man-sized agony: on the idea of "the crisis of masculinity"

Today I read it again. 'Finnish boys and young men are miserable'. Their mental health are, it is stated, worse than 'we' (?) used to think. "Grown men and knowledge about boys are needed in ordinary life, in schools and in health care. We should learn more about the needs of boys, about their development and what torments boys and in what ways they express that they don't feel good." (HBL, 22.07). This is a piece of advice from expert doctors at "Befolkningsskyddet" (at their home page translated as "Rescue services"). Provided we give this a very charitable reading, I would agree with it: the gender matrices of masculinity are fucked up and of course that is something that afflicts people, all of us, in one way or other. But I suspect that is not, at least not mainly (mabye they would talk about "destructive gender roles" or something) that they are talking about. Observation nr. one: They are talking exclusively about boys.

The doctors seem to say that boys have peculiar problems of a psychological nature of which we need to gain empirical knowledge, so that they can be dealt with. (There is another charitable reading I will say more about later: that we look away from the way masculinity is oppressive, not only to women, but also to men.) It's time to talk about things that we normally keep quit about, they most probably suggest (the insufficient, sublimating state of vittuperkelesaatana). The first part of the quoted sentence, "Grown men [....] are needed in ordinary life, schools and in healt care." Why do they put it like this? Well, it might not be too far-fetched an interpretation if we take them to say that there is something about grown men, their sex/gender that makes them more insightful with regards to the troubled minds of young males. From this can be derived a pretty essentialist idea about sex/gender, according to which these are something we, in a very simple and concrete sense, have. Thus: males have their peculiar problems, and guys are, because they are male, more well-prepared to understand the nature of these problems (and perhaps take appropriate action? - "role models").

Girls and women have, for a very long time, been the object of psychologizing and diagnoziation. One might even go as far as proposing that some ways of talking about "women" and femininity are internally related to talking about something as a psychological tic, a diagnosis or a psychological phenomenon. (Do I have to mention examples? PMS, hysteria, self-indulgence, "empathy", "tears come so easily for women....") Well, are we seeing the same development, but a male set of psychologisms? Yeah maybe. But the interesting thing, of course, is how these "psychologisms" are used. "Boys with psychological problems need understanding from other men." Well - what might be the point of saying such a thing? "Little Teddy is prone to act aggressively. His dad, who is a baseball player, will teach him a few things about turning his aggression into something creative. After all, boys will be boys." In this example, Teddy's anger, gushes of rage or what it might be, is treated as something that does not express anything about him, about his life, his relation to others. No: aggression is some sort of force that may be directed against different objects, some of which are more socially accepted than others (it's much nicer to be a baseball player than a serial killer).

The assumption here seems to be that there is a "male nature" that needs to be understood (and the next assumption is that males have a direct access to this understanding). The folks from "Befolkningsförbundet" claim that "there is a lot of pressure in growing up to be a man. You are either a winner or a loser. These models may be prohibited by means of recognitions of [boys'] need for help." Again: if we opt for a charitable reading, we may give these doctors credits for talking openly about the way people are crushed under stupid gender patterns. But there is still something in the article that makes me doubt whether they would say this. I hint a trust in "the good masculinity".

The common idea (and I don't necessarily want to ascribe this to the doctors in question), anyway, is that there is a lot of anguish because males are confused. Why? Because of the changing gender roles. It is no longer (here we go again) socially accepted for men to treat women as house slaves and sex slaves, thus, they must adapt into something else - but what? The problem is, many would say, that there is no clear model of what to be "as a man". Males are confused because there are too many masculinities. And hence the psychological crisis of young boys (but according to this argument, grown-up men would be in no better position to offer guiding to their juniors). You might ask why I am critical of this way of talking about "men in crisis". One reason (and it is a weighty one for me) is that social acceptability, combined with some hypothesis about "male nature", seem to be presupposed here. As if the main purpose in life for men - the way to harmony & happiness - is spelled a solid masculinity. Well, folks, if you ask me, that is fluff. One may be confused about what kind of person one is, about what kind of person "one should be". But I would say that a part of this confusion is that one is worrying about being "a particular kind of person". Instead of, you know, living the best one can.

At present, I am reading Paris-Dakar by Jens Liljestrand. It is a good book precisely because in it, Liljestrand questions the idea that there is a form of untainted, absolving masculinity in which troubled men takes comfort during hard times. His point seems to be that men are tormented by masculinity, that masculinity is a hang-up, a ghost, a false escape. In a next to perfect pitch, Liljestrand goes through the gendered clichés. In one of the short stories of Paris-Dakar, the author presents the respectable man who is seen as boring among his friends but who is good at organizing stuff. When he can't even hold on to that picture of himself, his entire existence is breaking down. Liljestrand's stories are packed with men who "feel miserable". But to use the psychologistic language that I referred to above would not fit the perspective he writes from. The pain he masterfully depicts is not dissolved by pointing at the dream of a solid masculinity. The problem is, I agree, Identity. But the book provides an argument against it. Every form of it. Identity is the problem (sickness unto death, if you will).