful.
Faludi's interviewees hew to this silence, and I wonder if that isn't part
of their trouble. Again, I think economics matters in this silence today. The
ideology of work in modern society puts great emphasis on independence, on
treating oneself entrepreneurially--but if you treat yourself as an independent
agent, you don't establish much emotional connection to other people. It's the
same problem: If you don't acknowledge you need them, they are not going to
care much about you. Unlike Shoshana, I don't see the modern economy in fact
giving people more independence; as she herself has shown, experiences such as
working from home via the computer often plunge people into situations where
they are more tightly monitored than if they were working in a traditional
office. So perhaps part of the trouble with conceiving of strength as autonomy
is that it makes people feel actually worse about the tangled web of
dependencies that in fact rule their lives. Men in particular.
This insight isn't really mine. The psychologist Carol Gilligan, in her fine
book In a Different Voice , has probed the destructive consequences of
manly silence--for men themselves as much as for the women and children who
fall under the spell of this silence. In fact, making issues of dependence
overt and legitimate requires a great deal of personal strength: You need to
know what you need, and you need to figure out whether someone else can help
you. I missed at the end of Faludi's study a discussion of this dynamic of
masculinity, though the problem surfaces in her interviews again and again.
I'd like to end this discussion, however, by saying that, perhaps unlike
Shoshana, I think Stiffed is an admirable, serious, and humane book. It
records the dead-end society has put men into as workers, parents, and
citizens. Stiffed is blessedly free of jargon, and full of telling
detail. Its analysis is meant to provoke debate, and will continue to do so. I
think people should read it and argue with it.
