What is a man? Exploring the concept of gender

Four articles in this issue of Humanist Perspectives focus on challenges faced by men in contemporary society. These articles presuppose we know what a man is but, in a society where a U.S. Supreme Court justice declared that she cannot define what a woman is because she is not a biologist, can we be sure? This article examines the changing nature of gender roles assigned to biological men defined as those in our species designed to produce small gametes (sperm) in a process of sexual reproduction. It is argued that it is legitimate to investigate masculinity through the lenses of sex and gender roles but that, in the final analysis, masculine identity is a part of the self.  

Although a person’s sex is male or female as a matter of biology, the ways in which femininity and masculinity are expressed may vary culturally. This was the main argument of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (2011/1949), which investigated how those of the female sex become women. Femininity, for de Beauvoir, is the inessential set beside masculinity as the essential. As such, feminist liberation would require seeing through the naturalization of feminine roles so that one can be a female on one’s own terms. In 1955 John Money appropriated the term “gender” from the study of grammar so as to distinguish between biological sex and the social roles de Beauvoir described. Thus, each sex had a gender, but the concept of gender allowed for a wide spectrum of ways one might choose to be male or female. The task of social justice movements of the 1960s and 70s was to expand those ways to include, for example, additional women’s employment opportunities and acceptance of homosexuality as a legally recognized option for men and women. This was not the first time sex-roles had changed.

With the Industrial Revolution men had been driven from feudal agricultural and cottage industries and forced to work in more distant mills and factories. This resulted in limited daily paternal contact coupled with a male role definition as financial provider (Robertson, 2017). With universal conscription justified by nationalism, qualities that make for good soldiers such as the respect for hierarchy and the repression of emotions became identified with the male psyche (Sanchez-Lopez et al., 2012). Women’s roles evolved to assign primacy to care giving and family nurturance, and women were in the forefront of legislative reform preventing maternal and child labour in mines and factories (Nathanson & Young, 2015).

With mechanization, the larger muscle mass of the average male was not needed for most jobs that, in any event, had become less dangerous. During World War II women worked in factories while men fought in war leading to a redefinition of what could be considered “women’s work.” The subsequent “Women’s Liberation Movement” defined infants as “blank slates” upon which sex-role differences were writ with some infants arbitrarily selected to form a dominant ruling class  (Fausto-Sterling, 1992). Pinker (2002) explained:

Gender feminism holds that women continue to be enslaved by a pervasive system of male dominance, the gender system, in which bi-sexual infants are transformed into male and female gender personalities, the one destined to command, the other to obey. (p. 341)

The assumption of the distant, cold and militaristic father was clearly not true for all men; however, such stereotypes likely contributed to the development of male stigma (Robertson, 2018). Since marriage was seen as an instrument of oppression (Ferree, 1990; Mohr, 1984), Canadian divorce laws were liberalized with increased entitlements to property, assets, and child support for women choosing this alternative (Robertson, 2017). Fault, defined as the failure to comply with the terms of the marriage contract, was abolished as a prerequisite for divorce (Carbone & Brinig, 1990). Laws were passed prohibiting discrimination in education and employment on the basis of sex, and affirmative action programs were implemented to ensure women had the opportunity to access careers formerly dominated by men.  

With courts and government programs primed to protect and advance the interests of women, it is not surprising that they would not be predisposed to protect men. The rationale that men are secondary to women in child care because they are necessarily absentee providers is no longer operative, but a narrative that men are potentially abusive, malevolent, and irresponsible may be viewed as a new rationale justifying such post-Industrial Revolution norms (Robertson, 2017). If the female gender has been defined to include victimization or oppression with moral superiority (Fillion, 1996; Tappin & McKay, 2016), then, in a dichotomous worldview men are necessarily seen as victimizers and morally inferior. After delivering a series of workshops on gender and self-awareness, Warren Farrell (1993) explained how language is used to cement gender stereotypes:

When women criticized men, I called it “insight,” “assertiveness,” “women’s liberation,” “independence,” or “high self-esteem.” When men criticized women I called it “sexism,” “male chauvinism,” “defensiveness,” “rationalizing,” and “backlash.” I did it politely – but men got the point. Soon the men were no longer expressing their feelings. Then I criticized the men for not expressing their feelings. (p. 12)

Gender has become a major field of study with notable theorists such as Judith Butler attempting to explicate the mechanisms by which the social construction of gender occurs. While we share Butler’s interest in gender construction, the notion that the male body was produced by the discourse of the powerful has been disputed by evolutionary psychology (Botwin et al., 1997; Buss et al., 1996; Cummins, 2005; Figueredo et al., 2005). We would like to propose that gender may be an important element of the self that is nonetheless rooted in biology. For individuals who consider their gender identity to be a major component of their personal identity, masculinity may be elaborated in the same manner as any other development of the self. As will be seen, the self has a capacity for holism which incorporates the body and biological sex.   

If gender is no longer viewed as a sex-linked role but as a socially constructed identity, then it is possible to have as many genders as there are people since each person sees themselves as a unique being. People who are biologically men can then define themselves as something else. While this can be an attractive option in a world that sees men as victimizers and morally inferior, it leaves young men without effective role models. Egalitarian feminists have unwittingly exacerbated the problem by equating sexual equality with sexual sameness, leaving men unable to make even one contribution to society, as men. Nathanson and Young (2012) argued that men need a collective identity that is distinctive, necessary and publicly valued.

We would like to propose that the key concept for unlocking the potential of masculinity is neither sex nor gender, but rather the self. This concept, as developed by LH Robertson in The Evolved Self (2020), holds that people may be stable or unstable, comfortable with who they are or looking for better ways to be themselves. Each person has one or more primary identities that give them a sense of who they are. Stability is achieved when many factors in the psyche work together to reinforce a central or core identity. For example, imagine a man who has fatherhood as a central plank of his identity. We can imagine that he might include such activities as provider, protector, or transmitter of cultural tradition as factors which reinforce and stabilize his identity as a father. There would be factors idiosyncratic to him which reinforce this strong plank of selfhood. He might be the one who renovates the cabin in the woods where his children spend vacations. He might be the one who takes his children fishing, or perhaps the one who has special worries about a certain child’s future. A sense of self as father could be robust through the many factors that act together to reinforce this web of associations. In an ideal case, a sense of psychological well-being and purpose in the world would extend from this identity. While “father” is a masculine identity, we are using psychological research on the self to understand it. Rather than the concept of gender, it may be that the concept of the self has better explanatory power. The self allows us to reunite the individual as a unitary whole. This holistic development of the unitary self could incorporate the male body and historical gender roles. It could respond to any need of men to make a distinctive and valued contribution to the world.

We believe that there is, at present, a pent up demand for a well developed masculine selfhood. It may be that this is associated with biological sex and its demonstrable traits. However, evidence for this demand may come from any boy or man who feels that elaborating a masculine identity would lead to a stronger and more livable sense of self. The authors argued in “The Opened Mind” (Robertson et al., 2020) that different cultures may provide different resources for the factors that are used to constitute a robust self. Based on the work of Paul Nathanson and Catherine Young on misandry (2006; 2012; 2015), or of Christina Hoff Sommers (2015) on schools failing boys, or of Warren Farrell (1993) on fatherlessness and related issues facing boys and men today, we may speculate that our current cultural situation does not provide rich resources for a masculine sense of self. A boy growing up without a father, in a feminist family, and attending a feminist school may lack the resources to fully elaborate a masculine sense of self. The gynocentric focus of our society, rightly celebrating the emancipation of women, may be inattentive to the needs of boys. In this regard, two recent developments are suggestive. Young men in North America are becoming more socially conservative than their female peers. This includes a return to Christianity, which in its traditional forms has a great deal to say on how to be a good man. There are powerful forces at work when the men and women of the same generation end up in two different political parties, or two different religions. Another recent development is the success of Jordan Peterson among young men. His message to take responsibility and try to make something of your life resonates among young men who apparently need to hear this. We must consider that these developments have occurred in the absence of a compelling humanist alternative guiding the development of a healthy masculinity. For whatever reason, it seems there is increasing unmet demand for resources for forming robust masculine identities.

Whether or not this demand is causally linked to biological sex, it seems that many men feel demotivated when they do not have masculine roles to fulfill. If the most common collocation to “masculinity” becomes “toxic” it seems that this can present challenges for masculine self development. Ideals of masculinity have always included fatherhood, friendship, and concern for society. LH Robertson (2018) demonstrated that male stigma exists across Canada. If there is a stigma against men, how can this be congruent with an awareness of all of the men who distinguished themselves in the human struggle for existence for all of recorded history? We are so focused on liberating Shakespeare’s sister that we are denigrating and marginalizing Shakespeare. In this strange situation, it is wise to remember Rudyard Kipling’s construction of masculinity, when he wrote “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you […] you’ll be a Man.”