The Crisis: Part II

[This is Part II of an ongoing series of posts discussing some aspects of the Crisis of American Masculinity. In this portion, I look at a series of cultural movements and how they fit into the crisis. Enjoy the ride!]

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Anti-Abortion

First, let’s consider the case of recently guilty-pled Anti-Abortion bomber Eric Robert Rudolf. That guy that bombed the Olympics, you know him… that kind of chubby fella who was an ex-cop or something and he was, like, there or something, and he did it, he bombed the Olymics in Atlanta cause he spilled coffee on his pants or something or other... right?

No. Eric Robert Rudolf, serial bomber, was found trudging through a trash dumpster in Appalachia after evading investigators for a string of incidences: He bombs in the name of saving the lives of the innocent fetuses of the world. Anybody who does not immediately grasp the irony of this sense of logic need not read further- nothing in this world will make meaningful sense to you. Eric, of course, was always erring on the side of life.

Don't worry though, folks: On the run from Johnny Law, Mr Rudolph made quite a folk celebrity out of himself. According to Answers.com:

It is thought that Rudolph had the assistance of sympathizers while evading capture. Some in the area were vocal in support of him. Two country music songs were written about him and a locally top-selling T-shirt read: "Run Rudolph Run." Many Christian Identity adherents are outspoken in their support of Rudolph; the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, notes that "extremist chatter on the Internet has praised Rudolph as 'a hero' and some followers of hate groups are calling for further acts of violence to be modeled after the bombings he is accused of committing."

This condition is not some aspects of redneck outliers- it is part of the American identity - Rudolph could have lived with the assistance of friendlies almost anywhere in the country. In no part of America will you find a vacuum of voices supporting the Anti-Abortion movement- it is woven into the thread of the country. Many people will vote hard-line solely on the candidate's stance on abortion alone, but, as evidenced by the CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll here [second poll down], the anti-abortion movement does not have a firm societal toehold. The only thing that most of these polls show is that most Americans think Abortion needs stricter limits and definition, but not elimination.

The Anti-Abortion movement at its very root has a core issue of the loss of American Masculinity: the loss of the Male’s control of the world. Men, with legal abortion, have no reliable ability to determine the effects of their actions without becoming reasonable parties in the relationship- women, now, have control. This sits just fine in many of our (men) hearts; but the loss of control of any kind is simply unbearable for many.

Interestingly, this one issue has led to innumerable conflicts on sexual morality. There’s the issues surrounding contraceptives and their distribution, sexual education, and varying versions of Roe v. Wade. Terri Schiavo also saw the Anti-Abortion movement move into all rights-of-life issues in strange new ways.

Sexual education is one arena of hypocritical intrigue for the American Male. We have told AIDS infected Africa that until they decide not to have sex, we won’t help. We have severely failed at even easing the pandemic of AIDS. We have attempted to reprogram American youth to abstain from sex against all of their hormones. Those card-carrying WWJD abstaining youth have let to higher numbers of dangerous, unprotected sex. A boy who has signed on to this program has been found to be up to 4 times more likely to engage in anal sex; oral sex has been, in a Clintonian irony, declared “abstinence.”

Whoops...

So we, us American Men, have tried to control our urges, and in the process, tried to control everybody else’s, and we’ve failed at both. So our sexual crisis, our crises of sexual control, has dropped back in our laps with so called “revenge consequences:” those unintended problems that are worse than finding reasonable solutions to the problems to begin with.

Is abortion the same problem as teaching abstinence? Not really. The difference is, of course, that it might very well be possible that giving people reasonable and healthy options, educating them on those choices, and supporting them might lead to a more sexually healthy America across the board; not to mention the projection of our ideological health globally, where they desperately need it [Africa!].

But, hey, what if they choose wrong? Isn’t that the worst possibility, them not choosing what I want them to?

The American Male- afraid to give up control.


Anti-Gay

The fear of same-sex marraige still is a hot-topic and still deeply resonates with the population. Homophobia has deep ties to religion, but in some unexpected and suprisingly contemporary ways (from Scott Bidstrup):

As crusade after crusade failed to permanently dislodge the Muslims from the holy land, Muslims became a favorite target of propaganda, including anti-gay propaganda. William of Ada wrote:

"According to the religion of the Saracens [Muslims], any sexual act whatever is not only allowed but approved and encouraged, so that in addition to innumerable prostitutes, they have effeminate men in great number who shave their beards, paint their faces, put on women's clothing, wear bracelets on their arms and legs and gold necklaces around their necks as women do, and adorn their chests with jewels. Thus selling themselves into sin, they degrade and expose thier bodies; "men working that which is unseemly" they receive "in themselves" the recompense of their sin and error. The Saracens, oblivious of human dignity, freely resort to these effeminates or live with them as among us men and women live together openly."

And so these days we see the same fears and methods arisen again, both from those propagandists responsible for the Swiftboat Veterans and from the religious right and their cultural stronghold in America.

The religious right, the conservative Evangelicals, are an interesting case. I doubt it would take a very deep peering to see the power-structure of the gender dynamics in their system of thought. For them, the only explanation is one of Tradition- and if I say the term "traditional gender roles" we all know exactly what I'm talking about: a power-centered man in a family (and by extension, in every branch of society) who determines essential social outcomes (garnering income, building internal ideological identity, not asking for directions, etc) supporting and supported by an unempowered passive "wife." Ladies, for those of you that have been taught you could have it all, notice how the cultural tides are turning...

An intrinsic aspect of contemporary homophobia is the threat from the loss of masculinity in men. Certainly this isn’t the only cultural undercurrent of homophobia, but it must be a prevalent one: for a certain type of Man, the worst type of man that there is is one who does not act like a Man (again, this "Man" is a gender, a reflection of a power dynamic. Many women [Condi, Karen Hughes, etc] fit into this archetype of power maintenence).

It seems that this type of Man has come to prominence in America of late .