Another problem for the homeless
PhD inspects ‘compensatory masculinity’
As if the homeless didn’t have enough going against them, now, it turns out, the bastards engage in “compensatory masculinity,” either blaming the women in their lives for all their problems or sexualizing or revering them as motherly objects.
I refer to a chapter in a new book that was written by Erin Dej, a criminologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.
Dej’s chapter is called When a Man’s Home Isn’t a Castle: Hegemonic Masculinity Among Men Experiencing Homelessness and Mental Illness.
Her conclusion is that while homeless men are denied the usual range of hypermasculine rewards (a house, a job, power, etc.) such are the benefits of “the patriarchal dividend” that they nonetheless “perform masculinity” and behave in the few hypermasculine ways that remain open to them.
Dej is well-published. She is polite, and certainly, she replied quickly to a couple of questions I emailed her. None of what I say is meant to disparage her in any way. But, my God, I despair. Dej is the face of the future. She is the well-educated (one might say hyper-educated) product of the Canadian education system.
She got her PhD in criminology from the University of Ottawa, an MA in legal studies from Carleton, held a post-doctoral fellowship with York University’s Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, and now is an assistant professor at Laurier.
Yet she so clearly subscribes to modern-think — that there are always oppressors and oppressed — that she could write, of one of the homeless men she interviewed, that his tall stature and build “have allowed him the privilege that many men, and few women, are privy to — not being ‘scared of walking outside at night’.”
News flash: It is not uncontested gospel that most women are afraid.
This was a fellow named Ron, one of 38 people “experiencing homelessness” she interviewed at two emergency shelters in Ottawa.
(Dej also spent 296 hours observing the homeless, and yes, for those who care about such things, she received approval from the University of Ottawa’s research ethics board, and got oral consent from those she watched.)
Ron, she said, was diagnosed with a number of mental illnesses (depression, bipolar disorder, anti-social personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder) and used cocaine, alcohol and heroin.
As a result, his physical health was a mess, and he felt vulnerable, he told her, such that where before he’d heard women say they were scared to walk at night, now, he too was scared: “…like, a little girl could have killed me. That’s how weak I was…”
He had also been physically abused as a child.
Yet what Dej found most telling was that he positioned “his sense of weakness and vulnerability in relation to women… This vulnerability is the antithesis of hegemonic masculinity…. For Ron, the feminine subjectivity acts as the ultimate exemplar of physical weakness and the most absurd hyperbole of who constitutes a threat.”
Why, she wrote, he even compared the cramps he got from his daily methadone treatment as “like, uh, menstruating, almost…. Like my stomach is just, like, cramps.”
Dej leapt upon this: “Using menstrual cramps, a sensation Ron has admittedly never felt, to describe the side effects of methadone treatment is telling of Ron’s felt masculinity status.”
Only a little later does she say that his identification with menstrual cramps “may be related to his recent identification as bisexual... For Ron, he has failed to live up to the basic tenets of hegemonic masculinity: physical strength, vitality and heterosexuality.”
One of the other key tenets, according to Dej, is “emotional numbness,” or what another man, Julian, described as being “‘like an island’ …
“While it is understandable why someone facing such debilitating emotions may revel in the idea of feeling nothing, the fact that this is a way of being that all men should emulate is deeply problematic,” Dej writes.
Who says all men should strive or aim for numbness?
This is part of the current narrative that masculinity itself is inherently toxic, or at least malformed.
That is such a lot of hooey, and so flies in the face of what most women and men know in their bones to be true — that neither gender has a patent on bad behaviour, or for that matter, an exclusive grasp on power.
In the time-honoured manner of academics everywhere, Dej pronounces her research important (it “fills a gap,” as she put it) and concludes that because most of the homeless are men (and white, as she also pointed out), “it is essential that interventions that seek to prevent and end homelessness take into account the complex gender dynamics at play . ... With this awareness, programs can be designed and services can be provided in such a way as to mitigate the troubling ways that compensatory masculinity manifests ... and introduce men to alternative understandings of masculinity.”
Yes, because that’s the one thing the homeless — who have nothing — really need.
Or, as a man I know put it: “The homeless are overwhelmingly male. As we all know, under-representation means discrimination. I for one am outraged that women are systemically denied the opportunity to be homeless.”
Perhaps the first step could be an initiative where the state takes homes away from white women.
THAT IS SUCH A LOT OF HOOEY, AND SO FLIES IN THE FACE OF WHAT MOST WOMEN AND MEN KNOW IN THEIR BONES TO BE TRUE — THAT NEITHER GENDER HAS A PATENT ON BAD BEHAVIOUR, OR FOR THAT MATTER, AN EXCLUSIVE GRASP ON POWER. — CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD