In Sociology, it is
uncontested that gender is a social construction. The value that we place in
the various and complex categories of gender are socially, historically, and
culturally specific. What is often a point of discussion is the relationship
between the social construction of gender and how that gender is performed:
what counts, what doesn’t, what behaviors are a reinforcement, and which are
utter failures. Using the theoretical
model of Sarah Crowley’s “Gender Feedback Loop” and the notion of
performativity, this paper shall extend that conversation by adding the
influence of pop culture onto the learning of gender and its execution. Through
an analysis of American masculinity, its reverence for violent vigilantes like
The Punisher, and its often-tragic outcomes, this study challenges performative
masculinity as nothing more than a pro-capitalist violent fantasy, installed as
another bureaucratic mechanism of social control.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
As I
stated in a previous essay: Crawley, Foley and Shehan (2008)’s Gender
Feedback Loop:
“is a mechanism of
surveillance, social control, disciplining behaviors, and ideas of the
self. The general messages that
girls and women receive is then internalized in themselves through the
cultivation of a gender self-identity. Then, the expression of that identity is
carried out on their bodies which then become messages for others.
Messages to Selves to Bodies
This general process is common regardless of the level
of restriction a system imposes. However, in a restrictive gendered system like
we have in the US, the messages, selves, and bodies require daily affirmations
and confirmations at each stage. Each of the “messages” require conformation
that they are being properly given, the “selves” require confirmation that they
have been properly received, and the “bodies” are policed to maintain “correct”
expression based upon the system its reinforcing.
This is a panoptical surveillance that sees
this body expression as passive; docile gender bodies (Foucault 1990). The
Foucauldian “bio power” envelops this loop defining the ways that the body is
considered “normal” by the way it expresses gender. The surveillance of
womanhood begins at birth and includes every woman’s behavior (Crawley et al
2008: 93). Girls and women are called upon to cut, pluck, pull, wax, fast, and
kill themselves into a “perfect” body. To accept the creation of masculine
social bonds through their objectification and violation, girls and women
promote masculine power for economic, social, and political stability. Women
are required through this surveillance to actively practice femininity through
what they do, how people respond to them, and how they respond back. They
cannot just be “not men”, they are required by the system to “become their own
jailers.” (Crawley et al 2008). Girls
get acquainted with this Prison and self-sanctioning at a very young age.”
This
feedback loop process is not just designed to police women’s bodies, but all
bodies along the gender expression spectrum. Even though ciswomen are often
policed in a more directly aggressive form, cismen too are policed, albeit in a
more indirect way.
Throughout the process of
social learning, and the lens of our white supremacist capitalist able-bodied
heteronormative patriarchy, cismen and women get the messages that the value of
men is intrinsic to our society. It is not what [they] do, it is that they do
it. “In short, the characteristics of
the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the
characteristics of the powerless.” (Steinem 2019: 1). Since cismen hold power
in our society, the value of cismen is rooted in the biological validation of their
personhood, as is, without social, cultural, or historical context. Cismen are just
men (which is part of the normalization through invisibility). Yet, because
there is a tacit acceptance to the high value of men in our society, both the
regulation and expression of masculinity is narrow and harsh. Whereas cisgender women are allowed greater
flexibility in doing behaviors and action that are considered masculine (as
long as they still retain their broader sex appeal to cismen), cisgendered men
have a narrower range of behaviors, actions, and language to reaffirm and
strengthen their masculinity. This
narrow range of behavior is coalesced into a “tough guise” that boys and men have
to create (usually through aggression, violence, sexual exploitation and
alcohol consumption) in order to hide their human complexity and vulnerability (Katz,
2013).
As with cisgender women
in “The Gender Feedback loop”, cismen are heavily policed for their actions, inactions,
and behaviors within this veneer of masculinity. A part of this “guise”, is
narrowing the ability of cisgender men to be able to express their own complex
emotions. Because anger and aggression have been masculinized in our US culture,
this becomes the primary emotion by which men express and interact with the
world. Almost every masculine cultural and social norm, especially when
expressing intimacy around other cismen, has to be filtered through their
singular masculine emotion of anger. Therefore, a variety of intimate and
joyful expressions men display, also have a violent or aggressive component to
it. Cismen are taught to express all of their complex emotions through a
singular avenue: Anger. They are taught to express love, through anger, joy, through
anger, fear, through anger, jealousy, through anger etc. This reinforces the systemic
misogyny of
The Rape Culture by normalizing sexual coercion and verbal, emotional, psychological,
and physical violence as the “natural state of men”, rather than a toxic and
dangerous system that is deadly to everyone involved.
Additionally, it is this
masculine emotional truncation which severely inhibits cismen from being their
full and complete emotional selves, keeping them from understanding and
embracing the full intricacies of human emotions. Because men are socialized
away from human emotions not culturally identified as masculine, or only
learning to express those emotions through a masculine prism, any behavior is only
seen through that lens. This cismale emotional conditioning becomes an issue
in the developing of relationships (platonic or romantic) with cisgendered
women. A common complication that arises from this is a lot of cisgendered
men’s inability to recognize general human compassion. Since men are socialized
to see the world through this masculine “tough guise”, any amount of compassion
shown to them, especially from cisgendered women, is misinterpreted as romantic,
or more likely, sexual interest in them (Walker 2020). Cismen repeatedly and erroneously
identify cis female emotional support: praise, attention, and validation as
intimacy; while ciswomen simply understand this as kindness deserved of all
humans (Walker 2020: 80-81). It is this,
and a series of other misinterpretations/ miscommunications that not only
reinforces the rape culture but evidences the inhumanity of performative masculinity.
Gender Performativity
One of the core Sociological
understandings of gender is that Gender is not something that anyone has. Rather,
it is something that is actively created, a routine accomplishment through an
elaborate gender performance that includes clothing, hair style, language,
mannerisms, and the following of cultural and social norms (Butler 1999).
Regardless of one’s definition and understanding of gender (binary or spectrum models)
we are all socialized to perform a gender identity. The difference is that
based upon how narrow or broad the definition of gender being used, determines
the amount, type, and intensity of the sanctions against individuals that
deviate their performance away from the sex assigned categories they were given
at birth. An understanding of the gender
spectrum allows for the existence of a variety of diverse gender performances a
lot easier than a binary model, which is often more rigid in its acceptable
performances, only legitimating those gender performances that reflect societal
sex assigned categories.
The Surveillance and Accountability
sanctions of “The Gender Feedback loop” are the societal pressures that
maintain a certain limited (usually binary) understanding of gender which not
only reproduces the exclusionary, basic, and incorrect understanding of gender
with each subsequent generation, but it also makes us our own jailers. From the
everyday confirmations or sanctioning of gender in interactions, to the institutional
systemic control through regulation and surveillance, it is all about gender
conformity; the conformation to the definition of gender that a society has
accepted. Therefore, if we all accepted a gender spectrum model of
understanding gender, your gender would be whatever you put on in the morning
without sanction or appeal from anyone else. Unfortunately, most of our
institutions have normalized and accepted the binary model, which puts many
sanctions in place to reaffirm it.
The reaffirmation of
gender happens through the societal acceptance of how we present our bodies out
in the world (Crawley et al 2008). Since we, as people, exist within a society
governed by cultural and social norms, we are representative of our culture by
our simple existence in it. We are walking cultural advertisements, billboards
for everything, including gender. Thus, our bodies become a reflection of
acceptable cultural ideas, and if those bodies are regulated, cut, incarcerated,
or eliminated, then the undesirable message for certain gender expressions
becomes clear. This is more potent the further away the body display and expression
is from what is considered acceptable. In this context, gender is not just
something that we “do” through an elaborate performance, gender is something
others do to us. Whether that is keeping us in a closet or forcing us to live
in a skin we despise, this gender assault is all about Power.
Masculinity, Power
Dynamics, and “Aggrieved Entitlement”
Crawley et al (2008),
Butler (1999) and countless other scholars have shown us that we live in a
gendered society. While the necessity of the gendering has solidly been put
into question, it is still something we wrestle with constantly. This is
predominantly because of the way that we have gendered the idea of Power, and
the systemic valorization of maleness and masculinity within all social
institutions, especially those that dispense power (Government, Military
Economy). We think of and define power in very masculine ways, using adjectives
that have only been given a masculine context. This not only normalizes the idea
of power as masculine but forces other non-masculine, nonbinary individuals to
use the masculine language of power to describe something that has no gender.
We double down on the
gendering of power through the bureaucratic mechanism of social organization.
According to Weber (2019), a bureaucratic social order is designed from a
Bureaucratic rational authority that seemingly gives people access to power
(through a contrived methodology of convoluted alienation) and treats everyone
the same (regardless of access to resources and opportunities). Because we
culturally value maleness and the performance of masculinity in our culture,
the avenues to power and the egalitarian effervescence bureaucracy touts, is
predicated on how close an individual can perform and express the desired masculinity.
This is the formation of the patriarchy as a social order; one that harms men in
uniquely specific ways.
Most people, regardless
of gender, begin to learn these gender messages and the “legitimate pathways”
to social gender acceptance through the social learning process of
socialization. Gender socialization is specifically where individuals learn
which gender model their society supports through the cultural and social norms
that they receive. Yet, what is often lost when discussing gender socialization
is the basic tenet of socialization itself; it is a mechanism of social
control. Through this particular lens, we see the hypocrisy of a lot of the
gender messages that cismen receive throughout the life-course. Sure, they are
valued for their innate assigned “maleness”, but the limited expression of that
identity intentionally makes masculinity fragile; able to be revoked or
reissued at a moment’s notice for any behavior, in any context, at any time. Men
are then forced to have to constantly aspire to validate their maleness through
their behaviors, decisions, and language; effectively “chasing” after their
masculinity (Walker 2020). The result is that men constantly check themselves,
or are checked by others (cismen, and ciswomen) cultivating an internalized
insecurity that is weaponized by the bureaucracy, in all its institutions, to
maintain the social order.
One specific way this
insecurity is weaponized is through the Provider/reward model. Within a
bureaucratically organized gender binary system, the acceptable male/masculine
gender performances are so acutely defined, that it cultivates the unique
consequence of enculturating men to a false consciousness of success. Men, cismen specifically, assume that if they
follow all, or most of the masculine scripts, that they will be rewarded with
prosperity and happiness.
According to Kimmel
(2013):
Most American men live
within a system in which they were promised a lot of rewards if they played by
the rules. If they were good, decent, hardworking men, if they saddled up, or
even more accurately, got into the harness themselves, they would feel the
respect of their wives and children; if they fought in America’s wars, served
their country fighting fires and stopping crime they would have the respect of
their communities. And, most important, if they were loyal to their colleagues,
and workmates, did an honest days work for an honest days pay then they’d also
have the respect of other men (26-27).
One of Kimmel’s (2013)
interviewees sums it up like this:
“Look, I thought if I did
it right, did everything they asked of me, I’d be ok, you know? Play ball and
you’d get rich, you’d get laid[1]…And now you’re telling me,
“Sorry, but you aren’t going to get all of those rewards”…I wouldn’t have done it if I knew I wouldn’t
get those goodies. How can [Society] take it away from us? We earned it! We
paid our dues! We did everything [Society] told us, and now you’re saying that
we aren’t getting the big payoff?...It all seems unfair (p 27)
What this man is expressing is a sense of “aggrieved
entitlement”, a sense of entitlement that can no longer be assumed and that is
unlikely to be fulfilled” (Kimmel 2013: xiv). Recently, this has been
weaponized in the government to manifest and push forward a far-right political
agenda fueled by white cismale fragility.
Yet, this dangling promise of this “bid time return” where cismen are given
what they believe they are owed, is a duplicitous scheme to keep cismen in a
state of false consciousness, wrapped up in their fragilely masculine,
emotionally stunted prison of aggrievedly entitled insecurities. These men are
thereby convinced that masculinity can be achieved, (and they can be rewarded) by
the performativity of empty rituals and toxic interpersonal behavior that has
no societal benefit other than the maintenance of the gendered status quo and
imbalance of social power.
The Cult of Masculinity
The
sense of aggrieved entitlement that cismen often feel, centers around not just the
feeling of not being given what they were promised, but that they were somehow
duped; and because the world has told them that they are valued and important
since the time they were born (general message of gender socialization), this feels
like injustice. This is not
injustice. But it is against their oath in the cult of masculinity: The Guy
Code, the collection of attitudes values and traits that together composes what
it means to be a man (Kimmel 2008:45).
·
A repudiation of the Feminine (or anything
that seems “weak”)
·
Success is measured in wealth, power, and
status
·
Strength is measured by stoic inertia. (being
the proverbial rock)
·
Exude an aura of daring aggression
Much of this “guy code” validates itself by
reaffirming narrow and tired gender stereotypes that are reinforcing a binary
understanding of gender and the white supremacist heteronormative ableist
capitalist patriarchy.
Additionally,
men who follow the code, and actively work to shed themselves of typical human
emotions by stripping away their emotional complexity, and shredding their
senses of compassion and empathy, feel that they have sacrificed. Admittedly,
they do not often attribute the feelings of disappointment, sacrifice, and
entitlement to their elected loss of emotional complexity and a lack of caring.
They decide instead, through a plethora of scapegoats, to blame cis women,
Trans and Nonbinary people, Black people, Latinx folks, and anyone else whose
success and happiness is thought to be at the expense of White cismen. Yet, other marginalized groups achieving/exercising
their rights, and gaining status and power for themselves does not hurt White cismen.
Our masculinity is the problem.
Regardless
of if boys and men follow the code or not, they still must deal with it every
single day. Through constant sanctions and surveillance, boys’ masculinity is
heavily policed in social interactions, from friends and relatives to strangers
of any gender. If they are not going to come into the fold, and under the thumb
of “The Guy Code” then they must actively resist it. Unfortunately, this active
resistance has created toxic masculinity variants of this code, rather than an
acceptance of gender neutral and more fluid behaviors. One such alternate are
Incels (Involuntarily celibate) or “Beta male” ideology that often places more
value on intelligence and courtesy. Because they believe they are morally and
intellectually superior to their “alpha” counterparts, they justify their
masculine entitlement to women by convincing themselves they are better people,
rather than just a different flavor of misogyny.
As I wrote in an essay
in 2018:
[Incel/Beta male] ideology sees women’s bodies as
products that they pay for with dinners, vacations, clothing etc. So, from this
perspective, if these men provide material goods for women, then they should
have access to their bodies. They
believe that if they are nice to women and are “supreme gentlemen”, then they
have claim to them. Often “Incel” men frequent predominantly online spaces like
4chan and reddit from which this isolated subculture has developed this new
warped sense of toxic masculinity that is both fragile (able to be
deconstructed with the slightest slip up) and preyed upon by our veracious
capitalism.[5] The result of which is a group of emboldened misogynists whose
lack of “sexual conquest” of women they believe is due to feminism. In their mind, feminism is a movement that
hates men; and that any feminist progress is one that hurts men’s sexual access
to women. Thus, when their masculinity
is shattered by women being able to have free and equal choice, these men have
lashed out violently due to the imagined slights by women that they have
perceived.
Accept it, reject it, or mutate it, masculinity is a force
in all people’s lives: individually, communally, and institutionally. The voracity with which people fight for, or
against it, becomes reminiscent of religious belief.
Sociologically,
a cult is understood as an informal and transient type of religious
organization or movement usually distinguished from other forms of religious
organization by its (usual) deviation from the dominant orthodoxies within the
communities in which it operates…combining elements of various religions,
focusing their allegiance on specific inspirational and charismatic leaders/characters
arising in mass during period of social unrest or change (Jary and Jary 1991:
98).
Masculinity has been
built as a cult. It’s codes, rituals, evangelizing of figures/leaders are the
blatant power language of bureaucratic social institutions; allowing
masculinity to take hold and root in every aspect of our social apparatus, so
that all institutions, especially the powerful ones, can entice, recruit, and convince
individuals into accepting masculinity as their religion, whether that be by actual
membership (cismen) or by association (ciswomen through patriarchal bargaining).
Each of these institutions promotes and supports the growth of masculinity in
various ways: whether that be the lobbying for the support of irrational gun ownership
legislation (because Guns are coded masculine), the elimination of reproductive
rights for anyone with a uterus, (men need to secure their legacy through
children) restrictions on funding for non-STEM education, to the support of
capitalism during a health crisis. All these actions are in place to validate
masculinity.
However, the validation
of masculinity through these institutions is only maintained at the macro
level. The cultish system of masculinity makes sure that individual’s grasp of,
and valorizing for achieving masculinity is left tenuous. For the purposes of social
control, Masculinity remains elusive and fragile for most men. Hard to catch,
difficult to keep. Because the conditions of masculinity are vague and dynamic,
men spend most of their time performing masculinity rather than being able to
achieve it. Masculinity becomes a motivational tool for cismen to exist within
the world, rather than something that is a part of them. Thus, Men drape themselves
in the costume of masculinity in order to hide their insecurities, emotional
trauma that following such a cult has caused; to the benefit of no one except
the institutions that peddle it
CASE STUDY: THE PUNISHER AND THE UVALDE
POLICE DEPT.
Basics
On May 24 2022, a gunmen entered Robb
Elementary school unimpeded, with an AR style rifle.
He shut himself in two adjoining classrooms and was not engaged with for over
an hour. In that time, the shooter was able to kill 19 children and 2 teachers.
Off duty border patrol agents bypassed the local police, entered the room, and killed
the suspect. In the intervening hour
plus, when the gunman was not engaged, the Uvalde police department cordoned
off the area, kept civilian parents back from entering the building to rescue
their children, and then waited for more personnel, and military style weapons,
before the breach was made.
A Failure to act, and a successful
performance?
The
Uvalde police department has been rightfully criticized for their actions on
nearly every level. They actively went against the training they’d been given
on how to deal with an active shooter thereby costing more lives. One
particularly damning piece of evidence is a hallway video where police waited
for over 60 minutes, getting hand sanitizer, fist bumping each other, and
checking their phones, while gunfire could be heard along with the screams of
children. The police failed, the training
failed, the “good guy with a gun” ethos failed, and masculinity failed. Yet, all
these things will survive, and the cult of Masculinity will rise, strengthen,
and spread. Because, regardless of the outcome, (no matter whose life is lost
in the process) the expression of masculinity in a patriarchal system is about
control. It is a label assigned to individuals based upon superficial performances,
platitudes, and language that they use. Masculinity is a costume; a security
blanket used to seek acceptance; daily affirmations that convince men they are
worthy and that they matter, only to keep them functioning in the larger
bureaucratic machine.
The Soft Power impact of Pop Culture on Masculinity
and Police
Since
the late 1970’s, there has been a wave of examples of films depicting Lone Wolf
Police or military individuals that break from the system to fight “the bad
guys”, whether they be battling space aliens, or terrorists, sans shoes. These
films became the cornerstone of US masculinity. These men had no armor, nor
back up…just their muscles, and a gun. This began to connect the ideas of
vigilante justice with expressions of Masculinity that would later be
weaponized by Police and the military through various forms of warrior style training
(Stahl 2009).
This collusion between pop culture and the
military, is a part of the Military Entertainment Complex [2]. Playfully referred to as “Militainment”, this
is a part of the larger Military Industrial complex in which Hollywood films,
television, and video games, are supported by the military (giving them access
to military style weapons, gear, and tactics; thereby lowering their production
budgets) in exchange for a favorable image of police and the military in the
final product, to boost recruitment. This becomes even more salient since the
advent of pilotless drone warfare have allowed video games to simulate the verisimilitude
of actual war.
Additionally,
since the majority of this ‘militainment’ content is gendered and marketed
almost exclusively to boys and men, they also shape the gender socialization of
boys to be soldiers, providers, and protectors.
‘Militainment’ is also masculine entertainment, where all of the
masculine gender norms are reinforced with a glossy sheen of popularized militarized
violence on top, without any liability…because it is a fantasy.
The Punisher: Fantasy in
a Flak jacket
One of these icons of
masculine ‘Militainment’ is Marvel comics’ Frank Castle: The Punisher. A
military veteran (Vietnam or Afghanistan depending on the comics run) who
witnesses the death of his family in Central Park due to mob violence. Unable
to deal with his grief, Castle vows a one-man war on criminality, murdering his
victims. In most of the depictions of the Punisher (outside of the Warren Ellis
run), Frank Castle is just a man with a certain set of (masculinely violent) skills,
and strong brand marketing (His costume is a t-shirt with a huge white skull on
it). Castle has no superpowers, just himself, his resiliency, and a gun. The
Punisher gets embraced
by the police and the military because, much like the
militainment films of the 80’s featuring Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Castle doles
out vigilante justice; often without consequence, remorse, or accountability. This is what a lot of men
are socialized to desire, power: the ability to do what you want even when
others resist. Even though the creator of the Punisher
has stated that the character is misinterpreted;
and should be seen as a failure of law and order; through Castle’s
masculinization and marketing, many cismen embrace him as the opposite; as the
True Justice of Masculinity.
According
to Abraham Riesman (2020) Frank Castle seems to be the patron
saint of police, Military, and Private security:
“Marine
Corps veteran Christopher Neff…owns thousands of dollars in Punisher comics and
merchandise, has a Punisher tattoo, and even designed one of his wedding cakes
to look like the character’s distinctive skull logo. Neff goes out of his way
to say he keeps his admiration for the character “safely in the realm of
fantasy,” but as far as fantasies go, it’s a powerful one. “Frank Castle is the
ultimate definition of Occam’s razor for the military,” he says. “Don’t worry
about uniforms, inspections, or restrictive rules of engagement. Find the bad
guys. Kill the bad guys. Protect the innocent. Any true warrior? That’s
the dream.”
Jesse Murrieta… served an
array of roles in law enforcement, including working at a Department of
Homeland Security prison, transporting federal inmates with the U.S. Marshals,
and doing freelance security work, and he’s a Punisher addict. He’s
particularly enamored of the skull: He owns rings in its shape, wears a dog tag
bearing its image, and spray-painted it onto the body armor he wears for work.
Like Neff, Murrieta sees an element of wish fulfillment in the character.
“Frank Castle does to bad guys and girls what we sometimes wish we could
legally do,” he says. “Castle doesn’t see shades of grey, which, unfortunately,
the American justice system is littered with and which tends to slow down and
sometimes even hinder victims of crime from getting the justice they deserve.”
Yet, the attitude and marketing strategy of this
‘Militainment’ only goes so far as its ability to bestow masculinity on others.
It allows men to fill in their cracks of insecurity through the selling of this
imagery and iconography, safely, and without consequences. It is a part of the
performativity of Masculinity. Men learn through this marketing, to mask fear
and self-doubt through unearned confidence and bravado, or that they need to
drown it with alcohol or other forms of self-medication, or you’ll be able to
ignore it with a big enough gun in your hands. The image of the Punisher is just
the latest costume masculinity offers to men, then uses it as an irrational
standard by which to judge them.
Masculinity as Criticism
As
stated above, masculinity has a greater level of scrutiny. The limited and
specific behaviors and norms that make up acceptable masculinity in the
bureaucratic structure are consistently policed by individuals, groups, and institutions.
Nevertheless, masculinity is still valued, integral to the social control of
millions of men in the US, and a strong marketing tool. And rather than take
measurable and significant steps to try and change the definition and understanding
of masculinity, or at least decreasing its overall importance to the operation
of our social systems, our culture decides to “double down” on masculinity and
use it as criticism.
Amongst
the legitimate criticism of the Uvalde police department for their inaction,
and the rational and sensible calls for stricter gun legislation to an outright
ban of assault weapons, there has been a consistent narrative critical of the department’s
actions through the lens of masculinity. While a broader criticism of
masculinity is valid, this narrative instead criticized the department for their
lack of masculinity.
Couched in masculine rhetoric,
the Uvalde police have been called dishonorable,
and branded as cowards. In the typical internet pile on that happens
on social media, every pro-gun weekend warrior, with any hint of tactical
training in their background, poured over the footage pointing out the various
errors that the officers involved made, making sure to their audience that the
problem wasn’t with the training or the weapons. The problem, in their mind,
was that the Police officers weren’t ‘man enough’. When it was revealed that one of the police
officers waiting in the Robb elementary hallway, had
a Punisher logo lock screen on their phone, some of the criticism dipped
into the rightful questioning of why police officers should emulate violent
murderous vigilantes. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversations was also in the
vein of “What
would Frank Do?” as a way to preserve the sanctity of their precious pro
capitalist phallic obsessed massacre prone masculinity.
CONCLUSION
Masculinity as criticism,
is a part of the way “The Gender Feedback Loop” functions. This criticism
regulates performativity and the multiple and various ways that boys and men
can lose and regain their fragile “man card”. Pop Culture is a tool for that regulation,
and through the commercialization of his iconic image, Frank Castle, the
Punisher, has become the latest and most recent paragon of toxically violent
masculinity, worshiped by cismen who fantasize about dystopian lawlessness as
an excuse to be able to kill people without repercussions. This fantasy, while
disturbing, and illustrative of deeply rooted racist, ableist and misogynistic beliefs,
is also a distraction for cismen from the feelings of isolation, alienation,
and emptiness masculine gender socialization causes in its strive to maintain
social control.
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________2013
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Alicia 2020. Chasing Masculinity: Men Validation and Infidelity New
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Weber,
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University Press
[1]
It
needs to be pointed out that a lot of these expectations on the part of men do
not take into account the agency of cisgendered women, that a lot of cismen
believe that they would be presented with women as a reward for being “a good
boy”.
