David Michael Newstead's Blog, page 106
December 4, 2016
#MasculinitySoFragile: Post-Election Edition
By David Michael Newstead.
In January, I spoke with the Twitter users that popularized #MasculinitySoFragile regarding their perspectives on gender in America. Skip ahead eleven months to the present and there’s still plenty to talk about after one of the most negative presidential campaigns in recent memory. For more insight, I checked back in with @anthoknees to discuss misogyny, gender, and where to go from here. Our conversation is below.
@DavidMNewstead: In your opinion, was 2016 a watershed year for misogyny?
@anthoknees: Within my 27 years of living? Definitely. Misogyny is not new, but just like Donald Trump’s election woke a lot of people up to the white supremacy that founded this country, Hillary Clinton’s loss woke up those paying attention to the sexism and misogyny that men benefit from. There has also been an increased call to U.S. college campus administrators to take responsibility for their Title IX failures, particularly around sexual assault. And locally, the Oakland and Richmond police departments are facing massive public scrutiny for sexual misconduct and rape with minors. Yet despite all of this, cisheteropatriarchy rules supreme and men still have the final say.
@DavidMNewstead: What’s behind that patriarchal dominance? And has your view of it changed over the course of the last year?
@anthoknees: While I think about masculinities, gender relations, and kyriarchy daily, I do not necessarily think pinpointing what’s behind the patriarchal dominance is something I can easily do. Based on what I’ve lived, read, observed, it seems to me that it is a learned behavior and a societal norm that has existed throughout time and go through various, often violent, cycles. Men are not born thinking that we are naturally better, stronger, or “destined” to dominate. In fact, men aren’t born, men are created. The same applies to every gender. While our genitals are a fact, our gender identity, gender expression, and even biological sexual identity are social constructions that really do hold us and everyone around us hostage. From gender reveal parties that begin before we’re even born to the sexual scripts we are taught throughout our lives what a man is expected to be, and how a man is supposed to dominate. It then becomes a legacy that we are more than willing to uphold.
So, to answer the second question, the last year has been the year I have really gotten serious about deconstructing my colonial notions of what gender is and what it can be. What I’m seeing now is that this patriarchal dominance, as you call it, is taught to us and we gladly uphold it because it benefits men more than it harms men–in almost all scenarios. Where it falls short is clearly the violence inflicted on our entire world in the name of patriarchy. It is not just women, trans folks, femmes, or even men. This notion that men must conquer people, land, and animals is at the root of capitalism and white supremacy. The overwhelming majority of white women who voted for Trump weren’t just voting for whiteness or supposed economic security. When a candidate can talk about grabbing women “by the pussy,” imitate a disabled reporter, insinuate that he’d like to sleep with his daughter, and still win so many popular votes and electoral votes? It’s a problem that is much bigger than individual acts of sexism or misogyny, and instead indicative of a much larger societal and structural problem. So again, this year was really about realizing that all of these systems are connected and while I cannot tell you why it started, it makes sense that it has continued.
@DavidMNewstead: Where does the struggle for gender equality go from here?
@anthoknees: It’s easy for me to be cynical, but where I do see hope is the next generation. For example, I see kids who know that they’re trans at a very young age and are finding protection and love from trans folks and queers my age and older. I see a lot more freedom sexually for young women. I see a lot more talk about folks who are intersex and feel like they don’t have to hide it anymore. And I see a whole generation that is realizing that a straight identity and a binary understanding of gender may not be the best way to go. I see us listening to the youth, particularly young women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming folks of color. I see the current generation of folks who fit or don’t fit into these boxes listening to our elders. And then I see that our elders had folks to look up to, but a lot less and many who were a lot less visible than they are today. My fear is that with increased visibility comes violence and hate crimes. Anyone who is not cis, straight, male, and able-bodied is susceptible to be harmed in some way as we continue to fight. But in looking for some sort of gender equality, I see more attempts to work toward gender equity as the next step. That is at all levels, but particularly the decision-making positions in every aspect of our lives. Additionally, that equity must be guided and led with a truly intersectional framework. If we work toward gender equality or equity without a proper understanding of race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationalism, ability, and more? We’re doomed to repeat the past history of a white-woman only feminist politic, a western-only feminist politic, and overall exclusionary politics that have truly damaging consequences.
December 2, 2016
November 30, 2016
November 29, 2016
November 27, 2016
The Most Famous Beard
By David Michael Newstead.
Fidel Castro is interesting the way a time capsule is interesting, because his reign intersects with so many major events in world history: the Cuban Revolution, the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the rise of Che Guevara, the Mariel Boatlift, and more. And how many other world leaders ruled through the entire period between President Eisenhower and President Obama, between Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin? Throughout the years, a caricature of Castro entered our culture and has remained a fixture for decades. He was a bearded revolutionary in green fatigues who gave eight hour long speeches, smoked Cuban cigars, and evaded multiple assassination attempts by the CIA. Outside of that portrait, of course, Fidel Castro was a highly polarizing figure with generations worth of criticisms leveled against him regarding human rights abuses, his communist dictatorship, and the perennial impoverishment of the Cuban people. With his passing, it’s hard to say what the future holds for a place John F. Kennedy called “that imprisoned island”. Over the last fifty years, Fidel Castro went from being a young revolutionary to a senior citizen. The Soviet Union collapsed. And the classic cars in Havana became mechanical reminders of life before the American embargo in 1960. When those cars will finally breakdown and when the ruling Communist Party will finally fall from power is anyone’s guess. But Castro once said that he never shaved his beard, because it saved him time throughout the year. As it turns out, time catches up to us all.
November 25, 2016
The Movember Reader 2016
By David Michael Newstead.
Enjoy some blog posts from the last year to reflect on throughout the month of November.
Of Beards and Men: Author Interview
From the Washington Post: Gendered Prices
In Search of Theodore Roosevelt
November 22, 2016
ReThinking Masculinity
By David Michael Newstead.
Last week, I took part in a Twitter Chat called ReThinking Masculinity #AllMenCan. And of all the issues that came up during the discussion, one question seemed to be the most relevant. I don’t necessarily have an answer, but I leave this as food for thought.
How do you think your ethnic, racial, and/or religious identity affects the way you understand or express masculinity?
November 17, 2016
November 16, 2016
The Quotable George Washington #1
To Bigotry No Sanction; to Persecution No Assistance.
November 13, 2016
Men Without Work: A Book Review
By David Michael Newstead.
Nicholas Eberstadt’s recent book, Men Without Work, is a wealth of information that highlights how the percentage of working age men participating in the U.S. workforce has been steadily decreasing for decades. Eberstadt explores the scope of this phenomenon by the numbers and includes a range of charts and graphs without being hyperbolic or overtly political. Even so, his findings if accurate have widespread political, social, and economic implications that are already being felt.
How significant is this? On page 4, Eberstadt writes:
How big is the “men without work” problem today? Consider a single fact: in 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages twenty-five-to-fifty-four was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, which was at the tail end of the Great Depression.
He goes on to say:
Here, then, is the underlying contraction of economic life in America’s second Gilded Age: A period of what might at best be described as indifferent economic growth has somehow produced markedly more wealth for its wealth-holders and markedly less work for its workers.
More than anything, the book is a detailed examination about what factors are contributing to this decrease and, in a very limited sense, what could be done to address it. But there is no one single answer offered up nor can this decrease (according to the data) be attributed to increased immigration, women’s entry into the workforce, men going to school full-time, men retiring, or comparisons across industrialized countries. Instead, it seems to be a convergence of social and economic factors that may be impacting male-dominated industries first, but not exclusively. So, increased automation is one issue. Levels of educational attainment are another. But it gets more complicated when the role of race and felony convictions are added to the discussion. And Eberstadt spends considerable time on this subject.
He writes:
If America’s felon population continued to grow at the same pace as the 2004-10 period, we would expect that total to surpass 23 million persons by the end of 2016 at the latest. America’s population of noninstitutionalized adults with a felony conviction somewhere in their past will almost certainly exceed 20 million by the end of 2016 – and the current total for men within this group could now exceed 17 million, or 13 percent of all male adults in America.
Later adding:
At the end of the day, I believe that appreciating that our growing new class of men without work looks to be disproportionately composed of people with a tangled history of criminal justice system encounters will put us on a better path to dealing with their work problems, which also happens to be ours.
