Sucheta Dasgupta

Kathmandu:

To do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There is a saying that if you hold someone down long enough, a part of you remains down there with them (her?) holding them down. Have the same practices that have oppressed women done the same to their menfolk, to the same extent, though in different ways. Well, perhaps, they have and freedom, not airy-fairy liberation, is our common goal. And even as we empathise, even agree, with Robin Morgan when she says: “I feel that “man-hating” is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them,” we must not forget that we must also look beyond and hold ourselves primarily responsible for our history. “I know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the Romans are but sheep.” William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”.

The suggestion of masculism should have come from women since they were the party actively into gender philosophy. (In fact, it did. I coined the term for my personal diary at age 12 in 1986 trying to strike a fair deal with the masculists then living around me. That doesn’t count in this context, though, because I was then not a woman (hee hee!) yet.) An ironic fact, though, is this that first wave feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, second wavers like Beauvoir and even some third wavers like Camille Paglia are often more masculist than feminist because they follow the male model of perfection in individual mankind, consciously (to initiate dialogue) or otherwise (for lack of example).

The first kind of secular response to feminism came from Ernest Belfort Bax, a socialist theoretician in the height of socialism at the beginning of the 20th century and an associate of Karl Marx. Bax wrote The Fraud of Feminism (bad title!) in 1913, which was in essence the first masculist text. However, the term masculism did not gain usage until 20th century-end and even today is sometimes misspelt “masculinism” or even confused with misogyny. There are three main strands of masculist philosophy and, as mentioned earlier, as many varieties of its adherents as the human populace.

Men’s rights/Neopatriarchists (So now you know who the enemy is. At least, you know their concerns. The beginning of language!): They want to have the cake and eat it, too. But at least, they want to eat the cake and admit it. These men ascribe to feminism the high rates of divorce, alienation of the genders, female chauvinism, love-shyness, disintegrating communities, fatherless children, high school dropout, drug addiction, consumerism, teenage pregnancy, male suicide, violent crime (especially murder), road rage and overfilled prisons (oh dear!). And they want a share of child rearing experience and views and father’s rights! They are vociferously resentful about women getting some unfair “advantages” and zealously promote their getting the others. They feel threatened by “covert matriarchy”, swear by so-called gender differences and complementary nature of the sexes (of course, women are the smaller half) and believe that women (more than) and men are “necessarily” dependent on each other (and not only for procreation, love or human stimuli). Example: “The Inevitability of Patriarchy” by Steven Goldberg

Men’s rights/Mythopoetic (I don’t mind sexist swearwords spent on an honest cause: the person is indulging his romantic dream of The Perfect Invincible Male. Such dreams should exist and be encouraged for his sake and that of others, both men and women, to grow and match against. It’s a different matter altogether that women are yet to reclaim their own idol/inspiration): They celebrate the Wild Man. Warrior, King, Shaman, Patriarch, Pilgrim, Warrior, Magician, King, Wildman, Healer, Prophet, Trickster, and Lover are their favourite stereotypes. They are naturalists and their views often grounded in robust common sense. Their movement stems from Carl Jung’s findings and the Chinese concept of yin and yang. They support a benign patriarchy and usually underestimate women enough to ignore them a little. They are usually interesting and attractive persons to meet and interact with. Example: Poet Robert Bly Men’s rights/Profeminist (Men can’t primarily be feminists; women can’t primarily be masculists: we decided that a long time ago. Farrell was only a pro”feminist” evolved from that point to his true, natural self): This is the perfect complementary movement to feminism, the so-called “New Masculinity”. In this viewpoint, both feminism and masculism are attempts to correct disadvantages induced by gender roles. While feminism addresses areas where women are seen to be disadvantaged such as equal pay and promotion, masculism addresses areas where men are seen to be disadvantaged, for example, criminal prosecution and sentencing, and child rights, according to masculists of this view. These masculists celebrate the notion of equality of the sexes and fluid gender roles.

Example: Warren Farrell. Farrell states in The Myth of Male Power that both genders are hampered by the gender roles of the past, which he said was “bisexism,” sexism which oppresses both genders. On his webpage, he further expands on this compatibility, stating: “I use two podiums: Dr Farrell, Masculist; and Dr Farrell, Feminist.” “We must not reverse the women’s movement; we must accelerate it... (Men’s liberation) is not a backlash, for there is nothing about conventional sex roles that I want to go back to.”

So now we conclude the dialogue that dialogue is opening up between the sexes. Language has evolved. Which brings us to an interesting point. Men have no name. The

genders both are generally Man/Men/Mankind, aren’t they? And, specifically, they can only be defined with respect to one another. (That’s science, man! Think x, y strains of

reproducing algae, the first plants. They are indistinguishable since they belong to such an early lifeform except by dint of their functionality. Think chromosomes.) Women, therefore, are etymologically wifmen (wif = wife, man = man, meaning wife of man). Men, too, have a

lost name. They are weirman (weir = husband, man = man). (Guys, you stand christened. I bet you didn’t know that!)

Taking stock: Feminism has been reclaimed after being redefined. Masculism is the name of the movement of the New/Eternal Male. Promasculism on the woman’s part and profeminism on the man’s are only two sides of the same coin of empathy, sexuality, inspiration and philosophy that is still relevant and expanding. Perhaps, as Nepali educationist Dr Prabha Basnet advises, “Look at yourself first but also look at others. And, once in a while, try and look at each through the other’s eyes.”