A History of Masculinity by Ivan Jablonka

Author:Ivan Jablonka [Jablonka, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141993713
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2021-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

FROM DIRTY LAUNDRY TO THE MENTAL WORKLOAD

While serial killers are rare, men who take advantage of their masculinity are less so. That is why male privilege is more disturbing than acts of violence, especially since it is almost impossible to admit. Male privilege can be defined as the whole set of advantages conferred on men due to their gender: to the extent that men are for the most part unaware of these advantages, they give in to them without restraint or soul-searching. That is why any man who holds a position of power of any sort should always ask himself to what he owes this position. Led on by the model of the male breadwinner, he may point to his work and his merit. There are three other factors that often go unnoticed, however: male privilege, the domestic exploitation of women and workplace discrimination.

The masculinity of domination confers prestige and authority on men. Turn on the television, open the newspaper, study the organizational chart: there they are. Men can sometimes be co-opted by other men in executive committees or universities, and power as such is expressed and manifested as typically masculine. In day to day life, cooking, clothing and personal care remain the domains of women, while the ‘exceptional’ talents belong to the great chef, fashion designer or professor of medicine. Similarly, the rare men practising ‘feminine’ professions (nurses, elementary school teachers, social workers) benefit from the ‘glass escalator’, in other words, accelerated career trajectories. In schools for midwives, one of the most feminized tracks of French higher education with 95 per cent females, men are expected to assume their masculine prerogatives: they are called upon to take care of the few tasks involving physical labour, step forward to serve as class delegates and take their place in the Council of the National Order of Midwives.fn11 Proof, once again, that patriarchy is not a plot, but a system.

This sexual division of labour was established in the Palaeolithic period: men were freed from the chores of mothering and nurturing that partake of the woman function. Is it possible that not much has changed ever since? In any case, many men feel that the anthropological destiny of women is to make sure that the fridge is full and the clothes clean: it’s basically their problem. Such assumptions are so firmly anchored in age-old history that even women comply; if not, ‘nobody would do it’. Why is washing the clothes the exclusive responsibility of the woman, even in young couples? ‘That’s the way it worked out,’ in the unsaid workings of habit, under the influence of automatic reflexes, in response to men’s willing incompetence and abstention.fn12

However, a fundamental break occurred over the course of the twentieth century: women entered the job market, mainly in the service sector. From that came the servitude of the ‘double workday’: salaried employment outside the home, unpaid labour within the household. In 1869, John Stuart Mill explained why women were still behind in the careers that were opening up for them: taking charge of the household absorbed a major portion of their time and attention.

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