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The anxiety some feel over the changing landscape of gender roles has inspired folks to drag out any old piece of “insight” to help prove their points.
I’m talking about this link on the Wayne Dupree’s blog from a year ago about Ice-T. Basically, it is about comments the rapper and former star of “Law & Order: SVU” made regarding the state of masculinity. In short he said that it is dead.
In long, he said (as told by Dupree) said:
“US rap legend Ice-T says gay men are not to blame for the “pussyfication” of the male sex. In an interview with The Guardian, the rapper and actor, known for his long-running role in crime show Law and Order, was asked about the lyrics on his new album Manslaughter, from his old thrash metal group Body Count.
Asked about the reference that “manhood’s dead”, Ice-T replied: “I think right now you’re dealing with the pussyfication of the male sex. Men are just being so passive, not standing for something; they’re very politically correct.
This has nothing to do with the gay male.
The gay male is gay and I have no problem with that.
Men are just soft. It’s OK to say you want to be a woman, but try to be a man and there’s something wrong with that.
He explained: ”One of my buddies told me, ‘For you to be a man, a bitch has definitely taken a position.’ If you’re with your girl and you’re like, ‘Where should we park? I don’t know…’, she’ll be like, ‘Park here!’
”Women want power. But at the same time they’ve made men feel uncomfortable about speaking their feelings.”
Who knew that choosing a parking spot would be such a gender-affirming decision?
Some of you probably stopped reading at Ice T. After all, why should we take the opinions of a self-proclaimed pimp with marriage problems, seriously? That’s like taking medical advice from the CEO of McDonalds or parenting advice from the Duggars. Also calling women “bitches” while whining about the death of real manhood seems quite ironic. Like, maybe if you wouldn’t call women “bitches” they might treat you with the respect and dignity you believe you deserve as a “man.” Just a thought…
But the problem is that this sentiment, which he has expressed, is really quite pervasive. Hence why this post is once again making the rounds on social media. As women make strides to claim their full humanity, it seems like men worldwide feel like they are losing theirs. And in some ways, I can understand. We live in a world, which has long preached, not only assigned gender roles, but that a man can only be a real man if he lords over every living creature on the planet, including women and children.
Yet, the realities of this version of manhood have rarely matched the theory. Power and control has always been in the hands of a concentrated few, whereas both men and women had to labor under ideas of proper woman and man hood, which very few of us found ourselves able to measure up. This is particularly true of our modern culture where income and racial inequality makes it hard for any person to fully be self-sufficient with one income, let alone raise an entire family. And there is no way a man can claim the idealized position of dominate leader when he and his spouse must both bring home the bacon.
And yet the fear of losing something that very few actually had the ability to reach, still lives on. It is aided by more than the romanticized views of gender, which has been forced down our throats in our homes and in our religious institutions, but also by our pop culture, in particular advertisers and corporations, which profit big off of the insecurity of men. As written by Amanda Hess in the piece entitled, How Mens Magazines Sell Masculinity to Low-Income Men:
“If advertising is meant to be aspirational, these ads are presenting a pretty sad version of what American men can aspire to be. And advertisers aren’t selling this hyper-masculine ideal to just any man: They’re specifically targeting the younger, poorer, less-educated guys in the supermarket aisle. In the latest issue of the journal Sex Roles, a trio of psychologists at the University of Manitoba analyzed the advertising images in a slate of magazines targeted at men, from Fortune to Field and Stream. They counted up the ads that depict men as violent, calloused, tough, dangerous, and sexually aggressive—what the researchers call “hyper-masculine”—then indexed them with the magazine’s target demographics. Hyper-masculine images, the researchers found, are more likely to be sold to adolescents, who find higher “peer group support” for manly-man behaviors. They’re also sold to working-class men, who are “embedded in enduring social and economic structures in which they experience powerlessness and lack of access to resources” like political power, social respect, and wealth, and so turn to more widely accessible measures of masculine worth—like “physical strength and aggression.”
It is true that male dominance is traditional. But so are child brides. And so is cannibalism. And so is wiping our behinds with leaves forged in the forest. Point is that society has turned it backs on those practices because we realized that they are dehumanizing, unhealthy or downright unsanitary. So perhaps it is time we do the same with this idea of real manhood?
And what was so great about male-dominated households and societies anyway? Men being in total dominance never stopped war. They never cured famine or ended poverty. And households where men led and reigned supreme did not stop White colonizers with their guns, germs and steel from pushing their ways onto the shores of Africa, conquering its land and stealing entire families away – men included.
Perhaps a little equality and freedom, or emasculation as Ice T called it, from the ideas of what real manhood is supposed to look like will help to actually free some folks. Maybe domestic violence and sexual assault statistics wouldn’t be so high? Maybe some wayward men will feel secure enough to stay around in households where they might not be able to financially keep up but can contribute in other ways. And just maybe we can park where ever we want without fear of what it supposedly says about us as real men and women…
