Cathy reads books: The Hazards of Being Male
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I’m currently reading three books and live-tweeting my thoughts as I go, including:
Here’s the thread for one I finished recently: The Hazards of Being Male by Herb Goldberg.
Someone recommended this book to me. I can’t remember who and I’m sorry for that, but if you’re reading, thank you. And if you’re on the fence about making recommendations, please do!
If you’re short on time, you can honestly skip the book and the review and just watch this:
Herb Goldberg wrote this book in the 1970s. I just did the math and that is FIFTY YEARS AGO. This is to today like something written in 1950 is to the year 2000. I don’t know why, but that absolutely breaks my brain. Parts of it are dated, for sure. But overall it just feels so relevant.
The point of the book
The main thing I took away from Hazards is that gender is a prison.
Gendered expectations suck.
Masculinity, in particular, is a trap. Gendered expectations suck particularly bad for men. Men are punished for performing femininity far more than women are punished for performing masculinity.
It’s much better to be a tomboy than a sissy in American society. For all the movies where the female heroine wears pants and kicks ass I can’t think of one mainstream movie where the male hero wears dresses and saves the day through the effective deployment of emotional labor.
Herb makes the point that men are stigmatized for inhabiting important feelings like dependency, passivity, neediness, fear, sadness, aggression, anger towards women, closeness to other men, the need for touch, freedom/impulsiveness, femininity, irrationality, ambiguity/conflict, and defensiveness. He learns that to depend on anyone else is feminine. To rest and recharge is feminine. To ask for help is feminine. Etc.
Men are taught that these things are feminine and therefore bad. Or, they’re stereotypically toxically masculine and therefore also bad. So men deny these feelings and states of being rather than learning from and using them to the benefit of themselves and others.
This leaves men in a bind. They can either express their “feminine” aspects and be called names or suppress them and live as half a person.
Women have fought hard against gendered expectations but men just continue to use them to hurt each other unquestioningly, without evaluating how they make them feel.
“Presently [the results of these gendered expectations are] taking the form of emotional detachment, interpersonal withdrawal, and passivity in relationship to women.”
Despite being written in the 1970’s, this passage pretty perfectly describes what’s wrong with US native-born men today. I can actually make a compelling empirical case that today’s native-born men are more withdrawn from work and community and more passive in romantic relationships than 50 years ago. I’ve seen stats showing that the following are all down since 1970 for men: Labor force participation, marriage rates, average number of close friends, organizations they’re members of, frequency of sex, and number of lifetime sex partners. I think it would be really hard to make a case that today’s men are less emotional detached, interpersonally withdrawn, and passive in relationship to women than they were in 1970.
Speaking of sex, I really liked how Herb acknowledged that rigid gender roles prevent men and women from relating to each other “on an equal basis.” Gendered expectations preclude deep, adult relationships and substitute for them codependency and a fundamental failure to understand the other.
One of my biggest problems with a highly essentialist, hierarchical, inegalitarian view of gender is that the more fundamentally different and subservient you make one gender the less fundamentally human they also must become. Forcing women to obey orders from a master upon whom we depend for survival makes for a boring relationship. Herb is pointing out that it’s more fun to fuck a human woman than a glorified housepet.
I also liked his point that when men deny or suppress their anger it neuters sex. The male need to be super gentle and sensitive, denying any aggression, paralyzes the man and encourages a gentle Madonna performance from the woman.
Women are coming into their anger and aggression while men are unable to do so. So they retreat into themselves and act passive aggressively. Again, the two remain unable to deeply connect or relate.
Herb is also prescient on feminine-coded jobs.
How do we prepare men for the jobs furthest from automation when their intuition and creativity is beaten out of them from a young age? Do men really prefer engineering or are they just heavily penalized for exploring art?
The 1970’s were a pivotal era in American gender relations. Women’s earnings and workforce participation rose dramatically. Men’s labor force participation fell and their wages stagnated.
He doesn’t really mention this. One of the big failings of the book is its narrow focus. First, he’s too focused on the individual rather than systems. He’s also mostly looking at the narrow slice of the population that came to see him in private practice. The men who go to therapy, especially in the 70’s, are likely going to be whiter, better educated, and higher income than the average man.
He also overstates how good things are for women. “[Women] can be sexually assertive or sexually passive,” he writes. Well, no. If she’s assertive she’s a slut and if she’s passive she’s a prude or dead fish. Yes, men always have to be sexually aggressive. But women are policed more aggressively on this front.
Herb thinks it’s a myth that men are “culturally favored.” Citing men’s overrepresentation in early death, disease, suicide, crime, accidents, childhood emotional disorders, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I guess we’ll ignore men’s advantages in diagnosis and medical research. Not to mention men’s vast overrepresentation in literally every powerful institution including judgeships, the C-suite, the Supreme Court, Congress, management, university administration, mayorships, military, most bureaucracies, etc.
“Because it is so heavily repressed, male rage only manifests itself indirectly and in hidden ways,” Herb writes. Uh, if only my dude. Mass shooters, rapists, and DV perps would like a word.
Two more things I liked about the book. First, this quote:
“During many years of practice as a psychotherapist, I have never seen a person grow or change in a self-constructive, meaningful way when he was motivated by guilt, shame, or self-hate.” PREACH
He also takes a mostly positive/neutral view of feminism. Ex: “Hopefully, the increasing liberation of the female will convince the male she is not a fragile, helpless being who is destroyed by a remark and that she is fully capable of responding on her own behalf if she chooses.”
Would I recommend you read this book? If you’re at the end of this review and you’re still not sure how gendered expectations fuck men over, then yes. You should read it. He makes a lucid, compelling case with real-life examples. If you get the point already though, then no. I don’t think you need more than what’s here to get the good out of the book.
My dear friend who departed us recently loved it when I called my readers my babies. So, in closing, thanks for reading my babies. <3
One nit to pick: "Herb thinks it's a myth that men are 'culturally favored.' Citing men's overrepresentation in early death, disease, suicide, crime, accidents, childhood emotional disorders, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I guess we'll ignore men's advantages in diagnosis and medical research."
Isn't it true that breast cancer research gets significantly better funding than prostate cancer research? More fundamentally, doesn't the discrepancy in men's and women's life expectancy and all-cause mortality demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that men are not "culturally favored" as recipients of health care (although they may be culturally favored in some other capacities)?
This brought up three memories from school I had forgotten - I absolutely loved playing jacks with the girls in my 4th grade class - I can distinctly remember a circle of us playing on the floor of the classroom instead of going outside for recess.
As best I can recall, it was 6th grade when I was set up to go on a double date (putt putt with G_____ & C____ ) with a ‘friend’ who didn’t show. We had a great time but it was definitely awkward at school. Neither girl was in the ‘popular’ set. The same young man who set me up for that (even giving me a ring for G____ to show we were going steady) beat me up on the playground later that year. Although smaller than me, I remember clearly his sitting on top of me taunting me.
I had hit a schoolmate who was making fun of me on the bus when I was in 1st grade - I knocked out his tooth and when I got home, ran away to hide in the barn I was so horrified at what I did. I have avoided conflict and physicality since then so I accepted getting beaten up 5 years later as unavoidable.
Given I have one close male friend, and a dozen close female friends, this column DEFINITELY struck a chord and got me thinking about other aspects of my personality and behavior in work, day to day responses, and in the bedroom.