Tori Amos once sang, "I don't know why in your boy's life, you become … like a bull in a china shop."
Breaking news: Feminism has done so well for itself that men are losing out in today's society. Thanks to the evils of the feminist agenda, the He−cession, an economic downturn where men are statistically affected more heavily than women, is in full throttle. Women have finally won the oppression Olympics. In response to this reprised, phallocentric narrative of the fall of Man, various scholars truly concerned about the decline of manliness established the Foundation for Male Studies in early April and announced its inception shortly thereafter at a symposium at Wagner College in New York.
Though Men's Studies has existed for the past three decades, the organizers of Male Studies repudiate (or is it refudiate?) any conflation with its well−established predecessor. Male Studies scholars differentiate the field in purporting a biological determinist view with the aim of studying what it is to be a cisgender male (those comfortable with the gender assigned at birth) in today's society. Exclusionary? Yes. Problematic? I'd say so. Even more troubling is the pro−men, anti−feminist drivel expressed by the scholars. Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and a major proponent of the new field, decries ideological feminism as the cause of men's problems for having created a world that disadvantages men and favors women. He was kind enough, however, to expand our minds and introduce the uncommon word misandry to the vernacular.
The inflammatory rhetoric of the organizers of Male Studies explicitly seeks to distance the field from gender studies and its offshoots. Of course, the study of masculinities and male experience is indeed important; however, the explicit anti−feminist view and the antiquated, simplistic commitment to the perspective of "biology as destiny" belie any legitimacy and necessity of the field.
Gender Studies analyzes gender identity and its intersections with sexuality, race, age, etc. through a macroscopic lens that takes into account the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. To commit to an individualistic perspective and a biological interpretation of sex and gender severely limits the perspective of Male Studies. The discipline claims to be novel and essential, but at this point, it only seems superfluous and misogynistic.
The organizers of Male Studies contend that the solutions to male issues — male underachievement and males as victims of violence, to name a couple — will result from a narrow outlook that focuses on maleness solely as possession the Y chromosome and one that writes off critical analyses of the institutions and conventions of our society that create, contribute to and continue gender inequity.
Additionally, they do not seem to have a commitment to intersectionality, i.e. the examination of the way in which various categories of identity interact on several levels to reproduce social injustice. Their rhetoric of feminist−bashing and valorization of masculinity only corroborate the former claim. While the proponents of Male Studies vilify feminist ideology, they subscribe to an ideology that is extremely limited and exclusionary.
The systemic structures that may disadvantage men on an individual level cannot be addressed by valorizing masculinity. Furthermore, the focus on cisgender maleness results in a singular conception of male experience and will further marginalize the other permutations of masculinity. That leaves us to wonder which masculinity will be allowed, privileged and studied in this new field.
Will Male Studies devote itself to a male experience only located in the upper echelon of society in terms of power and prominence, that is to say white, heterosexual, middle−class and cisgender? Certain men and manly characteristics (perhaps of the James Bond variety) will garner praise, while others will suffer an erasure of history and existence, for not all Y chromosomes are created equal, and not all "masculine" peoples tout possessing it.
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Elisha Sum is a senior majoring in English and French. He can be reached at elisha.sum@tufts.edu.
