Man-ipulated 2 (NSFW)

An extract from the full image below…

Not so long ago I published a post on this blog with an image that aimed to explore some of my concerns around masculinity. Following feedback and further consideration I made an alternative image starting with the same source image. It is more personal and perhaps more meaningful but still has many shortcomings. Below I will discuss the additional concerns that this image recognizes which were not acknowledged in the first.

If we are truly honest with ourselves, I think that we can see that a great deal of power in the world is maintained in part by violence and aggression, or at least the threat of it. Certainly in a world where voracious global capitalism seems to be a commercial and socio-economic expression of patriarchy, I see the threat of male violence as integral to the maintenance of control: whether that be on the front line of wars in resource-rich countries, at the factories in the poor global south, on the casting couch in Hollywood or in the trenches of a private home. And in fact, has male violence not been the foundation for past white colonialism upon which modern western capitalism is built?

I have never thought of myself as a violent person and have always had an aversion to violence. I do not know whether this is a perfectly natural aversion or specifically informed by the significant domestic violence I witnessed as a young child. Violence however has haunted me throughout my life, in as much as it has always been present at least as potential in my masculinity. Indeed, there have been times when that potential has been realised in acts of violence - but always to my regret and shame, rather than any sense of it being an expression of personal power.

Bizarrely maybe, it has taken me 45 years of living, and more recently, academic reading into gender studies to realise that of course it is important for the status-quo; for society, to inculcate violence, competition, tribalism, territorialism and protectionism into men, or at least embed these aspects into our notions of masculinity (which some women do also embrace). How else could we create armies but for creating citizens or subjects that believe violence can be a solution to a problem? We culturally normalise, even glorify (see Hollywood and competitive contact sports) violence in men.

Furthermore we teach and expect men to be stoic, to not cry, to supress emotions, to be able to compromise their self-actualisation in favour of being a successful bread-winner and happy consumer (while women are taught that they should prioritise motherhood over their own self-actualisation, or that indeed motherhood is their highest form of self-actualisation). And yet we are surprised when this thin façade of civilisation cracks and outside of the acceptable arenas for violence (again, war and competitive contact sports) men lash out at the world, resorting to the latent violence that society has fostered in them.

This then is how I see the creation and expression of what has become known as toxic masculinity and, for me it is important that we recognise that men just as much as women and wider society suffer from the consequences of this socialisation. It is why so many more men than women are incarcerated, why so many more men commit suicide. This is the motivation for making this image. And while it is again just a sketch for what a more complete and effective image might be, I hope that it addresses some of these concerns.

Man-ipulated 2