The word “masculinity” has caused a heated discussion recently.
Regarding the proposal put forward by Szef, the Standing Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in May 2020, the Ministry of Education replied on January 28th that it would “moderately improve the methods and forms of physical education, pay more attention to the cultivation of students’ masculinity, and continue to supplement physical education teachers through various channels. “In the above proposal, Sizhefu thinks that the teenagers in China are weak, inferior and timid, and they are pursuing the style of” butter niche “and” small fresh meat “. He also said that if this trend is not effectively controlled, it will definitely endanger the survival and development of the Chinese nation. Words such as “weakness, inferiority and timidity” are not only negative, but also associated with “feminization”, showing the gender stereotype implied in the proposal.
It is also worth noting that the Ministry of Education regards sports as the main means to cultivate “masculinity”, which inevitably reminds people of the emphasis on male strength and sportsmanship in Victorian British society. In the 19th century, physical education was introduced to British schools for the first time and was regarded as an important part of boys’ all-round development. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), an Anglican priest and social reformer, was one of the main promoters of sports entering the campus. He believes that “on the playground, boys can acquire virtues that books can’t teach them;” It is not only courage and endurance, but also calmness, self-control, justice, honor, sincere appreciation of others’ success without jealousy, and the spirit of mutual benefit and mutual accommodation that excellent men need after entering society. According to the research of Josephine Jobbins, a history student at Queen Mary College of University of London, from 1860 to 1880, British public schools were forced to hold sports competitions to cultivate boys’ physical quality and masculinity from an early age.
In fact, the Victorian period (1837-1901) was also an era of great emphasis on “masculinity”, which was regarded by later historians as one of the longest peaceful periods in British history-in various economic, social and cultural changes, a new male ideal replaced the definition of masculinity associated with the image of “warrior” in the past. Its definition, causes and reflected social group psychology give us a sense of deja vu. Looking back at this period of history, we can easily find that the drastic changes of the times often cause men’s anxiety about “gender anomie”, and there is always a gap between the ideal and reality of “shaping male models”
Industrial Revolution, Women’s Movement and Empire Expansion: Rebuilding Masculinity
What was Britain like from the 19th century to the First World War? John Tosh, a professor of history at the University of Roehampton in England, believes that the following three aspects constitute the characteristics of the times in Britain from 1800 to 1914: rapid industrialization, imperial expansion and increasingly sharp gender differentiation. In this increasingly urbanized, market-oriented and industrialized society, a series of brand-new requirements for masculinity began to appear: this male ideal, which Tosh called “bourgeois masculinity”, originated from the middle-class male group and gradually became the ideal male model of the whole society.
Source: vision china.
Tosh pointed out that the masculinity in the 19th century reflected its “modernity” from two aspects. First of all, professional pride and professional ethics are increasingly regarded as the core components of masculinity-having a paid and decent job first became the ideal of middle-class men in Britain, and a generation later, working-class men began to accept this concept. In the era when the husband supports the family and the wife stays behind, the responsibility of supporting the family is constantly justified and sublimated into a moral obligation and a channel for men to realize themselves.
Secondly, the family is endowed with a higher meaning by men, so the Victorian period is called “the worship of family” by historians. People began to regard the family/private field and the work/public field as two completely different fields. The family was regarded as a refuge for men-after struggling in the market competition, they returned to their warm homes (carefully cared for by their wives) to escape from the noisy and ugly city life and cruel market relations.
There is another aspect of masculinity in the 19th century that is not paid much attention to by later generations, that is, violence is no longer a respected masculinity. Until the 18th century, male violence was common in streets, pubs and other public places, and any behavior suspected of slandering and insulting male dignity was likely to be punished with fists and feet. However, under the persuasion and influence of evangelicals, the middle class began to innovate male values, so the 19th century witnessed a significant decline in male violence. By 1850, the duel between gentlemen had basically disappeared. It is generally believed that dueling is a degrading act, and only rude working-class men can solve problems with their fists. From 1850 to 1914, although the population of England and Wales doubled in the same period, the number of trials for indictable crimes decreased by one third.
The general consensus of gender researchers is that a dual gender model of “men and women are different” was regarded as the standard in Victorian times: male characteristics are related to vitality, strength, decisiveness and rationality, and they are also masters of the public sphere; All the traits contrary to the above are “feminine”
A dual gender model of “men and women are different” was sealed as the standard in Victorian era: masculinity is related to vitality, strength, decisiveness and rationality, and they are also the masters of the public sphere. (Source: vision china)
Why did gender essentialism prevail in Victorian England? Tosh believes that the increasingly fierce “gender opposition” and “the other” against women may smooth out class differences by creating a “male” identity shared by all men, that is, defining what is a “man” and a “real man”. In fact, it is difficult for “bourgeois masculinity” to penetrate into the working class and become the code of conduct for men at the bottom-dual-employment is the normal state of working-class families, which means that it is difficult for working-class men and women to meet the gender norms of the upper and middle classes in 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 men at the bottom from class conflicts.
Tosh quoted Thomas Lacorre, an American historian and sexologist, as another reason for the prevalence of gender essentialism: in the face of a political atmosphere that emphasizes equality more, men subconsciously take defensive responses. The democratic political idea of “natural human rights” advocated by the French Revolution not only broke the traditional social hierarchy, but also impacted the traditional gender order.
“Various polarization theories about gender differences are aimed at stifling the wave of women’s empowerment, and they refuse to admit that women have the same spiritual and moral qualities as men to play social public roles. People think that men are suitable for taking responsibility in the public sphere-but women are not-which is doomed by their nature … In this period, men should not only deal with the revival of feminist debates, but also deal with the weakening of male privileges brought about by the improvement of women’s material living standards. In the 1970s and 1980s, the power of husbands was weakened at the legal level, the education level of women was improving, and young single women (represented by “new women”) became more and more independent, which aggravated the discourse of gender differences.
“Therefore, we have reason to believe that men’s emphasis on gender differences is a self-defense response to the improvement of women’s status.” Tosh wrote.
To some extent, the expansion of the British Empire provided an outlet for male anxiety with nowhere to put it. In popular culture and collective imagination, the colony is an adventure paradise that is not bound by local social norms, and it is especially attractive to men who are eager to make great efforts overseas and pursue their careers. It is particularly noteworthy that although violence is increasingly unacceptable to the public in Britain, the legitimacy of violence has not been questioned in colonial affairs. At that time, popular adventure novels based on overseas stories, such as Henry Rider Haggard’s works (1856-1925), almost invariably described violence in detail. Tosh found that the British people at that time were particularly sensitive to the news of colonial riots or mutinies. He believes that this means that people are eager to vent their pent-up punishment and revenge impulses in the almost unsupervised colonial world. “Britain’s’ civilization process’ is based on the price of people’s growing desire to kill in the colonial world.
A painting depicting British officials riding elephants patrolling the streets of India, surrounded by Indian attendants. (Source: vision china)
Tosh also found that British imperialism was particularly attractive to men when they found it difficult to get a recognized label of masculinity in Britain-for example, the staunchest fans of military foreign policy in the 1890 s were male employees from the lower middle class. With the rapid increase in the number of female shop assistants (by 1911, female shop assistants accounted for one-third of commercial shop assistants), male shop assistants were worried that they would be laid off or their gender status would decline. Supporting the British Empire’s military foreign policy is a way to advocate masculinity to yourself and others, and in most cases, it does not involve any risk-in a generally peaceful era, even if you are recruited, you will hardly really participate in the war. In Tosh’s view, this dual mentality of normalization of war but lack of practical understanding of reality was one of the reasons why Britain fell into patriotic militarism in August 1914.
Homophobia, Popular Literature and Influenza: Inner Conflict of Masculinity
The emphasis on gender differences has also caused conflicts within male groups. The polarized view of gender makes the difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality more obvious, while the latter is increasingly regarded as immoral behavior. This intolerance, which does not conform to the characteristics of mainstream masculinity, is most obviously reflected in people’s prejudice against “femininity”. Tosh pointed out that in the 18th century, “femininity” refers to men who like to keep company with women, love luxury and show off, but don’t pay attention to cultivating physical and military achievements. But in the 19th century, because the signs of gender differences were clearer, the scope of the accusation of “feminization” was greatly narrowed. As reflected in Wilde’s trial, “femininity” mainly refers to homosexuality at the end of the 19th century, which is regarded as a kind of moral degeneration and a threat to the society.
Although the Victorian era placed great emphasis on “masculinity” and “masculinity”, scholars pointed out that in the public discourse at that time, the reappearance of masculinity almost always emphasized its ambiguous and uncertain aspects, thus suggesting the internal ideological conflict of masculinity in the 19th century. Taking literary works in the 19th century as an example, Ralf Schneider, a professor of English literature and culture at Bielefeld University, found that male images such as “Wei” were not liked by novelists, and male characters valued by “bourgeois masculinity” (strong body, fatherhood and career success) were rare in realistic novels.
This is most obvious in Bildungsroman, which describes in detail the growth process of the protagonists: many protagonists are orphans or have cut off contact with their families-for example, Oliver and Jane Eyre, the protagonists in Oliver Twist-so their fathers do not play an important role in their growth process. Even if the role of fathers does appear, they are often portrayed as roles full of doubts, personal crises and powerlessness, rather than reliable family providers respected by non-mainstream masculinity or male models full of strength and determination.
In Schneider’s view, popular literature is a more important text to examine the reproduction of Victorian masculinity: in view of the huge readership, one of the main functions of popular literature is to express the anxiety and desire of the public, and the male roles they present are therefore more worth pondering. This kind of text includes sensory novels that appeared in the 1960s, gothic novels in the late Victorian era (such as Dracula by braam stock in 1897) and detective novels (such as Sherlock Holmes’s Adventures of Sherlock by arthur conan doyle).
One thing in common is to discuss the destruction and reconstruction of the middle class value system. However, from beginning to end, under the surface of the story, there is an undercurrent that the foundation of mainstream ideology has been shaken-family life is threatened and the masculinity on which family security depends is in crisis. In romance novels and detective novels, crime seems to be a natural part of family life. Although Gothic novels in the 18th century tend to set their stories in distant places, Victorian Gothic novels almost always set their horror stories in Britain. Victorian readers can see crimes that threaten the economy and personal safety of the middle class, such as murder, arson, theft, corruption and fraud. In these novels, we can also see such evils as bigamy, trafficking, abandonment of husbands/children and so on, which undermine the foundation of marriage and family life.
The plot of a crime calls for the emergence of “problem solvers”, so there are often male characters of “amateur detectives” in these novels. They are responsible for thinking, acting and successfully solving problems in the stories, and more importantly, they become symbols of Victorian masculinity. However, Schneider pointed out that these male characters almost always have self-doubt and some shortcomings. They often hesitate at the beginning, or worry about the interruption of their quiet and leisurely life. Only driven by curiosity, the awakened sense of responsibility and justice will cheer up and solve the problem with the development of the plot, thus proving that he is a more mature man and more suitable for family life at the end of the story.
So there is a meaningful phenomenon: there are almost no real ideal men in popular novels. They may meet the expectations of mainstream masculinity at first sight, but with the development of the story, readers can always find ambiguity in them. For example, in Dracula, Jonathan Huck, a promising and ambitious young real estate agent, seems to be a positive middle-class male model, but his weakness is obvious in front of Dracula, a powerful, charming and energetic vampire count. Sherlock Holmes is also an interesting example of idealizing male roles. The author Conan Doyle pointed out the strange and absurd side of this clever detective through the mouth of Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes will admire a woman’s intelligence (played by Irene Adler), which does not meet the requirements of Victorian masculinity-after all, at that time, rationality and wisdom were considered to be exclusive to men. In Schneider’s view, the lack of ideal male characters in popular novels shows that ideal masculinity is considered to be beyond the reach of real men to a great extent, and the denial of male gender ideals in novels is actually an indirect recognition of male defects in real life.