These days all of Catalonia is choosing the books that our family, partners and friends will receive on Saint Jordi’s Day. One thing you may have noticed is that there is a significant increase in the offer of books about feminism and, generally, women’s issues. These include many volumes addressed to little girls; particularly popular among them are the collections of brief biographies of prominent women, such as Elena Favilli’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (and its sequel). I have purchased a copy for one of the rebel girls in my family circle, as she specifically asked for it, though with some doubts. It turns out that Favilli’s selection includes, hold my breath!, notorious women such as Margaret Thatcher. This means that I’ll have to caution my little rebel to distinguish between the truly positive role models for women and the ones that, following current nomenclature, I would call toxic.
Now, toxic is a word that you hear now frequently in connection to masculinity (it’s a word I try to avoid as it always brings to my mind Britney Spear’s eponymous hit song and then it stays on for while…argh!). And it is a word that has complicated enormously the production of similarly inspiring volumes for little boys. Something I didn’t quite mention in my previous post about Pablo Poo’s excellent Espabila Chaval, is that the title itself highlights that the problematic teens in Spanish secondary schools are males. He makes no specific comment on gender but implicit in his diagnosis is the idea that boys, rather more than girls, need to ‘wise up’. In short, most non-fiction texts addressing men today, as the #metoo campaign still unfolds, are mainly negative and tend to present, as I have noted, masculinity as toxic. What happens, then, as a young woman posted, in a GoodReads comment on Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, if you happen to be the parent of a little boy? What advice and what stories can you offer him?
I asked my new publisher in Catalan, Hugo Camacho (www.orcinypress.com) during a recent meeting at one of the most interesting bookshops in Barcelona (Espai Contrabandos, www.contrabandos.org/espai-contrabandos) for his opinion. Contrabandos, actually a cooperative project connecting dozens of small independent presses rather than just a bookshop, specializes in books aimed at raising political awareness at all levels. Hugo and I were, thus, surrounded by a few hundred books on gender and feminism, none of which addressed specifically little boys. Hugo tells me that readers, who are mainly female, are now demanding books on women and that publishers go with the tide. He agreed that there is no room right now for the kind of book on male heroes that was common a while ago (no Good Night Stories for Rebel Boys, then). I don’t like gender separatism at all, and I think it’s about time we put together a volume with positive role models for both boys and girls but Hugo corrected my idealism and stressed we haven’t reached that point yet.
I should say, however, that this is an urgent task. The reasoning is quite simple: boys and girls are co-educated and interact socially all the time, not to mention the basic fact that, regardless of their gender and sexual preferences, they constitute future society and are already a mixed-gender community. It makes, then, absolutely no sense at all to boost girls’ self-confidence and to make at the same time all boys the object of a blanket attack that should only apply to those endorsing patriarchy. Even if we assume that the budding patriarchs are the majority, my argument still applies: it is extremely important to find for them alternative models that undermine the appeal of toxic patriarchal masculinity. The problem, I’m well aware, is that the heroic discourse based on real-life persons works better for girls today than for boys: it is easier to find female heroes who had to struggle to be respected in their own patriarchal context, even when they did not call themselves feminist (please exclude Maggie Thatcher from this argument–she was in total collusion with patriarchy). In contrast, all habitual heroic role models for boys are, one way or another, tainted by patriarchy.
Let’s take a look at the main areas of human activity to consider where we may find positive figures for young men (and start thinking of names):
*sport, including e-sports, both individual and team sports, summer and winter varieties, and, indeed, adventure sports
*arts, from the fine arts to the popular arts: writing, cinema, TV, videogames, radio, comics, illustration, painting, sculpture, performing arts…
*science and technology: laboratory work, engineering of all kinds, and a huge etc., including space exploration (which used to be so exciting!)
*intellectual work, usually expressed in writing but not the kind of artistic writing I listed above
*teaching, at all levels, kindergarten to college
*architecture, including urban planning and interventions in the landscape
*law enforcement, from police to the judiciary
*care of persons, from medicine to fire services; include care of animals, too
*humanitarian work, in and outside NGOs
*activism, including environmentalism, gender issues, racism, anti-capitalism and any other form of struggle against discrimination and injustice
*politics, both in conventional party structures in democracies or in the opposition under tyrannies
*business, particularly business following less predatory strategies
*unionism
*social media/celebrity, with youtubers and Instagrammers at the top
*the military…
At this point we start seeing where the problem lies: none of these areas is free from the patriarchal taint, with some being the most direct expression of patriarchy (the military, above all). Even in areas that should respect egalitarian principles–like unionism, humanitarian work, and activism–there have been constant complaints regarding abuses and misbehaviour, I’m sure some are fresh in your mind (Oxfam in Haiti?).
This means that we risk a total collapse of the categories ‘great man’ and ‘admirable man’, even plain ‘good man’. This might seem to be a cause for celebration, particularly for radical feminism, but it is actually a very serious problem. Plainly: without positive models to imitate, and told that they’re the product of toxic masculinity (please, always use ‘patriarchal’), many young boys might react by embracing the worst forms of patriarchal entitlement. I correct myself: many (most?) are already doing that. Patriarchy has, precisely, used this strategy against, us, women: by depriving us of positive role models and denying the achievements of many women in the past, our self-confidence has been heavily undermined. Still today, many of us exhibit what I can only call the traits of our deeply engrained slave mentality. We are now finally lashing out against patriarchy for mistreating us and this is why we need to understand that if we deny men their own positive role models this will also result in a backlash–a patriarchal one against our very own interests.
Of course, I realize that the task of finding a new, alternative list of heroes is daunting because it seems that there is hardly a man on Earth who is not guilty of espousing a patriarchal attitude and behaviour if only at specific times in their lives (the media are these days busy outing basically all public male figures). They are all presumed guilty, which is not really as it should be. Supposing that we agree, for the sake of argumentation, that, say, Mahatma Ghandi, is the greatest man in all of human History and the best role model for young boys, we immediately see the problem: it doesn’t work, just as being told that Mother Theresa was a great woman doesn’t work for girls. Too saintly. I mean, rather, someone more directly imitable–young girls may connect with Malala, but who is the equivalent for young boys? Is Leo Messi the best we can do? (if you forget for a second the patriarchal lines along which football operates).
It occurs to me that the necessary thing to do is to progress beyond the biographical approach and to use, for instance, the list of areas I mention here as the framework. If anyone is listening, I would like to buy next Saint Jordi 2019 a book that speaks both to girls and boys, and that offers portraits of great figures, both male and female, in a variety of fields. I acknowledge that I’m by no means sure that there is anyone to admire right now in the fields of politics and, indeed, the military but, perhaps we might find someone who has truly worked for justice on egalitarian foundations. Perhaps I should start a poll! The problem with the existing ones, obviously, is that the persons invited to vote for a favourite hero choose along easy, conventional lines, and not following the gender awareness criteria I am supporting. Try explaining to a young boy why Edward Snowden rather than Leo Messi should be admired (and I hope it doesn’t turn out that Snowden is also tainted, one patriarchal way or the other–yes I do recall that he lives in Putin’s Russia… deep sigh!).
Perhaps the current obsession with superheroes, leaving aside the economic interests of Marvel and DC Comics, has very much to do with the general inability to find admirable real-life men. Funnily, Superman, now 80 years old, still embodies much we admire in men, without being a patriarch (or is he?, I should check with Lois Lane) and taking into account the fact that he is a (privileged) white male. We need to remember, however, that he is an alien and, hence, even more impossible to use as role model than human Gandhi. It might be either too early–or too late if you consider Trump–for new heroes to be born that can be both masculine and anti-patriarchal, that is to say, the good men little boys need to look up to.
I publish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328. My web: http://gent.uab.cat/saramartinalegre/