The truth about misogyny and male inadequacy
MEN who tell, or laugh at, sexist or homophobic jokes are mostly doing so because they are deeply insecure about their own manhood and feel the need to bolster it, in the face of threats, by making a few nasty jokes that show how little they think of women or gay men. This is the kind of thing I’ve said before, when writing about some of the vile commentaries seen on the Breitbart alt-right news site in the US, or the trolling on Twitter, or Donald Trump’s “locker room” banter.
I mention it now, because research is increasingly showing this to be true. A recent study by University of West Carolina researchers found that men who tended to base their self-worth around traditional norms of masculinity were more likely to find self-affirmation in sexist and anti-gay jokes.
Lead author Emma O’Connor said: “Men higher in precarious manhood beliefs expressed amusement with sexist and anti-gay humour in response to a masculinity threat because they believe it reaffirms an accurate, more masculine impression of them.”
Of course, such research won’t silence the trolls and misogynists. Those who feel their manhood is under threat tend to dismiss such research, and reaffirm their masculinity by telling some more appalling sexist jokes while declaring yet again that the problem is that women have no sense of humour.
Why don’t women get their irony? We’re too thin-skinned, they say. Why can’t we just see how hilarious a good blonde joke is? We’re not funny. Why don’t we find the video and lyrics to songs like Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines hilarious and oh so edgy? We’re too serious.
O’Connor’s research explains a lot. Whether it’s sexist jokes, online misogynies, supposedly humorous or mischievous articles or laddish banter, we can now see all of it for what it is: a problem with manhood; a problem with the threat men feel to their masculinity, not so much from women, as from other men.
But if we want to purge this kind of talk from our society, it’s not just a matter of calling it out, we need to dig out the actual culture of toxic manhood at it roots.
We need a revolution which begins in the hothouse of the playground, in the way that we parent and mentor our boys, and in the kind of environments we create for them. Research tells us, after all, that this starts early, almost from primary one, possibly earlier, though certainly from that time when boys are first thrown in with a bunch of peers and learn there is a hierarchy among males that revolves around overt shows of masculinity.
In her fascinating book Man Up – Boys, Men And Breaking The Male Rules, Rebecca Asher brings together some of the research which documents this phenomenon. “As boys scramble for their place in a group, they attempt to enhance their standing with others by demonstrating their adherence to stereotypical masculinity,” she writes.
“They do this in part by open shows of competitive highly physical and stoic behaviour.”
Boys and men also do it by belittling all that is non-masculine, for example, by describing stereotypically feminine behaviour as “gay”. Adult men and boys also accuse those that fail to conform to a masculine ideal of prowess, as being “such a girl”, or tell them to “man up”.
It’s not hard to see why a man who has grown up in such hierarchies might turn to a joke that belittles women, or gays, as a way to bolster his position in the social pyramid.
O’Connor’s research is mirrored by other studies into contemporary masculinity. One of the messages that comes across from them is that manhood, for many, is a “precarious” status, hard to earn, but also easily lost. This notion isn’t new. The novelist Norman Mailer once wrote: “Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honour.”
Men, therefore, react strongly when such hard-won manhood is under threat. According to research by University of South Florida psychologists Jennifer Bosson and Joseph Vandello, frequently they resort to aggression when this happens.
“Gender is social,” says, Bosson. “Men know this. They are powerfully concerned about how they appear in other people’s eyes. And the more concerned they are, the more they will suffer psychologically when their manhood feels violated.”
What do we do with all this? On one level, research like O’Connor’s arms women to fight back against the sexist jokes with quips and taunts that point out the fragility of the joker’s manhood.
“Some man you are,” we can say, “that would feel so threatened and resort to this.” Or: “Take a look at this research and see how pathetic you are.” But I don’t think shaming or attacking someone’s masculinity helps. It just plays into the whole problem. What we need is for men to see there is a cost here for them too, and that it is profound. They lose part of their humanity by clinging so hard to that precarious thing called manhood.