Over the last few weeks, people have been exploding over the new APA guidelines for treating boys and men. At the cornerstone of their vitriol is the idea that the "Ideology of Traditional Masculinity" is somehow at fault for many of our modern ills. They seem to think that our idea of masculinity is "natural" and that somehow it hasn't been controlled or evolved over time.
It is my opinion that "traditional masculinity" is, in fact, the masculinity of the 20th Century. The usage of the word ideology is not hyperbole but is used advisedly in this context. It is an ideal vision of manliness which was fabricated through the use of mass media and propaganda. The decisions that went into its formation were conscious on some level, and we've suffered the unforeseen consequences.
Of course, if you happen to be a man who has grown up to believe that all men must be competitive, aggressive, stoic, and dominant, you're also not prone to self-reflection. This is the kind of person who will argue a position long after it's been proven that he is wrong. He cannot accept that kind of threat to his dominance. Yet this has been trained into him, and he is continually fearful of losing social position. The words "I stand corrected" are not allowed in his vocabulary. As such, no words can possibly reach him. I write for those who are not so set in their ways, or who are looking for reasons why and how we got here.
British General Staff General Routine Order 2384 of June 1917 stated that "in no circumstances whatever will the expression "shell shock" be used verbally or be recorded in any regimental or other casualty report, or any hospital or other medical document." You see, "shell shock" could not be a diagnosis. The nervous individual was obviously too weak for combat in the first place. This was not a wound on the psyche, but rather a sign of personal weakness which was intolerable in a fighting man.
The white feather movement further shamed individuals who were not of the "appropriate type," basically any man of fighting age who was not currently in France dying in a trench. The two combined created the foundations for our ideal Manly Man, out fighting Gerry across the channel.
In Germany, they treated such "weak men" with electro-shock therapy rather than simply shaming them out of the military and leaving them without pension or support.
World War II was very much an extension of World War I, being the direct result of the Treaty of Versailles. By then we had developed film and radio beyond simple news reporting and were telling stories to the masses... stories about manly men, unshakable men, strong, competitive, unflappable, stoic, aggressive, sexually virile men. They showed the population a manly ideal, a man that always won out against incredible odds, and always, always, got the girl at the end of the story. This was not just story-telling and entertainment, they were inspiring young men to become war material.
As WWII wound down and the Cold War wound up, our ability to tell these stories became more robust. War films and Westerns remained popular giving rise to manly icons such as Justus Barnes, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood. Action films maintained the theme well beyond and into the present day with manly men like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Mel Gibson. Each one depicting a type of masculinity far removed from the Renaissance Men of previous centuries. The ideal of the gentleman was replaced with the new ideal of the pugnacious, uncompromising action hero.
This ideology was especially attractive to men returning from war to discover that women had taken over their factory jobs. Media again worked to put them back in their place as home-makers, while technology stole from them any value that had been placed on home-making as a pursuit. Automatic washers, vaccuum cleaners, cookers, etc... meant that the full-time job of keeping a household was eroded freeing up "women's work" to the point that men no longer valued the efforts involved. No longer was beating the carpets a full day's work, just a quick go around with the Hoover and it's done!
Full-time education of children further opened up their day, and so when women started looking for meaningful employment, men had to crack down. After all, they were being told by movies and television what a REAL MAN was all about, and that didn't include letting his wife work. That would question his prowess as a breadwinner!
Feminism erupted, demanding equal rights, equal treatment, equal respect, and to be equally valued. If women get equal respect, then what kind of trophy is the man supposed to get at the end of his heroic narrative? If you work hard enough to be the manly man depicted on the screen, then you deserve to be rewarded with the beautiful woman, right? Not an independent person with their own ideas, goals, thoughts, and employment.
We're in the midst of a major backlash where some of us realize that the ideology of twentieth-century masculinity is the result of political propaganda (remember that if a filmmaker deviated from the standard narrative McCarthy would brand them a Communist). We've outgrown that dark time in our history, but the narratives remain. We continue to tell the same old stories without teaching enough media literacy to analyze them within their historical context.
We need to realize that it is not the nature of man to be aggressive, stoic, and dominant. Men's Rights Advocates point to the mighty lion or other animals, not realizing that in the pride, the male is kept for breeding and everything is actually done by the females. From horses to wolves it is the head female who runs the show, not the male. Men compare themselves to "alphas" and "top dogs" but fail to realize that the top dog in a pack is a bitch.
This template for masculinity has been taught to us through society and the media. During the process of individuation, we repress those traits which we're told are inappropriate to our sex. In men, we repress what society tells us is "too feminine" and so create the Anima. In women, they repress anything that is considered too masculine into the Animus. It is entirely a question of nurture, not nature. Certainly, testosterone plays a role, but so does civilization and society.
At school, I had a rival. Not someone I hated, no someone I fought against. Instead, we worked to out-do one another. There was no prize to be won, except that we made each other into better students. That's a spirit of competition we don't teach in the modern era. It's either backstabbing, dog-eat-dog, or we give everyone a medal for showing up on game day. Both have contributed to failures in our technology, our politics, and our social growth.
Aggressive, unethical competition results in the destruction of superior products through subterfuge and ad hominem attacks. 40 years after the advent of the x86 architecture, we're still working on x86-based computers. We're using inferior software in part because of anti-competition tactics, theft, and targeted destruction of companies by the "winning" corporations. Our current processor instruction sets are merely extensions of the 80386 processor design, with true 64-bit processors disappearing from the landscape, most people not even aware that they existed.
When I was growing up, I watched a SPACESHIP land in Florida. An actual spaceship, that had been to space, and back, more than once! Now we rely on a ship designed in the 1960s which is launched and retrieved (it crashes into the desert) in Khazikstan.
Our concept of expertise is thrown out the window because modern masculinity will not allow an individual to admit to being wrong. Somehow a man is lessened as a person if he says "you know what, you actually know more about this than I do, I'll have to revise my position." It can't be done! Just watch congress trying to navigate Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Internet policies, or National Security. They know they have no idea what they're talking about, but they can't admit that without surrendering their dominance.
Let us look back at Jung's ideal individual. Every person is both Masculine and Feminine, and it is only through integrating the Anima/Animus, or integrating both Masculine and Feminine traits into the personality, that one becomes whole and healthy. Anything else is simply broken, and our society and culture, and future generations, will continue to pay the price.