Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short by Matthew Gutmann

Author:Matthew Gutmann [GUTMANN, MATTHEW]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

PROTEST AND THE SEMANTICS OF ABUSE

The politics of the women-only Metro cars on the Mexico City subway are manifest in the language employed to describe the problem these cars seek to address. My friend the radiator repairman, Roberto, lives an hour and a half from his workshop in the neighborhood of Colonia Santo Domingo, where I used to live. He spends most of his three-hour-long daily commute on the Metro. I asked him about men, women, and sexual assaults on the subway. Roberto suggested that we distinguish between “assault” and “touching.”7 I told him I thought he might be missing the point.

If the former meant harassment, molestation, and assault, whether physical or verbal or both, the latter for Roberto meant simply to touch, to come into physical contact inadvertently, an action that invariably happens on a crowded subway car. Touching happens because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control, but assault is caused, he believes, by “culture” and “education,” meaning here not so much formal education as upbringing by parents. Roberto was sure that better child-rearing could significantly reduce assaults on the Metro. He agreed that it makes a difference whether one is pushed by a man or a woman, and whether it was a man or woman getting pushed. For a woman, even if you are getting crushed by others inadvertently, it isn’t fun, but it’s not the same as when a guy pushes against you with his shrimp. Words to live by.8

Although I have some middle-class friends who use the Metro, by and large the Metro is for working-class riders who may not have an alternative means of transportation. But even for those in the working class, the subway is not for everyone. I met my old friend Delia when we were first neighbors on Huehuetzin Street in Colonia Santo Domingo, a rough-and-tumble area deep on Mexico City’s south side. She and her family were among the squatters and land invaders—the local word is “parachutists”—who descended on the area beginning in September 1971. Like her husband, Marcos, Delia worked for decades cleaning up classrooms, hallways, and offices at the nearby National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM. Both Marcos and Delia are used to physical challenges, including the gangbangers who are as much a part of the fabric of the community as they are.

The words they use to describe violence of various kinds, the people they hold responsible, and the situations they describe shed light on popular perceptions of how much about violence can be tied to men and maleness, and how much to poverty and hustle, or to infrastructural factors that are present in Mexico City, such as overcrowded subway cars. Their language of engagement with social problems, including violence, reveals underlying assumptions about causes and solutions, too.

But when it comes to the Metro, Delia says, she’d rather not even go. She’ll squeeze into surface road jitneys and buses instead. “The Metro scares me,” she told me. I admitted that, despite the injunction above the doors in subway cars—“BEFORE ENTERING

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