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[drunk theory question] do you all think revolutionary masculinity is an oxymoron? if not, what would it consist of (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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was discussing this with a friend of mine (she's an anarchist but she actually organizes and shit). she was saying there can be no such thing as revolutionary masculinity because the two things are contradictory. but i'm a marxist so contradictions really butter my bread.

i think in a utopian, communist world gender identity would be completely different, to the point where it might not even be legible to us today, but my question is more about how we get from here to there. basically, can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism, or does that not even make sense

feel free to dunk on me if this is a dumb question

Death to America

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism

Dunno. There are certainly ways men can be better, by reaching a fuller understanding of "traditional" gender roles (which can be largely understood as superstructure for economic relations between men and women rather). There's bad stuff in there that you and I are doing unknowingly. But men being better is not the same thing as being better men: if we take our blueprint of what not to do from what masculinity currently is, we are pointing in a new direction.

It has been the case that men have changed what it means to be a man within the bounds of masculinity. Dworkin gives an example: for a long time going to war made you manly. Then men refused the Vietnam draft, and suddenly that refusal no longer meant cowardice: instead it was a bold statement of your masculine individual power against the system, your individual moral clarity and strength, blah blah. But it was integrated within the existing ideological framework of male supremacy where we claim transcendence (courage, self-knowledge, achievement, ambition, what you do) and relegate women to immanence (passivity, beauty, what you are).

I suppose that if men get "better" the meaning of masculinity may improve, but I think that "revolutionary masculinity" is going to be subsumed into ordinary cultural masculinity and end up reinforcing it. For instance, if a revolutionary man loves the people, that will be incorporated as meaning that a man is capable of self-sacrifice and transcendent love in the old chivalric way, relegating women's love to passivity. I do not know how we can do these things without reifying the Subject/Other division. Perhaps by aspiring to neuter revolutionary ideals, not revolutionary masculinity, with vigilance that the two don't merge. That would need visibility of women who are revolutionaries and whose traditionally-feminine qualities are meaningful parts of that, not just upholding male supremacy values and showing off "mannish" women who are revolutionaries.

So I guess revolutionary masculinity is probably not possible. I suppose that if women achieve real economic liberation from men, the superstructure will no longer need to justify their oppression and we will have an easier time rescuing gender identities from what they are now.