Men who hate men
How will men respond to the idea that they themselves are the problem? It is one of the questions in the thesis No Man’s Land. On Men as Feminists, Interview Appearances and the Politics of Crossing Over This wasn’t easy to translate, but what I have put suggests a radical shift of opinion. I think ’the Politics of Transformation’ could also be an alternative.This wasn’t easy to translate, but what I have put suggests a radical shift of opinion. I think ’the Politics of Transformation’ could also be an alternative.from the sociologist Linn Egeberg Holmgren presented last year.
Egeberg Holmgren interviewed 28 men who called themselves feminists. The thesis’ title is borrowed from the radical feminist John Stoltenberg, who rejects the notion of a good masculinity. Masculinity is inextricably linked to the sexual objectification of women, injustice, and lack of empathy. The only option for those who want to make feminist opposition to this is to refuse to be a man. Feminism is a place to which men do not have access – a no man’s land.
Similar approaches recur with several of Egeberg Holmgren’s interview subjects. It is a contradiction to conceive of men as good men, because there is nothing good in manhood, as one of the men put it in what Egeberg Holmgren says was a surprisingly prominent perspective of the interviews. This obviously indicates a not-so-small measure of self-criticism on the part of the male feminists. In the article Killing Bill: Men as Rebellious Feminists In The Politics of Passing, Maybe this is your preferred term in relation to the preceding, but the meaning is less clear than the suggestions I have offered.Maybe this is your preferred term in relation to the preceding, but the meaning is less clear than the suggestions I have offered.one of the interviewees speaks about their feminist role models – women such as Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo character in Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill (the female avenger who does not hesitate to use force to get even with patriarchy). Had Egeberg Holmgren’s interviews done today, maybe someone would have mentioned Lisbeth Salander instead of Kiddo.
Stieg Larsson himself is said to have described Salander as an adult Pippi Longstocking. Sure, there are similarities: unconventional attire, the resistance to authority figures and peculiar family relations. But anyway … the truly I don’t know this word, this is my guess.I don’t know this word, this is my guess.black Salander and the colourfully mischievous Pippi? There are certainly big differences too. Salander, who with firearms, dildos, golf clubs and stun guns takes revenge on oppressive men, seems rather to have read SCUM Manifesto than Pippi.
And yes, Valerie Solanas is of course another idol of feminist men. Egeberg Holmgren’s interviews began in 2005, the same year the documentary Sex War was broadcast on SVT. “Men are animals”, said Roks’ then President Ireen von Wachenfeldt. But the quote is well known to have originated from Solana’s SCUM Manifesto. Or, yes ”to call a man an animal is to flatter him.”
So how will feminist men respond to this, that ”all men must die”? Not by sexual warfare and murder, but what in their case rather constitutes suicide: the abolition of themselves as men. You cannot ignore the fact that this use of language is to say the least absurd, at least for us who regard the feminist discourse from the outside. Even if you choose not to interpret the violent rhetoric literally, there seems to be division on this point, judging by the autumn debate on the Turtheatre’s production of SCUM Manifesto.
The feminist language is also problematic in other ways. For example, when Kajsa Ekis Ekman positively reviews Nina Power’s The One-Dimensional Woman in The Daily News (DagensNyheter) (9/1), she shows how the feminist jargon is too much even for the initiated: ”At times she becomes entangled in theoretical labyrinths that lead nowhere, as the ’individual self-commodification is so all-encompassing’ that there is no room for opposition. The analysis of the pornography industry, with its strained parallels to the labour market, probably only speaks to 22-year-old male students of Badiou. This also shows how anxious feminism has become: when we actually talk about real and important things, we then have to hide in a thicket so no one sees us.”
It should certainly be a concern for any movement that wants to see a social change if it starts to talk and sound like a cult to anyone who is not already convinced. And it is a pity, for there is after all something refreshing about the radical approach of the more academic feminism. Its merit is that it focuses on an existential dimension – basically, the right to be a human being, a person, rather than a gender.
The claims, that in Egeberg Holmgren’s thesis are called ‘Swedish state feminism’ have been dropped. For it is equality that is the primary objective, an equally indispensable part of the Swedish model of the welfare state. Sweden will not only be able to boast of being the world’s most egalitarian and modern country, but also the world’s most equal nation. Behind every policy proposal is a plan for equality and a climate goal. No opposition. The division lines, from left to right, are instead about how equality will be achieved.
Are there butlers in the subway, who are the solution? Dad months? Equality bonuses? Sounds very odd in English.Sounds very odd in English.Ultimately, we are all in the same boat and decide on who will cook the sausages, wash the socks and collect the kids from kindergarten. In all honesty – don’t we ever get tired of this? And is not it a bit embarrassing for the equality movement, that it still does not seem to have taken the step from the kitchen out into the world? Drop the cupcakes now, as well – it’s probably not on those that women’s emancipation depends.
When Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in Literature she commented: ”If the award is given to a woman, you also get it as a woman and you cannot know the absolute joy.” Jelinek seems to say that women can never fully be individuals, not primarily writers or whatever, but always mostly women. While women are always expected to bring a specifically female perspective to their writing, as a politician or in any other role, is there not also the same expectation that men will bring a male perspective? The male perspective is largely neutral; that of the female is different – it is visible.
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There is thus a kind of asymmetry where man is man and woman is a woman, which is deeply problematic. But radical feminism as presented in Egeberg Holmgren’s dissertation meets this problem with another asymmetry, where it is rather the woman is man, and the man animal. The woman is multifaceted, the man is one-dimensional and an undesirable anomaly.
To try to highlight this as something that seriously restricts individuals’ freedom is a far more interesting and important project than the symbolic issues of the equality zealots. The problem is that radical feminism seems to have it just as hard as everyone else in freeing itself from the societal attitudes and norms that it criticises. Therefore it seldom, or never, finds a sensible way to cross those barriers. The reasoning in Egeberg Holmgren’s interviews shows how feminist men become entangled more and more. They want to abolish themselves, but still cannot fully trust themselves in the feminist approach and get stuck in a self-destructive maze. As men, they are by definition part of the problem, not the solution.
This view is devastating for those who seek to tear down the barriers that trap people. Interviewee Ralph dreams of a society in which ”gender matters as much as hair colour.” It is certainly an appealing vision. But how to get there when those who are seeking this seem, at the same time, to be completely trapped inside the same walls, if they are not engaged in building them even higher? A feminism that continues to pigeonhole individuals into occupations based on their sex is, from the beginning, doomed to fail in its mission – at least if its mission is to liberate humanity.