Versions of Masculinity

By Kopano Ratele, Ph.D.

Side by side with the struggles around women’s gendered lives, there has also been a build-up of work around men and boys. Photo by Peter Frank.

Winning Letter
The letters page of the newest and biggest South African newspaper, the Daily Sun, of Friday 7 January 2005, carries a letter by Thembinkosi-ka-Mthwana from Dobsonville, Soweto. The letter is entitled, 'What is happening to South Africa?'; this part more likely to have been written not by ka-Mthwana but rather by one of the paper's editorial team.

Two reasons make the letter worthy of remark. The first is the big white lettering on a red-box background announcing: 'This letter of the day wins R100. WELL DONE!' Together with this, in bold letters at the bottom of the letter the editor writes: 

You certainly have raised some interesting points. What do other Daily Sun readers think? In the meantime please accept R100 for the winning letter of the day. 

Signal Views
Clearly, what this communicates is that in that letter are contained signal views about society. Leading from this is the second reason for the noteworthiness of the letter: the articulated views and assumptions of the letter. In other words, what is it that makes this a winning letter? Rather than summarise it, and for its brevity, let me quote the letter in toto: 

"Oh my lawless country! Allow me to express my views on my beloved country, South Africa. This country is lawless. Other countries enforce their laws whether the community is for or against them. In other countries everything is in order. The community knows what one may or may not do. If you do something wrong, you will bear responsibility. Why is it not so in my country? Or is this democracy, the ruler of my beloved country, right or wrong?"

"Abortion is legalised. Gay marriage is legalised. Children are allowed to lay charges against their parents. Men no longer rule over their families. What is up with this beautiful country of mine? It is getting totally out of the hand of God? Please God, save South Africa." 

Version of Masculinity 
It is important to note that the letter expresses a version of masculinity. Being a man is equated with being straight and imbued with God-given social power. Hence, in this man's view, the social order is near collapse, a great gender and sexual upheaval underway. 

To be sure, this is correct. There is such distress. But in a country where there were over 50,000 reported cases of rape last year and a long history of persecution of homosexuals, it is not women, girls, transgendered, gay and lesbian subjects to whom the state should step up their protection efforts and legitimise. It is straight males who face wretchedness. South Africa is lawless because (straight) men no longer get the respect that's theirs, homosexuals can marry, women can decide about their bodies, and only prayer can help bring society back under control.

Given such troubles the continent faces as the government-sponsored ethnic-motivated destruction of Darfur, the deepening poverty, the recent crisis in Togo, and the mind-numbing rates of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, it is perhaps hard to think of much else than trying to deal with these problems. There seems to be little time to give thought to an insignificant ranting letter writing man. However, to leave unsurfaced the writing below this troubling picture of the continent would be error. 

Such 'winning' assumptions about gender and sexuality as read in the newspaper are what lie beneath the visible cultural and political intolerance. Therefore, it needs to be made known that there are many organisations and individuals whose work seek to show that doing good toward females and homosexual citizens a society can do no better for all of itself.

Signposts of Advances
Some of these individuals and organisations have in the last year alone held dialogues on and been rewarded for showing the genderedness of different aspects of society, economics, politics and culture that would take up all the space given for this article.
I should still like to mention a few: (i) A conference was held at Fort Hare in July 2004 and aimed at providing a range of stakeholders an opportunity to exchange information on gender equality in health; (ii) Two conferences, one on Gender & Visuality in August 2004, hosted by University of Western Cape History Department and Women & Gender Studies, and the other the Writing African Women conference hosted at the same university.
Perhaps there is no better signpost of these advances and encouragement for their continuance than the efforts of Wangari Maathai who got the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for leading the Green Belt Movement. The singularity of the award was not only for being given to the first African woman; it was also in highlighting the importance of seeing the interwoven nature of environmental concerns, peace, and gender struggles.

Men and Boys 
Side by side with these struggles around women's gendered lives, there has also been a build-up of work around men and boys. These efforts are focussed on critiquing around ideas such as those contained in the letter above, and more generally around the production of masculinities, as well as how males can be mobilised into working towards gender and sexual justice. For example, since 1997 when scholars gathered together in Durban, South Africa, to talk about masculinities, there have been three other conferences on the same theme: one hosted by the Gender Education and Training Network in 2003, another at Wits University in 2004, and the last at Western Cape University in 2005.

To go with this, there has also been developing a body of research and programmes on masculinities. In a context where sexual and gender based rights still raise the heckles of editors and letter-writers it is indeed crucial to stress the importance of this work showing the centrality of gendered and sexual politics and practices. 

Crisis of Masculinities
The emergence of work around masculinities in Africa follows the attention around the world to the same. From different parts of the world that attention has been focused on what has been seen as a crisis of masculinities. The nature of the crisis has always been unclear though, with some men's movements and scholars of masculinities arguing for restoring traditional values of manhood while others posit a critical view. 

There are thus varying motivations for the engagement with boys and men's genders. Nevertheless, there does appear to be some consensus that there is a problematic that has to do with being a man. And the problematisation of manhood is visible in several spheres, from activism to the state and scholarship. In scholarship the attention can be seen across many disciplines, from African studies to theology and history, and straddling concerns from the HIV/AIDS epidemic to sociological, psychological and historical concerns. 

Critical Men's Studies
Now it is important to note that scholars within critical men's studies have noted that masculinities and men have never been absent from academic writing as they have not been from the centre of economy, culture and politics. They have pointed out that academics have traditionally had a habit of presenting the world from a male perspective and that gendered power has always been embedded in political and 
intellectual work. 

How the current interest is different is in its focus on boys and men as a gender. In other words, the studies on men are distinguishable by an approach which seeks to point out that it was not simply African people who were oppressed under colonial rule but instead that it was African as at the same time subjects of gender and sexual power.

In addition to differentiating between the sexes, one of the key insights from critical men's studies is that each sex/gender is internally differentiated. What this points to is that any analysis of political or economic disadvantage gains immeasurably from a focussing on sexual and gender practices/subjectivities of males. The advantage in politicising men's practices/subjectivities, in looking closely at doing masculinity, is realising their tenuous hold on and struggles around the demands to be 'the' man. 

But it's been clear to anyone who is interested that for example there have always been rich old gay men who are in different position to poor young bisexual men, and violent straight white urbanites in contrast to pacifist bisexual Muslim villagers. The politics and psychologies of men's gender thus reveal the instability of masculinities, the idea of there being vital distinctions amongst men. 

In other words, when society is looked at through the view of men as transgendered, bisexual, straight, or HIV positive subjects, in addition to being poor/rich, African/American, it is enabled to understand that masculinities change with circumstance, history and culture, that in fact one can only talk about several masculinities within a society. Politicising masculinities offers society to see that at any point in time there is no single idea of how to be a man. Knowing that there are dominant masculinities, and alternative and subordinate ones, a challenge can then be mounted.

*Kopano Ratele is Professor of Psychology based in Women & Gender Studies and Psychology Department at Western Cape University, South Africa.

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