Replacing Misandry: A Revolutionary History of Men 9780773583788

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r e p l ac i n g m i s a n d r y

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Replacing Misandry A Revolutionary History of Men

pa u l n at h a n s o n

and k at h e r i n e k . yo u n g

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015 isb n 978-0-7735-4553-3 (cloth) isb n 978-0-7735-8378-8 (eP DF ) isb n 978-0-7735-8380-1 (eP UB) Legal deposit third quarter 2015 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Nathanson, Paul, 1947–, author Replacing misandry: a revolutionary history of men/Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isb n 978-0-7735-4553-3 (bound). – is bn 978-0-7735-8378-8 (pdf). – isb n 978-0-7735-8380-1 (eP UB) 1. Men – History.  2. Misandry.  I. Young, Katherine K., 1944–, author  II. Title. HQ1090.N38 2015   305.3109   C2015-902455-2  C2015-902456-0

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii Prologue: A Revolutionary Theory  ix   1 From Hunter to Urbanite: The Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions 3   2 From Peasant to Proletarian: The Industrial Revolution  38   3 From Subject to Conscript: The Military Revolution  60   4 From Father to Sperm Donor: The Sexual and Reproductive Revolutions 96 Epilogue: Postmodern Man  137 Notes 141 Index 211

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Canadian Federation of the Humanities for a grant to support the publication of this book. In addition we thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Association of Theological Schools, and the Donner Canadian Foundation for past support, which made possible our cultural history of new reproductive technologies in relation to men and families. We would also like to thank Dorothy Chandler for her work on the index, which was very helpful indeed.

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Prologue: A Revolutionary Theory

This volume begins a reconstruction of men’s history – that is, human history from the specific perspective of men and more specifically from that of straight men, with the explicit intention of noting their specific needs and problems. Consequently, we return to square one by focusing on men directly instead of on theories about men that ideological feminists have concocted. The goal is to reverse the tide of misandry by replacing the conspiracy theory of history – that men rebelled against an egalitarian society in the remote past, established patriarchy, and have thus oppressed women ever since – with what amounts to a revolutionary theory. It is revolutionary in the metaphorical sense unlike other current theories. It is revolutionary also, however, in the literal sense: a history of the male body, from primeval times to postmodern times, in connection with at least four major technological or cultural revolutions. Our goal is to suggest a new phenomenology of manhood. Before proceeding, we need to clarify the complex relation between two of our central terms: nature and culture (what some people call “nurture”). In the context of men and women, the significant distinction is between sex1 (the natural distinction between maleness or femaleness) and gender2 (the cultural distinction between masculinity or femininity). Because people are always part of both nature and culture, to study humans adequately is to study both. According to Deborah Best, The similarity in gender stereotypes found cross-culturally suggests that the psychological characteristics differentially asso­ ciated with women and men follow a pancultural model with

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cultural factors producing minor variations around general themes. Biological differences (e.g., females bear children, males have greater physical strength) serve as the basis for a division of labor, with women primarily responsible for child care and other domestic activities, and men for hunting (providing) and protection. Gender stereotypes evolve to support this division of labor and assume that each sex has or can develop characteristics consistent with their assigned roles. Once established, stereotypes serve as socialization models that encourage boys to become independent and adventurous, and girls to become nurturant and affiliative. Consequently, these characteristics are incorporated into men’s and women’s self-concepts, aspects of their masculinity and femininity. This model illustrates how, with only minor variations, people across different cultures come to associate one set of characteristics with men and another set with women. Pancultural similarities in sex and gender greatly outweigh ­cultural differences.3 There is much truth in what Best says about this similarity, although she downplays cultural variation unnecessarily. Through culture, humans adjust to or even “correct” the givens of nature. We suggest that this leads to ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that respond to nature in either of two ways: pro-naturally (cultural responses that affirm natural tendencies by encouraging, extending, augmenting, or reinforcing some tendency, affinity, aptitude, or mechanism) or contra-naturally (cultural responses that work against natural tendencies by repressing, subverting, or modifying some tendency, affinity, aptitude, or mechanism).4 Because society might find it advantageous to encourage some natural tendency (such as pair bonding or the use of reason) but discourage others (such as socially disruptive behaviour), neither cultural response is inherently good or bad. In fact, historical or other contexts can make it necessary to change from one to the other in the interest of survival. To be a man is to be both male and masculine, at any rate, no matter how culture defines the latter. To be a woman is to be both female and feminine, likewise, no matter how culture defines the latter. Our topic here is men, however, not women. A few peaceful societies, which experience very little stress, have almost dispensed with masculinity and femininity. The functions of men overlap considerably with those of women – except, of course,

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gestation and lactation. Other societies, those that experience a great deal of stress, select men for functions that involve distinctive features of the male body: relative strength, speed, and mobility. When men use these aspects of the male body, they are acting pro-naturally. And societies have needed male bodies. Or, to put it another way, they have needed the services that most men, by virtue of their bodies, can perform better than most women.5 Versions of masculinity that build directly on maleness therefore usually confer healthy collective identities on men. Despite the grave risks and severe stresses, after all, they at least enable men to make contributions to society that are distinctive, necessary, and publicly valued. When the stress becomes too severe (or when society fails to acknowledge any contribution from men), the result is an unhealthy collective identity. This has happened not only in a few small-scale societies but also in more complex societies over the past twelve thousand years because of several technological or cultural revolutions: (1) the Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions; (2) the Industrial Revolution; (3) the Military Revolution; and (4) the Reproductive Revolution. These revolutions have increasingly marginalized the male body as a healthy source of collective identity. Unlike primeval men, therefore, postmodern men must rely primarily on culture to establish their identity as men. But postmodern culture, given its preference for deconstruction, is a most unlikely matrix for the construction, let alone reconstruction, of any identity at all.

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1 From Hunter to Urbanite: The Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions Men have to dream to get power from the spirits and they think of everything they can – songs and speeches and marching around, hoping the spirits will notice them and give them some power. But we [women] have power … Don’t you see that without us, there would be no men? Why should we envy men? We made the men.1

We know hardly anything of primeval men or women, those who were evolving gradually as one hominid species among others. At some point between two and three million years ago, our remote ancestors began to use stone tools. This period – the prehistoric, Paleolithic or Old Stone Age – included most of human history. We know very little about these people. They left no written records, although they did leave some physical remains and material artifacts. To interpret these, archaeologists sometimes rely on logical parallels between very ancient societies and their current equivalents, huntingand-gathering societies. They cannot prove that these parallels are accurate. They cannot know the extent, for instance, to which even the hunting-and-gathering societies of our own time have actually changed over the millennia.2 Nonetheless, archaeologists complement archaeological evidence with anthropological evidence. Like them, we do so to fill out our picture of ancient societies. This is precisely what many other academics, including feminist ones, do for precisely the same reason. Paleolithic people lived in small bands. These relied on the male body for at least two important activities in addition to reproduction: defending their communities from animal predators and supplying

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meat or fish.3 In communities that relied on dangerous big-game animals and were therefore vulnerable to predation, maleness was a distinct asset. Bringing down these big animals was exhausting, and so was carrying the carcasses back home. Men’s work was demanding not only physically but also mentally; it required men to learn skills, organize expeditions, and cooperate with each other for the common good. It also provided men with a healthy collective identity. To the extent that these early people established notions of masculinity and femininity at all, they did so in connection with maleness and femaleness, probably without resorting to elaborate and arbitrary gender systems. Both sexes, by virtue of maleness or femaleness per se, made distinctive and necessary contributions to their communities, which must therefore have valued both men and women. Men protected society and provided it with food by hunting or fishing; women bore children for society and gathered food. In doing so, moreover, both sexes faced mortal danger on society’s behalf. Predators often killed men, and childbirth often killed women. It was this complementarity that made possible the egalitarianism that probably characterized Paleolithic societies (and still characterizes contemporary hunting-and-gathering ones). According to Maxine Margolis, Anthropologists have long recognized that most hunting and gathering societies have relatively egalitarian gender roles compared with more complex societies. Aside from women’s contribution to subsistence, foragers do not distinguish between public and private domains, another variable that appears to influence female status. Life is lived in the open among the nomadic !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. People eat and sleep outside, conversations are public, and almost all activities are visible to the band as a whole. As such, the notion of a private or domestic sphere is absent.4 Men and women were thus equal in value – no society could exist without both – but different at least to some extent in function. Men had one psychological and symbolic problem, however, that women did not have. Women had to create new lives and sustain them, but men had to take lives – those of animals – in order to ­sustain human life. They might have deeply regretted the need to do

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so, however, and not only because of the risks that killing involved. Consider hunting as it exists today in hunting-and-gathering societies. The following descriptions by anthropologist David Gilmore might provide us with an insight into what hunting was like for our Paleolithic ancestors. Although the men enjoy hunting and look upon it as one of the acmes of masculine activity, it is extremely exhausting and timeconsuming work. The hunters leave their villages shortly after dawn and travel long miles through the forest and across sunbaked savannah before raising the tracks or scent of game. There then follows an arduous pursuit that sometimes lasts for hours. And the successful hunter often ends his day by carrying a hundred-pound wild pig on his back for three hours on the homeward trail to the village … [T]he men hunt nearly every fair day …5 Men are always given the task of procuring animal protein, fending off predators … hunting involves not only danger but also risk – to both body and reputation – because hunting is a contest of wills in which there is always a winner and a loser. The man tries to kill animals much more mobile than he; his quarry uses all its cunning and strength to escape, and it may be bigger and stronger than the hunter. It is this challenging, combative, winnertake-all aspect of the male role that demands the kinds of toughness and autonomy that need special motivation. Women’s contributions are equally important in their own way and may demand extreme patience and dexterity, but they do not often involve personal risk, a struggle with nature, or the killing of dangerous foes. Roots and berries do not fight back and do not run away. Childbirth is painful and a test of stamina, but it is not a contest a woman can “lose” by running away. In addition, the hunting and fishing that men do often involve distant journeys over rough and dangerous terrain.6 Although Gilmore ignores the fact that childbirth, too, was a dangerous struggle with nature, often ending in death, he makes an important point in the second passage. It made sense for societies to choose men for big-game hunting instead of women. In fact, there is little evidence of women as hunters.7 Killing animals is bloody and ­horrific, no matter how exciting it might be. It is morally ambiguous,

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moreover, no matter how useful. Hunters in some societies, therefore, actually offer apologies to their prey. The hunter kills, as it were, for professional reasons; to be a ­successful hunter, that is, to kill much game, is a natural wish dictated by the urge for self-preservation. In contrast to the naturalness of killing, however, a major part of the hunter’s ceremonial is oriented not to glorify the act of killing, but to nullify and negate the unavoidable deed. We find corresponding customs in all regions where hunting peoples still live. We hear, for instance, that the successful hunter will try to shift the blame by telling the slain animal his arrow “had lost its way” or that not they, the hunters, but “the toad” or “the sun” had killed it. At the same time, the “master of the animals” watches to ensure that no more  game than necessary is killed. Thus customs and ideas show clearly that killing is not viewed as a desirable or laudable act but as an encroachment into a non-human realm, forced upon man by the struggle for sustenance.8 Consider the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. When the hunter strikes an eland with his poisoned arrow, “he identifies himself as completely as possible with the agony of the stricken beast until it succumbs to the poison in death.”9 The same is true of the Canadian Inuit. Bears stand up on their hind legs and resemble men. “An initial relationship between the bear and masculine sexual power appears with the killing of the first bear, which is the proof of adult virility, and with the eating of the bear’s penis by sterile women.”10 Although the Inuit survive by killing bears, they never do so without acknowledging the link between these bears and humans: “If a bear was killed, the same restrictions on work and play were observed as if someone had died in the camp. It was said that the soul of a bear was dangerous, that it should be treated like that of a kinsperson, and so all work had to be stopped for three days. The person who had killed the bear had to remove all his outer garments before entering his home and for a month could not eat the bear’s meat or fat.”11 Paleolithic societies probably knew little of war. Killing other people was probably anomalous, not the result of conscious planning. “In Paleolithic art,” writes R. Dale Guthrie, “scenes of human-to-human violence are not as common as hunting scenes or erotic images. I have found only sixteen, isolated drawings that portray people (or seem to

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– most are very rudimentary) riddled with spears or darts – but no portrayals of fights between individuals or groups.”12 Archaeologists have found no mass graves from the Paleolithic period, moreover, which suggests that people seldom engaged in warfare. The population density was low, so bands of people could avoid conflict simply by moving off in different directions (which could account for the migration of Homo erectus, an extinct ancestor of Homo sapiens, from Africa to Asia and Europe). Approximately 14,000 years ago, however, came a major technological development. Bows and arrows made it possible to attack animals from a distance. This was much less risky than face-to-face encounters with them. And the same thing applied to encounters with other humans. The first evidence of a real battle is visible at a cemetery, where many bodies contain arrowheads. From that period, moreover, comes the first work of art to depict the use of arrows in combat.13 In this chapter, we examine an early phase of men’s history and more specifically that of the male body’s gradual marginalization as a source of collective identity for men. We do so in connection with (1) the Neolithic Revolution, which saw the rise of both horticulture and pastoralism; (2) a transitional period, which saw the rise of chiefdoms; and (3) the Agricultural Revolution, which saw the rise of archaic states and then that of advanced ones – civilizations – due to the introduction of plough agriculture, irrigation, long-distance trade routes, craft specialization, urbanization, and sometimes literacy. The Neolithic Revolution began approximately twelve thousand years ago, although the transition did not occur everywhere at the same time. It involved the domestication of both animals and plants. Neolithic societies, therefore, were of two kinds. The domestication of animals created pastoral societies, which maintained flocks or herds of livestock. Having to follow their animals in search of grazing lands, these people became nomads. Whatever the origin of pastoralism,14 it is clear that managing these animals required the size, strength, and mobility of men. Economies that relied on the accumulation of property in the form of herds led to lineage systems, so that people could pass their property on to their descendants. Because these economies relied primarily on men, their lineage systems were usually patrilineal, property passing from one generation to another through the male line. Of importance here

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is that the accumulation of herds made raiding those of other communities desirable, which eventually led to warfare. It is true that pastoral peoples often lived in peace with their settled neighbors, trading animal products for agricultural goods and handicrafts, but conflicts did occur. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist, writes of contemporary pastoralists that they have subsistence technology and skills which can be carried over into combat … The technology of war itself is an infrastructural factor with direct bearing on military planning and action … Whatever the general subsistence orientation, many factors affect the ability to make war on targets at varying distances, including distance between local groups, topography and ground cover, the technology of movement and communication, the existence of unoccupied territory allowing free passage, and the feasibility of a column literally living off the land … the point should be clear that infrastructural conditions are largely responsible for many aspects of the characteristic practice of war in any culture.15 On the Eurasian steppes, for example, domesticating horses approximately six thousand years ago and developing bridles and chariots in the following millennium gave pastoral societies military advantages over other ones.16 The domestication of plants, though, created horticultural societies, which probably used slash-and-burn techniques to prepare the land and hoes, or digging sticks, to seed their small gardens. People supplemented their diets, moreover, by keeping small domesticated animals, hunting or fishing, and gathering plants. They continued to live with at least some of their kin but now did so in small villages. Anthropologists have characterized a few contemporary horticultural societies as egalitarian and relatively peaceful.17 Robert Denton18 has studied the Semai, who live in the remote hills and mountains of central Malaysia. They have a mixed economy: primitive horticulture, fishing, trapping, and occasionally hunting for extra protein. In their remote and inaccessible region, which is where the Malays have pushed them, the Semai can avoid external conflicts. When conflicts do occur, they simply flee or submit. To avoid internal conflicts, moreover, they share everything and thus avoid any pretext for aggression. Although they raise chickens, they refuse to kill the animals. Instead, they use them for trade with the Malays. Women

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accommodate men sexually, even foreign men, to avoid conflict between rival men. By the same token, men ask for their sexual cooperation mildly. Parents do not discipline their sons or teach them to be tough. The Semai always subordinate personal interests to collective ones. They reject private property and thus discourage personal desire. They forbid sports, too, which create winners and losers. As a result, Semai men do not care about personal rights, status, or honour.19 They make very few distinctions at all, in fact, between men and women. Both men and women function in public space. Both men and women function in private space. Both men and women become leaders. Both men and women become midwives (although men do that less often than women do). Nonetheless, only men occasionally hunt with poisoned darts that they shoot from blowpipes. These blowpipes alone signify masculine identity, therefore, which is why the men carefully make, polish, and ornament them. Now, consider the Tahitians. They live on an island in French Polynesia. Once bellicose, they had become peaceful by the time of contact with Westerners in the mid-eighteenth century. Ritual circumcision is now the only remnant of earlier initiation ceremonies for young warriors. Drawing on reports of early explorers and the ethnography of Robert Levy,20 David Gilmore21 suggests that the Semai and Tahitians are very similar – although the latter are not as peaceful as the former. Tahitian men face little stress, because both their gardens and the lagoons provide them with abundant sources of food. Because men do not feud, they are passive, gentle, and generous. They ignore slights or even harms. Moreover, they see no need to ­protect their women. As for the women, they feel free to have sexual relations with men as they please, including foreign men. Like the Semai, the Tahitians make few distinctions at all between men and women. Women may become chiefs, play sports, and even beat their husbands. Men freely pretend to give birth and nurse infants. No wonder, then, that Paul Gauguin considered them androgynous. According to anthropologist Bruce Knauft, ostensibly peaceful societies do erupt in violence from time to time. Sometimes, they kill deviants (especially those who seek higher status, engage in sorcery or some other antisocial activity). Carefully and tightly repressing anger, moreover, sometimes leads to murder. Whatever the cause of any particular act of violence, though, the effect in these horticultural societies is always collective amnesia. People immediately “forget” in order to restore group solidarity and thus prevent feuding.

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Even so, most horticultural societies in modern times have been violent. And most Neolithic groups probably experienced common and even institutionalized violence. If the parallel between pastoral and horticultural societies of the present and those of the remote past holds, therefore, Neolithic men must have faced serious disadvantages that Paleolithic men had not faced. Of interest here are two particular ones: endemic warfare and either economic or familial marginalization. Constant warfare must have made men more vulnerable than ever before, their physical survival being continually at stake. If we are correct, then they must have endured high levels of stress. Unlike hunter-gatherers or pastoralists, who could solve conflicts with other nomads simply by separating and moving off in different directions, horticulturalists settled on the land. They could not easily pick up and move on. Although they could minimize conflict by intermarrying, they could not eliminate it. They competed directly with other settled communities, after all, for both land and water. They stockpiled food and other resources, moreover, which made raiding desirable. As a result, the possession of resources came to define s­tatus, power, and even survival. War22 emerged because of competition for resources that benefitted everyone in victorious communities, however, not because of some innately male characteristics.23 Gradually, the causes of wars came to include additional motivations such as revenge. War can be both adaptive and maladaptive. “It can lead to a reduction of the pressure of population on resources which led to the fighting. In doing so, war might protect the integrity of the environment by preventing over-use and long-term degradation of the resource base.”24 But it can also be very costly in connection with lives lost and resources diverted. Neolithic societies needed not only protection from raiders but also encouragement to become raiders. More specifically, they needed men who were willing and able to kill not only predatory animals but also predatory humans. Warfare was not random or anomalous violence. It was organized violence on behalf of the entire community. Most men were better suited than most women to raiding, to be sure, just as most men were better suited than most women to hunting or fishing.25 Most men were stronger, faster, and more mobile, after all, than most women were.26 But women, as we will show, were hardly pacifists. Neolithic men were more likely than women, in any case, to confront their enemies. This requires us to pause here to offer a brief

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discussion of maleness and femaleness in connection with warfare both then and now. Immediate threats to security – that is, high levels of stress – briefly increase the flow of adrenaline (epinephrine). Both men and women secrete that hormone, which provokes responses of “fight” or “flight.” Some urgent situations provoke men to fight. Other urgent situations, however, provoke them to flee. Adrenaline itself does not cause aggression, however, let alone war. It merely enables people to respond immediately to existential threats either by fighting or by fleeing. Without men nearby to choose one of those two strategies, of course, women do so for themselves; their adrenaline works as well as that of men in emergencies.27 Having men nearby to make these decisions for them, however, women can continue caring for their children (although older people and even older children can do so in a pinch). To the extent that caring for children involves nursing infants, only women can do that. You could argue, therefore, that women in early horticultural societies were more likely than men to choose the “flight” response to danger and men more likely than women to choose the “fight” response. But both women and men did so within cultural contexts and in view of immediate needs. Because hormones alone did not keep men in dangerous situations for very long, every society that engages in either hunting or warfare has used culture to supplement nature and thus prevent men from running away. And they have done so, characteristically, using rituals that initiate boys into the world of men. No Neolithic society could expect to exploit men effectively during raids without carefully training them to accept the routine killing of other men as an essential feature of everyday life. This meant facing danger and enduring pain without flinching. Producing men who could and would do so, reliably, required a massive cultural effort; male nature itself was not enough to do the trick. Just as Paleolithic boys had to develop and ritually demonstrate the courage to kill animals and thus become men, Neolithic boys had to develop and ritually demonstrate the courage to kill either humans or animals and thus become men. To take advantage of these new circumstances and turn boys or men into warriors, Neolithic societies had to repress the natural tendency of all human beings to preserve both their own lives and those of other humans. “Killing does not come naturally to men,” writes Joshua Goldstein. “Combat is a horrific experience marked by confusion, noise, terror, and atrocity, in addition to any physical injury. Societies historically have worked hard to get men to fight.”28

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Because natural traits neither prevented men from killing nor forced them into killing, in short, Neolithic societies must have prepared them to kill or be killed for the community. Demonstrating that ability, therefore, often became a defining feature of access to manhood. In view of what we know about the horticultural societies of our own time, moreover, we can suppose that those of our Neolithic ancestors used myths and rituals to support their definitions of masculinity. People expressed parallels between the human and the divine in rituals and legitimated those rituals in myths. Just as ordinary men sacrificed themselves to protect the community or provide it with resources, for instance, the gods did so to generate and fertilize the crops. When circumcision occurs at puberty, as it still does in the contemporary counterparts of Neolithic societies, it tests the courage of boys. Can they withstand the pain without flinching during a ritual? If so, then they are likely to withstand it also during warfare. Stoicism (in the current sense, not the ancient philosophical one) promotes not only physical self-discipline but also emotional self-control, which have long been characteristics of masculinity in these societies but not of femininity. Women usually perform grieving rituals, for instance, which often consist primarily of wailing.29 Anthropological evidence links initiation with warfare,30 torture,31 cannibalism, and head-hunting. After all, initiation rituals require dramatic feats. Some warriors torture captives, eat them and then display their severed heads. Doing so in the context of ritual demonstrates the courage and prowess of boys, their ability to take on the heavy responsibilities of adult men. At the same time, doing so demonstrates their incorporation of virility in the most direct possible way. Scholars have proposed various explanations of cannibalism. For one reason or another,32 initiates probably try to consume the spiritual power of enemies by eating their physical remains. As for head-hunting, many societies consider the head a source of whatever they need for survival: life, courage, anger, and violence. For this ­reason, initiates preserve the heads of their enemies as trophies.33 The link between heads and food could go back to the Paleolithic tradition, moreover, of collecting skulls so that the master of animals could transform them into living animals and thus renew the food supply. The Neolithic version (which continued in some horticultural societies down to the twentieth century) often involved collecting human skulls and displaying them in the fields or using them in planting rituals.

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These initiation rituals demonstrate the attainment of skills that warriors require. “There are tribes that practice both head-hunting and cannibalism,” writes Eli Sagan: “the head is preserved as a trophy and the body of the victim is eaten. If we think about the occasions for head-hunting, they appear to be identical to those for cannibalism – war, revenge … and proof of masculinity.”34 Neolithic men must have required extensive training, partly through myth and ritual, before most would routinely have to risk being mutilated, tortured, killed, and eaten. Societies that specialized in raiding tended to focus symbolic significance on male heroes, ­celebrating physical courage and glorifying the male body.35 In fact, mortal heroes were often more important than immortal ones. Because these societies believed that it was shameful for men to die in bed, moreover those who did so forfeited access to eternal life. In some ways, the male body remained a powerful source of masculine identity during the Neolithic. Women themselves affirmed its value. If contemporary horticultural societies are any indication, women became cheerleaders. They urged their men on to feats of military valor. Besides, women had vested interests in victorious raids. For one thing, these brought booty in the form of animals or other resources. They brought security, too, from possible rape or capture by enemy raiders. “[In] simple societies,” writes Goldstein, “the role of women in warfare varies cross-culturally, but women generally support more than oppose war … No society routinely requires women to fight in wars. But often women ‘engage in ceremonial activities … while their men [a]re away fighting’ – dancing, acting out the war, remaining chaste, and so forth. Women sometimes help to drive the men into a war frenzy by dancing, singing, and other supportive activities … Women also often actively participate in shaming men to goad them into fighting wars.”36 Even though Neolithic societies glorified mythical male heroes, the threat of surprise raids must have created a great deal of stress for ordinary male people. But Margolis refers to additional factors that must have led to stress. “One suggests that it is found in societies in which the interests of the sexes are opposed and, in effect, men marry their ‘enemies’; while another proposes that it is a reaction to the threat of overpopulation since it may reduce sexual contact between man and women … C.R. Ember … tested four theories about men’s fear of sex with women cross-culturally. She found

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worldwide support for both the ‘marrying enemies’ theory … and the population-pressure theory.”37 The existence of extreme stress, he adds, creates a distinctive cultural complex. “In varying combinations, the complex includes notions of male purity and female pollution, ideologies that women pose a danger to men, behaviors that separate women and or their belongings from men, elaborate male rituals that exclude females, anxiety about male sexual depletion, extreme sexual segregation, gang rape, female subservience, male dominance, and generally hostile relations between the sexes … Several explanations have been given for the complex.”38 Some Neolithic societies became matrilocal (families living with the mother’s household) and matrilineal (property passing through the mother’s line). This increased the stress on Neolithic men. Anthropologist William Divale points out that warriors in contemporary societies of this kind require a high level of male bonding.39 Because they must fight against enemies from beyond the community, they cannot afford to fight against enemies from within it. What they need is solidarity among the leaders of potentially conflicting families. To achieve that, some societies rely on matrilocality.40 Men leave their own families and move to the villages of their wives, where they live together in men’s lodges. They spend little time with their wives and children. Consequently, their primary loyalty is to the community of warriors, not to their own families or to the men of other lineages. But the cost of this adaptation is high. Boys grow up in the households of their mothers and become familiar with the cultural world of women. Then, however, they must move to the men’s lodges of their fathers and become familiar with the hidden cultural world of men. They must suddenly reject both women and the feminine side of themselves. Otherwise, they might regress and lack the courage that they will need as warriors. Dramatic initiation rituals, not surprisingly, mark the transition from boyhood to manhood in many of these societies. The events are exciting, to be sure, and even glamorous. But they are also terrifying, because they culminate in torture, killing, or cannibalism. In the event of divorce, moreover, men must move once again and start all over again. This means that they become even more marginalized than ever from the reproductive and intergenerational cycles. The men of some matrilocal societies in our time either live in men’s lodges or spend most of their time there. This makes it more difficult than ever for young boys to acquire masculinity, because they must

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leave the world of women and enter that of men. Apart from anything else, they must renounce anything in themselves that society defines as feminine and glorify anything that society defines as masculine. Having lived among women, nonetheless, they have already come to believe that women are both superior to men (because only women can “create” new life) and advantaged over men (because society does not deliberately expose them to death or mutilation in war). Now, with all of this in mind, consider two horticultural societies in Brazil’s Amazonia. Both exemplify a common cultural pattern among horticulturalists of their region. After migrating because of overpopulation, the Mundurucu settled in Brazil’s Amazon Valley. There, they made several additional transitions: from hunting to ­horticulture (with some hunting); from patrilocality to matrilocality (with some patrilineality); and from a relatively peaceable mentality to a relatively bellicose one. In fact, the Mundurucu have become head-hunters. Robert Murphy explains, moreover, that they exhibit the most complete development of the male-female dichotomy and accompanying men’s house complex in South America … All the post-pubescent males, married and single, sleep and relax in its confines, and it is additionally the center of the cult of the sacred musical instruments … The young man caught in the process of change to matrilocality was thus forced to accommodate himself to permanent residence in a village in which he had no supporting group of kinsmen … The man who marries a woman of another village becomes integrated into the men’s house, where he finds a large group of men of the same moiety.”41 Of great importance here, from our point of view, is the close link between the stress that men experience during combat and the stress that they experience in daily life. Either way, their situation contrasts with that of women. One myth is about the original dominance of women. It concerns sacred flutes, which represent power. One day, some women hear music emanating from a lake. Looking for the source of this music, they find three fish. When these fish turn into flutes, the women hide them in the forest. Instead of doing their work, they come to the forest every day to play with the flutes. The flutes give women power over men. As a result, the men now have to do  women’s work: fetching water, carrying firewood, and making

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manioc cakes. But the flutes require offerings of meat. This gives the men a chance to restore the old social order of hunting. They refuse to provide meat from their hunting expeditions. Before handing over their flutes, however, the women rape the men. Yolande and Robert Murphy make the following observations: In one sense, the myth is an allegory of man’s birth from woman, his original dependence upon the woman as the supporting, nurturant and controlling agent in his life, and of the necessity to break the shackles and assert his autonomy and manhood. The mother is the center of love and affect, but she is also an eternal threat to self-individuation, a figure of authority, a frustrator of urges, and a swallower of emergent identity; she can devour and reincorporate that which she issued, and the vagina, the avenue to life, is ambivalently conceived by the men as destructive. The role of the male, then, must be maintained by vigilance and continual self-assertion.42 Mundurucu women like to “play” with these flutes, which Freudians in our own society would consider disembodied phalluses.43 They want the power of men, at any rate, but not the men themselves. Not surprisingly, Mundurucu men fear the autonomy of women. From an early age, girls contribute to subsistence activities and the care of younger children. By fourteen, they are ready for marriage. After marriage, they continue living at home in this matrilocal society. On the other hand, they have romantic affairs and sometimes marry three or four times. Although boys have a longer and freer childhood than girls do, they must leave their villages when they marry. From their point of view, therefore, marriage is far more threatening than it is for girls. “The man is attached to the house of his wife, but he does not live in it, thus occupying a curious marginal role between that of member and that of constant visitor. It would be erroneous to say that the man is master in his own house, for his proper house is the eksa [men’s lodge] – and the household of his wife is led by its senior woman. The man is indeed the head of his nuclear family, but it is a family that has few functions.”44 When their wives take on lovers, the husbands must leave their ­villages, seek new wives somewhere else and start all over again. Because women often initiate divorce, moreover, their husbands have good reason to feel anxious. And the same is true in connection with

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reproduction. Women resort to birth control, abortion, and infanticide. Because they do so secretly, men fear the killing of their own children, especially their sons.45 Men try to compensate for their vulnerability in several ways. For one thing, they tell themselves that semen is necessary for the growing fetus. They insist on symbols of their own superiority, moreover, to women. This is why women sit and walk behind men, eat after men, lower their eyes in the presence of men, and go outside only when accompanied by other women. When women indulge in adultery, they do so discreetly, because women who flaunt their sexual freedom can expect gangs of men to rape them. And women who try to see the sacred flutes can expect the same thing. They generally play by these rules, but they are nonetheless self-confident people.46 Men might be the controlling political figures for whatever that is worth in a classless and rankless society, but women are the repositories of affective relations. They not only control the attachments of their sons but also keep their daughters at home. And despite all the cohesion of the men, the women are bound together by stronger emotional ties. Despite the marginalization of men and their envy of women, Mundurucu society is more harmonious than some other horticultural ones. Mundurucu men treat women “with a deference and caution that is in sharp contrast to the ritual expression of sex relations.”47 They enjoy visiting their wives several times during the day and playing with their children.48 The Mehinaku, like the Mundurucu, live in central Brazil’s Amazon Valley. In many ways, they resemble the Mundurucu. Both societies polarize the sexes, for instance, and tell similar myths about sacred flutes. Mehinaku men initiate affairs due to sexual desire. Women do so, on the other hand, due to gifts, especially fish, from their lovers. Their families, therefore, consider sexually active women economic boons. But so many sexual liaisons make it hard for anyone to establish the paternity of their children. Consequently, the Mehinaku acknowledge joint paternity. “With comic intent,” writes Thomas Gregor, “the men refer to joint paternity as … an all-male collective labour project.”49 But their humour could be a way of disguising real anxiety over their marginalization in reproduction. Despite their statements to the contrary, these men actually envy the women for menstruating. On the one hand, they see that

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“menstruation is the most anxiety-charged of the physiological characteristics of women. Caused by deadly fauna living in the vagina, menstrual blood is associated with wounds, castration, poison, disease, stunted growth, and enfeeblement.” On the other hand, they acknowledge some occasions on which “men symbolically menstruate, the most significant of which is the ritual of ear piercing.”50 Some myths are about the envy that Mehinaku men feel toward women. In one, Kiyayala has sex with a male friend through the ­rectum. The friend becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy. The process, which tears him up inside, is very painful. Nonetheless, he picks up the infant and holds him to the breast of a woman. The boy grows up to be tall and handsome.51 It seems clear from this story that men envy the ability of women to give birth. And the Mehinaku tradition of “couvade” confirms this interpretation. This institution is common cross-culturally. Derived from the French verb couver, to hatch or incubate, couvade refers to fathers who imitate the mothers before and just after childbirth. This can involve anything from obeying informal food taboos to re-enacting labour itself. Among the Mehinaku, couvade involves seclusion.52 Like Amazonia, Papua-New Guinea has many horticultural societies. And like Amazonian ones, these tell myths about men stealing sacred flutes from women to gain power over them. Because hunting gradually died out in the western highlands, people cultivated taro. As early as one thousand years ago, however, they relied also on the domestication of pigs. They did not eat all of the pigs; they exchanged some for political patronage, labour, women, power, and prestige. This created a demand for more and more pigs. Later on, moreover, they discovered that land, if unsuitable for the taro, might be suitable for the sweet potato and thus support even larger herds. But in the eastern highlands, the environment was less hospitable. Because this territory is a rain forest, people must endure heavy rain for nine months of the year and often heavy fog as well. Only recently have these societies turned to the cultivation of sweet potatoes and the domestication of pigs, which generated increasing conflict due to competition over land. Traditionally, they resolved conflict by fission, breakaway groups moving on to new land. Now, they can no longer afford to keep moving on. Unlike the western highlanders, who have developed peaceful techniques for resolving conflict, the eastern highlanders have therefore resorted to endemic warfare.

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Warfare is not the only situation that causes stress for men. Another can be economic marginalization. This sounds counterintuitive to those of us who live in modern and industrialized societies, where women have faced economic marginalization (although undereducated men will in the near future), but ours is not the only human society and its problems are not the only human ones. The Sambia live in the western highlands of New Guinea.53 Of interest here is one particular preoccupation: the polarity that divides maleness from femaleness in both themselves and nature. Sambia women produce and control the most important crops, especially sweet potatoes.54 In several passages from Guardians of the Flutes, Gilbert Herdt describes the suffering of these men due to their deep anxiety over women (despite macho posturing). Sambia men say women have the knack for regularly planting almost any kind of crop and getting it to flourish … there is something innate in women that results in the fecundity of their gardens … Men say that precisely because they possess penises they are unable to produce sweet potatoes. This is not said boastfully … [it is] a sensitive spot in men’s perceptions of the women whom they so often deride. Men state that if they planted their own sweet potatoes, the yield would be only stunted, “stringy” tubers matted with hairlike feeder roots akin to “our penises.”55 Men believe that a girl is born with all the vital organs and fluids necessary for her to attain adult reproductive competence naturally. This conviction is embodied in perceptions of the girl’s biological development from the moment following sex assignment at birth. What distinguishes a girl … from a boy … is obvious: “a boy has a penis and a girl does not.” Yet the simplicity of that idea is belied by an ingenious theory about female procreation and ontogeny to which men cling, and firm opinions about the natural divergence of male and female growth. Girls grow easily and more quickly, outpacing boys. They have it easy, men have it hard. These differences are thought to be innate, absolute, irreversible … Girls … grow unfettered into maturity, whereas boys are blocked along the way. What needs telling is men’s urgent concern that children are closely bonded to their mothers; that in girls this is unproblematic; but that in boys such an attachment

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stifles the unfolding of masculinity. Indeed unless initiated and ritually treated, boys remain small and weak … Men notice that from the earliest years, girls seem to mature faster than boys. Speech comes more quickly. Girls become taller, with bigger limbs, torso, and girth, their buttocks start to shape and their eyes seem livelier … It bothers men that girls physically outgrow or “succeed” over boys … girls seem steadier and more dependable than their brothers … assume garden chores and babysitting responsibilities.56 Male fragility applies to babies, too, many of whom die not long after birth. Boys, the Sambia know, are at greater risk that girls are.57 But Sambia men use ritual to overcome anxiety about their identity. Initiation, for example, involves a series of rituals. These include “egestive” ones (vomiting, defecation, and nose-bleeding), which destroy the pollution that arises from contact with women; “ingestive” ones (swallowing new foods and homosexual insemination), which allow men to participate in the care of boys; “insertive” ones (spreading sweat, snot, urine, spittle, and body hair onto trees or plants), which give men power over the fertility of plants; and “­confirmatory” ones (performing active fellatio on novices, joining raiders and getting married), which complete the process of masculinization. These rituals for men establish their collective identity as men. Ironically, they do so partly by imitating key events in the lives of women!58 Generally speaking, men do not recognize status distinctions in relation to other men but do so in relation to women, whom they consider inferior to men. In fact, sexual polarization is severe. Men say that women are not only inferior to men (being soft, dark and “no good”) but also dangerous to men (being polluted, licentious and sexually insatiable). Not surprisingly, they insist on sexual segregation. Women work near the bottom of a hill, for instance, and men near the forested top. That is where they build their lodges, centers of ritual activity, and where they hunt pigs. Even the huts, where men and women live together, are sexually segregated. Boys and girls play apart. Men hunt and fight; women garden and care for young children. And everything in nature follows the same pattern, they believe, which is why the Sambia classify everything as either male or female. But there is more to all of this than meets the eye, because Sambia

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men exempt their own wives, sisters and daughters from slurs. Moreover, they see marriage as the source of many rewards. To be a whole person, a fully human being, is to be married. The Nama live in the eastern highlands of New Guinea, not far from the Sambia. These men, too, exemplify men’s economic marginalization. But their reaction against women is much more extreme than that of the Sambia. Nama men no longer hunt, and women have recently begun to grow sweet potatoes and raise pigs. To raise pigs, they need better land than the Sambia do. And more than survival is at stake. Nama men require a surplus of sweet potatoes and pigs, which they use as status symbols. Now status, by definition, involves rank or hierarchy. From this, it follows that men must engage in competition and struggle. For several reasons, then, they experience far more stress than their Sambia counterparts. They must continually risk their lives in battles over land and continually compete with other men for status. Moreover, women’s labour has gained significantly in value and there is a greater degree of reliance on the production of women to enhance men’s prestige activities … It is in these societies that we might expect sexual antagonism to be highly visible and pollution ideologies and cult life to flourish. J. Watson … long ago noted that the change to sweet potato “thrust upon women the major economic burden, and an importance greater than before.” This “importance,” arising from a much increased demand for their labour and products of their labour … was matched only by men’s increased reliance upon women’s work and products for their ceremonial, political and prestige-seeking pursuits.59 Hunting no longer provides Nama men with a healthy source of ­masculine identity. Moreover, men are economically dependent on women. Sexual antagonism among the Nama is therefore truly pathological. According to anthropologist D.K. Feil, a young man shoots his future wife in the thigh with an arrow to demonstrate his unyielding power over her.60 But Nama men are not the only ones who think about sexual relations in this hostile way. Nama women express extreme hostility toward men.61 Women do this, Feil observes, because they need the

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protection of warriors. Given the constant possibility of being attacked, in other words, their compliance is a necessary trade-off and not simply a burden that men impose on them. The Nama are in transition, moving from kin-related groups (which have no supreme leaders) to chiefdoms (which do have supreme leaders and rely on loyalty to them instead of kinfolk). Some chiefs go further than others. As despots, they recruit men through intimidation and bravado.62 With the advent of despotism and extreme emphasis on hierarchy, of course, solidarity breaks down among the men. Surrounding them on all sides are enemies. Vulnerability and anxiety pervade their lives. In these circumstances, they are seldom able to cope with stress in healthy ways. The government of Papua-New Guinea has sponsored many pacification projects, but these have backfired by eliminating the one and only remaining source of identity that has remained for men: warfare. As a result, many of these societies have begun to disintegrate. If all these situations – harrowing initiations, warfare, economic and kin marginalization – come together in the horticultural societies that anthropologists study and also in the Neolithic ones that archaeologists study. Neolithic men, like their counterparts in our time, must have experienced severe stress, generating both fear and envy of women. Men probably compensated by defining themselves as naturally or culturally superior to women. But Neolithic women, too, would have experienced severe stress and loss in warfare. By participating in torture, moreover, they participated in the cultural ethos on which they relied for security and health. But their stress did not equal that of men, who were responsible for risking their lives to protect the community and lived with the enduring fear of death. We suggest that stress resulting from both physical vulnerability, and economic or familial marginalization led to pathological consequences among many Neolithic men just as it does among many of their counterparts today. The Neolithic did not last long as a phase of history (although some of those ancient societies continued until modern times); it led directly to a new age in some regions. If the parallel with present-day horticultural and pastoral societies holds up, some lineage elders and village headmen – those whom the community acknowledged as its leaders because of their skills, prestige, and resources – began to act out of personal interest, not the collective interest. Some people argue

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that these leaders, those who became chiefs, invented “individualism,” though admittedly not the civic-minded individualism that eventually produced the Enlightenment and American democracy. A much less confusing word than that would be “selfishness.” Personal power over others became an end in itself. The resulting tyranny was not due entirely to the inner world of these chiefs, their personal ambition, their personal malice toward rivals, or even their personal need to compensate for vulnerability of one kind or another. The external world did present these societies with real threats and therefore these chiefs with real challenges. The new world order required these societies to reorganize themselves with new social, economic, political, and military needs in mind. And hierarchies, including sexual hierarchies, either concentrated power or distributed labor in ways that were effective for the collective good. But there were as yet no rules to mitigate the brutality. Those who took power felt no need to restrain their use of it, and those whom they victimized still lacked the resources – moral or legal codes – to resist it. Excess was the rule, not the exception. Moreover, those in the chief’s entourage tried to emulate their leader on a smaller scale and thus gain in wealth or prestige. As a result, the principle of hierarchy, including a sexual one that left men in general with more prestige than women in general, became encoded in symbol systems and thus passed on to later generations – including those of early states. Eli Sagan has studied this transition in Polynesia, Africa, and elsewhere.63 As a few men gained power, they began to control and exploit other men in their own communities and enslaved ones from other communities. These chiefs came to believe that they were not merely powerful but omnipotent, a belief that they demonstrated by organizing massive human sacrifices,64 demanding the wives of other men, capturing or raping women en masse, making war on a new scale, murdering men who stood in their way, raping, slaughtering defeated men, and so on. But these chiefs ruled very unstable societies, partly because other men, sometimes their own brothers or sons, developed the same thirst for unlimited power. These societies conquered and absorbed others and evolved either quickly or gradually into early, or “archaic,” states. Sagan explains this transition from bands to chiefdoms and then to states. Bands suppressed personal ambitions in order to maintain collective solidarity. But instability due to changing social and economic conditions created scope for experiments with personal autonomy.

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These experiments led to anxiety and even more instability. Seeking personal autonomy, he argues, made chiefs profoundly anxious over separation from their kinsmen (like that of children who must separate from their mothers) but also made others profoundly anxious over the regression of their chiefs (like that of children who refuse to grow up). Many chiefs were infamous, in fact, for their childish temper-tantrums. One way for chiefs to remove debilitating stress was to project their own vulnerability onto others by means of horrific acts such as human sacrifice. Eventually, chiefs took human sacrifice to a new level. Disconnecting it from communal welfare, they turned it into a symbol of their own omnipotence: being able to kill a­ nyone at any time for any reason. Killing weaker people, they believed, was a symbolic way of killing weaknesses within themselves. Although only a few men had the initiative to experiment with autonomy, continues Sagan, they set the tone for many others. Some made the leap, and others did not. 65 But of greatest importance here is simply the fact that these changes, although they encouraged the excessive power of chiefs and their entourages, which meant tyranny over all women and almost all men, had less to do with maleness – some innate greed or lust for power – than with historical circumstances. The Agricultural Revolution, actually a series of closely related cultural revolutions, began approximately ten thousand years ago with two technological innovations, the iron plough and irrigation, which made agriculture itself possible. More efficient than horticulture, agriculture led to food surpluses and therefore to larger populations. No longer did everyone have to work the land. This situation led to the rise of cities, specialized professions, social and political hierarchies, legal codes, elite literacy in some cases and eventually to religious or philosophical speculation. Archaic states began to solve the problems that men had faced but created new ones for women – especially elite women. Most states adopted patrilocality, for instance, and patrilineality.66 The result was greater prestige and influence for fathers. This meant, apart from anything else, that the male body had a stronger relation to masculine identity, which solved a major problem for men. But the introduction in addition of complex gender systems created a new one for women. Just as nature decreed that only women could do some things

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(gestate and lactate), culture now decreed that only men could do other things (administering cities or irrigation projects, writing sacred texts, performing some religious rituals, trading in foreign lands, and so on). These new gender systems did not make much difference to most men or women, who were peasants or serfs, but they made a big difference to other men and women. They kept elite women at home, for instance, denying them access to activities that they could have done just as well as men.67 And, given the principle of “on earth as it is in heaven,” divine gender systems paralleled these human ones. Gods replaced goddesses or demoted goddesses.68 The rise of early states was an uneven process. Some disintegrated, but others stabilized and turned into early civilizations. Archaeologist Bruce Trigger examined seven early civilizations: those of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Chinese, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Yorubas.69 By “early,” he referred not to chronology but to structure. Early civilization, as anthropologists use this term, denotes the earliest form of class-based society that developed in the course of human history … They are (or rather were, since none currently exists) characterized by a high degree of social and economic inequality; power was based primarily on the creation and control of agricultural surpluses. While the technologies of these societies tended to remain simple, the organization and management of human labor could sometimes be quite complex. These societies were internally stratified in a hierarchy of largely endogamous classes. Each civilization was based upon exploitative relations, in which a king and a small ruling class extracted surplus production from the lower classes. These surpluses supported an elite style of life that was clearly distinguished from that of the lower classes by its luxuriousness and by the creation of monumental art, architecture, and other status symbols. Both slavery and coercive institutions, such as corvée labor and mandatory military service, existed, but they were less developed than in many subsequent preindustrial societies. Yet those in control possessed sufficient political power and social sanctions to conserve the stability of their regimes over long periods. The symbols that were used to conceptualize and discuss social relations in such societies were drawn mainly from the sphere of religion, which at its highest levels was subject to state control.70

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These early civilizations produced elaborate material cultures. Elites appropriated material wealth partly for the purpose of conspicuous consumption – that is, to “manifest and reinforce political authority.”71 Of particular importance here is that they allowed men to establish strong collective identities specifically as men. Maleness proved useful for some men in connection with iron ploughs and for other men in connection with iron weapons. Because these early civilizations adopted technologically advanced forms of warfare, the resulting stress led some men to seek refuge from war and even from society. In India, for instance, some men withdrew altogether from society and became wandering ascetics. Both Buddhism and Jainism probably emerged from these ascetic groups.72 Accompanying the rise of these civilizations, in fact, was the gradual rise of new religious movements, which challenged and resisted the unbridled power of early rulers.73 Gradually, justice replaced private revenge, and law replaced blood feuding. In other words, these early civilizations evolved into much more sophisticated ones. For example, Greek civilization began as a collection of unstable city states with powerful aristocratic lineages and weak social institutions. To put it bluntly, as David Cohen has done, the Greeks had to tame raw competition with its “nexus of honor, insult, humiliation, and revenge”74 among powerful people. They had to institutionalize competition by organizing it according to rules that would foster personal competition but in ways that would serve public needs. This meant a major shift in values. Masculinity could no longer rely on the self-interest of aristocrats and the pride of heroes. It had to rely instead on their ability to support the polis. The ideal man became the good citizen, who defined honor not by lineage or fame but by contributions to the common good. Greek citizens now resolved disputes in courts of law. The state could not eliminate conflict completely, of course, but it could discourage violence within its territory. A new concept of honor integrated equality and hierarchy. It relied on a notion of equality in honor at the same time that the point of the competition is to establish one’s superiority as the primus inter pares … The paradox of democratic Athens is that in this ideologically egalitarian society those with the greatest claims to honor, the elites competing amongst themselves for wealth,

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power, and influence, submitted, in the Assembly and the courts, to the judgment of those with far lesser claims. This role of the demos was seen as crucial to the equilibrium of the democracy. Aeschines argues … that democracy requires honor (philotimia) be granted by the people, not appropriated for themselves by the powerful … The tension between equality and hierarchy must be negotiated by granting distinctions which set some citizens above the rest, but by also keeping the decision about honor and hierarchies in the hands of the people as embodied in popular institutions like the courts … As Demothsenes puts it … in democracies freedom is preserved by the competition of the virtuous for the honors of the people.75 But the Greeks found an even more effective way to maintain social and political stability: the propagation of civic virtue. They actively promoted exemplary figures. At first, they used the words of Homer to instill a heroic mentality. Later on, they used collections of sayings and anecdotes. Eventually, every philosophical school had its own version. Roman civilization, too, evolved. From the beginning, Romans had valued songs and poems about their founding heroes. But they “received from Greece,” writes Clive Skidmore, “the idea that moral education should depend upon examples. It was not, of course, a novel idea to them. The Roman elite had its own aristocratic ideology of competition and rivalry with one’s fellow aristocrats in the service of the state … Just as the Homeric hero devoted his life to the pursuit of arete [goodness, excellence, virtue] so the Roman aristocrat pursued virtus,76 and the desire to be the best dominated both societies.”77 To make these virtues accessible, the Romans compiled comprehensive lists of heroes and their virtues, organizing them thematically. These later works – a good example is Memorable Words and Deeds, by Valerius Maximus – relied on two primary notions. One was virtue, the standard of moral conduct. Roman virtues included staunchness, restraint, self-control, justice, benevolence, moderation, tolerance and even mercy or pity.78 The other notion was vice, the standard of immoral conduct. Roman vices included rashness and fury. The reward for the former was public recognition and prestige; punishment for the latter was public condemnation and infamy.

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The pursuit of excellence … is always dependent upon respect for one’s peers, laus … [praise], for the public recognition of virtus is the just reward of achievement as well as its motivation. Therefore Roman aristocrats felt the need to quantify their achievements on tombstones in terms of facts and figures, the number of one’s offices and conquered enemies … ancestors too were objects of imitation, and the real incitements to virtue lay in the entrance halls and forecourts of noble houses in the form of captured arms and trophies, genealogies and records of each ancestor’s achievement … Most important of all were the ancestral images (imagines), which acted as visual examples.79 But Roman religion could not maintain the moral order of a vast empire. The gods were amoral, intervening capriciously in human affairs only to please themselves – usually their own vanity – and not to reward virtue or punish vice. The Christian god was different. One aspect of civic virtue and therefore of masculinity as well was “stoicism.” Among other things, Stoic philosophers urged their followers to endure pain or deprivation without flinching. Some subcultures, such as monastic ones, linked this mentality with pacifism and explicitly rejected the warrior ethos. But even those subcultures incorporated stoic virtues – embracing self-discipline, renouncing worldly pleasure and repressing emotion – by applying them to nonmilitary contexts. Scholars have noted the theatricality of their stoical behavior.80 Our word “stoic,” in fact, comes directly out of this context.81 The Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome, like their Eastern counterparts, consciously denied the value of emotion – both joy and suffering – in order to cultivate reason. Moreover, they legitimated self-willed death for men in specific circumstances. In fact, they contrasted men who chose easy forms of suicide such as hemlock poisoning with those who chose harder – and therefore more honorable – forms. As a result, death became their ultimate statement on masculinity. The Stoic philosophers were a long way from members of the modern Hemlock Society, who insist on “death with dignity” but without pain. For the Greeks and Romans, that would have amounted to cowardice and therefore to shame. Easy death was okay for women, slaves or political prisoners82 but not for male citizens.

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These civilizations introduced codes of law and moral guidelines.83 Now subject to transcendent authorities, kings acknowledged the need to promote justice or even benevolence. Similarly, husbands acknowledged the need to honor their wives, fathers to protect and care for their children, householders to act compassionately toward their servants and even their slaves, young people to respect their elders, and humans to respect the land and its creatures. Ordinary men still had higher status, at least nominally, than their wives and children did. On the other hand, they always had lower status than at least some other men and women did. After moving beyond the archaic phase, many states found ways of abolishing human sacrifice.84 Because they were powerful enough to mitigate chaos and warfare, these states found symbolic substitutes for cannibalism, headhunting, torture, and human sacrifice. They gradually eliminated the latter, for instance, in one or more of three ways: replacing it with animal sacrifice,85 then with fruit or grain sacrifice,86 and finally with spiritual sacrifice (reciting stories from sacred texts87 or passages from sacred law,88 saying personal prayers, and so on), or with symbolic sacrifice (such as the Christian Eucharist).89 Meanwhile, the Jews developed their own take on masculinity, although it took many centuries to evolve from ancient Israelite archetypes to rabbinic ones. The earliest Israelite heroes were the tribal ones of pastoral nomads. These eventually included a lawgiver and a series of “judges.” Their authority derived ultimately from God, not personal qualities. The rise of an Israelite state, two of them for a while, introduced not only kings (despite God’s warning against the tyranny that a kingdom would entail hardships such as forced labour and forced military service)90 but also prophets (who attacked most of the kings for ignoring God’s plan). The next transformation of Israelite religion began with the state’s demise after its conquest and the nation’s exile. Although many people returned to their homeland after one or two generations, the second state never achieved the wealth and power that the first one had attained under Solomon (although the state had not been particularly wealthy or powerful even under Solomon). During that first exile (after being conquered by the Babylonians), the Israelites began to transform themselves into rabbinic Jews. This reformation, which began during an exile, involved an awareness

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that military and even political power were of no ultimate importance – an awareness that deepened after the second exile and during centuries of persecution in foreign lands. At any rate, the rabbis introduced a new source of masculine identity: knowledge of the Torah. The ideal man was now a rabbi, a scholar. God himself was now the chief rabbi of a celestial Torah academy. In addition, the rabbis reinterpreted even the most obviously military and political archetypes. King David, the martial hero par excellence, became a poet (and author of the psalms). At the heart of rabbinic manhood were holiness and compassion (both acquired primarily, though not always directly, by absorbing and enacting the Torah’s principles as the rabbis interpreted them). These civilizations continued to provide contexts in which masculine identity could rely at least to some extent on the male body, although the contexts varied, depending on the particular cultural matrix of a given time or place – especially on the available technology. The fact that most men had greater upper-body strength than most women made it almost inevitable that they would be the ones to use iron ploughs (even though they had draught animals to help them).91 As for traders, they had to spend long periods travelling by land or sea, which required the kind of mobility that was easier for men than for pregnant or nursing women. In this case, male bodies had value precisely because they did not gestate or lactate. To some extent, therefore, identity still relied on the male body. These states gradually developed strategies – religious, political and social – to create stability and order. They either displaced or replaced definitions of masculinity, for instance, that had relied on physical aggression and excessive individualism. This transition resulted in a new ideal of manhood: not a brutal conqueror but a just king, a priest, a prophet, a sage, a gentleman. Moreover, these civilizations usually had the resources and the security to allow men more than one form of identity. Men could be  soldiers, administrators, scribes, accountants, priests, ascetics, ­philosophers, craftsmen, artisans, architects, merchants, traders, and so on. But none of these, aside from soldiers and some craftsmen, required massive physical strength, martial courage, or even mobility. For these men – not peasants (who needed strength to till the fields) or nobles (who needed strength to defend the state or extend it) but men of the new urban elite and middle classes – there was no longer a direct relation between maleness (distinctive features of the male

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body) and masculinity (activities that brought status). This situation was virtually unprecedented. And it began a process that, over the next ten thousand years, increasingly separated maleness from masculinity among all men. In one sense, the male body has become increasingly obsolete as a source of collective identity for men. As the male body’s functional importance declined in early civilizations, moreover, so did its physical condition. In Clouds, for instance, Aristophanes wrote that pupils of the Sophists “have the worst, the most shameful bodies for warfare, incapable of hard work, but hunters have splendid bodies … to support the common good of their fellow citizens.”92 Although the Greeks tried to counter physical deterioration with a cult of athletic – that is, military – fitness that they promoted for every citizen, male bodies became economically irrelevant in both Greek and other cities. So did traditionally masculine virtues such as endurance and courage. But two major adaptations contained the problem. First, societies went further than ever in restricting occupations to men. They legitimated this measure by arguing that women would have been incapable of performing them. In other words, they used culture (masculinity) to provide urban men with an identity that nature (maleness) no longer provided. Second, societies segregated men and women (a measure that had originated in some horticultural societies). Women usually dominated inside the home (even though men were at least the nominal heads of patrilineal families) and men outside the home (even though some ancient civilizations, such as that of Egypt, allowed women to own property and participate actively in commerce). Most men by far were peasants, who used their iron ploughs to till the fields. But consider the tiny minority of elite men. These members of the landed gentry, who relied on serfs to work their fields, had professions that women could have done just as well. These men were particularly conscientious about sexual segregation.93 Because cultural expertise and knowledge are forms of power, the cultural importance of masculinity improved even as the natural importance of maleness itself declined.94 Consider one notable cultural innovation of the Greeks: the competitive athlete, who had no less symbolic importance (as a philosophical ideal) than practical importance (as a potential soldier). Michael Poliakoff95 argues that the Greeks did not invent combat sports such as boxing and wrestling. More ancient peoples featured them in myths. But it was the Greeks who found them most

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fascinating. From inscriptions on Greek monuments, paintings on vases, and verses of poetry, we learn the obvious: that the elite men involved were not only young but also unusually tall and strong. This was partly because private wealth bought both leisure and training. And training was elaborate, involving not only calisthenics but also the study of military tactics. It was expensive, moreover, involving not only weights and punching bags but also massages, baths, and the musical accompaniment of flutes. But the Greeks (and especially their Roman imitators) took notice of raw talent from any class. Governments subsidized the training of boys from the middle or lower classes. Coaches found it professionally rewarding and often personally gratifying to guide these boys. Most prized of all were boys on the point of turning into young men. Their beauty and strength – displayed to advantage, by custom, in the nude – stirred widespread admiration. Sport was so important to the Greeks that they traced its origin to either Zeus or Hermes, whom they depicted with an erect phallus to celebrate both maleness and masculinity. Athletes were public heroes. And heroes, whether on the battlefield or on the training ground, had access to immortality. Their cults, like those of the gods, received offerings. And everyone understood the parallel between athletic heroes and war heroes. Both featured endurance, the result of strict training. Both, in fact, embodied the masculine ideals of boldness, courage, self-reliance, fair-play, integrity, perseverance, cunning, skill, asceticism, and leadership. Because major competitions occurred during festivals and during the hottest months, participants battled not only against each other but also against the sun. Crowds honored victorious athletes, who celebrated victories by giving testimonials. “I am the talk of all Asia, I Ariston, who took the olive crown in pankration. Whom Hellas called a man, seeing how in boyhood’s flower I held in my hands manhood’s power. My crown lay not in kind fortune’s hazard, but in fight without pause, I won of Olympia and Zeus the prize. Of seven boys, alone I had no rest, but always paired the others of the crown I bereft. So now I make glad my sire Eireinaios. And with immortal garlands my land of Ephesos.”96 A first victory at the games was a rite of passage, in fact, a coming-of-age ceremony. Because of their strength and pride, some athletes overstepped the rules of sport: “[W]e see the Greek admiration for the uninhibited and unbridled assertion of self to which the agon gave expression and

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release. Society may well have found the hero difficult to accommodate, but he was an embodiment of passions whose existence the Greeks were too honest to deny.”97 The danger made no difference. Proper athletic training provided discipline for the soul no less than for the body. But the main point here is that athletic competition made possible an important transition in the notion of manhood. The ideal Greek man was not only a military hero but also a public-minded citizen. The continuity was unmistakable. In the agora of his city, as on the field of war, a man’s masculinity was judged in terms of honor and shame. But there was now more to it than that. Elite young men learned not only about war and sport but also about political responsibility. And the latter meant much more than casting votes. It meant actively participating and even taking leadership positions in all aspects of public life. Greek citizens discussed politics, philosophy, art, music, and so on. Poliakoff mentions a trial that took place during the Classical period. The prosecuting attorney worried that a witness for the defense might make a very favorable impression, because he had once been a general and knew how to conduct himself “like one who has been in the palaestras and in learned discourse.”98 In the palaestra itself, which is where athletes trained at state expense, were wide benches for physical relaxation and intellectual discussion. Socrates often went there to lead discussions with promising young Athenians. But many philosophers thought carefully about sport. Pythagoras, it is reported, told his disciples that participating in sport, not winning, is the most important thing … the philosophical schools found the training and self-sacrifice of the athletes to be of extreme interest, in fact, often of far greater value than sport itself. The athlete’s ability to abstain from sex impressed Plato … Plato concluded that if athletes could make such sacrifices of physical gratification for the sake of victory, youth could develop more self-control and strength of character. Like Plato, Aristotle lent only a little explicit approval to athletics, but he found the boxer’s ability to withstand great pain for the sake of victory extremely enlightening. This, Aristotle noted, could teach a man even to sacrifice the life he enjoys for an important cause. The succeeding Stoic and Cynic schools made the athlete’s training and contest, with particular attention to the grueling combat

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events, into an extensive metaphor for the good man’s struggle to live properly.99 Gradually, Greek thinkers began to criticize sport for focusing too heavily on the individual and on the body (rather than on the mind and on character). Isocrates said that he had been “astonished at those who hold festivals and set up athletic contests that they consider physical success worthy of such great rewards, but have not given any honor to those who personally labor for the common good and so prepare their souls that they are able to benefit others.”100 At approximately the same time, allegedly, Diogenes the Cynic made an analogy between athletes and those who teach humility. He shocked officials of the Isthmian festival by putting the pine wreath on his own head, claiming that he had won even greater contests by defeating hardship and pleasure. As for Epiktetos, he strongly opposed athletics. He argued for an abstract notion of training. For him, the truly invincible athlete was one who could withstand temptation.101 First the Greeks and then the Romans replaced male muscle with male virtue, in short, and thus interiorized martial virtues. This transformation continued among the early Christians. They had no use for sport, as such, but found a great deal of use for sport as a metaphor that described an internal wrestling match: flesh versus spirit. Consider the words of St. Paul: “I box not like a shadowboxer.” He is a true fighter, one who enters true combat in pursuit of his faith. “I bruise my body and bring it into subjugation.”102 Paul was an athlete for God, in other words, not for mere wealth or fame.103 Occasional denunciations of the athletic establishment notwithstanding, Christians continued to use athletic metaphors. But their evaluations were not always the same. Clement of Alexandria considered it fitting to train young men as athletes. Others disagreed. The fourth-century Apostolic Constitution barred Christians from participating in or even observing athletic events. Those who did, in fact, could not expect baptism. The transformation of martial values into ascetic ones can occur, however, only in societies that either do not feel threatened by ­violence or designate the men of specific classes to protect society. Otherwise, asceticism would be a cloak for cowardice. This is how Krishna understood Arjuna’s premature flight from his duties on the battlefield, according to India’s Mahabharata, and ridiculed him as effeminate or hermaphroditic.104

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Some societies have universalized the stoic mentality as an ideal for all men, not merely for a few religious virtuosi. An interesting example of this is found in modern Japan. Although the samurai caste itself died out during Japan’s industrialization, its central value system of unquestioned loyalty to constituted authority did not disappear entirely but lived on in a modernized bureaucratic form. It was taken over by Japan’s growing bourgeoisie as a generalized code of conduct useful in nation-building and administration. It was gradually universalized to all other classes in Japan, rather like the Protestant Ethic in Western Europe, so that the entire country was more or less “bushido-ized” by the late Tokugawa period (1600–1868): “Basically [writes Robert Bellah,] the ethic of a warrior class, under the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism, became sufficiently generalized so that it could become the ethic of an entire people.”105 The societies that we are discussing here, those of agrarian civilizations, gradually spiritualized the rituals of initiation for boys. Consider the Hindu ritual of upanayana. It is regarded as the second birth of the initiate. The teacher who performs the initiation and who imparts the Veda is said to bear the pupil within him like an embryo and to cause him to be born again in the Veda. Thus the … first three social classes (varna), are called “twice-born” because they undergo initiation … Before the rite the boy takes his final meal in the company of his mother. Then his head is shaved and he is bathed … He is given a girdle, a deerskin, a staff, and a sacred thread. The teacher performs ­several symbolic acts that establish an intimate relationship between him and his new pupil. The initiatory rite reaches its ­climax when the teacher reaches over the pupil’s right shoulder, places his hand over the pupil’s heart, and says: “Into my will I take thy heart. Thy mind shall follow my mind. In my word thou shalt rejoice with all thy heart … [T]he pupil remains for many years at the teacher’s house, away from his home and family.106 The Sanskrit word veda means “knowledge,” which is what Hindus call their most ancient scriptures. At first, fathers passed down this

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specialized knowledge to their sons at home. Later on, teachers passed it down to their students in forest schools. These teachers required the boys to memorize texts, interpret them and perform rituals. In addition, teachers taught them about virtue, character, and the skills that they would need in daily life. After lengthy training, young men returned home to their cities or towns and married. The Hindu women of elite castes stayed home. They gave birth, cared for children, prepared food, produced clothing and other household goods, and administered households (which included servants or slaves). This was true also of those castes that imitated elite ones to gain status. At any rate, women did not need formal education to perform domestic tasks (although they often received enough training to perform domestic religious rituals). The gender system had an ambiguous effect on Hindu women. On the one hand, it could lead to psychological deformation and intellectual atrophy. On the other hand – and some feminists prefer to ignore this – it released elite and even middle-class women from backbreaking work in the fields (which often led to psychological deformation and intellectual atrophy among peasants both male and female). Henceforth, women with the highest status were those who could afford to stay home, and men with the highest status were those who could afford to use their minds or at least their hands instead of their muscles (except, however, for the few royal and noble warriors). Meanwhile, the status of women was declining. Peasant women continued to play vital roles in rice cultivation, although the introduction of iron ploughs, which required male bodies, diminished the status of their labor. Even so, men continued to envy women in some communities. They expressed this either implicitly or explicitly. Wendy Doniger observes, for example, that Hindus link female sexuality with power. Authority is male, a kind of seed (virya), the carrier of social hierarchy, while power (shakti) is not inherent in status or rank. Gods have power and authority in relation to mankind; human men have authority over human women, while human women have more power than human men … Authority is a social force (male) needed to tame, control, and channel pure power (female); to say that he has authority and that she has power is to say that he directs and shapes the life force that comes from her … The husband’s awkward position of having to control a person on

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whom he is dependent and who possesses a greater means of physical force (shakti) than he himself possesses, is a reversal of the usual link between status and [power] in the caste hierarchy.107 In goddess myths, “the exchange of male virility for female powers of revivification appears also in some episodes of sex reversals: the god turns himself into a woman in order to siphon off male powers (often demonic powers), ultimately to return to his male condition newly invigorated.”108 Similarly, male devotees of Krishna become “women” during worship and then men again after worship – but better men.109 To conclude, the Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions created enormous social and cultural stresses. Of particular interest here is how they affected men. The new technologies began a long and gradual process that increasingly marginalized the male body as a source of collective identity for men. To compensate for what nature itself no longer provided, men turned to culture – which is to say, gender systems that arbitrarily assigned some functions to men and others to women. Usually, this amounted to sexual segregation, the public world being masculine and the domestic one feminine. This solution propped up the collective identity of men, to be sure, but it simultaneously created problems for women.

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2 From Peasant to Proletarian: The Industrial Revolution The father was a key factor in the departure from home by the son. There was a widespread assumption in the 1930s that the father was relatively unimportant in child raising … When the father was unemployed, what little impact he had in the home was lost. The result in many homes was the emergence of the mother as the dominant parent, while the father became an antagonist or, in the other extreme, a withdrawn and elusive character. The father’s relationship with the son became more tense, created by the father’s frustration and the son’s attitude that the father was to blame for the family’s predicament – as well as his own. Thus, the combination of economic hardships and status loss made transition to the traditional adult roles more problematic and irregular for boys than for girls.1 Michael Scheibach

During the ten thousand years that have passed since the Agricultural Revolution, not much has changed in connection with the identity of men before the late eighteenth century. Some societies were relatively urban and others relatively rural, but all relied directly and heavily on agriculture. Some men required physical strength and physical endurance as they toiled from sunrise to sunset in the fields. Other men required physical strength for combat. Only a small minority of men required brains or talents instead of muscles to function as traders, merchants, artisans, and so forth. For most men by far, therefore, to be a man was still to serve the community with their male bodies. The late eighteenth century, however, brought about two cultural revolutions with profound implications for the collective identity of men. In this chapter, we discuss one of them, the Industrial Revolution and its affects on men during (1) the late nineteenth century and (2) the twentieth century.

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The Industrial Revolution meant that one distinctive feature of the male body, its muscle mass, would become obsolete both economically and as a source of collective identity for men. Machines more and more often did, faster and more efficiently, what male muscles had formerly done. The change was not obvious, at first, because some industrial jobs still required physical strength. Gradually, though, it did become obvious. Women2 and even children, after all, could tend the gears and levers in a factory or the picks and shovels in a mine. In the nineteenth century, though, legislative reform in Britain and then elsewhere took women and children out of the factories and mines. This left them more economically dependent than ever on men. Even some poor women now lived primarily in the private realm of home. And the gradual replacement of extended families by nuclear families, due to massive migrations from country villages to industrial cities, made their isolation even more difficult than it would have been otherwise. Nevertheless, women were among those who pressed most eagerly for legislative reform. After all, the new laws took women and children out of very dangerous and dehumanizing conditions. To those women who would otherwise have had to work outside the home, reform meant at the very least freedom to care for their children. Not every couple could afford this luxury, of course, but those who could were proud of it. To men, these new laws meant the opportunity to form an identity as economic providers for their families, especially important now that the male body itself was becoming less and less important as a source of identity. (In the United States and Canada, with vast areas of wilderness on the frontier to be tamed and farmed, this process was slower than it was in Europe.) To the extent that factories and mines still required male muscles, on the other hand, it reduced men symbolically to the level of machines – that is, the cogs who fed those machines (often losing their fingers or hands or lives in the process). And below even these men were those whose bodies were exploited in more primitive ways, because pure brawn was still necessary for the least rewarding and least prestigious tasks. According to Ann Douglas, the nineteenth century produced a  highly feminized culture in America.3 Characteristic of it was the famous (or infamous) “pedestal” on which society reverently placed women. Americans tended to see women, unlike men, as “domestic angels.” By that, they meant innately, or at least culturally, moral beings. Americans explained the moral status of women

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in connection with the fact that only women could become mothers. It is hardly surprising that they associated women with “civilization.” Not only as mothers, though, but also as teachers and missionaries, women became the primary transmitters of high culture. And as founders of literary guilds or music societies, especially in small towns and on the frontier, they became also the primary consumers of culture. But the culture that they created and consumed, mainly romantic novels and magazines, relied heavily on a combination of moralistic preaching and sentimental piety. This picture of women was widespread among both women and men, though for different reasons. Many women, including the early suffragists and feminists, thought in terms of essentialism. Women were innately good, early feminists proclaimed, by virtue of their ability to become mothers. This essentialism implied dualism: men were innately evil. Therefore it implied hierarchy as well: women were innately better than men. Some men, ironically, found this nonsense convenient. If they were really innately evil, after all, and if their evil nevertheless served some purpose in the grand scheme of nature or even merely of the economy, then there was surely no point in trying to “improve” themselves by giving up whatever pleasures came their lowly way. Even so, many men believed in the moral superiority of women and acted accordingly. Without the support of male officials and politicians, after all, the largely female temperance unions would never have succeeded in bringing about Prohibition. Now, consider what all this meant for middle-class and upperclass boys. In American Manhood, E. Anthony Rotundo explores nineteenth-century “boy culture.” Life began in the clothing of girls – the kind of clothing that many people associated with Little Lord Fauntleroy.4 Until the age of about six, they lived entirely within the domestic realm of women. The clothing that boys wore during their early years served as a vivid symbol of their feminization: they dressed in the same loose-fitting gowns that their sisters wore. One Ohio man described the small boys’ outfit of his childhood as “a sort of Kate Greenaway costume, the upper part of the body covered by a loose blouse, belted in at the waist, allowing the skirt to hang half-way to the knees.” Under these gowns, they wore “girllike panties” which reached the ankles. Such “girllike” clothing gave small boys the message that they were expected to behave like

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their sisters, and served also as a token of the feminine environment that clothed them socially at this point in life. More than that, boys’ gowns and smocks inhibited the running, climbing, and other physical activities that so often made boys a disagreeable addition to the gentle domesticity of women’s world. Whether they meekly accepted the way their parents dressed them or rebelled against its confinements, boys were put in a ­situation where they had to accept or reject a feminine identity in their earliest years.5 Boys remained constantly under the watchful eyes of their mothers and older sisters. Their fathers, working in factories or offices, spent almost the entire day away from home. This form of segregation, like every other form, had profound effects on everyone – including young boys. By the time they reached the age of six, mothers (or servants) could no longer confine boys to the home. The outside world, where they played, meant freedom from suffocating repression. They were more than ready by now, in short, to rebel. The boys created their own distinct space, their own subculture, in which they reacted against not only the world of adults in general (women who fettered them with rules and men who punished them for transgressions) but also both the feminine (moralistic restrictions) and the masculine (harsh duties). Observers of the time commented on their spontaneity but also on their noisiness and impulsiveness. Modern sociologists or psychologists, thinking of the nineteenth century, would comment on their assertiveness and group loyalty but also on their ritualized daring and general mayhem. They had rules, which relied on notions of honour and shame, but they had no culturally endorsed rite of passage either into or out of this semi-autonomous world. These boys spent much of their time playing pranks and wrestling. And they did not always do so in good fun. Some boys goaded the others into fights, for instance, and insider boys hazed outsiders or newcomers. Beneath this violence lay curious veins of casual hostility and sociable sadism. One of the bonds that held boy culture together was the pain that youngsters inflicted on each other. If boys posed a danger to one another, they were downright lethal to small animals. Boys especially enjoyed hunting birds and squirrels, and they did a good deal of trapping as well. There were

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several reasons for hunting’s great appeal. In the rural North of the nineteenth century, the gun and the rod were still emblems of the male duty to feed one’s family. The hunt, in that way, was associated with the power and status of grown men. Yet city boys – given the opportunity to hunt – took the same lusty pleasure in it that their country cousins did. They just liked the challenge of the kill.6 When they imitated the struggles between settlers and Indians, the boys portrayed the Indians as wild and aggressive. But they identified themselves with the Indians, not the settlers. They considered themselves “savages” by mid-century, and their own parents saw no reason to disagree with them. Writers called the boys “wild” and “primitive” and full of “animal spirits.” They compared the boys to Amerindians or Africans. One female writer even called them a breed unto themselves, “the race of boys.”7 Girls and women had come to represent “civilization” (culture), as we say, whereas boys and men had come to represent “savagery” (nature).8 Today, it seems clear that the word “savagery” involved a projection of European culture onto Amerindian cultures. In some ways, that projection was a negative one. In other ways, though, it was anything but negative. For boys and even adult men of the nineteenth century, it was a Romantic projection. They were positively attracted to what they perceived as “real manhood.” (The word “civilization” was equally ambiguous to Americans, however, having both positive and negative connotations.)9 The high degree of conflict led to violence, sometimes sadistic violence, against animals and “enemy” boys alike. “Boys turned woodchuck trapping into woodchuck torture, and they often killed insects simply to inflict suffering. While the boyish interest in hunting and fishing reflected in some part a remnant of earlier manly duties, it was also related to the pleasure that boys took in fighting and even stoning one another.”10 You could say, in fact, that all this confinement and domestication in early boyhood – all this feminization – had resulted in a resurgence of neurotic “re-masculinization.” As boys grew up, some of this neuroticism disappeared. But new anxieties developed. Of great importance to young men was the fact that they would have to provide financial support for families. There were no specific routes to enter middle-class professions or marriages. Despite the years of rough play, therefore, these young men

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now felt vulnerable and ambivalent about their lives. Rotundo makes no apology for calling attention to their vulnerability in connection with the attitudes of men toward women, courtship, and marriage: “If young men felt that their situation in courtship was dangerous, the reason lay not in a balance of power that was structured against them, but in the fact that their feelings and their self-esteem were so deeply at risk. In a situation like courtship, it did not take a designing woman to hurt a man’s feelings. A kind, sincere woman, if she discouraged his interest or refused his proposal of marriage, could plunge her disappointed suitor into depression and tumult. Young men knew that they risked pain and humiliation in courtship, and they defended themselves with stubborn emotional restraint.”11 But they were eager to have relationships with women. By examining their love letters, Rotundo found that young men replied to the letters of their lovers more quickly and more fully than young women did. Young men were faced with many double messages. One culturally transmitted message was that women were spiritual and pure (as wives and mothers). Another culturally transmitted message was that women were erotic and dangerous (as prostitutes). Even within marriage, things were seldom simple. Rotundo records the attitudes of both sexes as they struggled with the demands that spouses, inlaws, children, and society in general placed on them. Abandonment, divorce, and emotional retreat were somewhat familiar responses to problems. Men lacked a language of intimacy. Their identity, moreover, did not rely on marriage to the same extent as that of women did. Whatever common ground men and women might have felt, in any case, faded into insignificance due to the assumption of a profound psychological gulf between the sexes. “Women were pious, pure, submissive, domestic; men were active, independent, rational, dominant.”12 People experienced this in everyday life as institutionalized segregation of the sexes, which directed men – that is, the minority of middle-class and upper-class men – outward into the professions or the world of business and women inward to that of the home and the family. Many elite men were content, in all likelihood, with the symbolic status quo. Their complicity contributed to the general perception that masculine values were immoral and feminine ones moral, that men were selfish and women altruistic. Associating women with morality, in effect, legitimated the current status quo by giving women symbolic compensation for confinement to the home.

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Middle-class men established their identity primarily in work. (In the United States and to some extent Canada, unlike Europe, even upper-class men defined themselves in connection with work and wealth instead of aristocratic lineage and idleness.) By earning money, men provided for their families, proved themselves capable of manly action, attained social status in an age of individualism and found an outlet for competitive urges. In short, work gave men a sense of their own value as specifically male human beings. “By cultural fiat and the preference of individual men,” writes Rotundo, “the middle-class workplace was a male realm. As such, it had boundaries that needed defending. In other words, men needed ways to keep women out or to keep them isolated. Men wanted not only to protect their power but to defend the integrity of their cultural world as they conceived it. The male defense of gender turf was an important aspect of the culture of the middle-class workplace.”13 As a result of the Industrial Revolution, maleness became even less significant than it had been (for elite men) as a source of collective identity. Not surprisingly, sexual segregation continued to serve an even more desperate need. We see no reason to explain sexual segregation in terms of a conspiracy: some perpetual, ruthless, or even innate urge of men to dominate and therefore oppress women. We suggest that it originated in a functional context as a way of solving real problems. The point here is not to endorse that particular solution but to understand the complex situation that gave rise to it. By the late nineteenth century, however, men were paying a price for sexual segregation. Because work was so central to the formation of masculine identity, the realm of work could confer either prestige or shame. “Many men had to learn how to grapple with failure, and the fear of it was a common experience among males of the middle class. To understand these men, we must understand their attitudes and feelings about failure … Failure was a want of achievement where achievement measured manhood. Moreover, ­failure was viewed as a sign of poor character.”14 During the nineteenth century, two qualities explained “poor character.” One was laziness, the other dissipation. (Only the Great Depression, in the mid-­twentieth century, convinced most people that either bad luck or unjust economic and political structures could be factors in poverty.) Nineteenth-century experts realized that pressure at work could cause extreme anxiety and even emotional breakdowns. Called “male neurasthenia” in 1869, this debilitating disorder involved

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insomnia, tension, depression, fatigue, and many other symptoms.15 Observers found neurasthenia among both men and women, actually, but with different causes. Among women, said experts, the stress of pregnancy and childcare caused it. Among men, the stress of work caused it – but so did the fear of failure and the need for success. “Viewed in this way, neurasthenia was a matter of sex-role strain.”16 Worse, many men believed that it was unmanly to suffer any kind of breakdown. Culture prevented them from accepting their own vulnerability, let alone admitting it to others or trying to do something about it. When physical or psychological problems intruded on their well-being, they went into what we now call “denial” for fear of being ridiculed as unmanly. Listen now to Rotundo. Looked at in terms of gender, male neurasthenia amounted to a flight from manhood. It not only meant a withdrawal from the central male activity of work, but it also involved a rejection of fundamental manly virtues – achievement, ambition, dominance, independence. A man who steered away from the middle-class work-world was avoiding a man’s proper place. Moreover, the neurasthenic man was retreating into the feminine realm. By going home to rest, he was seeking out the domestic space of women. He was also finding refuge in roles and behaviors marked “female”: vulnerability, dependence, passivity, invalidism. Even a man who traveled to recuperate was pursuing the life of cultivated leisure which was associated with women. Unwittingly, a neurasthenic man was inverting the usual roles of the sexes, rejecting “male” and embracing “female.”17 Rotundo sees neurasthenia among men not only as a return to the feminine (going home to rest in the domestic realm of women) but also as a return to boyhood (seeking the protection or at least the comfort of their mothers). The cure, after all, was to rest and indulge in leisure activities. In short, it was a man’s way of regressing. “The gender dimension of male neurasthenia becomes more clearly visible when one looks at the professions where male invalids clustered – the ministry, the arts, scholarship – typed as feminine.”18 By the mid-nineteenth century, for instance, men considered religious ministry a “feminine” occupation. Boys who were “pallid, puny, sedentary, lifeless, [or] joyless”19 had been “born for a minister.” At any rate, ministers had more sensitive (read: feminine) temperaments

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than other men did. “Clearly, the minister’s tasks placed him at a great distance from the men who subjected themselves to the daily pressures of the market. The decline in the status of the ministry from the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century had many causes, but the daily association of the clergy with women and with the traits and cultural spaces allotted to women must surely have had an impact on the popular view of their profession.”20 Even men who did not suffer unduly from neurasthenia, however, remained confused over what manhood actually meant or could mean. Most men were profoundly affected by the feminine influences of mothers, older sisters, teachers, and so on. They carried this feminine culture inside them, moreover, even as they began to perceive it as a problem. In many ways, there was a lag between the femininity that they absorbed in early childhood and the machismo that they adopted as grown men. Many men did not even reach the transition. Both men and women attacked them as effeminate: intellectually inclined, aesthetically sensitive, spiritually oriented, and restrained by etiquette. Because many of these qualities had historic links with aristocracy, moreover, they evoked even greater disdain in the raw democracy of America. Men who failed to present themselves as manly were men who had bypassed the established boundaries between masculine and feminine. Some people classified them as “dandies.” Others classified them as, in effect, women. For the millions of men who had these qualities – and most men did in one form or another, to one degree or another – the consequences could be extremely painful. Neurasthenia and effeminacy, observes Rotundo, were not the only common forms of regression among men. Liquor, saloons, rituals, games, and prostitution provided additional ways of returning to boyhood. But these things were different in one way from neurasthenia and effeminacy. They had nothing to do with returning to the dependence of domestic boyhood. On the contrary, they harked back to the independence of “savage” boyhood – its rejection of home life and its emphasis on whatever seemed distinctively male.21 Many men tried to solve the identity problem by joining men’s organizations. Lodges for middle-class men – these had originated in taverns where adult men gathered for drinking, and telling ribald stories – proliferated (along with exclusive clubs for upper-class men). By the mid-nineteenth century, men were spending more and more of their leisure time in fraternal lodges rather than at home. The

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“savage” boys had eventually grown up, married, and settled down, after all, but many still wanted to re-enact the intense pleasures of boyhood. Industrial societies were becoming similar to the ones that we discussed in chapter 1. You could argue that the new men’s lodges and men’s clubs did precisely what the early men’s lodges had done in horticultural societies by providing men with their own distinctive space and, by extension, identity. During the last third of the century, according to Mark Carnes, almost a quarter of all American men belonged to a group such as the Odd Fellows, the Freemasons, the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Labor, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Lions, the Elks, the Shriners, the Grange, the Order of Red Men, the Improved Order of Red Men, and so on.22 A primary purpose of these largely middle-class organizations was to provide initiation rituals that reminded members of boyhood play (and anthropologists of initiation rituals in horticultural societies). At this point, we must examine the lodges in more detail. Consider rituals in the Order of Red Men. “Teach us the trail we must follow,” say initiates, “while we live in this forest and when it is Thy will that we shall cross the river of death, take us to Thyself …”23 The candidate for initiation, a “pale face,” paddles silently around the lodge room and is then captured by “Indians” who think he is a spy. The Indians confer among themselves. “This pale face is of a hated nation: let us put him to the torture! … He is a squaw, and cannot bear the torture! … He fears a Warrior’s death! Let us burn him at the Stake!”24 They threaten to impale him on a knife. Suddenly, though, they ask him if he wants to become a Red Man. When he says that he does, indeed, they test his courage. After all, Red Men are without fear. “The honest and brave man meets death with a smile,” moreover, and “the guilty trembles at the very thought.”25 (That notion is surprisingly similar to the Japanese one of a samurai warrior having to die with a smile.) To test his courage, the others decide to scalp the candidate anyway. In the nick of time, an Indian Prophet emerges, halts the execution, and announces that he has the requisite courage to be a Red Man. After his initiation, the middle-class man takes an oath of secrecy. Make-believe psychodramas of male initiation were enormously popular. This was the context for male bonding. If one can take ritual as a stylized form of conversation among its participants, then women also served as a chief conversational topic in the fraternal lodges of the late nineteenth century. The

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rituals of the Masons and other orders completely dominated lodge meetings, and they were focused in great measure on men’s feelings about women. In particular, these rites dwelt implicitly on men’s discomfort with their female-dominated upbringing and expressed the wish for an all-male family – a wish that was fulfilled both in the outcome of the ritual and in the fact of lodge membership. Like the simpler, more direct forms of conversation about women, fraternal rites expressed negative feelings that rarely found an outlet in other arenas of everyday life.26 The somewhat morbid but nonetheless exciting rituals of these lodges offered an imaginative return to that paradise of wild boyhood – which is to say, of freedom. “The double emotional function of the ritual,” says Carnes, “produced a confusing combination of roles: to cease being a squaw, the initiate became a man; yet to resolve anxieties over the adult male role, he regressed to the status of a child.”27 But as a recruit rose in the hierarchy, he enjoyed the role of patriarch and the veneration that fathers received. It is possible, therefore, that middle-class men of the nineteenth century found in these rituals a replacement for emotional ties with their own children. “The gender bifurcation of middle-class life,” adds Carnes, “had produced fathers without attentive children as well as children without effective fathers. Much as the rituals encouraged august father figures to accept callow initiates, they also urged young men to  better understand their elders.”28 The emphasis on father-son imagery in the coming-of-age ritual suggests, therefore, that men were mourning the childhood loss of their fathers to the remote world of work. The lodges provided men with more than identity and entertainment. They provided men with their own version of religion, especially the ritualistic aspect of religion. Of particular interest here, though, is the fascination with death itself. Carnes observes that death was the central theme of most rituals. The candidate commonly was “killed” during the initiation; one instance is Hiram Abiff’s assassination in the Master Mason ritual. Often the initiate’s metaphorical voyage stopped just short of death. The candidate for the Grand Army of the Republic, for example, was pronounced a “traitor” and led before a firing squad; his execution was

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interrupted at the last moment. In other rituals initiates were nearly slain by Indians, Old Testament patriarchs, or by God himself. Often they examined the physical consequences of death: the ubiquitous skulls, skeletons, and funeral paraphernalia – particularly coffins. In several Masonic degrees candidates were consigned to a Chamber of Reflection occupied by a coffin and a corpse. Candidates for the Odd Fellows, Grand Army of the Republic, and the Knights of Pythias took their oaths before a coffin …29 Sometimes, amusingly sadistic imagery found its way into this twilight world. The candidate learned that someone would thrust a red-hot iron through his tongue, pluck out his eyes or cut off his hands. Carnes thinks that this imagery was intended simply to generate a visceral response – as it does in the horror movies of today.30 Although it bordered on burlesque, it evoked the religious imagery of crucifixion, death, and the afterlife. Carnes observes that the Protestant churches, which dominated the religious landscape of America, were at that very time liberalizing and sanitizing death by dissociating it from both the Catholic preoccupation with suffering and the Calvinist preoccupation with hell. They associated death instead with a casual stroll into paradise. The lodges, with their skeletons and coffins, were simply reaffirming the old imagery – albeit with many more props from non-Christian religions (especially those of ancient Near Eastern civilizations and small scale societies). The liberal churches were feminizing death, in short, while the lodges were re-masculinizing it. The latter was occurring, Carnes points out, even in the funeral services that these lodges performed for members. Lodges often had to struggle with families or churches to get hold of corpses. In fact, a member’s death and funeral recapitulated his journey through various spiritual “degrees” within the fraternal order. Death itself was “the greatest initiation of all.”31 It would finally bring a man face to face with an awesome, powerful god. A thin overlay of biblical or Christian symbolism sometimes shrouded the displacement of Jesus and thus avoided a direct confrontation with established churches. Many men in nineteenth-century America, after their early years under heavy feminine influence, found themselves utterly unable to identify themselves as men with what had become a highly feminized Christ – the “meek and mild” Jesus of so many hymns and devotional pictures.

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The feminization of religion in nineteenth-century America was clearly visible in every home and in every church. In Material Christianity,32 Colleen McDannell discusses the history of popular devotional objects. These included not only the furnishings of churches but also countless mass-produced objects intended for either personal devotions or interior decoration. Factories gave religious motifs to even the cheapest and most utilitarian objects: chairs, tables, lamps, and so on. In addition, of course, they produced objects that had no purpose other than religious edification: wax crosses, say, or needlepoint passages from hymns. Art historians have long since attacked these objects as religious kitsch or even as “religious porn.” Encrusted with ornament, sentimental in tone, they function now, after the rise of Modernism, as classic examples of bad taste. As McDannell points out, though, many Christian leaders realized even then that male members of their churches found sentimental piety and watereddown theology very effeminate and therefore unacceptable. And Christian leaders were by no means the only ones to see that men were in trouble. Between 1875 and 1915, Americans began to think about manhood in a new way (though partly as a continuing reaction against what they considered European decadence). The Gilded Age, they came to believe, had produced men who were unworthy of their fathers – that is, men who had fought bravely in the Civil War. Theodore Roosevelt was very influential in glorifying the “active life,” physical exertion, and sometimes aggression, especially among men of the effete upper classes. Even Henry James, not notable for his own physical exertion or aggression, included a representative of this movement, Basil Ransom, in The Bostonians.33 Nonetheless, the churches and other institutions (such as the Young Men’s Christian Association)34 were more influential in this respect than any individual could have been. Liberal Protestants tried to bring men back to the pews not only by promoting movements such as “Muscular Christianity” and the “Social Gospel” 35 but also by adopting the avant-garde definition of art for use in their churches. According to avant-garde advocates, the function of art was to challenge or subvert conventional ways of perceiving, not to edify people by confirming the conventional or the familiar. Although few churches introduced art specifically to shock their parishioners, many brought in art that undermined the effeminate Jesus of Victorian art, who offered comfort to everyone but made demands on no one. McDannell does not dispute the widespread perception of Jesus, in

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Victorian America, as a “bearded woman.” On the contrary, her point is that this perception was perfectly legitimate and deserves respect as a distinctively feminine form of Christian art, not contempt from the (male) avant-garde (whether artistic or theological).36 From the perspective of men, in any case, women were firmly in control at home by the end of the nineteenth century. Though seldom ordained as religious leaders, moreover, women set the agenda also at church. They took their morality into public space with various reform movements, continuing crusades (which had begun with abolitionists in the North) against the evils that they associated with men: prostitution, intemperance, and secularism.37 Moreover, they were demanding more influence in all spheres of public life. At least partly on the basis of their own self-proclaimed moral and spiritual superiority to men (which men, for reasons that we have already noted, did not always challenge), they demanded the right to vote, the prohibition of “demon rum,” and many other changes. Moreover, middle-class women began working outside the home. Making this possible was the development of improved contraception; to some extent, women could now choose when to have children, how many to have, or even not to have children at all.38 As anyone could have predicted, women began reacting against the whole idea of lodges and their secret rituals. Opposition (especially from evangelical church women and the ministers under their influence) gathered under the institutional banner of the National Christian Association. Members attacked secret rituals, which (in the absence of information) they considered the work of Satan. One defensive strategy was for lodges to create parallel lodges for women.39 Early feminism challenged the ancient system of cultural compensation through sexual segregation. By the end of the nineteenth century, women were struggling to get the vote, enter universities, and take up professions. Men fought back as a way of protecting not only their power (a great deal of it for elite men and very little for other men) but their identity, which amounted to almost everything for all those who lacked real power. Losing one masculine realm after another, men continually tried to redraw the lines. When women entered the medical profession, for instance, men tried to constrain their professional activity to what they considered the women’s natural (but subservient) realm of nursing (even though nurses had not always been women).40 In addition, they developed notions of Christian warfare:

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Men found one solution to this problem through a strategy that merged the worldly with the godly, the “male” with the “female.” The strategy centered on the notions of Christian warfare and the Christian soldier. By waging Christian warfare, a minister could act with manly aggression while pursuing the sacred goals of love and goodness that his culture linked to women. A lawyer or businessman, by taking up arms as a Christian soldier, could purify his wealth and power by using it to godly ends. The chief arenas for this holy warfare were the revival and reform movements that flourished throughout the nineteenth century … Throughout the century, ministers also enlisted readily in Christian warfare. The great reform movements and revivals gave them suitable opportunities to apply assertiveness, energy, even masculine hostility to the cause of Christian goodness … By freeing up the aggressions of the clergy and purifying those of the businessman and the lawyer, the image of the Christian soldier in sacred warfare liberated vast quantities of male energy. Without this spiritually charged assertiveness, the great antebellum and Progressive reform movements would have been unimaginable. Moreover, this sacred combativeness made career choice possible for many young men by adding toughness to “feminine” professions and lending virtue to “manly” callings.41 With the turn of the nineteenth century and the move of women into the public sphere came a renewed focus on the male body, on maleness itself (as distinct from masculinity alone). Men began to worry that modern males – particularly themselves and their sons – had become so civilized that their relationship with their own primal needs was now dangerously disrupted. Such cultural spokesmen as these felt a burning need to preach the existence of the masculine primitive, to remind men of the professional and business classes that they indeed had a deep reservoir of savage drives and instinct – passions which men needed in order to be men, to struggle, survive, and dominate. They feared that civilization had so fully repressed their passions that their very manhood – their independence, their courage, their drive for mastery – was being suffocated. Thus, they clamored and boasted about their “animal instincts” and their primitive needs in hope of establishing a better balance between civilization and the inner savage. In so doing, they gave passion a new and honored place in the bourgeois definition of manhood.42

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Some people presented this as a need for physical health. A wave of sporting enthusiasm swept America, and many men found bodybuilding of particular interest. A study of magazine articles has revealed that, by the end of the century, heroes were most often described in physical terms, with an emphasis on their impressive size and strength. As much as they were concerned with the bodies of other men, late nineteenth-century males were most concerned with their own. Men of all ages noted their weight with care and precision, while young males in their teens and twenties recorded changes of body dimension in rapt detail … Indeed, men of the late nineteenth century went a step beyond Daniel Eddy’s assertion that a strong body was the foundation for a strong character: they treated physical strength and strength of character as the same thing … Another man equated physical strength with moral development.43 This embodiment of mind, spirit, and character reached a peak of absurdity at the turn of the century in the doctrine of Muscular Christianity. Using metaphors of fitness and bodybuilding, Christian thinkers imagined a strong, forceful Jesus with a religion to match … This hardy Jesus with rippling muscles was no “prince of peace-at-any-price.” He was an enforcer who “turned again and again on the snarling pack of His pious enemies and made them slink away.” The key to Muscular Christianity was not the idea of the spirit made flesh, but of the flesh made spirit. In proclaiming that the condition of character follows from the condition of the body, the advocates of Muscular Christianity were creatures of their time.44 This attempt to reaffirm the male body through cultural strategies had as its corollary an emphasis on bold decisive action. And that was accompanied by anti-intellectualism. More importantly, it led to a positive evaluation of “male passions” such as aggression, greed, lust and violence. Fighting, for instance, was now considered a way “to build youthful character … Early in the 1800s, men and women had seen youthful brawls as a badge of evil and a sign that manly self-control was not yet developed. The same sort of fight was seen late in the century as an emblem of developing character, a means to manliness.”45

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Men celebrated their “primitive nature” as a reaction to the perception that they had become “over-civilized.” With this inversion, the metaphor of life as a battle became part of common parlance among middle-class men. They looked back fondly to the Civil War, of all things. That, they believed, was a time of action and courage among men. Veterans had a new status in this climate. The only trouble with this Romanticism was that they were living in a time of peace, one that offered few opportunities for “real men.” Some men found a substitute for war in competitive sports with their cultivation of strength, speed, aggression, endurance, quick wits, steadiness, and courage. Rotundo observes that “for men, competition became an obsession. They even imposed it on situations where it was entirely out of place.”46 Clearly, it was a time of desperation. This led some men to want a real war. Teddy Roosevelt was among them. And he, unlike everyone else, was the leader of a powerful nation. In 1895, Roosevelt said what today – after the horrors of twentieth-century warfare – would be inconceivable for anyone to say: “This country needs a war.”47 No one should have been surprised at the Spanish-American War, in 1898, which the Americans won. But with that came the dilemmas of imperialism. It was Roosevelt, once again, who led the way by promoting “manly” engagement and the desire for world domination. If we stand idly by … if we shrink from the hard contest where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the stronger and bolder peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully … Let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.48 As we say, his solution was for men to be rugged, to adopt what he called “the strenuous life.” All this suggests an attempt to shore up the collective identity of men per se by an appeal not to public culture (which women were fast appropriating) but to nature itself – that is, to maleness.

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Despite the new emphasis on maleness, fathers had two problems. Some of their sons, as we have already noted, were too wild. Others were too effeminate, lazy, and narcissistic. Carnes and Rotundo ­differ on how people tried to solve the “savage-boy syndrome.” Observing a decline in their wildness, Carnes suggests that it occurred because of a changing family structure. As women entered the work world, they lost their insufferable claims to goodness. In fact, they developed vices such as smoking and drinking. These developments called into question the notion of female superiority and thus enabled real friendship between husbands and wives. Both young men and young women claimed more independence than ever before. Surprisingly perhaps, despite the new emphasis on machismo, most people in the late nineteenth century believed that marital intimacy and companionship were cultural ideals.49 This was due partly to growing individualism. Couples were no longer as constrained by societal norms, in any case, as they had been. This took the pressure off sons. Their fathers, not only their mothers, now became involved in family life. Both parents became more fully human, albeit for different reasons,50 than they had been. According to Rotundo, though, the solution involved adult men taking charge. They introduced structured games such as baseball and football. Fraternal lodges had boys’ divisions, too, by the late nineteenth century. This gave adult men more opportunities to guide boys. Spending more time at school, too, harnessed the “savage” energy of these boys. Because urban schools (unlike one-room rural schools) were age-graded ladders of ascent, moreover, boys could increase their status as they moved up (and refrained from associating with younger boys). This helped them negotiate the transition to manhood.51 To deal with effeminate, lazy, or narcissistic sons, fathers began to criticize the way that women were rearing them. Moreover, they began to celebrate the new boy culture. Elite and sexually segregated boarding schools became places for male teachers to encourage masculine virtues such as hardiness in the wilderness and competition in sport. They set up new organizations for boys, ones that men would administer. In addition to the Young Men’s Christian Association, for instance, they established the Boy Scouts, the Knights of King Arthur, and so on. No wonder, then, that clothing for boys changed. They now wore trousers by the age of two. Among their earliest memories, in other words, would be of looking different from girls.

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Society was trying to solve problems that the Industrial Revolution had created, but it could not solve problems that obsolescence of the male body had caused. During the twentieth century, more than ever before, it was obvious that men of the highest social and economic status were those least likely to base their masculine identity on the male body. In fact, men of the lowest social and economic status were those most likely to do so. Men linked machismo with manual labour and physical exertion, not with professional, artistic or intellectual skills. Technology was now replacing even lower-class men, those sturdy folk whom society had once needed (though despised) as “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” with machines. The only exceptions to this rule were professional male athletes. Their status was highly anachronistic, though, because their achievements were purely symbolic. Society valued them as sources of national pride, to be sure, but they were neither distinctive (because female athletes could do the same things) nor necessary (because no one depended on them). These problems continued throughout the twentieth century, although historical events – the First World War, the Depression, and the Second World War – complicated them. We discuss the two world wars, which postponed the problem of identity for men, in chapter 3. In the aftermath of the First World War, which had restored the idea that men per se were necessary (albeit at the cost of their lives), both men and women were busy creating a re-masculinized culture. Modernist authors encouraged searing honesty instead of sentimental piety or delicate euphemisms, for example, and disturbing complexity instead of shallow and moralistic preaching. They were resolved, at all costs, to abolish the stifling sexual repression of their Victorian parents. At the same time, modernity was beginning to mean radical change for the family. Mothers still dominated the home but did so now in consultation with outside experts. According to Robert Griswald, “the shrinkage of parental functions [due to the fact that professionals and state officials were rapidly taking over functions of the family] had left fathers with very little family role. Their responsibilities as religious guides, educators, welfare workers, counselors, and disciplinarians had all been usurped; consequently, the balance of power had shifted within families.”52 By 1930, the identity problem had resurfaced in a dramatic way. In the United States, massive unemployment during the Great Depression53 created a profound identity problem for men. “The

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narrowed role of the male, so largely confined to money making, took the brunt of the shock, with the general impairment of financial security and … families forced onto relief. With the man’s failure went … inability to marry in many cases and the postponement of children.”54 When men lost their jobs, in fact, they suffered from much more than lack of money. “Bewilderment, hesitation, apathy, loss of self-confidence, were the commonest marks of protracted unemployment. A man no longer cared how he looked. Unkempt hair and swarthy stubble, shoulders a-droop, a slow dragging walk, were external signs of inner defeat, often aggravated by malnutrition. Joblessness proved a wasting disease. What social workers called ‘unemployment shock’ affected some men as if they were in the grip of panic, driving them to frenzied search for work by day, sleepless worry at night.”55 As Americans searched for a way to end the Depression, experts called for a return “to separate spheres where men would take on responsibility for rebuilding the country and women would once again become the guardian [sic] of the hearth.”56 In short, experts reaffirmed the traditional gender system to prevent women from competing with men for the very few available jobs. Once again, the plan did not always have much to do with reality. It is true that many middle-class women stayed home and, according to surveys, preferred the traditional role of homemaker.57 Many lowerclass women, on the other hand, had no choice but to work outside the home. As Michael Scheibach points out, the Depression affected not only grown men, who suddenly found themselves out of work, but also their families and especially their sons. “What if existing manhood is viewed as empty, static, obsolescent?” asked Bruno Bettelheim. “Then becoming a man is death, and manhood marks the death of adolescence, not its fulfillment.”58 Seldom had historical events so severely tested the relationship between fathers and sons. The father was a key factor in the departure from home by the son. There was a widespread assumption in the 1930s that the father was relatively unimportant in child raising … When the father was unemployed, what little impact he had in the home was lost. The result in many homes was the emergence of the mother as the dominant parent, while the father became an antagonist or, in the other extreme, a withdrawn and elusive character. The father’s relationship with the son became more

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tense, created by the father’s frustration and the son’s attitude that the father was to blame for the family’s predicament -as well as his own. Thus, the combination of economic hardships and status loss made transition to the traditional adult roles more problematic and irregular for boys than for girls.59 In some ways, boys and young men did have a more difficult time than girls and young women. “For young males, the turbulence of the Depression era caused them to become imprisoned in traditional … [gender] roles … and, in many cases, to suffer the consequences.”60 Society encouraged young women to stay home to avoid competition with men for the few available jobs. Some of these young women aspired to careers outside the home in professions that sought women. Others, of course, found menial work for inadequate wages. According to a Maryland study of 1938, girls who worked outside the home fulfilled their occupational expectations (although these were lower than those of boys).61 When young women did work outside the home, in any case, it was generally by choice, not necessity. Women who did not have to look for jobs, in other words, usually chose not to do so. Sometimes, of course, economic distress did make it necessary for young women and even older women to look for jobs. “But the stigma for not working only affected the male. His role had not changed … The failure of the father to find employment was oftentimes assumed to be a personal failure; likewise, the inability of the male youth to find employment created personal frustrations and self-blame.”62 In other words, women who supported families in distress had gone beyond the call of duty, doing what men should have been doing. The Depression forced boys, partly through intense social pressure, to take on the functions of adult men at earlier ages than ever before in recent history. Some ascribed their failure to personal inadequacy and left home. Others ascribed their failure to society’s inadequacy and acted accordingly. Those who chose not to rebel, however, often fell into years of dependency on their families. The government solved some problems that the Depression had created. During the 1930s, national leaders had to acknowledge that millions of people needed help from the state at least temporarily. One result in the United States was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, America’s version of the welfare state.63 Some of its economic

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experiments succeeded. For one thing, they maintained political equilibrium in conditions that might otherwise have generated a revolution. And they reflected the growing moral and political consensus that governments, to be legitimate, had to do more than prevent chaos or resist foreign aggression. They had to help those who could not help themselves.64 Technological revolutions have had profound effects on the collective identity of men. The Industrial Revolution had a profoundly negative one, because it removed men from family farms or workshops to factories or mines. This meant that they could not teach their sons traditional skills and participate in their daily activities. Worse, although few men thought about it in abstract terms at the time, was automation: the replacement of men by machines, which were stronger, faster, and more efficient than any male body. A few men owned factories and mines, to be sure, and managed them. Other men entered “white collar” professions. Most men by far, though, became “wageslaves.” They sold their men, in effect, for very low-status jobs. And of those, fewer and fewer required the brute strength of male bodies. Gender distinctions relied on the arbitrary exclusion of women, not disabilities that were innately female. This solution was short-lived, not surprisingly, because women mobilized successfully not only for the vote but also for legal recognition of their ability to do jobs as well as men could. Meanwhile, many men had no jobs at all and therefore not even symbolic claims on masculinity.

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3 From Subject to Conscript: The Military Revolution Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.1 Hillary Clinton Yet when it comes to the inhumane treatment of noncombatant men and boys, nearly everyone seems to have incurred a severe case of laryngitis. By expressing little or no outrage for male victims of government barbarity – or altogether denying there are male victims, as Amnesty often seems to do – the international community does worse than merely expose an antimale bias that gainsays its own long-running plea for equal treatment of the sexes. It also helps perpetuate state-directed brutality against both men and women.2 Jerry A. Biggs

When Nancy Astor decided to become the first female member of Parliament in the British House of Commons, just after women had won the vote, she made the following comment: “We are not asking for superiority, for we have always had that; all we ask is equality.”3 Was Astor seriously considering “equality”? The background to that question is worth discussing in detail. This was in 1919, only one year after the end of the First World War, which had killed at least 703,000 young men and wounded 1,663,000 others in Britain alone,4 and only three years after the introduction in Britain of military conscription for young men but not young women. It might have

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seemed to Astor – and might still seem to many people – that this lethal form of discrimination against men was a “law of nature” and thus something that even egalitarian reformers could ignore. Actually, it was the recent result of cultural upheaval – and a recent one at that in terms of human history. It was probably not purely by chance that a technological revolution coincided with political revolutions in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth. Both kinds of revolution were legacies of the Enlightenment and its focus on reason. One state after another rationalized its economic system and, at the same time, its political system (though not necessarily by overthrowing it). By the twentieth century, many of these states were not only more efficient and prosperous but also more powerful than ever before. In other words, they were able to control their citizens more effectively than ever before. The urge to do so was hardly new. But modern bureaucratic states could do what even the most authoritarian ones of earlier times could not do: they could keep track of people more efficiently and punish dissenters more effectively. Even in the seventeenth century, peasants who failed to cooperate with royal plans – paying taxes, accepting state religions, serving in armies – could often run away and hide in the forests. But things were changing. Louis XIV kept even the highest nobles under his watchful eye by ordering them to live with him at Versailles. A century later, this focus on control and centralization fused with the Enlightenment’s focus on reason and efficiency. The result eventually produced modern bureaucratic states of not one but two types: liberal ones and totalitarian ones.5 These principles of the Enlightenment – especially where they led to increasing emphasis not on personal freedom from state tyranny but on centralization and state control – came to govern military organization, which affected masculine identity to an unprecedented extent. Before proceeding, consider the precise scope of this chapter. In view of the technological revolutions that explain the subtitles of some other chapters, you would expect the title of this one to discuss a revolution in military technology. The subtitle of this chapter, however, does not refer only to the transition from muskets and cannon to tanks and fighter planes, no matter how revolutionary those were. It refers also and even primarily to a sociological, psychological, and social revolution: the transition in Western ­

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countries from “professional” armies or ad hoc armies to conscript “citizen” armies. We begin this chapter by discussing men in connection with (1) pre-modern warfare. We continue by focusing more closely on men in connection with (2) the rise of modern6 states and the advent of conscription; (3) reactions to war and conscription since the early nineteenth century; (4) the “willing conscript” as a contradiction in terms; (5) a non-Western example of conscription; (6) the cultural, or symbolic, implications of conscription for gender identity; and (7) the specifically moral implications of conscription for any society and those of male conscription for any egalitarian society. Neolithic wars amounted to constant raids or skirmishes. They were about keeping, gaining, or losing the fundamental resources – land and water – that those societies required urgently for demographic survival. For men, one major change from Paleolithic times was from hunting to warfare. Before, men had hunted animals, and animals had sometimes hunted them. Now, men hunted other men, as it were, and other men hunted them. Preparing men to kill or be killed by other men required an even greater cultural effort than preparing them to kill or be killed by animals. Apart from anything else, therefore, it required more elaborate coming-of-age rites than ever before. War was a central feature of life in proto-states and early states. Some men separated themselves from the interests of their kin group, began to wage war for personal gain, and became chiefs. Those chiefs who managed to consolidate a lot of territory through war established the first kingdoms. As kings, they used warfare also to stabilize their domains and to ward off attacks by other kings. But this violent process led to the development of major civilizations in the ancient world both western and eastern. Feudal Europe was not quite as “dark” as you might imagine from the critiques of those who later described the period as the benighted Dark Ages or Middle Ages. Kings and their vassals engaged in warfare almost continually, to be sure, but they did so, at least in theory, within moral and theological constraints that relied on philosophies to define “just wars.” Moreover, not all men participated in war. Most men by far were peasants or serfs, not soldiers. Rulers required their agricultural services more than their military services. Besides, the

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feudal hierarchy made them unfit for the high vocation of military leadership as mounted knights. In theory, only those who belonged to  one class, the aristocracy, were suitable for military leadership. European rulers required military service from lesser men of their own class, as Indian rulers did.7 Surprisingly, however, even these men could choose in Europe between the sword (for knights) and the chalice (for priests and monks, whose way of life precluded military service). Military leadership was the sign of nobility, in short, not of manhood per se. In fact, however, medieval and early modern rulers (like both earlier and later ones) relied most heavily on mercenaries8 to fill the ranks, not on a few barons and their retainers. Mercenaries sold their military skills – in effect, their massive bodies – to the highest bidders.9 They came from no particular class or region, although most were probably disgruntled peasants or runaway serfs, and had no particular dynastic, national, ethnic, or religious loyalties. They owed their loyalty instead to anyone who could promise realistically to reward them. Mercenaries risked death in battle, to be sure, but they might eat regularly; they would have risked starvation otherwise. Those who survived enough battles, at any rate, developed the combat skills or at least the brute strength that soldiers required. And the best fighters among them could rise in the ranks, because rulers sometimes rewarded them with titles and land grants. At the very least, mercenaries could expect to gain materially from victorious battles by looting. By the eighteenth century, however, this ancient system was breaking down. Rulers still relied heavily on mercenary soldiers. But some rulers began to think of peasants, too, as potential soldiers – cheaper ones. Frederick the Great forced some Prussian peasants to serve in his armies, for instance, especially those who happened to be unusually tall and impressive. British authorities allowed the Royal Navy to form “press gangs,” moreover, which scooped up young men or even boys directly from the streets. Nonetheless, officers had to whip or beat these involuntary recruits into submission; the process of turning them into reliable soldiers took not months but years. Neither the Prussians nor the British tried to legitimate this kind of recruitment, in any case, because neither felt any need to do so; each assumed an unquestioned right to use state power coercively. That changed because of two revolutions.

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From our point of view in this chapter, modernity began with two revolutions. The American Revolution established a democratic state, which relied on political philosophy to establish limits on its own coercive power (albeit with varying degrees of success and consistency). The French Revolution established what amounted to a crusading state, on the other hand, which relied on political philosophy to maintain its coercive power. Of greatest interest here is the latter, which established a radically new cultural paradigm for war in the modern world (although it relied to some extent on the militia system of ancient Greece and Rome). On the eve of the French Revolution, most reformers wanted nothing more than a constitutional monarchy. But resistance from the regime and also from rival political factions convinced many reformers to adopt more and more radical positions. What began as reform, in other words, turned into revolution. And the French Revolution, unlike the earlier American Revolution, soon took on a life of its own – which is to say, one faction after another lost control of it. Within only a few years, leaders were no longer satisfied to raise armies that would defend the revolutionary state from foreign armies. They now wanted to spread revolutionary doctrines by conquering other states. To do that, they required an army of unprecedented size. The solution was universal military conscription – universal, that is, for men.10 More was involved than the need for soldiers or even reliance on efficiency, though. By legitimating “universal” conscription, the revolution clearly signaled a new social “contract” between citizens and the state.11 This amounted to a social contract not only between men and the state but also, indirectly, between men and women. Becoming a soldier was no longer the vocation of aristocrats. It was no longer the fate of hapless peasants who happened to be convenient resources for local lords or even that of a king’s generally passive subjects. It was now the acknowledged price that all men paid for becoming citizens. And those who refused to pay that price had to pay another one, either imprisonment or execution (which amounted to the temporary or permanent loss of citizenship). In one stroke, therefore, suitability for warfare became the ultimate and even defining feature of citizenship. The same logic excluded women from full citizenship, partly because of the universal assumption that women fulfilled their duty to the state, producing and caring for children, within the private

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realm. At the same time, therefore, suitability for warfare became the ultimate and even defining feature of manhood. It was maleness itself that qualified men for warfare, after all, not the interests or even the physical abilities of any particular man. Men became full citizens, but also soldiers, simply because they had male bodies. Women did not become soldiers or full citizens, however, simply because they had female bodies. Women did not vote or do much in the public realm, but they also were not forced to fight for the nation or the revolution. Once Napoleon began to export the revolution by conquest, other countries found it necessary to follow the French example by conscripting their own male populations. And they continued to do so long after defeating Napoleon and restoring conservative regimes. Always fearful of revolution, with good reason, they had to justify unpopular measures such as conscription. They tried to follow the French paradigm of a social contract, but they had one big problem. Many of these states were neither constitutional monarchies such as Britain, after all, nor republics such as France and the United States – and even France reverted several times to monarchy. They could not offer full citizenship, therefore, to their conscripts. Instead, they offered other rewards. One reward was the increasingly intense emotional appeal of nationalism,12 which governments could foster effectively in schools and newspapers by the late nineteenth century as a result of compulsory education. The other reward was (eventually) some social programs such as disability compensation and old-age pensions. The exception was Russia, which made no pretense of offering most of its soldiers anything like citizenship. John Keegan refers to this as “selective conscription.” Russian conscripts had to endure “long periods of service to an unrepresentative government.” In fact, “twenty years was the term in Russia before the emancipation of the serfs.” As the serfs and, later, the peasants and proletarians, understood, this was “difficult to differentiate from the slave system.”13 Forcing men into combat, per se, was nothing new in the early nineteenth century. Dictators of one kind or another – chiefs, kings, emperors, warlords – had been doing this for thousands of years. But two things really were new (a few exceptions in ancient times notwithstanding): subjecting all men to conscription, as we say, and trying to legitimate that institution in philosophical, theological, or even scientific terms.

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Not all men accepted military conscription passively even in the nineteenth century. Consider New York’s Draft Riots of 1863. Thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets, from 13 to 16 July, in opposition to conscription – the draft. Many saw this as an infringement of their freedom under the Constitution. What troubled them was not only the draft itself, however, but also a loophole that let the sons of rich families buy their way out of military service. What began as a class conflict quickly turned into a racial conflict, moreover, as protesters turned their fury on the city’s black population. Once the Union restored peace, however, conscription ended until the First World War. That war caused millions of Europeans to question the legitimacy of war itself, let alone a social contract that relied on conscription for war.14 In August of 1914, most Europeans – both men and women – welcomed the advent of war in an atmosphere of mass euphoria, one that came close to collective ecstasy. Many people have written about this extraordinary and, in retrospect, almost inexplicable response to the outbreak of war. Barbara Tuchman produced a very readable account, which relies on eyewitnesses, in the first chapter of her best-known book: The Guns of August.15 One explanation for the mass euphoria (as distinct from the war itself), ironically, was its historical context: decades of peace and prosperity, not of conflict and poverty. Young people had become bored with the stability and comfort of an effete or decadent civilization. Moreover, they felt suffocated by the elaborate constraints of propriety and decorum. They wanted to experience the underlying pulse of life. To do that, they emphasized the irrational, the emotional, and the unconscious along with what they considered the savage or the primitive. They responded, therefore, to revolutionary movements in painting, music, dance, and other forms of art, all of which tried to capture the vitality of earlier or exotic societies. Consider the intensely vivid colors and violently distorted forms in paintings by artists such as Franz Marc and August Macke or the supposedly primitive rhythms and dissonant chords of composers such as Igor Stravinsky. The latter’s Rite of Spring, in fact, became an icon not only of the primitive but also of Modernism and provoked riots during its Paris premiere in 1913. But the thrill of unleashing atavistic impulses was primarily a preoccupation of elite circles. Many young men longed more prosaically for opportunities to prove themselves worthy of citizenship16 or, at the very least, to escape from crushing boredom in factories or on farms.

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Governments focused their attention on these young men. Using traditional imagery, especially images of knighthood and chivalry, early war propaganda claimed that these young men could become heroes and thus renew their sense of masculine identity. Every country except Britain relied on conscripts, nonetheless, and even Britain resorted to conscription in 1916. It did not take long, after all, for everyone to realize that this war was unlike earlier ones. Even generals no longer wore elegant uniforms with golden epaulettes and embroidered sashes, no longer waved glittering swords around, and no longer charged ahead while mounted on impressive white steeds. Men of all ranks wallowed for months on end in filthy trenches, wore gas masks that offered at least some protection during chemical attacks, and went “over the top” to face machine guns and mass death. Except for the aerial duels of a few “ace” pilots, this was a mechanized, industrialized, and therefore impersonal war – its only precedent being the American Civil War,17 which had, for Europeans, erupted long ago and far away. This was partly the consequence of new military technologies. For veterans of the trenches, at any rate, this war had not been about glory or even duty but about endurance. It had solved the problem of ennui, to be sure, which had annoyed gilded youth during what must have seemed to survivors like a lost golden age. But most countries, including the victorious ones, had lost far more in the war than they had gained. The most serious loss, of course, had been its staggering and unprecedented loss of life. The war had almost destroyed a whole generation of young men, the “lost generation.” That involved personal tragedy for countless families but also political catastrophe – and not only for the losers. Countries on both sides now had only old men to lead them, notably those who had either started the war or profited financially from it. The result was pervasive cynicism. Nonetheless, “universal” military conscription has continued to this day in almost every European country except Britain and, ironically, those on the losing side, briefly (because the Versailles Treaty prevented them from doing so).18 After that Great War, what we now call the First World War, communism gained ground and socialism became fashionable in some circles. Both fostered contempt for the capitalist society that had brought about the war, and both fostered the unity of all proletarians and thus internationalism instead of nationalism. Moreover, both promoted visions of manhood that stressed service for the common

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good. But socialism, unlike communism, rejected violence. The ideal socialist man was a productive worker, not a soldier and certainly not a dead soldier. Käthe Kollwitz, a socialist artist, became famous during and after the war for her prints and drawings of dead young soldiers. She was interested in all victims of inhumanity, especially the poor. Her own son was killed in the war, moreover, and she made a point of using her art to protest against all war. “That these young men whose lives were just beginning should be thrown into the war to die by legions – can this be justified? There has been enough dying. Let not another man fall!”19 Pacifism became fashionable for the first time and not only among socialists. Although pacifist imagery remained unusual20 in postwar memorials, the Canadian government allowed Walter Seymour Allward to use a pacifist motif for one group of statues at its Canadian National Vimy Memorial.21 One sculptured group, Breaking the Sword, shows three young men, one of them kneeling and, as the title indicates, symbolically rejecting war for all time. But it was probably in Germany, which had been among the most militaristic countries before the war, that pacifism became most popular (until the Nazis took over in 1933). By 1929, anti-war sentiment – which is to say, pacifist sentiment – had generated two German novels of great importance: Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues22 and Ernst Johannsen’s Vier von der Infanterie.23 The very next year, 1930, produced the first three major anti-war movies. Kamaradschaft24 is about cooperation between German and French miners, former enemies. After an explosion collapses a tunnel that joins mines on opposite sides of the border, German miners rescue their French counterparts. They do so with only grudging acceptance by their bosses, however, who represent the governments that had led both sides into a cataclysmic war. Immediately after the rescue, in fact, authorities on both sides restore the barriers and thus perpetuate the adversarial system that had caused the war. Johannsen’s novel, Vier von der Infanterie, was filmed in Germany as Westfront 1918.25 In a detached style that filmmakers would later call cinéma vérité, it follows a group of young soldiers through relentless suffering from one trench to another. Highlighting the meaninglessness of their ordeals is Karl’s leave back home in his village, where he finds that his family faces starvation. With this very possibility in mind, his wife turns to prostitution. Not surprisingly, Karl brings

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his anger and confusion back to the trenches. This war, he tells the others, is “everyone’s fault.” One scene shows fog – poison gas – gradually dissipating. As it does, rising hope turns into rising terror. Facing them across no-man’s land is certain death: a massive steel wall of enemy tanks. The soldiers succumb to their fate without being able to justify it, let alone to explain it. Remarque’s novel, Im Westen nichts Neues, was filmed in Hollywood as All Quiet on the Western Front.26 Like its cinematic counterpart from Germany, Westfront, this movie presents the First World War as a senseless and brutal slaughter of unprecedented magnitude. Though made primarily for American viewers, its protagonists are all German and thus recent enemies of the United States. It made a profound impression not only among Americans, not surprisingly, but also on Germans. The story begins in a village schoolroom. Paul and his schoolmates listen to their old classics professor urging them to emulate the Romans as soldiers, fighting heroically to the death. “Dulce et decorum est,” he says, quoting from the Roman poet Horace, “pro patria mori.”27 Just outside the window, local soldiers march proudly and confidently off to war. Intoxicated by military glamour, the boys are eager to throw away their books and join their brothers. But once they actually experience the mechanistic and dehumanizing discipline of training, let alone the horrors of battle itself, the boys question the jingoistic ranting of their teacher. One by one, the boys succumb to modern warfare. The final scene shows Paul lying in a trench. He is tired, thirsty, homesick, and thoroughly disillusioned. Still alive, nonetheless, he responds to the fragile beauty of a butterfly that flutters toward him. He reaches toward it. Suddenly, during a loud explosion, he clenches his hand. A moment later, his fingers open in death. Only the butterfly remains alive, a sign that life itself continues. To suggest that life continues also in another world, the camera rises to reveal a long column of ghostly soldiers marching into the heavens. This movie had a profound impact not only viewers but also on at least one of the actors. Lew Ayres, who played Paul, became a fervent pacifist. Drafted for military service during the Second World War, he became a conscientious objector and therefore the target of intense public hostility. This pacifist vision of manhood did not last long, especially in Germany and the other defeated countries.28 In Germany, a massive reaction set in even before the Nazi takeover. Actually, it was not a reaction but a restoration, in far more virulent and even pathological

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form, of the old vision. The Germans had not only lost millions of young men,29 they had lost those young men in vain. The country had achieved nothing except a staggering debt to the victorious countries. Like the people of other countries, those of Germany felt a pressing need to memorialize the war dead. Public monuments soon encouraged intense mourning. In addition, though, they encouraged in some circles a kind of mythic and ritualistic cult that emphasized defiance and revenge. This became Germany’s equivalent of the Confederate “religion of the lost cause,”30 although it had even deadlier results.31 Because German soldiers had done their jobs faithfully and effectively on the field of battle, some right-wing radicals believed, it was neither they nor their military leaders who had failed but civilians. These included not only political leaders but also those who had profited financially from the war. The latter had “stabbed Germany in the back,” as the Nazis kept saying. Immediately after the war, in fact, German veterans banded together in right-wing military organizations such as the Stahlhelm and the Freikorps. Their explicit aim was to maintain public order in the face of collapsing institutions and revolutionary excitement on the left. Their implicit aim, however, was to restore the honour of German manhood. Meanwhile, leftwing radicals were increasingly willing to fight back on the streets of Berlin and other cities. In both cases, the effect was to shore up a militaristic version of masculinity. One of Hitler’s first acts after taking power, not surprisingly, was to ban both Westfront and All Quiet. R.C. Sherriff’s anti-war play, Journey’s End,32 was the British equivalent of German anti-war productions. The focus here, though, was on class conflict instead of group solidarity. The entire production takes place in an officer’s dugout, after all, and not all of the officers in this war come from the upper class. Even so, the enormity of war soon trivializes both personal and social problems. The play ends with an explosion that destroys not only the dugout but also, metaphorically, the officer class that had caused and perpetuated a catastrophic war. Given this play’s massive popularity, it is clear that the British winners were just as disillusioned and angry as the German losers were. Public sentiment at all levels of society veered toward pacifism. Those who declared that they would be unwilling to fight another war for king and country, in fact, won a famous debate at Oxford University.33 Pat Barker has observed in several of her novels34 that among the many problems faced by men in the trenches was something that most people considered the fate of women

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– prolonged passivity and docility – but on a scale and with an “intensity” that women themselves would have found inconceivable. This, according to one of her characters, was what accounted for the fact that so many men broke down under the strain of modern combat. The male population of France, too, suffered colossal losses in the war.35 But it was not until 1937, on the eve of another war, that the French produced their anti-war classic, La Grande Illusion.36 Set in German prisoner-of-war camps during the First World War, Jean Renoir’s movie focuses more attention on class than on combat. Captain von Rauffenstein has taken some French soldiers captive. These include Captain de Boëldieu. Like von Rauffenstein, he is an aristocrat. The two fight on opposite sides but nonetheless have in common not only friends and interests but also a worldview, one that transcends national borders. The war is about duty for them, not nationalism. Also prisoners of war are Lieutenant Maréchal and Lieutenant Rosenthal. Unlike de Boëldieu, they come from middleclass families. Rosenthal, for instance, is the son of a wealthy Jewish banker. Contrary to the stereotype, he is generous to his men, physically brave, and patriotic. All of these prisoners have one goal: to escape, return to France and fight again. And yet not all think of escape in the same way. De Boëldieu sees Maréchal and Rosenthal as men of the future, men whose positions are due not to collective privilege but to personal achievement. He sees himself, however, as a man of the past. He has no place in the present world, much less a  future one. The days of aristocratic leadership, he tells von Rauffenstein, are over. Given his experience of the war, de Boëldieu realizes that the new world order – and given the real-life date of 1937, this clearly refers to the fascists and communists – will be much more brutal than the old one. With this sad recognition in mind, he sacrifices himself as a decoy so that his men can escape. Renoir’s point in this movie is that state-sponsored nationalism, which supposedly legitimates hatred on both sides and therefore causes senseless catastrophes, is an alluring but empty illusion. On the surface, Americans did not experience overwhelming rage or cynicism after the First World War. For one thing, the war had killed relatively few Americans.37 And the United States was by all accounts the biggest winner of all, not only militarily and politically but also economically. After the armistice in 1918, therefore, Americans went back to business as usual. Lingering jingoism notwithstanding, moreover, they reaffirmed their isolationist foreign

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policy. The rise of aggressive regimes in other parts of the world, after all, seemed very far away. But prosperity did not last long. Americans entered the 1930s in economic and psychological distress. The Great Depression, as we have already noted, left millions of men unemployed and dependent on government handouts, a severe blow to their identity as men. And just below the surface, even Americans were deeply troubled by the possibility of a new war. This is clear from a powerful anti-war novel by Dalton Trumbo, which appeared in 1939.38 Johnny Got His Gun39 is gruesome enough to be almost unreadable – almost but not quite. The protagonist, Joe, lies in a hospital bed during the First World War. An exploding artillery shell has left him not only without both legs and both arms (which means that he cannot touch) but also without a face (which means that he cannot see, hear, smell, or speak). After a tracheotomy, Joe tries to suffocate himself but cannot move the apparatus that allows him to breathe. As a prisoner of his own body, or what remains of it, he cannot communicate with anyone. He learns gradually to communicate in a rudimentary way, however, by banging his head on the pillow in Morse Code. This allows him to express a final wish: to be encased in a glass box and exhibited all over the country as a witness to the horror and futility of war. Meanwhile, Joe daydreams sadly about his early life: his hopes and fears, his father and mother, his girlfriend, and so on. Implicitly, however, he reveals common notions of manhood that war has forced him to question. Despite isolationist sentiment (along with some hostility toward Jews and admiration for Nazi Germany), many Americans realized in the late 1930s that they would not be able to avoid another war. President Roosevelt introduced the country’s first peacetime draft in 1940,40 almost two years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “Entering the army were millions of civilian men who [had] crossed county and state lines in search of work in war-related industries. The war would also reinstate the dignity of American men, men who had lost their prestige and status in the 1930s … As an immediate and not at all unlikely possibility, the prospect of war should have a tremendous appeal to millions of our youth. Despite the fact they will have to do the fighting and the dying, they will also have a chance to perform the heroic deeds.”41 Although the war gave many young men at least some dignity after a decade of undeserved shame, it did so at a terrible cost in male lives.

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During the Second World War, Americans glorified their war heroes. And, considering what was at stake in that particular war, how could it have been otherwise? But during this war, unlike the earlier one, no one expected men to revel in combat; it was enough for them merely to serve in combat without complaining or deserting. This was a clear implication of one scene in The Very Thought of  You,42 a wartime propaganda film. Everyone ridicules Cal for using guile to get a medical deferment from the draft. Guilt makes him overly defensive and therefore hostile to Dave, his sister’s fiancé in uniform. In the end, of course, Cal gets his comeuppance. “I got a laugh for you, Dave. Cal’s been reclassified 1-A! [that is, fit for combat] Ha, ha!” These are the words of Cal’s own father. Men like Cal  were in a no-win situation; they could risk either dying with honour or living with dishonour. Not all wartime propaganda movies resorted to shaming young men into submission, however. In Since You Went Away,43 a sensitive (but not “gay”) young man is thrown out of military school for incompetence and possibly hints of cowardice. When drafted, Bill tells his girlfriend, who worries about him. But Jane’s mother has the most revealing line. “Well,” she tells him, “I’m sure you’ll be glad to get over there and have it out.” What else could anyone say? She maintains the necessary fiction, and he refrains from contradicting her. Bill goes to war, of course, but he clearly does so very reluctantly. And everyone is proud of him all the same, not only Jane and her mother but also – after Bill gets killed – the militaristic officer who had been ashamed of his grandson. In view of the fact that this movie came out at the height of the war, when victory was by no means a certainty, it was a stark but insightful and effective concession to the reality that going to war was sometimes necessary, both collectively and personally, but never good and never easy. Although movie directors depicted horrific violence, moreover, they did so very carefully. Viewers could see grenades exploding, in short, but not how they mutilated the bodies of soldiers on either side. And war journalists adopted the same measures. Everyone realized that showing the charred, shredded, dismembered bodies of boys could undermine the war effort. Each body, after all, could be a viewer’s son or brother. For that matter, each body could represent a viewer’s own potential fate. So, cinematic and journalistic restraint ruled even during a war that almost everyone considered just. Only

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occasionally did Life publish horrific pictures. Some issues included Tom Lea’s paintings of combat but not the most horrific one of all. It shows a young man, still alive, who has just had the entire right side of his body ripped right off by a grenade.44 All in all, during the Second World War, Americans tried to maintain both civilian and military morale by presenting images of soldiers who would go into combat either eagerly (and thus fostering fantasy) or obediently (and thus accepting reality) but also by hiding much of what awaited them there. Several movies examined the difficult transition from war to peace by acknowledging frankly that even the survivors of combat could be severely scarred psychologically, physically, or both. The Men45 is about a young lieutenant who, wounded in action, ends up in a hospital ward for paraplegics. Ken feels sorry for himself, so he gets no sympathy from the other veterans. His girlfriend is more sympathetic to him but also more demanding. Ellen insists, courageously, on going through with the wedding that they had planned. Eventually, of course, Ken finds a way to rejoin society. Probably the most memorable postwar movie about soldiers re­ adjusting to civilian life, however, is The Best Years of Our Lives.46 This story is about soldiers of various ranks and therefore social classes, who return from the war in states of emotional fragility. One wealthy businessman finds it hard to live and work as if he had experienced nothing shocking or disturbing at war. Another finds it hard to live with a wife who, untouched by the war, wants only to spend money and enjoy herself. Still another finds it hard to live at all with steel hooks instead of his hands. These movies do not say explicitly that suffering due to war is the hidden cost of manhood, let alone that death in war is the ultimate cost of manhood, but they imply that society as a whole should share the burden of war by, at the very least, being sensitive to the needs of veterans – and therefore, in those days, to men in general. Soldiers returned from the battlefields of Europe and Asia as heroes. After fifteen years of depression and war, they were glad to be alive and increasingly prosperous. Many returned to their former jobs. Others took advantage of the GI Bill to continue their education. American wars continued after the Second World War, and so did  the draft. The latter continued, in fact, during both peacetime and wartime. Only during the Vietnam War, however, did massive protests against it bring people out into the streets. Unlike their

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prototypes of a hundred years earlier, these protesters were sophisticated. Most of them were college students, in fact, who had deferments. Instead of giving spontaneous expression to rage, they created a political movement. It is worth noting here that this movement, one that emerged within living memory, seldom even referred to the problem that we have focused on here. Many anti-war and antidraft activists observed that the military burden fell primarily on blacks, who were much less likely than whites to have student deferments. Very few activists protested that the military burden fell entirely on young men, not young women. (A few did so, and we will discuss one of them later on.) How could people have ignored the proverbial elephant in the room? The answer, lamentably, is very simple. Male protesters ­realized that questioning the draft’s obvious sexual discrimination against men, especially when the nascent feminist movement was alerting the world to sexual discrimination against women, would have subjected them to merciless ridicule from their political adversaries, enduring shame from society as a whole and possibly hostility from their girlfriends as well. On a collective level, it was not cool to admit that men, or at least white men, had any problems at all. On a personal level, moreover, it was not cool for men to admit that they were afraid of anything. Activists framed their opposition to the draft, therefore, in terms of their opposition to the war itself. Not to war in general, which would have meant pacifism and might therefore have undermined their identity as men, but to this particular war. The debates were about hawks and doves or Geneva Conventions and Paris Accords, consequently, not about the meaning of manhood or about sexual equality. In 1973, however, President Nixon ended the draft and introduced the volunteer army. Since then, many Americans have allowed themselves to ignore not only the draft’s possible future, despite the continuation of draft registration and occasional calls for the draft’s revival, but also its documented past. On one episode of Boy Meets World,47 for example, characters find themselves “transported” back in time to the Second World War. The young men volunteer for military service, as many did in reality, but no one mentions the fact that they would have been drafted anyway along with those who were unwilling to volunteer. Finally, for those who still doubt the enduring importance of this topic in the United States, it recurs now and then on distinctly rancorous blogs; bloggers either approve or disapprove very strongly.

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This brings us to a striking anomaly, one that has nonetheless received surprisingly little attention: the “willing conscript.” Many men and some women volunteer for military service in peacetime, especially those who see no other way of escaping unemployment and poverty or, in some times and places, even eating regularly. Moreover, many men and some women volunteer for combat in other contexts, especially those of invasion or – as they did recently in Libya – revolution. Conscripts, by definition, do not volunteer. Dying gruesomely in battle or living on with painful wounds is not, after all, a self-­evidently attractive fate. Why have most conscripts accepted their fate passively and not become dodgers or deserters?48 Several theories have tried to explain the “willing conscript,” not all of them successfully: (a) innate aggression; (b) glamorized fantasies; (c) bribes and threats; (d) nationalism; (e) the residue of Greco-Roman civic virtue; and (f) the residue of Christian atonement theology. One of the most common explanations, innate aggression, is also one of the least adequate. Apart from blaming the male victims of war, it relies on hormonal determinism (and inadequate knowledge of hormones at that). To put this explanation in blunt form, “testosterone poisoning” simply hurls young men into war and other violent activities from football to crime. Actually, testosterone does nothing of the kind. Otherwise, how could we account for the fact that all men are not always clubbing each other? And how could we explain the fact that women, too, can be aggressive? Taking those questions seriously means understanding that aggression is not synonymous with destructive impulses; no society could survive, in fact, without channeling aggression in ­constructive ways instead of destructive ones. As for testosterone, the so-called male hormone, it occurs in both men and women but at much higher levels in men (although these levels fluctuate considerably throughout the day).49 In men, it promotes the development of both reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics. In addition, it promotes both physiological health and psychological well-being. Theodore Kemper refers to the latter as “elation” due to either dominance or eminence.50 But testosterone does not, in itself, cause aggression (which, in any case, is not synonymous with violence). In 2010, Nature reported on a study that confirmed this counter-intuitive fact.51 The study linked testosterone in humans not with aggression but with fairness “if this serves to ensure one’s own status.”52

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Adrenaline is another matter. This is the hormone that really does provoke “fight” or “flight” responses to emergencies. But adrenaline, unlike testosterone, occurs at roughly the same level in both men and women. At some very early stage of human evolution, adrenaline – not testosterone – might indeed (with cultural backup) have hurled men into raids or skirmishes that lasted a few minutes or at most a few hours. Whatever the effects of either hormone, however, they cannot account for two things. First is that humans – including men – are very reluctant to kill; they require extensive training, therefore, to overcome that reluctance.53 Second is that modern wars are fundamentally different from the skirmishes or raids of our ancient and medieval ancestors. For one thing, they last for months, years or even decades – much longer than any spike in the volume of any hormone. Moreover, early modern and modern wars have originated in complex economic, political, and ideological clashes – ones that have little or nothing to do with the transient flow of hormones in any elected official or even any dictator. According to a closely related explanation, many young men succumb to glamorized fantasies of wartime adventure. There is some truth to that explanation in connection with both culture and history. Popular entertainment does present war as the venue of precisely those things, not as the venue of suffering and death (at least not for the protagonists). Most people do, moreover, want to see the world. As recently as the mid-nineteenth century, most people never traveled more than a few miles from the country villages in which they had been born. For young men in these circumstances, running off to join the navy – or bands of pirates – offered at least some hope for adventure in foreign parts instead of drudgery in the local fields. Well, times have changed. We live now in a much more mobile world than that of even our recent ancestors. It is true that young men (and women) often join the armed forces partly for patriotic reasons but partly for practical reasons such as college tuition or technical training, which they can use for either military or civilian careers. “Be all you can be.” But they are volunteers and therefore of relatively little importance in this discussion. They join the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the National Guard in peacetime or at least in more peaceful times than those of major wars such as Vietnam or even Iraq. Naively, perhaps, many of them do not expect to end up in combat zones overseas.

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According to a similar explanation, society explicitly bribes young men who join up, willingly or not, by promising them greater postwar prestige than those who stay home (including the necessary ­credentials for holders of public office). And those who stay home, as a class, are women or children. This prestige involves not only opportunities to display their rusty medals or dress up in their old uniforms for annual parades on Main Street. It amounts, as we will show in due course, to collective reverence with distinctly theological associations. In the past, moreover, society implicitly promised young men who joined up, willingly or not, more rights or privileges than those who stayed home. Until just after the First World War, for instance, only men – those who, as a class, had gone to war – could vote. Even after the Second World War, in which many women had served overseas in non-combat roles, the big winners were male veterans. Female veterans were eligible for benefits under the GI Bill, but not many took advantage of them. Service in combat was still encoded, culturally if not legally, as “male.” In these two ways, the nation at least promised to compensate young men for complying with the law and thus risking their lives in combat. This compensation is the proverbial “carrot,” which we will discuss more fully in connection with the sexual integration of both conscription and combat. In addition, society implicitly threatens young men with shame and explicitly threatens them with punishment – in some cases, deserters face execution54 – for not complying with the law. This, of course, is the “stick.” Both factors, bribing and threatening, are very complex projects. They require massive cultural efforts, beginning in early childhood, to make sense and therefore to sound convincing. To be effective in wartime, these cultural efforts must convince boys and young men at some deep level of consciousness – one that is visceral, not merely cognitive – that engaging in military combat would be the ultimate demonstration of their personal honour and that failure to do so would be the ultimate demonstration of their personal shame. Our point here is not that our society should use either inequality as a reward or punishment as a threat but merely that our society and many others have used both to ensure a renewable supply of “willing conscripts.” Another explanation is that many young men believe very strongly in national causes or moral causes and are therefore willing to die for them, which means that governments do not actually need to draft them. This explains not only why so many Americans volunteered

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to fight against Hitler by joining Britain’s Royal Air Force instead of waiting for their own country to declare war but also why so many Americans (and others) volunteered to fight against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Not being pacifists, we find it hard to imagine living happily in a society that had not fought against evils such as Southern slavery or Nazi genocide. We do not know how many young men would have volunteered to fight, because these wars relied on conscripts. But think of this: most conscripts on both sides of both wars – the Civil War and the Second World War – believed strongly in the value of winning,55 which should give pause to those who imagine that the “willing conscript” is a corollary of the just war. Closely related to that explanation is yet another. This one relies mainly on subliminal residue from one of the two worldviews that gave rise to Western civilization: that of the Greeks and Romans. At the heart of Greco-Roman life was civic virtue. (And that word, “virtue,” derives from the Latin word for man: vir.) Western countries, especially the United States in its formative phase, have deliberately cultivated Greek and Roman prototypes. They have done so not only by imitating ancient architectural forms for public buildings, studying ancient philosophical systems, or referring to ancient legal codes. They have done so also by absorbing ancient assumptions about citizens in relation to the state. These go back to republican Rome and even further back to Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta. Of interest here are not only the ultimate honour that society awarded to those young men who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the state but also the ultimate shame that society inflicted on those young men who were unwilling to do so. (Here, once again, are the carrot and the stick.) Mothers allegedly warned their sons to return from battle either marching in victory or lying on their shields – that is, carried home dead by their grateful comrades – but not as living cowards. Even now, many people are familiar with one legend of Spartan courage. A young man steals a fox and hides it under his cloak. When someone questions him, he lets the fox tear him to pieces rather than reveal it and then dies of his wounds. Until recently, moreover, everyone who studied Latin in school read a similar legend as recorded by Livy. Gaius Mucius “Scaevola” tries to assassinate Lars Porsenna, the Etruscan king who has laid siege to Rome, but ends up killing someone else by mistake. Porsenna finds out and ­condemns Mucius to death by fire. But after a short speech in which Mucius brags about his willingness to die for Rome, the young man

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thrusts his right hand into the fire and holds it there, without flinching, until the flames consume his flesh. Impressed, Porsenna releases him. The most fundamental, most enduring, and most disturbing explanation for “willing conscripts” in Western countries involves Christianity. Many people are aware of a close link between the rhetoric of war and that of religion, including Christianity. One obvious example is the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.”56 Very few people, though, are aware of the precise theological principles that underlie that link. These principles still inform the rhetoric of war, but in the United States, with its official separation between church and state, they are now implicit more often than explicit. Within ­living memory, the situation was somewhat different. The impact of some twentieth-century wars was so traumatic that people on both sides tried to make sense of intense collective grief by resorting to religious ideas that many had begun to abandon. Of these, the most important in this context is atonement theology. Originally, “atonement” referred in English simply to reconciliation. In biblical Hebrew, however, it referred specifically to the price that people paid in order to make amends for harms that they had done to others and thus to establish reconciliation. It referred also, even more specifically, to the price that a sacrificed “scapegoat” paid every year on the Day of Atonement to make amends for the sins of all Israelites. It eventually referred among Christians to the price that Jesus, as the Christ, paid by sacrificing himself on the cross in order to make amends for the sins of all people. Of profound importance here is a paradox that lies at the heart of Christian theology: the incarnation. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth was a man and therefore fully human. But he was simultaneously the incarnation of Christ (second “person” of the Trinity) and therefore fully divine. Christians believe that Jesus the Christ sacrificed himself, willingly and according to a divine plan, even though the local authorities executed him for their own sinister reasons. Otherwise, after all, the Christian God would be just another cruel god. For Christians, the self-sacrifice of Jesus the Christ has a biblical prototype in what they call the “sacrifice of Isaac.” But the prototype is not obvious to non-Christians, because scripture depicts Isaac as a (potential) sacrificial victim, not a (potential) self-sacrificial martyr. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac but relents at the last moment, because this is merely a test of Abraham’s faithfulness. And yet, say Christians, this story is a dry run for something much bigger. It

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“­prefigures” the final and ultimate story in which Jesus, the Christ actually goes through with the sacrifice but turns it into an act of self-sacrifice. Our point here is that to make the prototypical story of Isaac work as an analogue of the archetypal one of Jesus, the Christ, Christians must believe that Isaac, too, willingly sacrificed himself. And Christians have not been the only ones to interpret the story of Isaac in this way.57 Because the Christian God is not an abstraction but a person – that is, three persons – Christians believe that they can imitate God’s incarnation as Jesus, the Christ. They cannot recapitulate the archetypal self-sacrifice of Christ, to be sure, which was once and for all time. But they can sacrifice themselves in one way or another as an affirmation of both human love and divine love. And to do that, ultimately, they must take up the cross as martyrs.58 The ultimate goal of Christians, therefore, is to sacrifice themselves for others.59 “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”60 This goal has operated, however, within gendered societies. In theory, all Christians can imitate Jesus, the Christ. In practice, a deeply embedded gender system has often gotten in the way of that theory. Men have imitated Jesus, the Christ, in other words, but women have often imitated the Virgin Mary.61 Over the centuries, political and ecclesiastical leaders in officially or even nominally Christian countries have appealed to the ideal of self-sacrifice with precisely that in mind when referring to the war dead in public rituals. Self-sacrifice in war has become the ultimate way for young men, in short, to imitate the archetypal self-sacrifice of Christ. This explains the effectiveness of Christian theology in disguising what would otherwise be an unacceptable fate for men in wartime. It was with precisely this in mind that C.K. Ogden referred to the Great War (the First World War) as a “holocaust of young men.”62 The English word retained, and still retains to some extent, its original sacrificial meaning: a burnt offering at the Temple in Jerusalem. Ogden used the word satirically to suggest that both the parents of young conscripts and the state, acting on their behalf, were actually sacrificing their sons for a supposedly rational goal. Among the first and most dramatic American attempts to link the rhetoric of war and that of atonement theology occurred during the Civil War. In his aptly titled book, Baptized in Blood,63 Charles Wilson shows that both sides used the Christian imagery of self-­ sacrificial and redemptive blood explicitly and effectively. After the war, Southerners argued in connection with the “lost cause” that

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shedding the blood of their sons had been necessary to purify the nation from the Northern sins of materialism and tyranny. Northerners argued that shedding the blood of their sons had been necessary to purify the nation from the Southern sin of slavery. The following lines are from “Memorial Day” by Katharine Lee Bates (a popular poet of the early twentieth century, who became famous for “America the Beautiful”). Tears still are salt for those who fell, Precious wreckage of shot and shell, Bruised and shattered and overthrown, Riders cleft by the saber-stroke, Stormers torn in the cannon-smoke, The dying who gaze could scarce descry Floating flag from drifting sky, – Trampled and rent and riven, Their orison a groan, Giving their life as the Christ’s was given, For a mercy not their own. O shining spirits who thronging went Up from the awful sacrament, By one keen agony shriven, Up from the South where the slave wept, Up from the land where truth had slept, – O shining spirits, be well content! Did not your blood atone?64 Neither nationalism nor romanticism could acknowledge the ­ orror of the First World War, too, let alone confer meaning on it. h Christianity, on the other hand, could do so. Recalling Civil War rhetoric, soldiers “lay down their lives” on the nation’s “altar” or “gave” their lives,65 for instance, which alluded to the self-sacrificial death of Jesus and therefore the atoning death of Christ as well (because the fully human Jesus was also the fully divine Christ). This became a central feature of civil religion in every country that had fought. They remembered the war (and would remember later ones) by institutionalizing public memorial days, establishing military graveyards, building cenotaphs for “unknown soldiers” or other monuments with lists of those who had “fallen,” selling poppies66 (to wear conspicuously at public events), honouring “gold-star mothers”

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of dead soldiers (but not, for some reason, their fathers), and so forth. How else could governments have even tried to re-legitimate themselves? Every Western country followed the same pattern: setting aside times and places for public remembrance of the First World War (and, eventually, of more recent wars). John Stanhope Arkwright wrote one poem, “O Valiant Hearts,” just after the war. It has become a standard hymn that Christians sing on Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, A NZ A C Day, or their equivalents in many countries. Note his theological imagery in the fourth, fifth and sixth stanzas. O valiant hearts, who to your glory came Through dust of conflict and through battle flame; Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved, Your memory hallowed in the land you loved. Proudly you gathered, rank on rank to war, As you had heard God’s message from afar; All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave To save mankind – yourself you scorned to save. Splendid you passed, the great surrender make; Into the light that nevermore shall fade; Deep your contentment in that blest abode, Who wait the last clear trumpet-call of God. Long years ago, as earth lay dark and still, Rose a loud cry upon a lonely hill, While in the frailty of our human clay, Christ, our Redeemer, passed the self-same way. Still stands His cross from that dread hour to this, Like some bright star above the dark abyss; Still, through the veil, the Victor’s pitying eyes Look down to bless our lesser Calvaries. These were His servants; in His steps they trod, Following through death the martyred Son of God: Victor He rose; victorious, too, shall rise They who have drunk His cup of sacrifice.

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O risen Lord, O Shepherd of our dead, Whose Cross has bought them, and whose star has led. In glorious hope their proud and sorrowing land Commits her children to Thy gracious hand.67 But something changed in the bitter atmosphere that prevailed in Europe after the First World War. Many people consciously and explicitly rejected the Christian rhetoric of self-sacrifice, which they found inadequate to describe participation in this unprecedented catastrophe. They began to see a gulf between the official rhetoric, in short, and what had actually occurred. More specifically, they began to argue that most of the soldiers had not sacrificed themselves at all. Rather, the state had sacrificed them on behalf of the nation. By the state, they meant primarily corrupt politicians, who had led people astray; incompetent generals, who had led soldiers to either victory or defeat without any prospect of significant gain; and greedy industrialists – the “merchants of death” or the “bourgeoisie” – who had profited financially from the war. Few poets writing in English expressed outrage over the war more powerfully than Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Here is one of the latter’s poems, “On Passing the New Menin Gate.” Sassoon attacks the piety of public war memorials (such as the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium) as hypocrisy that officials hoped would blur the crucial moral and theological distinction between sacrifice and self-­ sacrifice. And he refers directly to the “immolation” (sacrifice) of “the conscripted” (victims), which he refers to as a collective “crime” of the nation, not as an act of collective self-sacrifice by the victims. Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones? Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.68 Some people carried the analogy further by referring to biblical passages that condemn ancient Israel’s neighbors for practicing human sacrifice. From this point of view, modern political leaders and war profiteers became the metaphorical priests of Moloch,69

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sacrificing young men to a militaristic and exploitive state just as the Canaanites had sacrificed infants or young children to a cruel god. Artists on both sides of the war made this link either explicitly or implicitly. One of these was an Australian cartoonist named Sydney Wentworth Nicholls. A socialist, he was outraged in 1914 by the prime minister’s decision to raise $20,000,000 for the war effort. On 4 December, Direct Action, a publication of Industrial Workers of the World, printed the cartoon that would make Nicholls famous (or, in some circles, infamous). Behind a huge cannon, viewers see a cross. On the cross hangs a crucified soldier. Standing below the cross and to the left is the caricature of a bloated capitalist or politician, who holds a chalice near the cross to catch the soldier’s dripping blood. Just to make sure that no one would miss the message, the editor has added a caption: “P.M. [Billy] Hughes has offered another 50,000 men as a fresh sacrifice to the modern Moloch. Politicians and their masters have always been generous with other peoples [sic] lives.”70 Others made the same ironic link between pagan sacrifice and Christian self-sacrifice but with a political slant to the right, not the left. Both during and after the war, a persistent rumour had it that the Germans had crucified a captive soldier. As usual, the crucified soldier was both a stand-in for the self-sacrificing Christ and also for the sacrificial offering to Moloch. But those who had allegedly crucified this soldier represented the wicked “Huns,” not the bourgeois capitalists. Even though no one ever substantiated this story, it found its way into art. In 1919, British artist Francis Derwent Wood produced a powerful bronze sculpture, Canadian Golgotha, for the Canadian War Memorials Exhibition in London. On a barn door hangs the crucified soldier: a Canadian. Nearby, German soldiers mock him. Because of the diplomatic controversy that ensued between Canada and Germany, this work was not displayed. Eighty years later, in 1989, it entered the Canadian War Museum’s collection as a historical artifact. George Grosz was among the German artists who made the same ironic link between pagan sacrifice and Christian self-sacrifice. He did so implicitly. Like Nicholls, Grosz served in the war and survived to become a caricaturist. He satirized Weimar society relentlessly and mercilessly. In one of his drawings, Christ with a Gas Mask, viewers see Christ himself as a victim of the war. The publication of this drawing, in 1923, led to a blasphemy trial that soon became a touchstone for public attitudes toward both the war and religion. Fortunately for

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Grosz, he was able to escape Germany just before the Nazi takeover. Hitler included Grosz on his list of degenerate artists. Otto Dix followed the same pattern but not quite so blatantly. Featured in Schützengraben,71 which he painted in 1923, is the barely recognizable body of a soldier. He dangles horizontally from the bare branch of a blasted tree. Below him are the mutilated and decaying bodies of other soldiers, one of them still wearing his gas mask. The tree would have reminded more than a few viewers at the time of a cross, because the tree and the cross are symbolically interchangeable.72 Others would have known that from stylistic details, such as the decaying flesh that reveals Dix’s inspiration by the famous sixteenth-­ century Isenheim altarpiece73 – also a triptych with the crucifixion on its central panel – by Matthias Grünewald. Dix implies that Christian Germany has sacrificed its sons just as pagan Rome sacrificed God’s son. The notion of soldiers as sacrificial victims has remained pervasive. Otherwise, how could we explain popular movies such as The Believers?74 Cal, a psychiatrist, works for the police on a case that involves the ritualistic murders of two young men. Cal goes undercover to learn about a local Santeria cult and finds that it has long practiced animal sacrifice but has recently turned to human sacrifice. He soon learns that members of the cult expect him to sacrifice his own son. When Cal reacts in horror, one member says that he sees no  difference between the illegal sacrifice of sons to appease gods and the respectable sacrifice of sons to win wars. And nothing had changed twenty-five years later, which is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that Americans had long had a volunteer army. “Libya,” says one participant in a New York Times blog, “Who really cares about Libya? When you wake up in the morning, do you wonder about this dusty country of 6.4 million people? Do you have any connection that would make you say, ‘Yes, I’ll sacrifice one of my children for them’?”75 More recently, male feminists such as Stephen Shapiro, have unwittingly revived the same symbolic cluster. He notes that “infanticide was practiced openly until recently in the Western world.” Most of the victims were female, he presumes without any obvious evidence. “Second daughters,” he continues, “would not often live to receive dowries.”76 He could have argued that society victimizes both sexes though not necessarily at the same ages, but he refrains from doing so. Earlier, though, he refers explicitly to that very topic.

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A friend of mine stated that he could not understand how any father could send his son to war, any war. Having been psychoanalyzed, he knew that such actions were infanticidal. Didn’t God prohibit Abraham from sacrificing Isaac? My friend reserved the absolute right to judge his government and withdraw his son … from the community. What good father wants his son to die in Vietnam or Nicaragua? … Because pervasive mistrust has so deprived our institutions of legitimacy, such personalism can masquerade in our culture as the unmasking of hypocrisy. One who doubts can simply withdraw.77 The analogy is provocative, Shapiro’s retort notwithstanding, even though no analogy is perfect. Parents resort to infanticide as an end in itself (getting rid of unwanted children), after all, but they resort to conscription as the means to another end (winning a war). The link between self-sacrifice and religion has remained explicit, however, in churches to this day. Just as the Son of God sacrificed himself for the human race, local sons sacrifice themselves for the nation. This illusory focus on the altruistic “choice” of sons allows parents, especially Christian parents, to avoid feeling guilty for sending their own sons to be killed in war (although the rhetoric sometimes refers explicitly to mothers who “give” their sons,78 as we say, a sharply contrasting alternative that originated not in Christianity but in pagan Greek and Roman religions on the one hand and some pagan Near Eastern religions on the other).The same illusory focus on “choice” discourages sons, at least Christian sons, from questioning their own fate. They could not do so, after all, without also questioning their identity as willing followers of Christ – that is, those who imitate Christ. This deception is not quite as cynical as you might think at first. Parents do not allow the state to sacrifice their own sons carelessly, much less enthusiastically. They do so, especially in democratic countries, in view of what they believe is the lesser of two evils: upholding a fundamental moral principle (freedom of conscience or the right to life) but losing a just war versus winning a just war but denying a fundamental moral principle (the need to defend the nation or oppose tyranny). Religious explanations for “willing conscripts” in the West rely not  only on the assumption that they see themselves as self-­ sacrificial martyrs (without which their fates would be meaningless

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and therefore unacceptable) but also on the assumption that most of them believe in some form of life after death (which mitigates their natural reluctance to die). And until the late nineteenth century in Europe or the mid-twentieth in America, military officials could make those assumptions with some degree of accuracy. But what happens when conscripts cease to believe in one assumption or both of them, as they did during the past century? To conclude, Western countries at war have not relied exclusively on the rhetoric of nationalism (according to which soldiers fight for the nation – which is to say, until very recently, its “women and children”). They have relied at a much deeper and therefore subliminal level on the rhetoric that underlies not one but both sources of Western civilization: civic virtue (which originated in ancient Greece and Rome) and especially atonement theology (which originated in ancient Israel and lies at the core of Christianity). This book, like the other volumes in this series, is primarily about gender in modern Western countries. But it is worth acknowledging that male conscription has generated the very same cultural patterns – the rhetorical conflation of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, the link between combat for the state and full citizenship in the state, the relation between combat and masculine identity, the need to compensate men with privileges for risking their lives in battle, the resulting tension between men and women – in non-Western countries. Consider male conscription in South Korea. Insook Kwon draws most of the same conclusions that we have drawn, despite the many cultural and historical differences between Asia and Europe or America, except that she, as a feminist, focuses almost exclusively on the economic disadvantages that male conscription dumps on women instead of the existential ones (matters of life and death) that it dumps on men themselves.79 Kwon begins by observing that South Korean women, including feminists, have largely ignored male conscription; they see it as a problem of men and therefore of little or no importance to women. But even social scientists have neglected this basic feature of political culture. Without understanding the subtle gendering of conscription, we will not be able to make adequate sense of the persistence of a culture of militarism today, even after the end of the cold war,

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even after a pro-democracy movement pushed the military out of power. Therefore, I seek to demonstrate how male military conscription lies at the core of what most members of society believe it means to be an “authentic” South Korean in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I show that compulsory male military service has played a crucial role in constructing citizenship, nationhood, masculinity, femininity, motherhood and fatherhood and in creating the essential “glue” that binds each of these six potent ideas to the conception of the national-state in contemporary South Korea.80 Of particular importance here is Kwon’s observation that “the most common model for national self-sacrifice is the brave warrior … Yet this connection between willing self-sacrifice for a nationstate and the sacrifice of a person in the role of a warrior is not gender-free … Furthermore, positioning the national sacrifice of the warrior so close to the core of the nation-state has the consequence of militarizing masculinity, not only inside, but also outside the military.”81 Male conscription is not a superficial, ephemeral, problem of the West. It is a profound and enduring problem of modernity, one that lies at the heart of any debate over either society in general or gender in particular. Turning now to the cultural implications of conscription, we suggest that reviving it – that is, a male draft – would have profound implications for masculine identity.82 This much should be clear in view of what we have already said about war imagery. Of interest here, though, is not the collective identity of Christian men but the collective identity of men per se. This brings us back, first, to the ambiguous subtitle of this chapter. Although the Military Revolution refers primarily to the advent of a new institution, it refers also to the advent of new technology. This is a secondary consideration only because the new technology, new military technology, did not change anything; it merely accelerated a process that had begun much earlier. We have already observed in the first two chapters that technological changes have gradually separated masculine identity from maleness per se.83 As long ago as the Agricultural Revolution, a process began that eventually and gradually gave the highest status to men who did not need powerful and mobile bodies, who did not need to

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use brute strength. At first, to be sure, most men – and most men by far were peasants or serfs – still needed a great deal of it to work the fields. And a few men at the very top – kings, aristocrats, and their regiments – still needed it to lead troops into battle (though not ­necessarily to hunt, which gradually became a ceremonial function of  elite men). In contrast, a small but slowly growing segment of the male population – priests, scribes, administrators, artisans, architects, merchants, traders, physicians, perfumers, bakers, and so on – did not need brute strength at all. They needed managerial, artistic, or intellectual skills. The fall of Rome in the West, which resulted in the reversion from an urban economy to a rural one, slowed down the process that we are describing here. Most men by far worked on the land once again as serfs or peasants. They did work that required brute strength and physical endurance. Endemic warfare, moreover, rewarded those with the brute strength to be effective in combat. Before the widespread use of gunpowder – though invented during the 800s in China, gunpowder did not become a significant factor in European warfare until the Battle of Crécy in 1326 – military leaders required not only noble lineage but also physical stamina. Armies had relied on longbows or crossbows, lances, swords, and various bludgeons – all of which required considerable physical strength to wield effectively. Moreover, combatants had to carry around massive suits of armour. Even after the arrival of muskets in 1520 soldiers needed the strength to carry and manipulate these massive weapons. Service in the infantry still requires brute strength: carrying heavy equipment, supplies, and wounded comrades. But not all soldiers are in the infantry. The process gained momentum again, however, with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and especially the Industrial Revolution. Farmers still needed brute strength to work the fields, although new machinery would mechanize many tasks in the late nineteenth ­century. And some proletarians needed it to work the mines, say, or to haul products from here to there. But most proletarians – many of whom, at first, were women and even children – did not need much brute strength to tend the machines in factories. As for kings and aristocrats, they no longer engaged in hand-to-hand combat (except for the few who still engaged in ritualistic duels). More important, neither did the rapidly growing number of middle-class men. And most Western men today are their vocational descendents, not those of either peasants or aristocrats.

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By now, the process is almost complete. Very few men work in the fields, and those who do rely heavily on agricultural machinery. Most men by far, on the other hand, work in offices and have therefore become sedentary. Even military jobs do not necessarily require brute strength. Those who serve in the infantry do, but many others rely more heavily on other skills. Military leaders require college degrees from military academies more than physical strength. Their armies rely primarily on careful planning. Massive vehicles – tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines – carry around much of the armour. In short, modern warfare relies heavily on complex and sophisticated technologies. Men with the highest status, therefore, are those who have managerial, psychological, and intellectual skills to offer the nation in wartime. Men with the lowest status, on the other hand, are those who have nothing to offer the nation in wartime but their bodies. Modern states that wage wars, no matter how necessary or even noble those wars might be, have therefore considered the bodies of these men expendable; like pawns in game of chess, they are resources to be used up. Political leaders never make that explicit, of course, but their moral calculus has been clear enough to generate a common expression: “cannon fodder.” The male body is no asset, in short, to most men in peacetime. Worse, it has been a severe liability in wartime. Only in combat, after all, has the male body been a legal requirement. Only in connection with combat, moreover, do many people still consider death an acceptable job outcome. Meanwhile, the draft remains a legally defined fact of life for all young men in the United States (as it does in many other countries no matter what their political ideologies84 and no matter how unlikely they are to engage in warfare).85 Because they must still register for it at the age of eighteen, the very act of doing so has some connotations that coming-of-age rituals have always had. It is enough to say here that drafting only men once more would mean, as it always has in modern times, that combat is the ultimate destiny that all men potentially share and, at the same time, the ultimate destiny that all women do not share. Although this would provide men with an identity, it would do so at a price that many men would now reject – unless they remain blind to the effects of gender on men, which would be very unlikely in a society as preoccupied with gender as ours now is. Otherwise, after all, it would be clear to everyone that conscription is an inexcusable violation of personal liberty in a free society. Unfortunately, men cannot reject the expectation of being

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willing to engage in combat without also rejecting their claim, no matter how tenuous, to manhood. If masculine identity is at stake, however, revising the draft to include women would have additional cultural and moral implications. With that in mind, consider the following comment, by Barbara Ehrenreich. The comfort women of World War II were captives of war – so every assault they endured could be seen, by their assailants, as a humiliation inflicted on the enemy. This doesn’t excuse the Japanese; it just throws a particularly nasty light on the goingson [among Americans] at Fort Leonard Wood and the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Generally speaking, sexual abuse is visited on women of the other side. One’s own women are supposed to be sacrosanct … All right, there can be a fine line, sometimes, between sex and the abuse of it … But we’re talking about having one’s clothes ripped off and being passed from pawing hand to pawing hand (Tailhook, 1991). About being raped and then told by one’s assailant that “if you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll slit your throat” (Aberdeen Proving Ground, 1996). This is not about sex and its regulation or lack thereof. This is about war. What does it mean when soldiers start treating their comrades-in-arms as if they were members of an enemy force?86 What it means, actually, should be very obvious to everyone. The male soldiers in question saw female soldiers – members of their own army – as invaders and therefore as enemies. Why? Because, as one of the very last public spaces that society has reserved for men, combat has had the dubious advantage of allowing men a collective identity (albeit one that exposes them to mutilation or death). The law that keeps women out of combat is one of only two remaining laws that explicitly discriminate on the basis of sex (the other being one that requires young men but not young women to register for the draft).87 Ironically, therefore, men have something important to lose, symbolically, whether women join them in combat (which eliminates one of the few remaining sources of identity for men) or not (which prevents equality). When women enter combat, they symbolically destroy one important historical feature of masculine identity – something that female soldiers did not do in earlier generations.88 This is definitely not an

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argument for restricting combat to men; the physical lives of people must take precedence over their symbolic lives. It is an argument, however, for thinking more carefully than Ehrenreich does about the meaning of intersexual strife within the military. (For a discussion of Ehrenreich’s comments on how men see the women of enemy countries, see appendix 1 in our next volume.) She argues facetiously for the restriction of combat to women, because “a military that runs on testosterone is about as useful as a platoon armed with maces and pikes.”89 But her real aim is to show that the only reason for keeping women out of combat – and the financial or political rewards that come with it – is irrational malice on the part of men. This, she says, is the reason for men’s harassment of women in the military.90 Finally, she points out that “we should be hearing a lot less of the sanctimonious argument that women don’t belong in the military because they occupy a ‘protected’ category.”91 Cynical to the core, she argues that the idea of women as a protected category amounts to nothing more – and nothing less – than political propaganda. And yet a great deal of evidence, including countless letters from American fighting men in earlier wars, indicates that they sincerely believed in their duty to protect American women. The debate over allowing – let alone forcing – women into combat remains heated in the United States. We suggest that the crucial factor for many men, though seldom a conscious one, is not legal permission for women to serve in combat and thus become career officers (which is how advocates always frame the debate) or the physical limitations of women (which is how their adversaries almost always reframe the debate) but the ability of men to maintain their collective identity as men. Because we have for so long associated combat exclusively with men, and because combat has outlasted almost everything else that society once associated exclusively with men, combat is one of the very few things that prevents complete sexual integration and therefore stands out all the more – for good or ill – as a defining feature of masculinity.92 And this is true no matter how men choose, either personally or collectively, to define masculinity. Even some Amish men, who reject anything to do with combat and insist on permission to do so as members of “peace churches,” must think carefully about how and why they differ from other men. Excluding women from combat has enabled men to establish a ­collective identity as men, as we say, but men have paid an extremely high price for the “right” to make this particular contribution to

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society. And the kind of collective masculine identity that relies exclusively on defending society would not be a healthy one for boys, who would have to repress any feelings that interfere with the psychological skills required for combat. Nor would it be a happy one for women, who would have to repay men for protecting them by allowing society to give men at least a bit more status or a few more privileges than it gives to women. The possibility of men lacking an effective alternative source of collective identity, therefore, presents everyone with a major problem. Now, consider the specifically moral implications of conscription. Apart from anything else, conscription is always, at least potentially, a matter of life and death. This makes it an ultimate moral problem, therefore, not a merely personal problem. Almost everyone realizes by now that war is a moral problem, a necessary evil at best (although, judging from centuries of debate over the definition of a just war, this realization is by no means a new one). But not everyone realizes that conscription for war presents a more subtle moral problem.93 It denies moral agency to those who actually fight in wars, after all, and thus hides the problem. It is one thing to debate the advantages or disadvantages of going to war and then making a choice at the ballot box. It is something quite different to prevent those who must bear the ultimate burden of going to war from making their own choices. In debates over both combat and conscription for combat, people either reject something that they consider evil or choose it as the lesser of two evils: a necessary evil. Those who do the latter should realize the moral implications of doing so. And most people either do realize these moral implications or quickly begin to do so in wartime, because the effects of war are self-evident and even quantifiable in terms of casualties, property, territories, money, and so on. The moral implications of conscription, on the other hand, are subtle and therefore not always self-evident even to conscripts themselves (except, of course, when conscripts challenge their legal status in court). Conscription relies directly on an instrumental view of human life, which some people accept and others reject. This debate (like several others) might be not only serious, therefore, but also insoluble. On one side are those who believe that people are inherently ends in themselves (as subjects), not the means to other ends (as objects). On the other side are those who believe that people are not inherently

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ends in themselves and therefore are indeed sometimes the legitimate means to other ends. But even those who generally assume that human life is “sacred,” an end in itself, sometimes make exceptions in circumstances that make this belief impractical. This is what happens in debates over conscription. But the same thing happens in connection with other moral debates, notably the debate over abortion but also the debate over euthanasia. In one way or another, many people have come to believe that preserving human life is not necessarily the bottom line. In that case, other considerations take precedence: winning a just war, rejecting the burden of an unwanted child, ending the agony of someone who has to some degree lost the “quality of life.” At issue here is not only the cultural conditioning that most modern countries have used to turn boys into men and men into soldiers, therefore, but also the moral assumptions that shape debates over it and ultimately form the moral substratum of society as a whole. In this chapter, we have discussed the historical effects of war and conscription for war on men. We suggest that the main effect was to provide men with a source of masculine identity that rewarded compliant men (at least in theory) with status markers and privileges. In addition, though, we suggest that this system came with a very high price tag. Many items appeared on the bill, including social and political turmoil at various times, but we want to emphasize two items here. Young men ended up dead or wounded. And a nation that promised equality, an ideal at the very heart of its historical identity, institutionalized sexual inequality.

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4 From Father to Sperm Donor: The Sexual and Reproductive Revolutions “This is not a rejection of men,” insists Sherron Mills, a nurse practitioner and executive director of the Pacific Women’s Health Services. Mills is showing me her bank’s large barrel-shaped tank that can house up to 5,000 vials of frozen sperm, enough to propagate a small town. With her short graying hair and comforting manner, she could pass for anyone’s aunt checking to see if the cookies are done. She grabs what looks like an oven mitt and lifts the tank lid, releasing a cloud of vapor from the liquid nitrogen, and carefully pulls up a rack of labeled vials encrusted with frost. “Men are very necessary to this process,” Mills says.1 Lynn Snowden We condemn the use of women from exploited countries and poor women by men and international conglomerates in the interests of global capital and patriarchy. We condemn men and their institutions that inflict infertility on women by violence, forced sterilization, medical maltreatment, and industrial pollution and repeat the damage through violent repair technologies. We support the exclusive rights of all women to decide whether or not to bear children, without coercion from any man, medical practitioner, government, or religion.2 FINR R A GE

So far, we have examined cultural revolutions that emerged in connection with social and technological changes in the public realms of agriculture, industry, and warfare. We turn in this chapter to cultural revolutions that emerged in connection with even more radical social and technological changes in the private realms of sexual behaviour

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and family life. These have had dramatic social, economic, and political consequences. As the feminist slogan has it, “the personal is political.” At the heart of this chapter is fatherhood, a surprisingly controversial and complex topic. Not at all surprisingly, however, popular culture has sometimes revealed conflicting attitudes toward fathers. In Spreading Misandry,3 we discussed in detail the pejorative ways in which popular culture has portrayed fathers routinely since the early 1950s, especially in sitcoms and commercials. Until recently, even men s­ eldom complained. But popular culture was not always so hostile to fathers. Among the favourite targets of those known today as “cultural critics” (especially among academics in the field known as “cultural studies”) is Father Knows Best.4 What provokes mockery and even contempt in our time is not the show’s quality – acting, writing, and so forth – but the mere fact that it relied on the supposedly ludicrous or even mendacious proposition that fathers might actually have a distinctive and important function in family life. No matter what the problem, Jim Anderson was able to discuss it patiently and rationally with his children (just as Judge Hardy had done with his son Andy in the movies of an earlier generation). It seems highly unlikely, despite the glib comments of cultural critics today, that viewers had ever believed that real fathers could be so consistently wise. What annoys critics is not merely the fact that this show might have presented an atypical home, as if sitcoms were sociological treatises in narrative form and should therefore rely on statistics, but the fact that anyone had the stupidity or audacity to take fathers seriously in the first place. This show and several others of the period portrayed fathers with gentle wit rather than cynical ridicule. Cultural critics notwithstanding, sitcoms still feature men who try hard to be good fathers. The main difference is that these circumstances – dead mothers, working mothers, young siblings with no one to care for them, and so on – usually force these men to act like well-intentioned fathers. Part of the humour in these sitcoms, therefore, supposedly comes from the mere fact of men trying to act like fathers – or even mothers – and seldom succeeding. Their children are usually so irritatingly precocious and cynical, in any case, that the roles are partially reversed. And the women in their lives are always ready to step in when Dad gets in over his head. Even in the 1950s, there was a negative way of portraying fathers. It was Ozzie Nelson,

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in the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,5 who became the prototypical father that he has been ever since. Though kind and amusing – and present at home, because he never went to work – Ozzie was also a hapless bumbler. He often needed lessons from Harriet or even the children. Nothing much changed over the next five or six decades except for the lack of any replacement for Jim Anderson. Ozzie’s ultimate descendant in T V -land appeared in the 1990s on Home Improvement.6 Tim is kind and amusing, once again, but also a hapless bumbler. Worse, he represents almost everything that had long been considered reprehensible in American men: his preoccupation with power (or at least power tools), his bravado, his ignorance, and so on. And then there was The Simpsons.7 Not all fathers on sitcoms have been as incompetent and buffoonish as Homer Simpson, but some have. The extraordinary success of this show indicates that it continued to perpetuate conventional stereotypes of men in general and fathers in particular. Homer’s direct descendant appears on a more recent animated sitcom called Family Guy.8 Peter Griffin is another bumbling, blue-collar idiot. Like Homer, moreover, he has an intellectually and socially superior wife. (It is true that some other genres, including crime and science fiction, focus on alpha males. The latter have either trophy wives or no wives at all. But these male characters are not necessarily any more admirable than their primitive counterparts on sitcoms.) The comedic association of men with lower-class boorishness and vulgarity remains intact, therefore, as does the conventional American association of women with upper-middle-class education, refinement, and ambition. Peter is a middle-of-the-road father. Worse than Peter is Frank Gallagher, the drunken, selfish, narcissistic, and cheating father on Shameless.9 Frank does show some signs of concern for his children, sure, but only in the most dire circumstances (which he often causes in the first place). Better than Peter is Phil Dunphy, the well-meaning but clueless father on Modern Family.10 Phil’s idea of a good father is someone who pretends to be a cool best friend to his children; the latter nonetheless show contempt for him (rightly, because they need him to be a father, not a friend). In the new century’s second decade, this might be as good as it gets for sitcom fathers. Fathers on other shows demonstrate behaviour that ranges from criminal to pathological. In the criminal category is Walter White on Breaking Bad.11 Although his criminal career begins in a way that

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generates sympathy – a diagnosis of terminal cancer leads him to provide money as quickly as possible for his children – the consequences of his venture into the drug trade are brutal for the children of other people. In the pathological category is Don Draper, the damaged man who leads a double life on Mad Men.12 Don does almost everything wrong, but viewers can sympathize with him, to some extent, because of his abused childhood, his experiences during the war, the hedonistic culture in which he lives, his charm, and so on. By 1995, according to Colin Harrison, children’s books were treating fatherhood as a problem. “How’s Dad doing these days? Not necessarily very well. The mass culture long ago shucked the Ozzie Nelson archetype; now the genial, clean-shaven man in a suit is understood as a shorthand symbol for a set of disproved assumptions. (That the suburbs are safe, that America is prosperous, that “father knows best.”) In the cultural calculus, the married, faithful, dependable Dad is at worst derided as a fantasy and at best inspected as subject of nostalgic veneration.”13 Of the three books reviewed by Harrison, only one is about a decent father. “We know society has changed,” he writes, “we know that many families are ‘dysfunctional,’ but I, for one, find it worrisome that in these three stories, the only undamaged and undamaging father lives in a tale set more than ninety years ago.”14 In this chapter, we present a brief historical review of fathers in connection with two radical changes in the understanding of sex and family life: (1) the Sexual Revolution and (2) the Reproductive Revolution. These did not appear out of the blue. Rather, they appeared within a specific historical context. Both began (or began again) during the 1960s, and created seismic cultural shifts that have continued ever since, generating questions of profound importance about the collective identity of men. We conclude with (3) the cultural context and the cultural fallout from these technological revolutions. It could be argued that what we now call the “Sexual Revolution,” a mélange of movements that became highly visible during the 1960s and advocated (among other things) sexual freedom of many kinds, began decades earlier. Millions of young (and older) people in both western and central Europe cheered the outbreak of the First World War, hoping that it would shake up a world that had succumbed to bourgeois respectability, predictability, and tedium. Four years of trench warfare generated rampant cynicism at all levels of society.

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And yet old and discredited political leaders remained in power, even in the “victorious” countries. The survivors, who considered themselves a “lost generation,” rebelled against the worldview that had allowed countries to send millions of young men to kill or be killed for nothing of any enduring value. Alive despite the odds and filled with the natural exuberance of youth, they set out not only to challenge rigid and repressive old social orders but also to create new and liberating ones. This led to hedonism during the “roaring twenties” but also to radical experimentation, especially literary, artistic, social, and sexual experimentation (although even these had precursors before the war and even earlier in “bohemian” circles). But the party was over after only ten years. It came to a sudden end in the 1930s, due to an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, political forces that led to the rise of pathological ideologies in some countries and, within ten more years, to an even more destructive war. After the Second World War came a second wave of social, cultural, and political ferment, this time originating in the United States. Like the first wave, this one began in reaction to the repression, now called “oppression,” of earlier generations. But these experimental movements, unlike those of the first wave, won one battle after another. By the late 1980s or early 1990s, a period that we emphasize in this book because of events that had powerful but unanticipated and unacknowledged effects on men, what had been an experimental worldview became the prevailing one in Western countries; what had been the “counterculture” no longer needed to “subvert” anything (although it retained the rhetoric of subversion, transgression, and so on). Apart from anything else, this new worldview affirms all forms of pleasure. More specifically, it affirms all forms of sexual behaviour (except those that involve coercion or minors), all forms of family organization (except polygamy), and all aspects of sexual equality (except for the self-contradictory notion that women are more equal, so to speak, than men). Strongly supporting these phenomena were two developments of interest here. In this section, therefore, we discuss briefly two very well-known events in recent American history: (a) the advent of reliable birth control – “the Pill” – and (b) the legalization of abortion on demand after Roe v. Wade. In her historical study, Sex in the Heartland,15 Beth Bailey discusses changing sexual mores in the United Sates between the 1940s and the

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1980s. Instead of focusing on New York or California, the avantgarde’s epicentres, she focuses on a more representative case study: Lawrence, a college town in Kansas. In other words, she focuses on the fly-over region that some people either ridicule or ignore. Using primary sources such as student newspapers, she describes not a ­sudden change that coastal radicals imposed on the nation but rather an evolutionary process that originated among people who had no intention of instigating a sexual revolution and in events that had nothing to do with sex at all. To understand what happened in the 1960s, she argues, it is necessary to understand first what happened twenty years earlier. The Second World War led not only to the increased power and influence of federal agencies as distinct from local ones but also to massive migrations both at home and abroad. During the war, thousands of people from other parts of the country ended up in Lawrence to work at a military plant. After the war, thousands of soldiers ended up there as students under the G I Bill. Somehow, they all lived together uneasily. At the same time, radio and cinema were replacing local culture with a national one. The result was unprecedented “diversity,” which undermined local sources of social or cultural authority and made it harder than ever for them to enforce traditional standards of sexual behaviour even during the supposedly repressed 1950s. During the 1960s, Bailey shows, by no means all of the students who demanded co-ed dorms and other changes did so for the same reasons. Some of them argued for greater responsibility, others for sexual liberation, and still others for a cultural or even a political revolution. As for the Pill, that found most support originally as a way of solving the “population explosion,” not as a way of encouraging women to have casual sex or of allowing men to escape from the responsibilities of fatherhood. Eventually, some people came to glorify sex as the venue of liberation; others came to denounce it as the venue of oppression. All of these changes amounted not to a new consensus about the meaning of either sex or gender, in short, but to the dissolution of an earlier consensus on each. Bailey covers almost every debate that led to radicalism during the 1960s and 1970s, notably an unstable alliance that gradually emerged between the feminist and gay movements. (For some reason, however, she says very little about the most contentious debate of all: the one over abortion.)16 Despite the fragmentation of campus life into

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political movements, most students eventually held in common a vague or visceral opposition to “bourgeois” or “patriarchal” society as a whole. In other words, evolution really did turn into revolution. But why should that surprise anyone? After all, not every revolution begins as an attempt to destroy one order and replace it with a new one.17 Given the “contested” meanings of sex and gender, Bailey tried to present an objective account.18 She did not always succeed. It was true, for instance, that women and gay people had benefited a great deal from decades of sexual and social ferment. But that was by no means the only result of all this ferment; new problems, in fact, replaced the old ones. It was certainly not obvious, at any rate, that people were happier then than they had been before all the ferment. The “counterculture” contributed substantially to the rise of a “drug culture” (which fostered not only crime but also countless therapeutic movements and therefore undermined “personal responsibility,” the original slogan of those who had sought sexual equality) and what a later observer would call the “divorce culture”19 (which produced not only legions of fatherless children but also a host of social and psychological pathologies).20 Even sexual equality, supposedly a primary goal of the Sexual Revolution, proved elusive at least partly because misandry simply replaced misogyny as a tolerated form of sexist prejudice. (Almost everyone knew that misogyny did not go away, although it was closely monitored and publicly denounced, but almost everyone either ignored or condoned misandry.)21 In fact, men and women were now at least as polarized as they ever had been after forty years of influence by ideological feminists (and, since the first book in this series, we have made a careful distinction between ideological feminists and egalitarian ones).22 At least in the Western world, the Pill changed everyday life profoundly by severing the link between sexual pleasure and reproduction. It freed people – men no less than women – from the fear of having to worry about responsibility for unwanted children. Widespread use of contraception not only undermined the ancient taboo on premarital sex but also, eventually and in the context of an increasingly hedonistic society, the historic definition of marriage itself. It not only eliminated courtship and called into question the need for marriage but also allowed women to seek sexual gratification just as men did and thus called into question an ancient double standard (in this case, one that had favoured men). In one ironic way, though, the

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Pill did not truly sever the relation between sex and reproduction. Eventually, on the contrary, it glorified the relation between sex – that is, the female sex – and reproduction. More about that in due course. In any case, the Sexual Revolution was a brief prelude to the closely related Reproductive Revolution, which would soon have profound implications not only for young people but also for the nation and even for the species. Many people “forget” that another demand of the Sexual Revolution was for legalized abortion on demand, possibly because that topic remains, almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade,23 too controversial for calm discussion. Reliable birth control prevented a problem; legalized abortion fixed one. Legalizing abortion on demand strongly reinforced the effects of introducing reliable birth control. Both severed the primordial link between sexual pleasure and reproduction. It no longer made sense, at least in secular communities, to insist on virginity before marriage. Abortion was much less desirable than contraception as a form of birth control, however, partly because it remained not only legally and politically controversial but also emotionally fraught. Nonetheless, it did come to function for many people as a last-resort form of birth control. Proclaiming that legalized abortion was a matter “between a woman and her doctor” (but not the father) was only the first step. The next step was to be sure that even adolescent girls did not have to consult their parents, let alone their boyfriends, before having abortions. Pro-choice advocates certainly did not want any government regulations to prevent women from having late-term abortions or partial-birth abortions. Anything that diminished the autonomy of every girl or woman, they believed, was an unacceptable example of patriarchal control over women.24 Similarly, they insisted that the choice between giving birth and having an abortion is about a “woman’s right to choose.” The father had no corresponding right. He had no legal say whatsoever, in other words, even though the birth of a child would affect him both legally and financially for many years or even for decades – a problem that sperm donors, too, have encountered.25 From this point of view, the conception, birth, and rearing of children were strictly women’s business. And that was more than an opinion; it had become the law. Fathers no longer had any say at all

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concerning the ultimate fate of their children. (They had hardly any say even about the custody of their living children.) In some jurisdictions, women no longer had to inform them of pregnancies. Once women decided on their own to give birth, of course, they still expected fathers to take financial responsibility for the resulting children. And the law supported this expectation, which we discuss in Legalizing Misandry.26 Society had come a long way since the patriarchy of ancient Rome, which gave the pater familias absolute control (at least in theory) over the ultimate fate of his children even to the point of commanding the “exposure” of an unwanted or unhealthy child. By the 1970s, an American mater familias had almost the same authority. The main difference was that ancient Roman society allowed fathers to kill infants and modern American society allowed mothers to kill fetuses. At issue here is not the moral legitimacy of abortion on demand per se, however, but the exclusion of fathers per se not only from the most fundamental of all decisions that any father could ever face but also, implicitly, from any stake in reproduction and therefore in the future of society. No talk about fathers helping out with diapers could ever push those things very far into the background for long. Since the legalization of abortion in the 1970s (and many court rulings on custody in later decades), men have known that they have no legal right to save the lives of their own children, let alone to gain joint custody of their children or even to have any contact at all with their children in many cases (when divorced mothers refuse to honour the visitation rights of fathers). Was it any wonder that many men – yes, there have always been men who wanted children and wanted to care for them – began to distance themselves, at some level of consciousness, not only from the possibility of fatherhood but also from marriage itself? The message to men, beginning in the 1970s, was clear: fatherhood was now not only irrelevant but also a potential liability. The closely related Reproductive Revolution began ten or fifteen years after the Sexual Revolution. Scientists were inventing innovative technologies to solve the problems that infertility caused. These technologies provoked heated public debates, but there was one striking exception. Abortion had been around since ancient times, of course, and had become legal in most Western countries by the 1970s. But it had remained so controversial that politicians avoided the

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topic for fear of losing voters. Both advocates and opponents of new reproductive technologies avoided it, too, for fear of drawing attention to the fact that abortion was part of the larger cultural system of reproduction. Discussing abortion in connection with that larger cultural system would have required consistency: using the same principles for and against all reproductive technologies. Because all reproductive technologies function partly as symbols within a single cultural system, reproduction, it was highly artificial to raise questions about the legitimacy of all but one. Not every reproductive technology was actually new in the 1980s and 1990s. Surrogate motherhood, like abortion, had been around since ancient times, though without the refinements of modern technology.27 Nor did donor insemination have to wait for the advent of sperm banks and artificial insemination. Even contraception had been around since ancient times, though not very effectively. Other technologies, notably in vitro fertilization,28 really were new. And still others, such as cloning (producing exact genetic replicas),29 male gestation (implanting an embryo into a man’s abdomen), ex utero technologies (using an artificial womb), and parthenogenesis (producing embryos without fertilization)30 were by then on the drawing boards. With the striking exception of abortion,31 then, all of these technologies quickly provoked public debates that focused on reproduction in general – and not only on the reproductive problems of a few infertile couples. And these debates led, in turn, to government studies, political lobbying, law reform, journalistic crusades, talk shows, and even, as we say in Sanctifying Misandry, to religious or quasireligious movements that focused on the “divine” feminine.32 Debates occurred not only in medical circles, then, but also in political and ideological circles. Moreover, public debates focused exclusively on the implications of new reproductive technologies for women (not only mothers) and also children. No one asked what these technologies might mean for men (not only fathers). Egalitarian feminists had long wanted reproductive choices for women. Without that, after all, how could women plan for careers outside the home? Reliable contraception and legalized abortion on demand had given choices to women.33 They preferred not to risk more acrimonious debates, therefore, over the latter. Ideological feminists, however, had long demanded reproductive autonomy for women. By that, they meant complete freedom from

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men and therefore complete reproductive control. In the 1980s and 1990s, ideological activists34 rejected technologies that posed potential threats to the health of women,35 the reproductive power of women,36 or the collective identity of women.37 These feminists were highly critical of what they understood as experimentation on women’s bodies. They worried that (male) physicians and (male) scientists would control reproduction, thus reducing the “autonomy” and even undermining the identity of women. These new reproductive technologies included not only in vitro fertilization but also sex selection, artificial insemination, and surrogacy along with a few even more radical ones that we have already mentioned. At least partly because of political expediency, this debate ignored the fact that all humans have (or should have) a collective interest in human reproduction. In fact, the underlying questions that they raised – about what it means to be a man or woman, to be part of a family, to be part of society, to be a moral agent, and to give or take life – are of universal concern. Even though no one asked those questions at the height of public concern over new reproductive technologies, we suggest, the fact remains that reproduction is not a matter of personal concern only to infertile couples or even a matter of collective concern only to women (let alone children). It is of crucial importance to everyone, because everyone has a stake in the future of society. Those who do not believe that they have any stake in the future of society, after all, are likely to abandon or even attack it. And men, we suggest, began during the 1980s and 1990s to feel diminishing stakes in the future of society. At first, ideological feminists insisted that the rights of “biological mothers” should trump those of both “social mothers” and “biological fathers” when interests collided. This legal hierarchy supported their claim to motherhood (in the sense of genetic continuity and “nurturing”) as the essence of femaleness. Women should take control over their own reproductive abilities by banning technologies that would give men at least some control over their own interests in reproduction. These feminists wanted not partial control but complete control, or as complete as possible given the current need for semen. But some of these technologies provided women with an ideal opportunity to end all but the most rudimentary participation of men in reproduction. Technology was fine in connection with abortion, ideological feminists argued, because that gave women reproductive autonomy. But it was definitely not fine, they claimed, in connection

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with surrogacy, which gave men (whose wives were infertile) the opportunity to make reproductive choices. Acrimonious debates made the public aware that some new reproductive technologies presented women with practical problems.38 Those who adopted this point of view organized as the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE),39 which was most active during the 1980s and 1990s but continues to this day. Its members met regularly to ­discuss legal and scientific developments, set up task forces and lobby among legislators for legal and political changes.40 Canadian members, for instance, were among those who instigated a Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in 1989.41 Their immediate goal was a moratorium on the use and even the study of technologies such as in vitro and surrogacy. In addition, members wrote books and articles, monitored scientific journals and produced a journal of their own: Issues in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering.42 In The Mother Machine,43 published in 1985, Gena Corea relied heavily on the conspiracy theory of history.44 She claimed that new reproductive technologies represented nothing less than new ways of asserting patriarchal control over reproduction and thus over women’s bodies (but ignored the fact that governments have controlled men’s bodies in other ways). Referring to “subversive sperm,” “manmade ovulation,” “doctor-induced infertility,” and so on, she warned of “gynecide” through sex-selection (without referring to the “androcide,” of course, that many societies have imposed at a later stage of the life cycle in the form of conscription for military service). Although technology would at first turn women into breeding machines, she argued in connection with “the patriarchal urge to self-generate,” technologies such as the artificial womb and cloning would ultimately make these female breeding machines obsolete and remove reproduction entirely from the control of women. From this perspective, new reproductive technologies were urgent and compelling political problems for all women, not merely for those who happened to be infertile and certainly not only for women who happened to live in the industrialized world. Here are some clauses in the manifesto that F I NR R A G E issued: We condemn the use of women from exploited countries and poor women by men and international conglomerates in the

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interests of global capital and patriarchy. We condemn men and their institutions that inflict infertility on women by violence, forced sterilization, medical maltreatment, and industrial pollution and repeat the damage through violent repair technologies. We support the exclusive rights of all women to decide whether or not to bear children, without coercion from any man, medical practitioner, government, or religion.45 FIN R R A GE abandoned even the rhetoric of equality, in short, and replaced it with that of autonomy.46 Members and supporters fought for the reproductive autonomy of women – that is, for exclusive control by women of human reproduction. Underlying this rhetoric was the notion that women could be, and should be, completely independent of men. During the 1980s and 1990s, F I N R R A G E favoured technologies (such as contraception, abortion, and artificial insemination) that gave reproductive power to women but opposed those (such as sex selection, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization) that might have required some negotiation with men for control or, even worse, allowed men at least some measure of their own control. Reproduction, they believed, was women’s chief bargaining chip in the bid for power – as long, that is, as men had to rely on women for reproduction. An artificial womb, they understood, could change that. Because even implicit separatism is not a particularly attractive position – most women did not want to get rid of, say, their sons – ideological feminists adopted arguments that led implacably in that direction but without sounding obviously unreasonable. They argued that scientists were experimenting in their labs on women’s bodies by using in vitro techniques to reverse the effects of infertility, for instance, or that rich but infertile couples were exploiting surrogate mothers as “rented wombs,” thus dehumanizing women in general and poor women in particular. As we say, though, F I NR R A GE maintained a double standard on reproductive technologies. When it came to technologies that dehumanized men or undermined fatherhood, after all, they were either silent or encouraging. They saw no problem with artificial insemination, for instance, which allows a single woman to become a mother by relying on a sperm donor. Every donor amounts to nothing more than the proverbial “teaspoonful of sperm,” which dehumanizes, or “objectifies” him. In other words, artificial insemination reduces fatherhood to a purely mechanical operation and gives total control

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over reproduction to women – including single women and lesbian couples, who believed that they had a “right” to children. Andrea Dworkin and her followers argued that surrogate mothers were the new prostitutes. (In one of her novels, Margaret Atwood called them the “handmaids” of patriarchy.)47 Therefore, (male) scientists or physicians who encouraged women to use this technology were the new pimps. Surrogacy allowed men (or rich women) to hire poor women as breeders. It was one more way for men to control the reproductive process, they believed, and therefore women’s bodies. Not everyone agreed. In the conceptual combination of the surrogate mother, the prostitute and the supposed innate male longing for power and death, a feminist paranoia about men is voiced. A moral panic is created and spread. Whereas in the beginning of this century, the metaphor of the prostitute was a way of delineating decent heterosexual behavior … [it is now used] to create an overall feminist identity that denounces heterosexuality itself … In this process, the definition of oppression itself is becoming more and more shadowy. By denying the existence of any free will or the legitimacy of passions … the question of what is being oppressed in women’s oppression can only be answered by referring to a hypothetical Woman or Femaleness. Nurturance, naturalness and love are assuming the status of oppressed entities: the problem seems to be that patriarchy denies us our femininity. This is a striking point when we remember that in the first stage of feminism it was that same patriarchy that imposed femininity upon us. In this way, surrogacy is the “ideal” issue for stating both the legitimacy and the “truth” of [ideological] feminism. Natural motherhood and natural procreation can become the real values of feminism, and surrogacy is the ideal negative mirror image. The contradiction … that women are supposed to be socialized as women while men are born as men, is increasingly solved by positing an inborn femininity as well. Feminism is no longer that vivid and colorful process of changing gender; instead, it becomes a struggle of life and death between fixed males and females.48 It would be a serious mistake to assume that this hostility to new reproductive technologies (as distinct from at least one ancient

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technology) came from only a few radicals on the supposedly lunatic fringe of feminism. Remember Mary Beth Whitehead? She was the surrogate mother who made headlines in 1988 for demanding custody of the child that William and Elizabeth Stern had hired her to gestate. Eventually, the court awarded “Baby M” to the Sterns and allowed visiting rights to Whitehead. Many people understood the need for genetic ties with their children or parents, but the Baby M case revealed a double standard. Women who insisted on the primacy of genetic ties (as did Whitehead, the surrogate mother) were praised as good mothers for that very reason; men who did so (as did William Stern, the genetic father) were denounced as idiosyncratic or even selfish fathers. When this case became a cause célèbre, Newsweek49 featured on its cover both the surrogate mother (Whitehead) and the adoptive mother (Elizabeth Stern) but not the genetic father (William Stern). He, apparently, was insignificant. And the implicit message to boys and men was that fatherhood is insignificant. Why, then, should they stick around to care for their families? Of particular interest here is the fact that members of F I N R R A G E worried explicitly about the possibility that men would develop ex  utero technologies.50 These posed obvious symbolic threats to women. The artificial womb, even then on the drawing boards, would undermine the collective identity of women. And sex selection, they claimed, would favour boys and thus lead to “femicide” or a “holocaust of women.” Michelle Stanworth did not flinch from drawing what she considered the logical conclusion of using (high) technology in reproduction: “Whether or not women are eliminated or merely reduced to the level of ‘reproductive prostitutes,’ the object and the effect of the emergent technologies is to deconstruct motherhood and to destroy the claim to reproduction that is the foundation of women’s identity.”51 And yet no one acknowledged that some new reproductive technologies could just as easily undermine the collective identity of men, who have always faced a symbolic problem: the physiological asymmetry that allows women but not men to give birth. Inherent in the genetic code that governs maleness, after all, is this anatomical lack. Inherent in the various cultural systems that govern masculinity, therefore, is some cultural compensation that turns the negative into a positive. Either an artificial womb or male gestation could do so by allowing men to participate more fully in reproduction, but parthenogenesis might lead to the elimination of men.

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Massive social changes, notably the high rate of divorce, accompanied those debates over new and old reproductive technologies. We turn now to the cultural context and the cultural fallout from these technological revolutions: debates over (a) motherhood, especially single motherhood; (b) fatherhood, including single fatherhood; and (c) either dual motherhood or dual fatherhood. By the late 1960s, no-fault divorce had become available in many Western countries.52 To no one’s surprise, the divorce rate skyrocketed. Earlier, most people assumed that divorce would damage children. Even unhappily married people sometimes refrained from divorce “for the sake of the children.” But then the reaction set in. Many people assumed that children would be better off after a divorce, or at least not worse off, than they would have been in unhappy homes. It was a matter of intense debate even among the experts. Everyone could agree that children might be more damaged by the constant bickering of unhappily married parents than they would by living with one parent or the other. But some people realized out that this was not the only alternative. Another was for both parents to conduct themselves responsibly despite their personal unhappiness. Why was this possibility so seldom advocated or even considered by social scientists (let alone political leaders and group activists)? The reason was very simple. Society no longer valued self-discipline, let alone self-denial. This expressed a sharp break with American tradition. Early Americans valued the “pursuit of happiness” highly enough to enshrine it in the Constitution. In addition, though, they valued self-discipline. Somehow, the two were supposed to balance each other. Feminists disagreed among themselves about motherhood, let alone single motherhood. During the 1960s and 1970s, egalitarian feminists tried to ignore motherhood or at least stay-at-home motherhood and did not yet foresee the problem of single motherhood. Betty Friedan53 implied that mothers who did not have careers beyond the home were either stupid or oppressed. To bring about change in the division of labour – in order to legitimate mothers who worked outside the home – egalitarian feminists distinguished between the cultural institutionalization of motherhood (which restricted women to the private realm) and the genetically programmed ability of women to gestate and lactate (which many women might legitimately disregard in order to have more interesting or more lucrative careers).54

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Early egalitarian feminists tended to downplay motherhood on the personal level, in short, for the purpose of attaining economic independence on both the personal and collective levels. By the 1980s, however, feminists such as Sylvia Hewlett were ready to challenge that approach.55 Hewlett argued that European feminists had found a more effective strategy than American feminists. By not conflating equality with sameness, they allowed women to be women. By that, she meant mothers with access to affordable day care. Ideological feminists went much further than their egalitarian counterparts. After all, the ability to become mothers is innately female. Even though not all women choose to become mothers, therefore, that remains a defining feature of womanhood and therefore of collective identity and collective power for women. Consequently, they believed, any challenge to maternal supremacy would amount to an attack on women. Ideological feminists began to emphasize motherhood not for practical reasons but for political ones. And these relied, explicitly or implicitly, on the notion that women, by virtue of their maternal instinct, are innately superior to men. Paeans to motherhood soon became de rigueur among academics and politicians. These had always been de rigueur in popular culture, of course, despite a brief period during the 1950s, when they co-existed with occasional paeans to fatherhood as well. The glory of motherhood notwithstanding, according to early ­ideological feminists, peril lurks everywhere for mothers. Among the pioneering efforts to sound the alarm were those of Shulamith Firestone,56 Kate Millett,57 and Germaine Greer.58 They argued that the link between women and reproduction enslaved women. If so, then women would have to break the link in order to liberate themselves. In The Politics of Reproduction,59 therefore, Mary O’Brien argued that women’s reproductive labour is creative, not mechanical or pathological (as men, presumably, had defined it). It is therefore an advantage, not a disadvantage, in the contest for value against men’s merely productive labour. In fact, O’Brien said that women could benefit from the “alienation” of men from reproduction. She referred to the “potency principle” by which men, marginalized in the private realm of reproduction and uncertain of paternity in any case, created the public realm, in which to find compensatory control or power. Juliette Zipper and Selma Sevenhuijsen noted that “in the women’s peace movement and in the eco-feminist movement, women speak in

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the name of motherhood, which is supposed to give a special wish and capacity for protecting life and nature, which are said to be threatened by patriarchal and/or male principles. In the wake of these activities, the connection between Woman-Mother and Nature is restored.”60 In fact, this is the theoretical paradigm that dominated feminist discussions of sexuality in general and reproduction in particular. “Sexual violence is seen as the paradigm of women’s oppression, in terms that equate sexuality, heterosexuality and sexual violence … Women’s oppression is defined as the appropriation of women’s bodies by men and male principles. The fact that many women consent to or even enjoy sexual relationships with men is interpreted as a proof that male ideology defines the female.”61 Andrea Dworkin had already argued62 that motherhood had become a branch of (female) prostitution. (In her acknowledgments to Right-Wing Women, Dworkin, an icon of ideological feminism, thanked Gloria Steinem, an icon of egalitarian feminism, for suggesting the expansion of an earlier essay and insisting on its importance.) Just as men had exploited and discarded women at will, she claimed, they were now doing the same thing to parts of women – that is, their eggs. By becoming whole people through feminism, she said, women threaten the continuity of male supremacy in a patriarchal system. The “brothel model” of biological reproduction worked for men, she added, because, it allowed them to keep thinking of women – not only prostitutes but also wives and lovers – as useful objects rather than as whole people. For Dworkin, ideologically tied to both essentialism and dualism, this evil was no historical aberration. On the contrary, it was the essence of maleness just as the opposite was the essence of femaleness. From the beginning of second-wave feminism, in short, motherhood had been a bone of contention. Some feminists devalued motherhood. It was the only remaining difference between women and men. It was an obstacle on the road toward sexual equality, they found, because they defined equality as sameness. This was certainly very inconvenient for women who wanted to leave the home for more exciting careers. But other feminists glorified motherhood. It was indeed the only remaining significant difference between women and men, they argued, and therefore the only focus of identity for women (often adding or at least implying that motherhood was the source and primary expression of women’s superiority to men). Motherhood was either a curse or a blessing for women, in other

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words, depending not only on personal experience but also on whichever point of view feminists found politically expedient. The debate over motherhood quickly spilled over into a debate over single motherhood. One unforeseen result of the divorce culture was a rise in the number of single parents, usually single mothers, sometimes by default but very often by design. What Barbara Dafoe called the “divorce culture” established a dramatically new context for the debate over parenthood, one that opened up for debate not only the custody of children after divorce but also single parenthood63 in general and single parenthood by choice in particular. Because courts routinely granted custody of children to their divorced mothers, moreover, the rate of single motherhood increased dramatically. This meant that more and more politicians sought the votes of single mothers. And this in turn meant that more and more legislators sought ways of using the law to help them, especially by extracting excessive amounts of money from their former husbands. Meanwhile, the increasing focus on single mothers64 was turning them from hapless victims or into fighting heroes. Single mothers appeared on one talk show after another to tell the world that they had beaten the odds, earned college degrees at night, took three or four jobs to support their children, and so on. Earlier, almost everyone had assumed that single parenthood was sometimes a necessary evil. Even single parents agreed. After all, it was the result of unwanted pregnancy, divorce, abandonment, or death. It involved considerable hardship. Single mothers – most single parents were mothers – deserved compassion or at least pity. But that point of view began to change. In the eyes of many Americans, by the 1990s, divorced and other single mothers (with the possible exception of widows) were not only iconic victims of men but also iconic heroes of autonomy for women. This explains at least one wellknown “teaching moment,” the public debate over Marcia Clark. A divorced mother, Clark was also chief prosecutor at the notoriously controversial murder trial of O.J. Simpson. During the trial, Clark demanded more money from her ex-husband despite her own high-status and well-paying job. Every journalist and talk-show host in the country began discussing the pros and cons of single mothers. According to Lyn Cockburn, for example, Americans needed to stop belittling women who create, maintain and run families. Instead, we need to celebrate, support and honor their abilities,

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their creativity, their innovations and certainly the love they give their children. Women are capable, skilful, creative, powerful people. They must be validated if they choose to participate in a family with a man and equally legitimated if they choose another model. Above all, women who create and maintain families must never be made to feel they are somehow inferior because they do not have husbands.65 Cockburn added that “women lose a lot of their power when the validity of the family is based on whether or not it contains a man.”66 She failed to note, however, that the “validity” of a family depends also – and usually more heavily – on whether or not it contains a woman. After all, society had traditionally assigned women the task of child care. For political purposes, therefore, single mothers were ideal as exemplary figures. Some had thrown out their abusive husbands. Others had never married their abusive boyfriends. All had illustrated the basic feminist principle: that women do not need men (even though some women need help from the welfare state67 and therefore from at least some male legislators). Single motherhood by default was turning into single motherhood by choice.68 At first, most people – including most but by no means all feminists – agreed that families were important social units.69 They did not want to abolish the family and redistribute its functions to other institutions. Even Israeli kibbutzim retained family units, no matter how subordinate these might have been in the communal atmosphere; families might eat one meal a day, for example, in privacy. More and more people began to accept the legitimacy of “alternative families.” At issue for these people was merely which type of family to foster. Some feminists, in particular, began to promote families that were headed by single mothers (and eventually by female couples). Several assumptions underlay the argument for “alternative families.” Some assumed that mothers, at least those who held down jobs outside the home, could afford not to marry. Others assumed that divorce affects children only temporarily and actually “enriches” their experience in the long run. All agreed, though, that mothers can do everything that fathers can do. At the same time, many Americans were beginning to identify “progress” with “diversity.” Just as the nation consisted of diverse ­ethnic and religious groups, all of which had contributed to its vitality,

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it consisted also of diverse family forms. The problem was not alternative families, advocates claimed, but the stigma that had long been associated with “broken” families. In Going Solo,70 a characteristic product of the 1980s, Jean Renvoize argued that single-mother families were better (or at least no worse) for children than other types of family. But others argued that just because families with both mothers and fathers were sometimes inadequate did not mean that families with only one parent (or, eventually, two parents of only one sex) were always adequate. Must we exchange one set of problems, they asked, for another? By the mid-1980s, moreover, few Americans still believed even that single mothers by choice were harming their children by denying them fathers. Renvoize argued71 that gender itself would disappear with so many mothers at work outside the home, because their children would now be statistically normal. This argument revealed the assumption that women could expand their collective identity to include all male functions (even though men could hardly include one important female function). At the heart of her argument was a definition of human identity that relied on utilitarianism. She saw human identity from the perspective of function alone. Mothers could do everything that fathers could do. Ergo, fathers were unnecessary in the family unit. Even mothers were unnecessary in the family unit, presumably, after giving birth and nursing infants. She did not draw the logical conclusion by arguing that fathers could do everything that mothers could do aside from gestation and lactation.72 Her argument relied not on equality between men and women but on autonomy for women. Ultimately, it rested on a profoundly sexist foundation: turning the old gender hierarchy on its head by defining men according to the standard of women. The presence of men (in the family or even in society at large) was tolerable, for her, only to the extent that they were willing to function according to the expectations of women. This could explain what viewers should have seen – but obviously did not – as an odd omission on one episode of Beverly Hills 90210.73 This was an immensely successful television series about wealthy high-school students, some of whom had “dysfunctional” or “alternative” families. In one episode, Steve goes to Albuquerque to look for his “biological mother.” He actually succeeds in finding out, from her father, that she is dead. But what about her husband, Steve’s “biological father”? He, too, is dead. Still, the idea of searching for him

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never even occurs either to Steve or to his grandfather. In other words, it never occurred to the author of this episode and, presumably, to viewers. Why were so many people either unable or unwilling to ask what effect the lack of fathers might have on children? To answer that question, we must remember that single mothers by choice fell into several categories. In one category were women who accepted either marriage or an enduring “relationship” as the ideal setting for children but lacked acceptable candidates for the job of Mr Right. Listening to the ticking of their “biological clocks” made them feel desperate. They felt an urge to have children. In addition, however, society made them feel entitled to children. They wanted children, period, with or without the fathers of those children. In a second category were professional women in their thirties or forties. After years of not wanting children so that they could get graduate degrees and begin careers, they had changed their minds. They wanted now to be professionals but also to be mothers. In short, they wanted to “have it all.” What made other women accuse them of selfishness – and some did – was not merely wanting to have it all but expecting to have it all at the expense of their own children. The urge for personal gratification trumped the need of children for fathers, in other words, and thus demonstrated the emergence of a hedonistic society – which is to say, one that placed supreme value not merely on personal pleasure but on personal gratification of any kind – ­sexual, emotional, intellectual, professional, financial, material, or whatever – as an end in itself. These women rejected the idea of meeting men at bars and “hooking up” with unreliable ones, let alone paying for dating services. They wanted children immediately. If they could not afford the time to stay home with their children, they could afford nonetheless to hire people who could. By this time, as we have already said, not many people retained any clear sense of why or even whether children might need fathers. The solution was to replace men with sperm. Many women either went to sperm banks in person to select reliable genes (or, more recently, used the Internet to order sperm). And if they met attractive men later on, well, those men would be luxuries. In a third category were ideological feminists. They denied not only the need of women for men but also the need of children for fathers. Like some women in the other categories, moreover, they insisted that women should “have it all” and therefore rejected the

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very idea that women had to make choices (as if men did not have to choose between actively building their careers and actively participating in family life). From this ideological point of view, single motherhood by choice was not selfish at all. On the contrary, they believed, it was a necessary stage in the advancement of women and thus made children the means to an end. Otherwise, they argued, women would never gain reproductive autonomy and therefore economic autonomy as well. In a fourth category were teenagers who had given birth to children, sometimes without even telling the fathers, in order to provide them with what no one else provided: unconditional love. Helping them financially, of course, were their parents and, ultimately, the welfare state. Whatever their category, many women decided to bypass men ­altogether. As Katherine Gilday showed in a documentary film called Women and Men Unglued,74 moreover, even those who still wanted enduring “relationships” were increasingly pessimistic. Because neither sex now needed the other, according to cinematic talking heads, both sexes would have to rely on transient motivations such as sentiment and sensuality. Many of Gilday’s informants – these were mainly young, white, urban, educated, and professional women, along with a few men – said that they had actually come to envy their married parents or grandparents. Maybe this explains the (continuing) fashion for extravagant weddings, the wedding industry that arose to provide these extravaganzas and the “reality” shows such as  The Bachelor75 and The Bachelorette76 that arose to glamorize archaic notions of courtship in addition to the weddings. After several weeks of competing for a wife in one case and a husband in the other, each series concluded (and still concludes) with a highly ritualistic77 proposal of marriage and a “fairy-tale” (read: outrageously ostentatious) wedding. Like jousting tournaments long after the Middle Ages (when jousting was serious business), these weddings had become vestigial artifacts: symbols of an ideal that most people can no longer expect to attain except in their daydreams.78 Sure, millions of children grew up in “alternative” or “non-­ traditional” families – the “politically correct” euphemisms for families that lacked parents of one sex or the other, usually the male parent – and millions of single parents struggled in adverse conditions. That made them worthy of compassion, it is true, but many people thought that it made them worthy also of adulation. This is what Americans

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encountered on countless talk shows during the 1980s and 1990s. The public began to focus not so much on single motherhood but on single motherhood by choice. Think of the furore that Vice-President Dan Quayle provoked in 1992 with his comments on one episode of Murphy Brown. The title character decides to have a child without marrying the father. According to Quayle, Murphy had “mocked the importance of fatherhood.” And many Americans agreed with him, including many liberal Americans who had hitherto considered him a right-wing idiot. But this controversy did not appear out of nowhere. It had a history. Most of that history involved feminism, as we say, both egalitarian forms and ideological ones. Feminists of all kinds agreed that “the personal is political.” Their point was that personal, or private, aspects of life are actually of great political importance. Or, to put it another way, feminists could debate these aspects of personal or even private life with very effective political results. And what could be more personal, and now political, than giving birth? In 1992, Margaret Carlson pointed out that there was nothing new about having babies without getting married. What’s new is society’s attitude, which has gone from punishing it, to tolerating it, to celebrating it. Ah, Murphy, she is too darn busy and successful to have a baby the old-fashioned way, and anyhow, men are jerks. With her high income, Brown seems a poor vehicle for examining the problem of children born without fathers. Yet she has more in common with the inner-city teenager than we might think. The 14-year old gets pregnant as a way to give her life meaning. Murphy Brown and fortyish women like her want a tiny version of their nearly perfect selves to give their lives more meaning.79 Among other things, continued Carlson, being a Murphy [Brown type of] Mom means having postponed childbirth until one’s salary has reached the upper brackets and one has sufficient disposable income to employ a full-time muralist and buy enough Scandinavian furniture to induce existential dread. But even at the upper end, where the career track is fast and the dress code is for success, there can come the nagging ­feeling that this might not be all there is. By then, of course, the

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flexibility to tolerate a big lug leaving his dirty socks on the floor and the luxury of having time to find one are both in short supply. It takes a tiny leap for those accustomed to satisfying every whim to see a baby as one more choice.80 Carlson concludes that it is one way to turn a life-style into a life in nine months. Actually, this problem was due partly to the glorification of individualism (but in a self-centred way that the founders of America would have rejected) and to the legitimation of self-indulgence (a reaction against self-denial, which many had come to see as “puritanical” and “repressive” and “patriarchal”). Marilyn French argued that self-discipline and even self-sacrifice were “patriarchal” values that led directly to oppression.81 An undercurrent of Romanticism, moreover, glorified emotion itself. This gave rise to the talk shows, the self-help or therapeutic movement, the “recovery community,” and “New Age” religions (or new versions of older religions) that relied on the ultimate goal of “self-realization” or simply “growth.” In this climate, not surprisingly, many adults found it expedient to assert that if they themselves were better off emotionally, their children would be as well. And it certainly sounded logical; emotional problems really can be devastating to children (although they are not necessarily so). But the problem was the result also of precisely the opposite: a resurgence of collectivism (pertaining not to society as a whole, ­however, but to groups within it) and the notion of “identity politics.” It was not only commercially unwise to risk hurting the feelings of women or mothers but also politically unwise. Few people in the entertainment industry worried about purveying offensive images of men or fathers, though, because they had not (and still have not) organized themselves as a powerful lobby wielding overt or covert power over legislators. Given that many children of divorced parents were not, in fact, faring well and were suffering from a long list of social problems,82 at least some attempt to reappraise what had become conventional wisdom in huge sectors of the population was clearly in order. By that time, though, millions of people already had vested interests in the new paradigm; rethinking their decisions would mean the possibility of having to acknowledge serious mistakes. Very few were ready to go into reverse, and this applied to society as a whole no less than to

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groups or individuals. As Whitehead put it, this cultural shift explained what would otherwise be inexplicable: failure to see the rise in family disruption as a severe and troubling national problem. Moreover, it explains why there was virtually no widespread public sentiment for  re-stigmatizing either of these classically disruptive behaviours (divorce and single motherhood by choice) and no sense – no public consensus – that they could or should be avoided in the future. On the contrary, the prevailing opinion was that we should accept the changes in family structure as inevitable and devise new forms of public and private support for single-parent families.83 Way back in the mid-1960s, people had attacked Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a racist for questioning the effect of single-parenthood on black children. Within a few years, though, even that topic could no longer be ignored. Those who had the audacity to speak out still knew that there would be a political price to pay. It became “politically correct” to insist that families, no matter how transient and fragmented, were better than ever before. For one thing, saying anything else would have appeared to be a political assault on single mothers and their children. How dare anyone attack women, especially those who were obviously doing the best that they could do under difficult circumstances? Those who did attack “women” were not only emotionally insensitive but also politically ruthless. Once word was out, anyone who had the audacity to raise disturbing questions about the consensus was shouted down as a “conservative” or “religious conservative” – which had come to mean someone who exploited public nostalgia in order to turn back the clock and put women back in their kitchens. Even when feminists acknowledged the truth, however, they often ignored it. The fragmentation of families, they argued, had become an enduring fact of life. Consensus eluded society. Many people continued to reject the standard arguments in favour of either “diversity” in general or “alternative families” in particular. The public furore was partly about political opportunism, in any case, not social science.84 Of great concern to John Leo, for instance, were public perceptions of single parenthood. Any country serious about its future would move to confront this unfolding disaster, but in fact the opposite is occurring. The truth is that the elite in this country considers single parenthood a non-issue. In effect, that elite has decided not to look very hard

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at how children pay the price for the growing emphasis on individualism and personal fulfillment. We once exerted heavy pressure on couples to marry and stay together to avoid forcing children to pay this price. But now fulfillment is king, and the upper middle class is rich enough to afford breakups and intentionally planned single-parent homes … As a result, Christopher Jencks writes in his book, Rethinking Social Policy, “elite support for the two-parent norm has eroded.”85 The legitimation of single motherhood by choice created the need for safe artificial insemination. In an article for the New York Times Magazine, in 1995, Peggy Orenstein observed that artificial insemination by donor had become a profitable industry over the past half century. By then, it was a carefully regulated industry.86 Not all women, however, made their choices so deliberately. Many become pregnant outside of marriage for a variety of reasons. At no point did Orenstein discuss another problem: the message sent to boys and men, but also to girls and women, about the irrelevance of fatherhood. In Hollywood, wrote one observer in the 1990s, “most prospective parents request a white baby girl.”87 By that time, many ordinary women had come to assume easy access to sperm. In an article for Elle, Lynn Snowden wrote nonchalantly about new developments in the twenty or so California sperm banks. Most of them are accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks … which sets standards for donor screening and has begun to make accreditation inspections. California has been widely publicized as home to a “genius” sperm bank, the pompously named Repository for Germinal Choice, but much more significant are [sic] the concentration of female-friendly sperm banks – self-proclaimed as “feminist” – that have set, in the last decade, a more personalized standard … Even the most traditional sperm banks in California now bow to consumer demand for more detailed information about donors, such as whether they’re ­vegetarian, left-handed, and what their favorite color is …88 Women could now “shop for sperm banks,” Snowden observed, “in the way that they would shop for anything else.” One bank offered sperm according to sex, for instance, and women who thought

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that this would be horrible simply looked for another bank. Still, most were quite definite about the characteristics that their donors would have to have. One said, “I don’t want him to be fat.” Another insisted: “Jewish, no allergies.” According to Snowden, they all worried about “the jerk factor.”89 They rarely even mention “semen” or “sperm” when referring to what they buy, sell, and store. As with most businesses, there’s a certain vocabulary to be observed: The men who masturbate into the little cups, the “donors,” are performing what is called “collecting”; the little room where they do that is a “collecting area.” The actual ejaculate is referred to as “product” or “a specimen.” When you phone the California Cryobank in Los Angeles, for instance – a big bank with a booming trade in mail-order sperm – you get no verbal clue as to its business. “Please dial 1 for the laboratory,” a recorded voice says. “Please dial 2 for shipping …”90 These euphemisms indicated that many customers found even the thought of sperm, the “product” of male bodies, somehow dirty or disgusting. Because the customer was always right, sperm banks sanitized the procedure symbolically as well as medically. They made it possible for women to completely ignore the fact that men were (minimally) involved. Sperm banks have everything to do with reproduction and nothing to do with sex. Like high schools intent on keeping the sexes apart [in the past], sperm banks often provide separate entrances for men and women. That physical separation is enforced procedurally: donors sign away custody rights to any potential offspring, and recipients sign exemptions from claiming child support from donors, should the recipient ever discover the donor’s name.91 Those in charge, of course, were indeed aware of the men. The “masturbatoriums” of one sperm bank, decorated with posters of muscular men holding babies, had tables with copies of Hustler and Playboy “for inspiration.” Those of a more ideologically oriented “facility,” though, had posters of flowers by Georgia O’Keeffe, fertility symbols, and talismans. After all, women “could never support pornography.” This was a legalistic approach, which ignored the fact

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that donors had to create their own erotic fantasies in order to function properly. Artificial insemination, said advocates, had several advantages. Children found it easier to accept themselves as the results of donated sperm, some argued, than they would as the accidents of one night stands or brief liaisons. Besides, they added, this medical procedure was safer than having sexual intercourse in an age of rampant sexually transmitted diseases such as A I D S . Sperm banks used genetic screening, moreover, to avoid hereditary diseases. Somewhere between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of the customers, straight or gay, were unmarried. Although Snowden acknowledged that “society seems immensely threatened by the spectre of a woman who is not only financially able to support a child herself but technologically and biologically able to conceive without even having sex with a man, let alone a relationship,” she implied that those who felt threatened (that is, men) were either stupid or neurotic. Following the lead of her informants (including those with vested interests), at any rate, she was willing to dismiss the topic without taking it seriously. “This is not a rejection of men,” insists Sherron Mills, a nurse practitioner and executive director of the Pacific Women’s Health Services. Mills is showing me her bank’s large barrelshaped tank that can house up to 5,000 vials of frozen sperm, enough to propagate a small town. With her short graying hair and comforting manner, she could pass for anyone’s aunt checking to see if the cookies are done. She grabs what looks like an oven mitt and lifts the tank lid, releasing a cloud of vapor from the liquid nitrogen, and carefully pulls up a rack of labeled vials encrusted with frost. “Men are very necessary to this process,” Mills says.92 Sure they are, she added, in the way that silkworms are necessary to the fashion industry. What did all this say about the attitudes of society toward fathers? Reduced to triviality, it was a wonder that anyone still took fatherhood seriously. And what did all this say about the attitude of women, in particular, toward fathers? Apart from anything else, it said that nothing took precedence over reproductive autonomy for women.

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Sperm banks quickly became a major industry in the 1990s. They paid donors between $50 and $100 for a vial of sperm, which customers bought for between $150 and $600 plus shipping. But the price sometimes went up for additional services. Many sperm banks sell various kinds of information about donors, ranging from short profiles (height, weight, race, education, etc.) which are usually free, all the way up in some cases to personal visits with the donor, which can run thousands of dollars. You can pay for baby photos, detailed genetic/health information, written essays, staff interviews, psychological profiles, audio tapes and so on.93 For a price, one sperm bank provided customers with a link to photos of two or three celebrities, whom “our staff has deemed each donor most closely resembles.”94 Another sperm bank helped donor-conceived children to find their siblings. For $50 a year, they could join the Donor Sibling Registry, which Wendy Kaminer had founded in 2000. There, customers could post the identification numbers of donors in the hope that other “searchers” would see these and make contact.95 The children of donors could try to locate their sperm-donor fathers and reconnect with their half-siblings. These stories get applause. A psychotherapist named Jane Mattes had founded Single Mothers by Choice in 1981. Look at its more recent website, which shows that nothing changed over thirty years aside from changing the language from marriage to partnership and then back to marriage due to the rise of gay marriage. A single mother by choice is a woman who decided to have or adopt a child, knowing she would be her child’s sole parent, at least at the outset. Typically, we are career women in our thirties and forties. The ticking of our biological clocks has made us face the fact that we could no longer wait for marriage before starting our families. Some of us went to a doctor for donor insemination or adopted in the United States or abroad. Others accidentally became pregnant and discovered we were thrilled. Most of us would have preferred to bring a child into the world with two loving parents, but although we have a lifetime

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to marry or find a partner, nature is not as generous in allotting child-bearing years. Single motherhood is ideally for the woman who feels she has much to give a child and who has adequate emotional and financial resources to support herself and her child. Our membership includes thinkers, tryers, and mothers. More than half of our members are “thinkers” (as we call women who are considering single motherhood) or “tryers” (women trying to conceive or adopt), and our organization ­provides a unique support network for women who are going through these very stressful and important stages. We encourage women in the thinking and trying processes to become members of SMC . We have members all over and chapters in most major metropolitan areas including, among others, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC /Virginia, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Raleigh / Durham, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Western Mass and more. Whether or not there is a chapter near you, you will receive a list of members in your area and contact information for them.96 This organization did not originate as a front for any ideological or political movement (although it offers implicit support for some of these). “In general,” visitors to the site learn, “our members feel that it is preferable to raise a child with two loving parents. However, in the absence of a good partnership, and with the rate of divorce as high as it is, we feel that being raised by a caring and competent single parent is definitely a viable option.”97 By the early twenty-first century, single motherhood by choice had become much more than a “viable option.” It was de rigueur in some circles,98 which meant that it would have been political suicide for any politician to question its legitimacy for fear of causing single mothers to lose self-esteem. The new ideal became prominent, as usual, in Hollywood, where some of the most glamorous single women were single mothers. In fact, glamour magazines featured articles on them.99 Although not all chose to be single mothers, none regretted being a single mother or worried about their children not having fathers. Among them were Jodie Foster, Sheryl Crow, Mary Louise Parker, Sandra Bullock, Mia Farrow, Teri Hatcher, Madonna,

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Michelle Pfeiffer, Rosie O’Donnell, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Kate Jackson, Dianne Wiest, Minnie Driver, and Linda Ronstadt. “Not only are actresses adopting,” noted one Hollywood maven, “but a lot of women in the executive ranks are also becoming single mothers. Women feel secure enough today to raise a child alone. You don’t need a husband. That’s creating an enormous comfort level.”100 Meanwhile, few people thought about fatherhood at all, let alone single fatherhood. Among those who did were some feminists. Collectively, feminists have always been ambivalent about fatherhood. Since the 1960s, egalitarian feminists have supported fatherhood. After all, doing so follows the inherent logic of sexual equality and also encouraged men to share the burdens of family life. But many of  these feminists supported (and still support) a particular notion of fatherhood. Fathers, they assumed (and still assume), are mothers in drag or assistant mothers, thus deviating sharply from historical notions of fatherhood. Among the most important advantages of two-parent homes, from this point of view, is the fact that egalitarian ones can divide up both household tasks and household expenses between two interchangeable parents (at least after infancy).101 As for ideological feminists, they had (and still have) no interest in fathers at all except as sperm donors, the main problems of mothers and the archetypal “patriarchs” of an oppressive society. As we say in Spreading Misandry,102 popular culture had already been trivializing and even demonizing fathers for decades with impunity. For almost as long, as we say in Legalizing Misandry,103 politicians and legislators had found it expedient to crack down on “deadbeat dads” and claim that fathers had many duties but no rights. Meanwhile, as we say in Sanctifying Misandry,104 ideological feminists themselves had been deifying women as maternal incarnations of a Great Goddess. By the late 1990s, not surprisingly, many of them were attacking fathers for  organizing on the Internet to challenge what had become con­ ventional wisdom in ideological (but influential) feminist circles. According to ideological feminists, for instance, these fathers were not interested in regaining access to their children but only in regaining control over their wives or girlfriends. From an ideological point of view, in short, men – even fathers – were motivated primarily or even entirely by some atavistic need to control women. One ideological strategy was to foster public hysteria over physically or sexually abusive men, especially fathers. Consider the

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national preoccupation with “recovered memories” of sexual molestation (which we discuss elsewhere).105 That episode lasted approximately ten years and destroyed thousands of families. Its psychological and cultural legacies, however, have remained. Many men felt uncomfortable about hugging their own children. Many endured false accusations, with dire results, due to ex-wives seeking sole custody. For that matter, many unrelated men – teachers, doctors, clergymen, coaches, scout leaders – worried about having physical contact of any kind with the children in their charge. But the indifference or hostility of ideological feminists toward fathers involved more than blazing headlines and lurid court cases. Their secret weapon was postmodernism.106 This academic fashion launched a crusade against the idea that objectivity in scholarship was possible or even desirable and thus gave academic and political respectability to the “deconstruction” of anything. If participatory fatherhood were nothing more (and nothing less) than the toxic artifact of a “patriarchal” society, if it were without any basis whatsoever in the human condition (whether you define that in terms of evolution, physiology, psychology, existential conditions, or whatever), then why not get rid of these “social constructions” without further ado and start over again from scratch? In theory, of course, postmodernists should have deconstructed both fatherhood and motherhood. But they seldom deconstructed motherhood, in spite of their approach’s inherent logic, because many of them actually believed in feminist ideology and therefore granted it the privilege of immunity to deconstruction. Even though early egalitarian feminists had tried to deconstruct motherhood in order to liberate women for careers outside the home, more recent ideological feminists refrained from doing so precisely because of postmodernism’s inherent logic: one that relies on both essentialism (the innate “connectedness” of femaleness) and dualism (the innate “alienation” of maleness). Both postmodernists and their ideological protégées can go after fatherhood without hesitation, in short, but not motherhood.107 Many feminists, whether egalitarian or ideological, accepted any theory that would let women “have it all.” These theories relied on the state to replace fathers, because they assumed that fathers could provide only two things apart from sperm: material resources and physical protection, which the state could provide either as well as or better than many fathers could on their own. Men who refused to

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be frozen out of family life, however, were waking up to the fact that they would have to fight lengthy legal and political battles.108 And they would probably receive little help from national leaders. President Obama often deplored the fact that many fathers abandoned their families but failed to explain precisely why families need fathers (as distinct from mothers). His focus was on punitive measures, not incentives, in order to discourage fathers from abandoning their purely financial responsibilities (which would otherwise fall to the state). Given public indifference to fathers (except in connection with the prosecution or even persecution of “deadbeat dads”) and public sympathy for mothers (even though that did not necessarily translate into adequate funding for affordable day care), it was hardly surprising that many fathers ended up feeling envious, frustrated, confused, discouraged, and sometimes angry. They wanted to be good fathers, but their role models and teachers were women (some of whom either consciously or subconsciously resented the intrusion of men on their home turf). It seemed as if children were the business of women, not men. This was the message, unwitting on the part of egalitarian feminists and deliberate on the part of ideological feminists, that society sent to boys and men through both popular culture (notably television sitcoms and talk shows) and punitive legal measures (notably in connection with divorce and custody). Why, then, should anyone have expected men to make heavy emotional investments in family life? Even so, almost everyone agreed that men would actually enjoy being hands-on fathers. This was (and is) surely true for most men (who have regretted, sometimes angrily, that their own fathers had devoted very little effort to family life, let alone fatherhood). Not selfevident, though, was precisely what that could or should have meant. Few stopped to ask precisely what, apart from an innate male handicap – their inability to gestate and lactate – makes fathers distinct from mothers but also necessary participants in family life. But the obvious sexual asymmetry did not trouble egalitarian feminists. Neither did some common claims of both social scientists and ideological feminists: that women are innately more “caring” than men; that mothers are therefore innately better “parents” than fathers; that children turn to their mothers, not their fathers for comfort; and that, anyway, children prefer mothers to fathers. According to conventional wisdom, not surprisingly, fathers were luxuries in the home

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at best and liabilities or even potential molesters at worst. This made many fathers feel awkward or even out of place within the family.109 The newspapers and news shows said it all, though not always directly or deliberately. When mothers made mistakes (such as neglecting, abusing, or even killing their children), it was often because they were either mentally ill or victims of violent men; when fathers made the same mistakes, it was often because they were either innately incompetent or simply evil. With these crude notions about fatherhood in mind, consider the words of Caren Weiner in a review of Junior.110 This movie is about a man who becomes pregnant: “And watching this fluff on the small screen just trivializes it [childbearing] further. In fact, the more viewers are egged on to laugh at [Arnold] Schwarzenegger’s condition, the less funny women – who actually do suffer through these trials – are likely to find it.”111 By that time, no one would have said that childbearing was a curse. On the contrary, some implied that, with all its sacrificial “trials,” motherhood was virtually sacred. To undermine it, therefore, would be to commit sacrilege (anything that defiles or mocks the sacred). Only those who are cut off by nature from this sacred domain of femaleness,112 men, would be stupid enough to find anything trivial in motherhood. Recently, the debate over single motherhood has shifted to a debate over dual motherhood or dual fatherhood. By the latter two arrangements, we refer to families with either two mothers or two fathers (sometimes in the context of gay marriage.) This shift did not come out of the blue, but it did require a major reversal of rhetoric. Only a few years before the debate over gay marriage, the rhetoric about family life had focused on single parenthood. Social scientists and other academics had given their seal of approval to the idea that children would thrive with only one parent, which led almost inevitably to a steep increase in the number of children living with single parents. As we say, politicians recognized that they had a heavy investment in these single mothers. Once it became clear that many of those children were in trouble, however, it was too late for politicians to rethink their policies. Who would have been foolish enough (let alone “insensitive” or even misogynistic) enough to consider the possibility of going into reverse? The only solution, they reasoned, was to give single mothers and their children all the help that they needed. By this time, no one cared much about single fathers. But it

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was obvious to most people (and always had been) that two parents (and now two incomes) made it much easier to bring up children than it would have been otherwise. That led directly to the idea that any two parents were better than only one. More and more people began to think that there was nothing wrong with children having either two mothers or two fathers – that is, having either no fathers or no mothers. At first, however, advocates for gay marriage had very little to say about children. They accused their adversaries of “trotting out the children,” in fact, as a diversionary strategy. The battle hinged primarily on fairness and equality for gay adults.113 Children were clearly bystanders in the debate.114 Eventually, advocates of gay marriage noticed the flaw in their own strategy, pointing out that they themselves had children in need of the rights and protections that marriage would guarantee. The debate still focused on the rights of gay adults, and advocates of gay marriage often tried to gloss over potential problems for children, but it was now necessary to do some homework. Advocates had to show at least some evidence that the children of gay couples would be just as well off, or perhaps even better off, than the children of straight couples. In short, children were no longer out in the cold. They had at least some rights.115 At this point, the case for gay marriage became more plausible to straight people. It now relied on arguments that many straight people in our society, whether secular or religious, found hard to oppose – and rightly so in most, though not all, cases. Close to the heart of any modern democracy is equality, so why make an exception in this case? Advocates of gay marriage pointed out cogently that gay couples did not yet have the same rights and benefits as straight couples. The only question for many people was how to attain those rights for gay couples and thus end the hypocrisy of inequality. At issue was what had become a pervasive ideal of marriage, one that focused heavily on supplying needs that almost everyone had come to assume in modern Western countries (although some had been recognized much earlier and in many countries). Notable among these were the need to give public expression to private goals, to gain state approval for private matters, to attain respectability for themselves both personally and collectively, to provide stability for their children, and to acquire legal or economic benefits such as the right to make medical decisions for incapacitated partners and the right to coverage by the medical plans of partners

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(although contracts would solve the former and universal medical coverage the latter problem). Underlying the debate over gay families were three closely related debates, aspects of which we have already discussed. One of these was over “alternative families” in general. Advocates associated the latter either with circumstances that required compassion (death, divorce, or abandonment) or with choices that evoked admiration (such as single parenthood by choice). They argued that a wide range of family types can strengthen society (without explaining precisely how). They drew support from popular culture (without mentioning aspects of it that they despised), pointing out that sitcoms and talk shows did not create alternative families but merely acknowledged their existence. “More precisely, they have taken the raw material of demography and fashioned it into a powerful fantasy of individual renewal and rebirth.”116 Among those who advocated new forms of the family were some who argued – and still do – that the historic form, which ideally includes both mothers and fathers, really was worthy of hostility. In Raising Boys without Men,117 for instance, Peggy Drexler attacked people who favoured intact families for insidiously attacking single mothers. This hullabaloo about boys and fathers, she said, was nonsensical at best and misogynistic at worst. Boys, she added, automatically grew up to become men. In short, they did not need fathers (or, presumably, mothers). The message to boys and men, therefore, was that there was no need for them, possibly no room for them, in family life (except, presumably, for the money that fathers can provide either willingly or unwillingly). At stake in this debate over family life was not merely the practical problem of getting fathers to help out with housekeeping chores. Nor was it merely the psychological problem of getting fathers to be more emotionally involved with children. At stake in addition was the symbolic problem of retaining fatherhood as a source of collective identity for men. Another underlying debate was over society itself. Here, it is enough merely to note that egalitarian feminists did not want to destroy the historic family form. They merely argued that adding newer ones that would create “diversity” and therefore encourage “pluralism” (without showing precisely why those were good things or how either was necessarily different from fragmentation).118 As egalitarians, they were content to see the historic pattern coexist with newer ones. Ideological feminists and some of their gay allies,

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however, were not open to every “alternative family” and therefore did not truly endorse “diversity” (which had its limits from their point of view) let alone “pluralism” (which supposedly fosters many competing ideas of truth). They identified the historic family not only with “misogyny,” “patriarchy,” and “phallocentrism” but also with “heteronormativity” and “heterosexism.”119 We have already discussed those who considered marriage itself nothing more than a form of “legalized prostitution” or even “slavery” for women. For them, egalitarian marriage was an illusion. They routinely satirized or attacked this one type of family as the ultimate source of all social pathologies or “dysfunctions” and therefore demanded its  deconstruction or even destruction. As the keystone of an oppressive society for women and sexual minorities, at any rate, marriage – the old model of marriage – would have to disappear before anyone could build a new and better social order. Yet another underlying debate was over reproductive technology. At first, most feminists had insisted that birth mothers – they assumed that these were also genetic mothers – should take legal precedence over all other parents in cases that involved reproductive technologies. In view of increasing public acceptance of gay marriage, though, many began to insist that the rights of “gestational mothers” or “social mothers” should trump those of genetic mothers. Why the turnaround? One reason was very simple: political expediency. Having spent thirty years trying to deconstruct the traditional family as nothing more than a “social construction,” they had concluded that nature had little or nothing to do with parenting. Anyone who “loves” a child – gay or straight, married or single – could be a fit parent (barring some personal disqualification). Genetic ties were now just as irrelevant, in short, as sexual orientation. Another reason was that legal claims of men, depending on their genetic relation to their children, could be eliminated if the state recognized only social parenting. But this was not such a neat separation. When conflict occurred between two gay women, for instance, sometimes the genetic and birth mother argued that she was the real mother and should be awarded custody. “A bio-mom can pull out the ultimate trump card … She can say that these are my children, not ours, and you’ll never see them again.”120 This brings us back to the implications of gay marriage for fathers but also for men in general, which is why we have included this

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discussion of gay marriage here. Although very few men of the new millennium were au courant with the latest academic or ideological theories about gay marriage, some were aware that gay marriage had become, apart from anything else, a powerful symbol of their function, or lack of it, in family life. More and more jurisdictions either allowed the names of gay partners or wives to appear on birth certificates as “father” or eliminated both “mother” and “father” from birth certificates to replace them with “parent a” and “parent b” (or even “party a” and “party b”), each of which could refer to anyone who has any kind of relationship – genetic, social, psychological, economic – with the child.121 The message to fathers was becoming clear.122 In an essay written for GQ, and thus addressed primarily to men, Anthony Giardina discussed his anxiety as a man over the declining importance that our society attached to fatherhood. For him, the ultimate symbol of that decline was the vogue for lesbian motherhood. What bothered him was the belief that fathers were unnecessary, not the fact of lesbian couples. The problem was not so much that Betty or Billy had two mommies, in other words, but that Betty or Billy had no daddy. “Are there any of us,” he asked, “who actually believe that lesbian families aren’t going to alter the landscape in significant ways? … For one thing, my role changes; at least the way I think about it changes, because I’m being told I’m no longer utterly necessary. In lesbian families, there are no fathers.”123 There were not all that many lesbian-headed families, it is true, but their symbolic power could hardly have been overestimated. As the title of one newspaper article put it, “Fathers Wonder Whether They Are Still Needed.” This article was about two gay women, who found a sperm donor through the Internet. Their specifications for him included the following factors: income level, nationality, age, height, weight, personality, education, and sexual orientation. The author of this article then commented: I’m sure that Jane and Sarah will love their baby … But … consciously or not, they send their offspring this message: Men are irrelevant to the healthy rearing of a child. Their sole useful purpose is in the provision of bodily fluids needed for conception. After that, whether they serve that role as paid donors via companies like NewLife or merely as randy, one-night-stand amateurs, they are no longer needed. Nor, it would follow, do they

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bear or deserve any responsibility for whatever offspring they produce. Fatherhood is nothing more important to society than the simple act of appropriately timed sex and/or insemination – the two being no longer intertwined. I wish for Jane and Sarah that their baby is born healthy. But more, I wish them luck in explaining to their son how meaningless they really believe him to be.124 Hollywood, as usual, eventually found a way to back the winning horse. Consider one very popular movie. The Kids Are All Right125 made headlines, because the kids have two mothers. Viewers get the distinct impression that this is no longer an “alternative family” but an ordinary family – and not a “dysfunctional” one. The children decide nonetheless to find their sperm donor. When they do, he proves likeable and even willing to participate somehow as a member of the family. In the end, though, the kids and their mothers classify him as a superfluous intruder. The explicit message is that sperm donors are not really fathers at all, which is true in one way. But the implicit message, which appears over and over again in popular culture, is that even live-in fathers are irrelevant at best (as assistant mothers or walking wallets) and sinister at worst (as potential molesters). So far, though, no one has demonstrated that the families of gay couples are immune to these problems – or, for that matter, to their own distinctive problems.126 If you can argue that the presence of a father is inherently dangerous, after all, you could argue also that the absence of a father is inherently dangerous.127 Although some feminists idealized lesbian couples, moreover, social-scientific evidence indicates that they are at least as violent as straight couples.128 Because this book is primarily about men, and this chapter primarily about fathers, we conclude with some comments on the day that officially celebrates fatherhood. On Father’s Day in 2008, President Barack Obama took the opportunity to scold American men for abandoning their responsibilities as fathers. It is true that he got into trouble with Jesse Jackson for scolding black fathers in particular. Obama pointed out that fatherless families were particularly numerous in black communities, after all, and that white racism alone could hardly account for the problem. But Obama did not get into trouble with any political leader for scolding fathers in general, when he could easily have made the same point by praising good fathers.

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And  the situation in other Western countries was no different. In 2008, for  instance, some schools in Scotland forbade children to make Father’s Day cards. The ostensible reason was “to avoid causing embarrassment to classmates who live with single mothers and lesbian couples.”129 Never mind that only 7 per cent of the children in Scotland live with single mothers. No school, however, forbade children to make Mother’s Day cards. Clearly, we have a long way to go before we can encourage boys or men, unambiguously, to become fathers and then integrate them fully into family life as those with a distinctive and necessary contribution to make. We will discuss that much more fully in the concluding volume of this series. There, we will argue that fatherhood is the only historic function of men that remains130 not only necessary but also distinctive and therefore worthy of being publicly valued. Moreover, we will argue that only in this way will boys and men be able to create a healthy collective identity for themselves, one that relies on their ability to make that very kind of contribution both to their families and to society as a whole.

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Epilogue: Postmodern Man

What we conclude from the history of these technological or cultural revolutions will probably cause rejoicing among neither men in general nor women in general, albeit for very different reasons. We have already shown that men have some severe problems. Some are innate, others cultural. Some emerged in the relatively remote past, others in the recent past. Some are the result of political changes, others of technological changes. All have come together in our time, though, to generate a massive and historically unprecedented problem for men (and therefore society as well). Many men do not want to think about any of this, because doing so would reveal collective vulnerability with no obvious solution. Many women do not want to think about men at all, moreover, except in connection with the needs and problems of women. Ultimately at issue here, nonetheless, is something that neither men nor women can avoid forever. All people, both personally and collectively, need to know that they can make at least one contribution to society that is distinctive, necessary, and therefore publicly valued. Through most of human history, the male body allowed men to do so; every society required people who could function as providers, protectors, and progenitors. But things have changed over the past twelve thousand years, at first for a few men and eventually for most men, due to a series of technological or cultural revolutions. Today, women can do almost all of these things either on their own or with help from the state. Therefore, men can no longer make contributions of this kind – except, perhaps, as fathers. To the extent that boys and young men no longer believe in their ability to do so – no longer believe that even fatherhood remains distinctive, necessary,

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and publicly valued – then they can no longer have a healthy collective identity. In that case, we can expect them to give up in one of several ways: abandoning themselves to hedonism in the hope of attaining at least ephemeral pleasure and thus blocking out underlying pain; abandoning themselves to despair by dropping out of school or committing suicide; or abandoning society by resorting to antisocial behavior. We conclude by placing all this in the context of postmodernism, however, because that remains the dominant world view (albeit one that filters down unevenly from the academic world). Do men really need a collective identity? Does anyone? Postmodernists have asserted in one way or another that collective identities – national, economic, racial, religious, and so on – are not merely “social constructions” but dangerous ones, because they foster the dominance of some groups over others. The direct origin of that idea is obviously Marxism, which urged proletarians of all nations to unite in the effort to overthrow capitalistic states, along with their oppressive religions, and thus inaugurate a “classless” utopia; the latter would lack not only economic distinctions but also religious and other ones.1 The trouble is that postmodernists hardly ever complain about the collective identities of some groups – notably those of women and sexual or other minorities – presumably in the belief that these are the “constructions” of groups so lacking in power that they can do no harm. And that is, indeed, always a possibility. But the postmodernist urge to eliminate other boundaries by “deconstructing” them and their supposedly sinister motivations evidently opposes the human urge – judging from human history – to create or sustain some boundaries, especially those that confer identity. It would be hard to think of twentieth-century history, for instance, without acknowledging the profound problem that modernity presented by turning people into “consumers,” “workers,” “numbers,” “machines,” “cannon fodder,” and so on. Apart from anything else, including the benefits of science, modernity meant abandoning the religious traditions and face-to-face relationships of village life for the seemingly chaotic and “faceless” or “rootless” quality of urban life. Both fascism and communism tried to solve this problem. And both did so by trying to obliterate personal identity, which had dire  moral consequences. The Nazis rejected modernity, inventing a  mythic alternative: the racial community. The Soviets glorified modernity, inventing another mythic alternative: the collectivized

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community. Both experiments failed but for different reasons. The Nazis mobilized collective identity very effectively, so effectively that many people tolerated mass murder; the regime succumbed not to public cynicism, although many Germans had become cynical, but to invading armies. The Soviets mobilized collective identity effectively enough to fight off invading armies but not effectively enough to prevent many people from welcoming the invaders as liberators; the regime eventually succumbed to moral anomie and public cynicism (among other things). It makes no sense to oppose collective identity, clearly, if people actually need some form of collective identity. And we strongly suspect that they do. But why does anyone need an identity specifically as a man or a woman? We suggest that men have needed one since the Agricultural Revolution, first a few men and eventually most men. At any rate, men need one now, even if only because women have already insisted on creating an acceptable one for themselves and in doing so, whether knowingly or not, an unacceptable one for men. It would indeed make sense, therefore, to accept the needs of both men and women for collective identities – if not in some ideal or eschatological world then at least in this one – but identities that generate justice and compassion instead of hatred. In the next and final volume of this series, Transcending Misandry and Misogyny: From Feminist Ideology to Intersexual Dialogue, we propose a way to move beyond conflicts over the sexual identities of men and women.

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Notes

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  1 See Bobbi S. Low, “Biological Bases of Sex Differences,” in Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures vol. 1, ed. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (New York: Springer, 2003), 27. Aside from the basic difference between male and female chromosomes, Low points out, “it is not simply ‘genetic or hormonal’ or a ‘difference in chromosomes.’ Rather, sex differences, however mediated, arise from past ­evolutionary and ecological pressures” (27). When comparing species, the “specifics of sexual reproduction can differ, but sex differences are common and also predictably patterned. Males and females in most species behave differently, in predictable ways, regardless of how sex is mediated” (27). Moreover, “in genetically sex-determined species like humans, the sex chromosomes are clear proximate influences on many traits. For example, although both sexes produce both androgens and estrogens, they do so in different proportions. There is still variation, of course, and the distributions of most traits overlap when the two sexes are compared” (28). Low goes on to discuss physical sex differences: gross physical ones (such as men on average having more upper-body strength and muscular development than women) and more subtle ones (such as men and women having somewhat different brains). In addition, there are hormonal, cognitive, and perceptual difference, on average, between men and women.   2 See Cynthia Whissell, “Personality and Emotion” for a discussion of sex differences and the “nature-nurture” controversy in Ember and Ember, 1: 63–4. She concludes that “Most researchers would not go so far as to deny totally the validity of the complementary viewpoint (nurture / situation or nature / disposition) in explaining sex differences, but many have

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distinct preferences for one approach or the other, and these are evident in their work” (64).   3 Deborah L. Best, “Gender Stereotypes” in Ember and Ember, 1: 11.   4 Our word “contra-natural” is not a synonym for “unnatural.” The latter is of dubious value, because anything that exists in nature is, by definition, natural. Some people use “unnatural” for anything that works against a natural tendency, it is true, but even that does not convey what we mean by “contra-natural,” because our word has no pejorative connotation. In some situations, after all, we not only can but should work against natural tendencies.   5 To eliminate the idea of male superiority, some feminists point out that some women are bigger, faster, and stronger than some men. But when they use this fact to deconstruct any sexual differences, they make it hard to explain historical and cross-cultural patterns. Others admit that most men really are bigger, faster, and stronger than most women. But when they add that these differences are inconsequential, they make it equally hard to explain historical and cross-cultural variation. Still others insist that male size, speed, and strength add up to profound differences between the sexes. Of those, some claim that these differences are complementary and thus promote group survival. Others claim that these differences are oppositional and thus promote dominance or submission. Susan Brownmiller, for example, claimed in Against Our Will (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975) that all men subjugate all women in all places and at all times by threatening them with violence. This is tantamount to claiming that men are “innately evil” (even though that would make no sense, because evil always involves moral agency – that is, being able to choose freely between good and evil – and cannot, therefore, be the result of forces beyond anyone’s control). chapter one

  1 Ruth Underhill, quoting a woman of the Tohano O’odham (Papago) people, in Papago Woman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), 92.   2 Although the evidence points to continuity in many ways, those of immediate concern in this book, it points also to discontinuity in some ways. We know that in Amerindian cultures hunting changed dramatically after the introduction of horses and guns in the modern period. In his essay “Communal Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains” (Hunters of the Recent Past, ed. L.B. Davis and B.O.K. Reeves [London: Unwin Hyman, 1990]), Reeves argues that this period introduced several innovations: pemmican,

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a new meat preparation and storage technology; the bow and arrow; and the horse (168–95).   3 Some feminists have tried to deconstruct the link between men and hunting, because they consider it the paradigm for arguments of male physiological superiority. Barbara Ehrenreich, for instance, argues that it “is tempting to discern, in myths connecting the goddess to the hunt and the menstruating woman to the hunting animal, a time when real women played a central role in the realms of both economies and religion: in the economy, as participants in the hunt; in religion, as beings whose bodies had the seemingly divine gift of bleeding without dying, and doing so ­regularly, in tune with the most salient of the night skies” (Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War [New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997], 108). Women were powerful, she suggests, partly because their periods synchronized in groups. As predatory hunters, they personified goddesses. In her opinion, the link was direct and positive.   Hunting, she explains, was an innovation that occurred late in the evolutionary scheme of things. Before that, human beings banded together against wild animals, she claims, and scavenged for their meat. Later, they banded together as hunters of wild animals. The entire community now hunted, she writes: men, women, and children. How did women and even children participate? By dancing, making a lot of noise and driving the animals into traps (over cliffs, into cul-de-sacs or bogs) where they died or could be killed with stones, spears or clubs. So women and children, like men, were hunters. For evidence, Ehrenreich points to analogies in hunting-and-gathering societies. The !Kung, for example, see one between a girl’s first menstruation and a boy’s first kill. And Ehrenreich points to the fact that Amerindians included women and children in their group hunts.     It is certainly possible that, when humans began to separate from other primates, some women participated in scavenging or helped scare animals into pits. But Ehrenreich’s reconstruction of history raises more questions than it answers. Some evidence does not support it. Consider Boxgrove, a lower Paleolithic site in Sussex. Boxgrove contained a waterhole that attracted big animals such as rhinos, horses, bison, and giant deer. Archaeologists have found thousands of bones there, many of which have cut marks. This suggests that hunters deliberately killed them (see David Derbyshire, “Stone Age Man: Spear-thrower or Scavenger?” National Post, 26 May 2003: A12; reprinted from the Daily Telegraph).   Ehrenreich observes that women and children were more fearful than men were, because they were left unprotected during the hunt. Does this not imply that men were acknowledged as better or stronger hunters?

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  The !Kung refer to a woman’s first kill metaphorically, not literally. In fact, it is well established that women are not routinely hunters in huntingand-gathering societies – including that of the !Kung.   The analogy between a girl’s menstruation and her first kill might be due to a morphological similarity between vaginal bleeding and the bleeding wound of an animal.   The link between menstrual bleeding among women and ritual bleeding among men might not have originated in connection with the blood of either prey animals or predatory ones. Instead, it might have originated in connection with the envy that men felt, because women went through a natural rite of passage – unlike the arduous and dangerous cultural one that boys went through before entering manhood – or because women could apparently produce life. We identify it as envy, but it could be fear or dread as well.   The idea of a predatory goddess need not have originated in the power of hunting women at the dawn of human history, for which we have no evidence. It might have originated among adolescent boys who feared being shamed by girls and women for failing to kill an animal during initiation. Hunting, especially for big game, was a very intimidating prospect. Boys had to measure up if they were to be accepted as men; girls and women were the cheerleaders. Boys might have elaborated on this fear, as men, by creating the myth of a predatory goddess. Women would be like predators, in other words, willing to eat boys who fail to become men with the courage to kill on behalf of their communities.   Finally, we doubt that women really were routinely engaged in direct struggles with wild animals, especially big ones. What if they were pregnant or nursing?   4 Maxine L. Margolis, “The Relative Status of Men and Women,” in Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, ed. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (New York: Springer, 2003), 1: 139. In this context, she cites P. Draper, “!Kung Women: Contrasts in ­Sexual Egalitarianism in Foraging and Sedentary Contexts,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).   5 Robert F. Murphy, Headhunter’s Heritage: Social and Economic Change among the Mundurucu Indians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 54. This passage is about hunting in a horticultural society, but the tasks that Murphy describes are the same whether they occur in horticultural societies or hunting-gathering ones.   6 David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 120.

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  7 Gilmore claims that “only one empirical case has been reported in which women actually do kill large game by themselves. The case is that of the Agta, a Negrito people of northeastern Luzon, the Philippines … This case has been offered as evidence that hunting can just as well be a female occupation as a male one … Closer inspection of the evidence presented shows that Agta female hunting has been somewhat exaggerated. The authors of this study note that most native women hunt full-time only in ‘extreme circumstances’ and those that hunt on a day-to-day basis are laughed at by neighboring people of both sexes … In addition, Agta women do not hunt when either pregnant or nursing, so that the general emphasis still remains on hunting as a male role. Hunting, the Agta say, is a ‘sort of male activity’ … something loosely associated with men, and something that men are better at doing. Further, one must point out the unusual subsistence adaptation of the Agta. These people collect virtually no vegetables, because they prefer to trade meat to their farming neighbors for cultivated crops. This is a relatively recent development, which has eliminated the traditional female gathering role and which may explain the anomalous female hunting” (ibid., 118–19).   8 Adolf E. Jensen, Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 163–4.   9 Joseph Campbell, The Way of the Animal Powers: Mythologies of the Great Hunt, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), xix. 10 Bernard Saladin d’Anglure, “Nanook, Supermale, the Polar Bear in the Imaginary Space and Social Time of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic,” in Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World, ed. Roy Willis (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 189. 11 Ibid., 184. 12 R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 180. 13 Ibid., 422. 14 For theories on the origin of pastoralism, see S.I. Vajnshtejan, “The Problem of Origin and Formation of the Economic-Cultural Type of Pastoral Nomads in the Moderate Belt of Eurasia,” in The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes, ed. Wolfgang Weissledder (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 128–30. 15 R. Brian Ferguson, “Explaining War,” in The Anthropology of War, ed. Jonathan Haas (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990), 34. 16 A.M. Khazanova, “Characteristic Features of Nomadic Communities in the Eurasian Steppes,” in The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of

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Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes, ed. Wolfgang Weissledder (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 123–4. 17 These include the Semai, the Buid, and the Xinguano. But they are not equally peaceful. The Semai always flee violence, for instance, whereas the Buid and the Xinguanos sometimes react to attacks with retaliatory raids. Moreover, they sometimes execute their own people for witchcraft. According to McCauley, “Perhaps the most notable commonality of the three peaceful groups is what [Thomas] Gregor calls an ‘antiviolent’ value system. Peace is supported by stigmatizing quarreling, boasting, stinginess, anger, and violence, and by according prestige for generosity, gentleness, and conflict avoidance. This value system is supported by supernatural beliefs in which helpful friendly spirits are opposed by malevolent and ­violent spirits who prey upon men. Further, the antiviolent value system is embodied in a contrast between the peacefulness of the ingroup and the violence of outsiders, a contrast that forms an important part of the everyday maintenance of the system. Outsiders are bloody, violent, dangerous, ugly, evil, animal-like and, in a real sense, less than human. Children are warned against outsiders and, especially, about behaving like outsiders … Another commonality is the egalitarian nature of all three societies, and an associated impairment of personal relationships … Individuals are encouraged to depend only on the group, and not on particular other individuals … all three peaceful societies have very low degrees of social stratification, obtained by controlling expression of individual wants and emotions in various ways … Other commonalities … include slash-and-burn agriculture, patchiness of resources, small villages, relatively open-ended groups with blurred cleavage planes, endogamy preferences, sources of disputes (sexual jealousy, gossip, stinginess), and agency of aggressive models” (Clark McCauley, “Conference Overview” in Haas, 14–15). 18 Robert K. Denton, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979). 19 McCauley, “Conference Overview,” 15. 20 Robert I. Levy, Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1973). 21 Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, 200–9. 22 War is “a subset of human aggression involving the use of organized force between politically independent groups” (McCauley, “Conference Overview,” 1). 23 In A History of Marriage Systems (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), G. Robina Quale discusses the ancient Near East. By 7000 B C , “the

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pattern of separate sleeping huts and storage huts had changed to one of a single, separate sleeping and storage facility for each family … With that separation of ours-and-yours within the village, the larger community within which basic family clusters of spouses and children lived must have finally ceased to have the unity of the hunting-gathering band” (50). 24 Ferguson, “Explaining War,” 35. 25 Besides, fit male bodies attracted women. Thomas Gregor observes that the ideal Mehinaku man is tall and muscular: “On the average, tall men are more likely than short men to sponsor rituals, be wealthy, have many girlfriends, and become village chiefs” (Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Life of an Amazonian People [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985], 36). But in Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl [New York: Schocken Books, 1962], Elizabeth Herzog and Mark Zborowski show that traditional Jewish women from eastern Europe had a very different notion of male sexiness. The women said that sexy men looked pale and thin – as if they spent all their time in the synagogue, studying Torah! 26 Some people argue that societies assign men to war, because they need extra women for reproduction – or, to put it more bluntly, because they believe that men are reproductively expendable. But every pregnancy requires both a man and a woman. And almost every society so far has depended on men for protection. Very small-scale societies exist at the margin of survival. When food is plentiful, they ensure survival by increasing the population. Otherwise, however, they do so by reducing the population. In short, we must not assume that any society can rely on the kind of utilitarianism that quantifies human value. 27 It is hard to know if women or men are more likely to choose “flight” in emergencies. If women have men around to choose “fight,” they might be less likely to do so themselves. When no men are around, they are probably just as likely as men to choose “fight.” Otherwise, how could we explain the many accounts of mothers who, at great risk to themselves, defend their children from predatory animals and similar dangers. 28 Joshua S. Goldstein, “War and Gender” in Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, 1:108. 29 See Katherine K. Young, “Grief and the Crisis of Masculine Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” plenary address for the International Conference on Helping the Bereaved Male (London, Ont., 1980). 30 This conclusion emerges from a study of 108 societies, which represent all major regions of the world. Karen Eriksen and Jeffrey Paige have coded these in connection with several variables. (See The Politics of Reproductive Ritual [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981]).

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Because Eriksen and Paige are interested in reproductive ritual, they do not comment on the relation between available resources and ritual warfare. Examining their data, however, we found that out of 20 societies with few resources (mainly hunting-gathering ones), only 2 organize ritual warfare. Out of the 43 with many resources (pastoral, advanced horticultural and agricultural ones), only 7 do. By contrast, out of 45 societies with average resources (simple horticultural, fishing and mounted-hunting ones), 27 do. We conclude, therefore, that headhunting and cannibalism occur mainly among simple horticulturalists. 31 Listen to Eli Sagan on torture among the Hurons: “The captive selected as a trophy of war, to gratify their vindictive spirit, was subjected to the most inhumane and even more inquisitional torture. The nails of [his] … fingers and toes were torn off by force; the three principle fingers used for drawing the bow were lopped off; the skull was denuded of its hairy scalp, and coals of fire and hot ashes were heaped upon the bleeding head, or hot setting gum was poured upon it. Sometimes, he was made to walk across a great number of fires with his body and feet entirely naked, between two files of tormentors who struck him with burning firebrands and rubbed his legs with heated axes. At other times, they threw hot water on his back to increase his pain, and touched his fingers’ ends and his sexual organs with burning cinders. Then they pierced his arm with a splint, drew out the nerves and tore them away by force” (Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form [New York: Harper and Row, 1974], 10–11). 32 Peggy Reeves Sanday rules out the possibility that fear of starvation commonly provokes cannibalism, although it sometimes does (Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986]). Following James Frazer and Wilhelm Mannhardt, on the other hand, Christiano Grottinelli suggests that these rituals dramatize the seasonal cycle of cultivated plants and that “their periodic ‘death’ is followed by their return or ‘rebirth’ before the next harvesting” (“Agriculture,” in the Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade [New York: Macmillan, 1987], 1: 245). René Girard argues that ritual killing prevents violence within groups by siphoning it off – that is, killing ­surrogate victims (Violence and the Sacred [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972], 221). And Eli Sagan (Cannibalism) explains that eating victims is a way of acting out aggression. He thinks that cannibalism belongs to the most archaic type of society.   All of these theories are problematic. Sanday makes an observation but offers no theory to explain it. Grottinelli’s old “death-rebirth” theory, on the other hand, does not explain why killing a deity became a dominant

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myth among horticulturalists. In addition, it cannot explain why they resort to killing humans. Hunter-gatherers hardly ever sacrifice animals, after all, let alone humans. Girard does not explain why taking a victim from some other community occurs among horticulturalists but not hunter-gatherers. Head-hunting and cannibalism hardly ever occur among the latter, after all, but often do among the former. Sagan, too, must be wrong. We see no link between cannibalism or headhunting and the most archaic type of society. 33 Michel Meslin, “Head: Symbolism and Ritual Use,” in the Encyclopedia of Religions, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 6: 222. 34 Sagan, Cannibalism, 36–7. Similar rituals occurred in India during the 1940s. Bikash Chandra Gohain observes that “the practice of head-­ hunting … is associated with the fertility cult. The Nagas believed that if the fertilizing aspect of the soul-substance could be acquired, their crops would prosper … The Quoireng Nagas used to take heads because the possession of a head brought wealth and prosperity” (Bikash Chandra Gohain, Human Sacrifice and Head-Hunting in North-Eastern India [Gauhati, Assam: Lawyer’s Book Stall, 1977], 67–8). Elsewhere, he writes that “belief in the fertilizing aspect of the soul-substance takes us back to the practice of cannibalism among head-hunters … The Lushais used to taste the liver and lick, from the spearhead, the blood of the first victim slain in war. The Thadou Kukis ate their first meals after taking a head with hands stained with enemies’ blood (Gohain, Human Sacrifice, 75). 35 Among the pastoral Masai and Samburu of eastern Africa, young men are not only expendable in battle but also unwanted as husbands. Quale says that “young women’s parents looked for husbands for them in age-grades older than the young warriors’ age-grade. They sought men who were no longer liable to die in battle unless the conflict was so serious that older men were also sent to fight” (History of Marriage Systems, 116). 36 Goldstein, “War and Gender,” 110. 37 Margolis, “The Relative Status of Men and Women,” 140. 38 Ibid. 39 William Divale, Matrilocal Residence in Pre-Literate Society (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984). 40 Following Murdock, Divale says that about 70% of the world’s societies are either patrilocal or virilocal and 11% either matrilocal or uxorilocal – 17% when you include all other female-oriented residence patterns (ibid., 13–14). 41 Robert F. Murphy, Headhunter’s Heritage: Social and Economic Change among the Mundurucu Indians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 101–3).

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42 Yolande Murphy and Robert F. Murphy, Women of the Forest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 95. 43 The myth reveals what psychoanalysts would call “fear of castration.” This is clear in several other Mundurucu myths. “In one story, a young man named Perisault has coitus with a jaguar-woman, who plans to kill him and cut off his penis. In another, a man hears a female frog croaking and threatens to insert his penis into her and make her croak with pain. The frog later changes into a beautiful woman and seduces the man, but at the point of orgasm, she retransforms herself into a frog and hops away with the man’s penis locked in her vagina. She stretches it out to an incredible length before she releases the penis, leaving the man immobilized. Some others arrive on the scene, see the man’s plight, and apply a preparation to reduce his penis. They reduce it too much, however, and he goes away with a penis the size of a little finger” (ibid., 100). 44 Ibid., 144. 45 See George Devereux in A Study of Abortion in Primitive Societies: A Typological, Distributional, and Dynamic Analysis of the Prevention of Birth in 400 Preindustrial Societies (New York: International Universities Press, 1976). According to Devereux, women who do not want to take on adult responsibilities abort or kill their children. In many small­scale societies, women must not enjoy sex until their children are weaned at the age of three or four. Once they have one or two children and thus demonstrated their fertility, they resort to birth control, abortion, and infanticide. But depopulation is common for many other reasons in horticultural ­societies. Men often capture small children, therefore, during their raids against neighboring tribes. Other anthropologists have noticed the same phenomenon and suggested that this practice originated not only in the need to supplement the number of children but also in the need to give men a role in providing children for the community (Theodore Wilmanns and Ruth Wilmanns Lidz, Oedipus in the Stone Age: A Psychoanalytic Study of Masculinization in Papua-New Guinea [Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1989], 160). 46 “That the fear of emasculation is far deeper among the men than is penisenvy among the women is … suggested by the secrecy of the [flutes]. Women cannot view the instruments under penalty of gang-rape, surely a clear indication of phallic power, but we never found any curiosity among the women. Some of them must have spied on the roots of male power at some time, however, as the women can give a fairly accurate description of what they look like. And they do this with little sense of awe or fear … the

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women were obviously less impressed with male prowess and its props than were the men” (Murphy and Murphy, Women of the Forest, 101). 47 Ibid., 217. 48 Ibid., 115. 49 Thomas Gregor, Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 88. 50 Ibid., 186. Gregor describes the parallels between menstruation for girls and ear piercing for boys. As soon as blood flows, people carry boys or girls to their hammocks. Highly vulnerable to witches and spirits, both boys and girls are safe only inside their houses. Every girl holds a cotton spindle in her navel “to keep it from closing up.” Every boy clenches his teeth around the dowel that someone will use to pierce his ears. Leaves from the cotton plant, the plant that “never dies,” induce favorable dreams, which boys and girls interpret with similar symbolic equations. Both boys and girls must lie quietly and speak only in whispers. Both boys and girls must follow food taboos to ensure both the rapid cessation of flowing blood and favorable dreams. Both boys and girls fast, drinking water only after one day. Following the fast, both boys and girls may eat any food except fish, which would prolong the blood flow, because fish contain a lot of blood from eating other fish. (Monkeys and birds eat only fruit, on the other hand, and therefore have a different type of blood.) Both boys and girls may eat them. Once the blood stops flowing, a ceremony reintroduces fish to the diet. The boys go outdoors, taste a small amount of fish, and spit it onto a fiber mat. The girls do so indoors. They may now eat fish but not food that society considers either sweet or salty (ibid., 189). 51 Willmans and Lidz, Oedipus in the Stone Age, 60. 52 As soon as the child is born, the father enters seclusion with his wife and infant. Called “the infant’s father” … he is said to “resemble” the mother. In fact, the taboos and restrictions honored by the father appear to have been generalized from the mother to him. Like the mother, he lives behind a palmwood barrier, refrains from sexual relations and avoids those foods that are taboo to a woman who is experiencing postpartum blood flow. Specifically, he avoids fish, but he may eat monkey and bird meat brought to him by close kin. When the mother’s postpartum bleeding ends, both husband and wife sit on benches within the house and, in a ritual identical to that of boys in the ear-piercing ceremony, chew a small morsel of fish. The mother then leaves seclusion, symbolized by her going out of the house by the front door, bathing, and frequenting the central plaza. But the father does not “go out.” His food taboos change to reflect a

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“non-bleeding status,” similar to boys whose ears have healed and girls in seclusion after their first menses. These food taboos and numerous other restrictions on sex and on the kind of work he may perform … are honored in the interest of the child … The father’s period of seclusion lasts until the infant assumes the status of a child … By these criteria, seclusion lasts approximately a year, though some of the villagers claim that in past times a new father spent as long as three years in isolation. With the birth of subsequent children, the couvade is reimposed, but in an attenuated form (Gregor, Anxious Pleasures, 194–5). 53 They reckon descent through the male line and practice exogamy (marrying people from outside the group). Marriages are either monogamous or polygamous. Each hamlet contains a few fortified houses, but several hamlets can coalesce to form a larger community of several hundred people in the context of either ritual or warfare. This society is very loosely organized, although it recognizes war leaders, elders, and shamans. Only age confers status among the men despite their disinterest in status symbols. 54 Gilbert H. Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity (New York: McGraw Hill, 1981), 83. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 168. “Women’s periods are steady and visible … a powerful force alive and operating within her … there is nothing comparable in men … [Women’s] bodily vitality is rich; their abundant blood repels disease. They are thus innately healthier and longer-lived than men … Females do not fall sick, not really, and they live longer than men to boot” (ibid., 190–2). 57 Ibid., 206. Herdt continues as follows: “A female being must give birth to attain complete womanhood. This drive to birth is basic; it is innate; it produces life; and it is fundamentally female. The natural drives of parturition so evident in women are thus frustratingly dormant in men … The birth of a child is the last step into adulthood … for man and woman alike … Yet the place of the two sexes differs greatly in this development. Having a baby and suckling it are visible and what really count. Only females do this and so every man must have a wife. Parturition is innate to femininity … Since femininity is that overwhelming and innate, all that is left for men to do is to separate and defend boys from women, while oddly simulating certain perceptually correspondent female changes by means of ritual” (ibid., 199–202). 58 “Toward the end of the first initiation, after days of ritual and fasting, the novices are nearly worn out. They are led from the cult house into the edge-land forest. They are lined up before the mor-angu which is contextually likened to [the hut where women give birth]. Boys hear high-pitched

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cries from within that are said to be a squawking new infant but are actually produced by the bamboo flutes” (ibid., 203). In addition, Herdt says that each “menses requires that men induce nosebleeds alone in the forest. Of all manly rituals, this is the most painful, traumatic and intimately personal. Unlike menstruation, though, it is not shameful. Yet it is secret … Women are ashamed of their periods … [so say the men]; men hide their nose-bleedings. A woman hangs special leaves around her neck to signify she is in her period; a man paints red ochre on his stomach, face, and limbs, following that secret ritual he has enacted in the forest. The parallel of activities is striking. Sympathetic identification is at work; parturition is the focus” (ibid., 194). 59 D.K. Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua-New Guinea Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 184. 60 Ibid., 200. Feil points out also that, “Aside from physical separation in domestic and public life, women were severely punished for adultery by having burning sticks thrust into their vaginas, or they were killed by their husbands; they were whipped with cane if they spoke out of turn or presumed to offer their opinions at public gatherings; and were physically abused in marital arguments … This strident misogyny, of pathological proportions, is nowhere so manifest in the highlands as here. Sexual antagonism is fundamental, inherent, and, like warfare in the eastern highlands, unrestricted. Men do not require specific incidents or reasons to abuse or mistreat women; it is part of the normal course of events; indeed, in ritual and myth, it is portrayed as the essential order of things … The solidarity of men versus women, a theme of initiation, and symbolized by the secret flutes, is given further social reinforcement by institutionalised age-grades … Initiation is designed to produce uncompromising warriors who are hard and ungiving … Women represent an enemy, the enemy, and aggression is based on opposition to them. At every stage of the developmental cycle, men have an internal, united organisation as reference; women and external enemies are the target of concern, they are conceptually equivalent, and the point of rigorous instruction and ordeal” (ibid., 203). But according to Goldstein, even women sometimes participate in torture. “Despite women’s exclusion from combat, a number of societies have routinely used women as support troops … [In Apache tribes], [w]ar prisoners were often taken back to camp for the women (especially those who had lost loved ones in battle) to torture and kill. Women’s partici­ pation in torturing and killing prisoners is also found elsewhere. The Konkow sometimes allowed women to participate in torturing captured male enemies. Among the Tupinamba of Brazil, women enthusiastically

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helped torture prisoners of war to death and then dismember and eat them. Similarly, Kiwai women of Oceania had the special job of ‘mangling’ enemy wounded and then killing them with knives or digging sticks” (“War and Gender,” 111). 61 Menstruating girls, for example, learn “about their new potency which must not be used against men … Initiation [of the girls] is interrupted, most dramatically, by female dancers imitating men, who chase the young girls around the seclusion hut to the resounding chorus of ‘men are the enemy’ … Such explicit statements of sexual opposition do not exist even in male initiations [among the Hua or Gimi] … Why do women cooperate in men’s initiatory proceedings, participating often enthusiastically, in blatantly misogynistic events? … Hays and Hays deny brute force as a reason and stress that women’s ceremonies emphasize the ‘complementarity’ of the sexes, that women, as much as men, believe in their special powers and dangers, which must be curtailed for the ‘common good’ … Women acknowledge that their reproductive and other powers must be harnessed … If society is to ‘survive,’ women and men must combine their efforts” (Feil, The Evolution of Highland Papua-New Guinea Societies, 208). 62 Matato of Tairora was nothing short of audacious. He had sixteen to twenty wives and eventually killed several of them. He murdered his affines by contract, killed other members of Abiera when it suited him, dispensed mercenary “armies” to fight foreign campaigns, forced wives of Abiera men to copulate with him as he desired, telling their husbands to wait outside their houses until he was finished … Affines and other villagers were targets of his wrath (ibid., 105). 63 Sagan’s explanation is far too reductive, but his documentation of change according to historical records is extremely valuable. 64 Remnants of head-hunting, according to Meslin, occur even in the Iliad. “Dolan the Trojan dressed himself in a wolf skin and tried one night to bring back the heads of Odysseus and Agamemnon; when he was discovered, his own head was cut off by Odysseus and Diomedes” (“Head: Symbolism and Ritual Use,” 222). Also practicing human sacrifice were the pre-dynastic Sumerians, pre-dynastic Egyptians, first-dynasty Chinese, and ancient Indians. In the Rig Veda, Sunahsepha prays to Varuna as he is about to be immolated. In the slightly later Yajur Veda are detailed instructions for human sacrifice; to attain supremacy, Brahmins and Kshatriyas, the two highest castes, were supposed to sacrifice 179 people. Finally, incipient agrarian states practiced human sacrifice. This usually occurred in connection with royalty, rites of passage, public events, and political crises (Eli Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origins of

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Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State [New York: Knopf, 1985], 120). As a rite of passage, the funeral of a king often included many human sacrifices. Victims were no longer only enemy aliens; many were the local poor and marginal. As the power of kings increased, so did the number of human sacrifices. According to Sagan, societies in Buganda, Dahomey, and Benin sacrificed five hundred people at a time. The Aztecs sacrificed thousands at a time (ibid., 118–19). In accounting for the prevalence of ritual warfare as a way of training initiates to kill human beings, we challenge the theory that human sacrifice is nothing but a variant of animal sacrifice in the sense of hoping for divine rewards after they sacrifice either animals or humans. 65 Sagan cannot adequately explain the discrepancy, because the only argument at his disposal is that economic surpluses led rich men to assert power over poor men. Sagan probably makes too sharp a distinction between egalitarian societies that emphasized kinship and early hierarchical ones that emphasized other principles. 66 If this process does not precede state formation, it almost always follows. This transition, according to Divale (Matrilocal Residence in Pre-Literate Society, 204), had already begun in horticultural societies (pastoral ones already being patrilocal). Divale’s study shows that even horticultural societies undergo a transitional process after migration: uxorilocal; matrilocal; matrilineal; avunculocal; virilocal; and patrilocal-patrilineal (29).   Whenever patrilineality involved monogamy, it brought advantages for everyone. In matrilineal societies, men had experienced a great deal of conflict over their roles as both social and genetic fathers. They could devote themselves exclusively and without ambivalence to their own children. Moreover, they no longer had to worry that their wives or brothersin-law would take away their children. Finally, they could now bequeath property – men controlled property in states – to their own children. Patrilineality offered some advantages to women as well. In exchange for marital fidelity, some states or religions guaranteed them economic provision and protection. This was especially important in an age of violence and social breakdown, when many women turned to prostitution for survival and no woman was safe from the lust of marauding warriors. 67 By classical times, upper-caste women no longer received formal education for several reasons. Knowledge was increasingly specialized, which required attendance at a school, and schools were for men only. By appropriating formal education for themselves, men established a distinctive masculine identity. Once women no longer knew the sacred language of scripture, Sanskrit, they lost status. Authorities linked them consistently

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with the lowly shudras. Paradoxically, it was precisely their lack of education that counted as their status. 68 Katherine K. Young, “Introduction,” in Religion and Women, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), 14–23. 69 Bruce G. Trigger, Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1993). For a more extensive ­discussion, see Bruce G. Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University 2003). 70 Ibid., 7. 71 Ibid., 10–11. 72 Asian societies promoted ascetic methods such as meditation to attain enlightenment, or freedom from illusory polar opposites such as subject and object. They expressed the resulting equilibrium as the imperturbable face of the Buddha or the Hindu yogi. Eastern ascetics developed a tradition of willing their own deaths. Hindu and Jain ascetics fasted to death. Japanese ascetics “fell” on their swords according to the samurai’s bushido tradition (which relied on Zen Buddhism). By disembowelling themselves, they chose the most painful possible death. All the same, they died “smiling” and “falling down like cherry blossoms” (Katherine K. Young, “A Cross-cultural Historical Case against Planned Self-willed Death and Assisted Suicide,” McGill Law Journal 39.3 [1994]: 677). Why did they choose such painful ways to die? Because these provided opportunities to display heroic attributes of masculinity such as courage and determination. Death was the final and ultimate test of manhood. Like the initiates of former warrior cultures, they could neither flinch nor flee. 73 The term “axial age” was first used by Karl Jaspers for the period that began approximately 2,800 years ago and concluded approximately 2,200 years ago … when thinkers (such as the Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Elijah, and others) arose in ancient Greece, the Middle East, India and China. Although these civilizations were probably not in contact with each other, many of their ideas about spirituality were similar. From this, we surmise that these ideas reflected similar historical conditions. See Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). Karen Armstrong has revived this theory in The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (New York: Knopf, 2006). 74 David Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 142.

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75 Ibid., 187. 76 This word derives from the Latin vir, which means man. “Virtue,” therefore, was originally associated with “manly” honor. 77 Clive Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Work of Valerius Maximus (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 16. 78 The Romans valued tolerance along with mercy and pity but not compassion. The Israelites, on the other hand, valued compassion but not tolerance. 79 Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen, 16. 80 Anton J.L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-killing in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1990). 81 A.A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 82 Socrates drank hemlock only as an alternative to execution by the state. He managed to add a manly veneer to his sip of hemlock, however, by his attitude of ease and cheerfulness. That rescued his honor. Only occasionally, especially after the Roman Empire had slid down a slippery slope in the practice of self-willed death, did drinking hemlock in imitation of Socrates become a model for others. See Katherine K. Young, “A CrossCultural Historical Case,” 657–707. 83 Some reforms ended up as new forms of older religions; others ended up as new religions. In many cases, religions in both categories ended up as what we now call the “world religions” that have survived to modern times. 84 The scale of human sacrifice among the Aztecs was exceptional. 85 One explanation for the origin of sacrifice was public accountability for sharing meat after slaughtering a domesticated animal. To ensure this, they ritualized both the killing and the sharing of meat – as they had done during the Paleolithic. Given this direct continuity from hunting rituals to sacrificial ones, it stands to reason that when people wanted to eliminate human sacrifice (which had a different origin), they found an easy substitute in the existing ritual of sacrificing domesticated animals.   Some societies replaced humans with pigs. Pastoralists usually preferred goats, sheep, cattle, or even horses. Occasional relapses occurred. Sagan notes, for example, that in “the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, the chorus cries out against Agamemnon for sacrificing his daughter instead of the usual animal. To indicate the horror, the victim is described as “unholy, untasted” (Sagan, Tyranny, 133). 86 After the Buddha and the Jains criticized animal sacrifice, for instance, Hindus changed their ritualistic tradition to worship the deities in statues. They now offered flowers, fruit, and water.

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87 This happened in India. In the Kalika Purana, for instance, Devi, the Goddess, is satisfied for a hundred years by the sacrifice of one person and for a thousand years by the sacrifice of three. Chapter 59 praises Durga during a human sacrifice. “Black and holding the trident, [thou art] like the last dreadful night of creation; born fierce, of bloody eyes and mouth, wearing a blood-red garland … drinking blood, and munching heaps of flesh, thou art Asi [that which eats away the head of its victim] … thou art Durasad [the giver of difficult attainable objects]; thou art Srigarbha [the womb of prosperity]; thou art Vijaya [victory].” In addition, this text calls the goddess Kali Kesai-Khati (eater of raw flesh). Other puranas discuss human sacrifices to Chamunda, a dark and frightening goddess with a garland of skulls. She holds a skull by the hair in one hand and a sword in the other. Blood flows over her body. Shiva receives garlands of skulls. Shaiva ascetics sit on cadavers during meditation, and eat from skulls. Shaiva mendicants are called Kapalikas: possessors of skulls (Maitrayani Upanishad 6: 8). 88 After Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, Jews could no longer make sacrificial offerings there. Daily and annual prayer services in synagogues replaced daily and annual sacrifices in the temple. Even studying biblical passages about the temple cult amounted to replacing it. 89 Jews and Christians have had somewhat conflicting views about human sacrifice. Jews explicitly reject the very idea of human sacrifice. “You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch,” God tells the people in Leviticus, “and so profane the name of your God” (Leviticus 18: 21). Moreover, “Any man of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Moloch, shall be put to death” (Leviticus 20: 2). Speaking in the name of God, Jeremiah rebukes the people of Judah: “They set up their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Moloch, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32: 34–5).   In Genesis, the same condemnation of human sacrifice appears in a slightly less direct form. When God orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his son, Abraham faithfully prepares to do so. At the last moment, God provides a ram instead (Genesis 22). For rabbinic Jews, as Elie Wiesel suggests, the whole point of this story has been that God does not want human sacrifice (Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends [New York: Random House, 1976], 76), which is why the story refers for Jews to the “binding” of Isaac. When Rome destroyed the temple

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in Jerusalem, at any rate, the Jewish sacrificial cult fell into desuetude. Symbolically, however, it lived on in several ways. For one thing, the rabbis declared that prayer and repentance were substitutes for it. And they democratized even these symbolic reminders of the cult. Every Jew became a “priest,” every home a “temple” and every dining table an “altar.” The parallel between temple ritual and home ritual could not be more obvious than in connection with the elaborate procedures surrounding kashrut (the rules for killing, preparing, and consuming of food). On special occasions, the symbolic substitution is explicit. A piece of bone represents the paschal lamb, for example, on every Passover table. For two thousand years, moreover, Jews have lovingly studied biblical passages on the sacrificial cult and rabbinic commentaries on them. Symbolically, they participate in the cult by planning its restoration in messianic times. The most dramatic example of the symbolic replacement of human sacrifice in Judaism is pidyon ha-ben, a ritual in which fathers “redeem” their firstborn sons ceremonially instead of sacrificing them. Similar substitutions appear in Christianity.   For Christians, however, the whole point is very different. After all, they consider Christ the ultimate human sacrifice. Nonetheless, they implicitly oppose human sacrifice. Isaac was a potential sacrificial victim, one who prefigured the ultimate and final one. This is why Christians refer to his story as the “sacrifice” of Isaac. Christ’s sacrificial death fulfils and abolishes the need for sacrificial atonement by human beings.   In modern societies, human sacrifice persists on a colossal scale in the context of war. Soldiers killed in modern wars, though, are not captured enemies ritually sacrificed by the state. On the contrary, they are members of the community itself who supposedly “lay down their lives” on its “altar.” In other words, they sacrifice themselves for the good of their own society – even though the state actually conscripts them for military service. See chapter 3 for a much fuller discussion of this topic. 90 I Samuel 8:10–22. 91 Morgan D. Maclachlan, Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural Adaptation in a South Indian Village (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983), 242. 92 Aristophanes, Clouds; quoted in John J. Winkler, “Phallos Politicos: Representing the Body Politic in Classical Athens,” in Differences 2.1 (1990): 31. 93 Susan S. Wadley, Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur, 1925–1984 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). One variant of sexual segregation is purdah (veiling of women). “In Karimpur, as in much of rural

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  95   96   97   98   99 100 101 102 103 104

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North India, purdah demands that married women, both Hindu and Muslim, of families that seek high status or good reputations remain secluded in their courtyards and houses, usually going out only for the early morning latrine stop in the fields or to leave the village for a visit to relatives, the doctor, or the district fair. Women should be not seen by strange men, nor should they talk to them. Unmarried teenage girls are also restricted in their mobility, perhaps visiting the village shop for some spices or supplies for a festival, but always accompanied by other children. When a daughter-in-law of the village does leave her house, she is enveloped in a shawl, with her sari pulled down to cover her face. Even in her courtyard, the end of her sari covers her face, and she speaks in a whisper in the presence of her husband and any male senior to him. She will also veil herself to show respect when other women are present or on ritual occasions” (52-53). Sexual segregation in early kingdoms gave men a new chance to have some distinctive identity, but we should not ignore the other reasons for it. In the first place, kings segregated their wives in harems and aristocrats followed their example. It was precisely because the king and his henchmen carried symbolic associations with lust as well as power that the wives of other men needed protection in the home. Sexual segregation, in short, had several causes. Enhancing the identity of elite men was both a cause and an effect. Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Ariston; quoted in ibid., 21–2. Ibid., 129. Aeschines; quoted in ibid., 130. Ibid., 141. Ibid., 142. Ibid., 142–3. Corinthians 9: 24–7. Ibid., 144. Alaka Hejib and Katherine K. Young, “Kliba on the Battlefield: Towards a Reinterpretation of Arjuna’s Despondency,” Annals: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 61 (1980): 2–12. Gilmore 189; quoting Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 188–9. Patrick Olivelle, “Rites of Passage: Hindu Rites” in the Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 12: 390.

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107 Wendy Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 117–20. 108 Ibid., 129. 109 Ibid. c h a p t e r t wo

   1 Michael Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood: Effects of the Great Depression on Male Youth,” Adolescence 20.79 (1985): 738.    2 Factory work posed some problems for women that it did not for men. Women with infants had to nurse them, and women with older children had to take care of them. New laws kept women out of factories and mines. In addition, of course, this eliminated job competition between men and women. By the late nineteenth century exploitation had replaced protection; women got jobs, especially in offices, but for lower wages than those of men. “Often owners would fire men from jobs men claimed exclusive rights to and hire women (despite their ‘physical ineptitude’) because they could pay them less. But men were successful at keeping women out of jobs that required long apprenticeship; they formed unions and fought to keep women out of them. Some jobs required special training for which women were considered inadequate – until they were needed during World War I” (Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals [New York: Ballantine, 1985], 196). Nonetheless, conditions in the factories were so deplorable – long hours, low pay, rampant disease – that women who did not need to work there for survival often sought a way out. Moving into the middle class carried with it, by comparison, a greater freedom, security, and ease of existence (housework and childcare being less onerous than these tasks plus factory work). But the gains had created new problems: confinement to the home, the church, and the ladies group along with total dependence on their husbands economically (unless they had their own inheritances). To the degree that men really “ruled” the roost or avoided it altogether, domesticity would have created claustrophobia. Middle-class women, then, often experienced ambivalence. They were better off than working-class women and better off than some men of their own class. But the realm of domesticity could be intellectually and emotionally stifling.   3 Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1977). See also Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University

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Press, 1999). In addition to what Blanchard says about Wilde in particular, she points out that American women were active in the feminizing aesthetic movement that many people associated with him. This movement was possible, she writes, only because the Civil War had destroyed more virile notions of manhood; notions of masculinity were ambiguous, in short, and unstable. Actually, though, the Civil War had not destroyed older notions of masculinity. Even the First World War presented only a severe challenge to it (mainly in Europe, where the losses were far greater, and included the intelligentsia). Half a century of peace had merely made traditional notions of manhood more problematic than ever. American men were more anxious to prove themselves worthy of heroic manhood, but they had fewer opportunities to do so. Many men contented themselves with nostalgia for the age of heroes, especially in the South, and empty posturing.   4 Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1887; New York: Garland, 1976).   5 E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 33.   6 Ibid., 35–6.   7 Rotundo, “Boy Culture: Middle-Class Boyhood in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 15.   8 In point of fact, according to Rotundo, they sometimes released their deep hostility against the adults not only at home but also at school and in society as a whole – that is, at “authority figures.”   9 See Paul Nathanson, Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 109–79. 10 Rotundo, American Manhood, 35–6. 11 Ibid., 113. 12 Ibid., 145. 13 Ibid., 209. 14 Ibid., 178–9. 15 Psychosomatic illness originating with the urge to withdraw from masculinity, whatever that might mean, occurs in many societies. The symptoms of koro, in China, include “acute anxiety palpitations, precordial [sic] discomfort, trembling, and intimations of impending death. The most flamboyant symptom, however, is the belief that the penis is either shriveling or retracting into the belly” (Gilmore, Manhood in the Making, 173).

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Chinese psychiatrists, who refer to this illness as a “syndrome,” note that it is most common among young, uneducated, weak, fearful men who think they lack virility or among those who are narcissistic and prefer fantasies to responsibilities. The same kind of illness, reports Gilmore, occurs in Indonesia and other parts of Asia (ibid., 182). 16 Rotundo, American Manhood, 190. 17 Ibid., 191. 18 Ibid., 191–2. 19 Ibid., 172. 20 Ibid., 206. 21 Ibid., 192. 22 See Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 1. 23 Mark C. Carnes, “Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual,” in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 41. 24 Ibid., “Middle-Class Men,” 41. Note the reversal here. In other texts, white men are the “men” and natives the “women.” 25 Ibid., “Middle-Class Men,” 42. 26 Rotundo, American Manhood, 201–2. 27 Carnes, Secret Ritual, 121. 28 Ibid., 123. 29 Ibid., 54–5. 30 Ibid., 55. 31 Ibid., 57. 32 Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 33 Henry James, The Bostonians (1886; New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005). 34 George Williams founded the YM CA in 1844, as the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum in Britain. The aim was to get young men off the streets by helping them develop healthy bodies, minds, and spirits. To that end, the “Y” promoted prayer and scripture. From the beginning, though, this movement was unusual in that it crossed denominational boundaries. By 1851, branches had opened in both Boston and Montreal. Mary Jane Kinnaird and Emma Robarts, also British, began a movement that would eventually produce an international counterpart for women: the Y WC A . 35 See Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1800–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). “Muscular Christianity” referred to church promotion of

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physical culture: restoring to men who worked in offices not only health and vigor but also delight in adventure and competition. The “Social Gospel” referred to a liberal movement that competed with evangelical or fundamentalist forms of Christianity. Drawing on the work of Walter Rauschenbusch in books such as Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1907), they used theology to attack and eradicate injustice in the modern world. This movement continued to produce social activism throughout the Depression and influenced religious thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr. 36 According to McDannell, hostility to popular devotional art of the nineteenth and early twentieth century is due to nothing other than a conspiracy of men against women. In a very problematic chapter, “Christian Kitsch and the Rhetoric of Bad Taste,” she argues that the public debate over Christian material culture relies primarily on neither aesthetics nor theology but on sexism (although she refrains from using that word).   Condescension alone motivates many Christian theologians, especially Protestant ones, to denounce art of any kind – let alone “bad” art. The strong, they claim, require no images at all to focus or support their faith; only the weak do. The former are literate and intellectual, in other words, the latter illiterate and emotional – which is to say, according to McDannell, primarily women and children. She reverses this hierarchy by claiming that those considered weak (women) are actually better in some way than those considered strong (men). In fact, she claims that the dichotomy is an illusion. “It is inevitable that a book on material Christianity will include the activities of women, children, and lay men. However, my intention is also to discredit the impression that educated men do not form relationships with pious art, use healing water, or wear religious garments. Lay men and clergy typically hold key positions in the production and distribution of religious goods and the construction of Christian landscapes … Material Christianity is a means by which both elite and non-elite Christians express their relationship to God and the supernatural, articulate ideas about life after death, and form religious communities. To gloss over, ignore, or condemn material Christianity because of its association with ‘marginal’ Christians is to misunderstand who uses the tangible and sexual in religion” (12–13).   Elsewhere, though, McDannell’s interest in “gender” (women) causes more problems than it solves. Her claim, as we say, is based on the conspiracy theory of history (although she does not use that term, either). “The masculinization of the Christian arts is part of a subtle strategy, dating from the mid-nineteenth century, to continue Christianity’s patriarchal

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nature by making the church a comfortable place for men (whether ministers and priests knew what made ‘men’ comfortable is another question). Churches filled with women were not enough. ‘Honest’ religion had to appeal to the normative human being: man” (195). At first glance, this argument seems merely superficial. The problem was primarily one of ­theology, after all, not aesthetics. Many theologians began to realize that the reaction against Calvinism, a religion that relies heavily on cognitive assent to doctrine, had gone too far in the direction of emotional selfindulgence and passive dependence on divine rewards in the hereafter.   For whatever reason, men (and women) took the former seriously but not the latter. McDannell’s conclusion is uncharitable, therefore, to say the least. On what conceivable grounds could pastors have remained indifferent to the potential loss of half their flock? How could they possibly have discarded the hope of attracting more men? (Church leaders now see the opposite problem, it is worth noting, even though the women who attend church still outnumber the men who do.) This had little or nothing to do with notions of a “normative human being.” It had everything to do with common sense (filling the pews) and basic theology (offering salvation to everyone).   By referring to this “normative human being,” of course, McDannell herself acknowledges a problem underlying any superficial rhetoric in the debate over church art. In fact, that is her main point. For her, though, what underlies the rhetoric is misogyny. “As long as any cultural expression is perceived as positive,” writes McDannell, “it is accorded either ­neutral or masculine characteristics. When something needs to be devalued, one rhetorical device available is to call it effeminate. Another device is to accuse it of contradicting ‘natural boundaries’” (194). To illustrate this double standard, she observes that a “feminized statue of Christ is seen as perverse, but St Joan of Arc dressed in battle gear is heroic” (195). But her analogy is flawed. Joan did dress and act like a man, but Jesus did not dress or act like a woman. To the best of our knowledge, at any rate, none of his contemporaries claimed that Jesus was effeminate. Nor would anyone today consider his behavior effeminate. There really is something perverse about distorting information that is available to anyone who actually reads the gospels. As for contradicting natural boundaries, it is true that Christian churches have always been gendered (in spite of what St Paul said about there being “neither male nor female” in the Kingdom of God). So far, though, every human society has been gendered (some more thoroughly than others). It is fine to argue that gender itself is evil – that no distinction between the sexes should be acknowledged – as long as

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you provide a reasonable solution that would inevitably be generated by the experiment. This requires an explanation.   McDannell acknowledges the widespread belief among American men after the Civil War that Christianity had been feminized. (Men were alienated by pictures of Jesus, for example, that depicted him as a “bearded woman.”) Consequently, they deserted the churches and flocked instead to fraternal lodges. This much, historians have documented extensively. See Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1977) and A Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977), and Mark C. Carnes, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). But McDannell implies that men had no good reason for believing that Christianity had been thoroughly or even extensively feminized. They came to that conclusion, she argues, only because they had been culturally conditioned to identify sentimentality not only as feminine but also as inferior and intellectuality not only as masculine but also as superior. Understood this way, the problem was simply one of power: to attain greater moral and spiritual power than women (or to maintain moral and spiritual power over women), men had to ridicule the feminine Jesus and “construct” a more masculine one. Actually, the problem was (and still is) much more complex.   At issue for men by the mid-nineteenth century was not so much power (which McDannell defines in purely economic and political terms) as identity. Men complained with good reason about their confusion. Consider this in the specific context of religion. At church and at home (presided over by mothers who had become “household angels”), boys learned to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and lie passively on the “bosom” of Jesus. At school and everywhere else, they learned to compete aggressively or even ruthlessly in the world of business, take up arms if necessary in support of national causes, and be independent at all costs. How could they admire a “meek and mild” saviour? To imitate that version of Jesus meant to imitate women. In itself, that might not have been a bad idea; both sexes, in fact, should be able to learn something useful from the other. In the end, though, the fact remained that men were not women. And if the churches could not tell men what distinctive, necessary, and publicly valued contribution they could make to society specifically as men, maybe other institutions could. For a while, it seemed as if fatherhood might fill this need. Fathers were once portrayed carefully reading and explaining the Bible to their families. But, as McDannell herself points out, the image of motherhood soon trumped that of fatherhood. Then, it

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seemed as if the business world or even the military world might serve this need (no matter how destructively for society and self-destructively for men). Neither has been able to do so, of course. Women can do everything that men can do, after all, but men cannot do everything that women can do. Consequently, the situation has remained just as pathological as it ever was. “While the men of the 1950s had firm control over business and politics,” notes McDannell, “they feared the moral and nurturing power of their wives just as men had done in the previous century” (195). Just so. The point here is that it is just as tendentious for McDannell to trivialize the needs of men as it was for the academics and clerics she attacks to trivialize those of women.   Not everything that McDannell says about gender is wrong. The problem is that she pays attention only to notions of gender that men – theologians, popes, art critics – presumably established in the interest of men. She ignores the fact that women have always had their own ideas about gender, ideas that paralleled or even contradicted those of men. Among those who argued most persistently for the innate moral and spiritual superiority of women, for example, were many of the early feminists – those who were active at the very moment in American history discussed by McDannell. And ironically, considering McDannell’s theory, these feminists claimed that it was precisely their emotional proclivities that gave women their superiority – and their justification for leading moral and social crusades such as the temperance movement. They agreed with the essentialist theory that women were governed by emotion and men by intellect. They just disagreed (as women had for centuries) over the value assigned to each. In other words, women propagated the same dualism that McDannell attacks. 37 At the end of the twentieth century, women are still crusading against the evils that they associate mainly or exclusively with men, although the particular evils have changed. The new ones are pornography, racism, sexism, and “homophobia.” Even the current critique of men as inherently evil relies on the nineteenth-century view that men are inherently immoral and women inherently moral. 38 C. Sharp; quoted in Gary Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire: Sexuality in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987), 85. Some members of the middle class, however, found this trend away from motherhood and family disturbing. At the turn of the century, Theodore Roosevelt remarked that “The woman who flinches from childbirth stands on a par with the soldier who drops his rifle and runs in battle” (Theodore Roosevelt; quoted in ibid., 50). In Canada, similar attitudes prevailed. There were campaigns to restore marriage and motherhood. In 1908, for instance, the Reverend C.

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Sharp warned his parishioners as follows: “God abhors the spirit so prevalent nowadays which condemns motherhood. How it must grieve Him when He sees what we call race suicide: when He sees the problems of married life approached lightly and wantonly; based on nothing higher and nobler than mere luxury, and gratification of passion.” The victims of the First World War greatly exacerbated anxiety because of a declining reproductive rate. “The war,” observes Kinsman, “heightened the emphasis on patriotism and maternity and the interdependence of cradle and sword” (85). During the 1920s in Canada, Helen MacMurchy produced a series of “Little Blue Books.” These promoted the idea that “the decent wish for a true woman is to be a mother” and argued that motherhood was “the highest form of patriotism, for if ‘No Baby, No Nation’” (quoted in Kinsman 105). Governments encouraged women to return home, partly due to anxiety over depopulation of the middle and upper classes. Nonetheless, one effect was to bolster masculine identity by recreating separate and distinctive identities for men and women. 39 Men tried several strategies. One of these was to explain that their secret activities really involved social service for widows, orphans, and cripples. Another was to explain that “imperiled by unregenerate men, True Womanhood required the assistance and protection of the lodge” (Carnes, Secret Ritual, 83). Yet another strategy was to explain that the lodge itself humanized the wild nature of man and made him as “mild, gentle, patient, charitable, and tender as a woman” (ibid., 84). The most radical strategy was to set up parallel lodges for women. The Degree of Rebekah, for instance, was the institutional counterpart of the Odd Fellows. But these women’s branches, Carnes points out, were parallel in name only. Dull biblical parables replaced the dramatic initiatory structures, for example, moral woman replaced courageous man, and male ritual officers kept tabs on the women. If the secrecy of men still bothered women, at any rate, they could now live with it. 40 Early Western nurses included the Knights Hospitallers, for instance, a military order whose vocation was to care for pilgrims to the Holy Land. It was only in the nineteenth century, due to the efforts of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, along with Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton during the Civil War, that nursing became a women’s profession (although a few men have now entered the field once more). 41 Rotundo, American Manhood, 174. 42 Ibid., 232. 43 Ibid., 226. 44 Ibid., 223–4.

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45 Ibid., 226. 46 Ibid., 245. 47 Ibid., 235. 48 Theodore Roosevelt, “Strenuous Life” speech of 1899; quoted in Rotundo, American Manhood, 235. 49 The idea of companionate marriage, or family intimacy, was not new. It had originated among the upper classes in the eighteenth century. 50 By the 1920s, membership in the lodges was declining. For those who ­continued as members, there was less emphasis on the initiation rituals and more on service and charity. This explains the current respectability of Rotarians, Lions, and Shriners. In the wake of the First World War, men and women were forming the first youth culture. Carnes seems oblivious to nineteenth-century boy culture. 51 Organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America, begun in the 1920s, packaged games and skills with rules and moral subtexts. These measures helped (Rotundo, “Boy Culture,” 34–6). 52 Robert L. Griswald, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 92. 53 The Depression affected many countries, but it was most severe in the United States and in the countries that relied most heavily on its economy: Canada because of its geographical proximity and Germany because of its total reliance on American funding (and the American dollar’s strength) to rebuild its industries after the war and pay the staggering bill for war reparations. 54 Robert Lind and Helen Lind, Middletown in Transition (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), 177–8; quoted in Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 735. 55 Dixon Wecter, The Age of the Great Depression: 1929–1941 (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), 32. 56 Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 730. 57 Ibid., 739–40. The author notes that these points were made by Maxine Davis in The Lost Generation (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 90. This book relied on a survey, which Fortune published. According to the survey, young college-educated wives preferred the traditional role of homemaker. Only 5.6% of married women disagreed in 1940 (if their husbands had adequate incomes). It is worth noting, however, that their husbands preferred them to work outside the home. 58 Bruno Bettelheim, “The Problems of Generations,” in Youth: Change and Challenge, ed. Erik Erikson (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 79; quoted in Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 732.

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59 Ibid., 738. 60 Ibid., 728. 61 Howard Bell, Youth Tell Their Story (Washington: American Council on Education, 1938). The girls listed their ten occupational choices. These were: nurse, teacher, stenographer, housewife, secretary, beautician, family domestic, artist, musician, and inside salesperson. Surprisingly, six girls were actually working in the jobs of their choice. The same was not true of boys. Their expectations reflect the traditional importance of being a provider. They preferred the following jobs: engineer, mechanic, farm owner, aviator, physician, lawyer, electrician, teacher, musician, and machinist. Not one boy, however, was working at the job of his choice. Instead, all were working as farm labourers, industrial labourers, inside salespersons, unpaid family workers, textile workers, clerks, truck drivers, general helpers, and W PA or CCC workers. 62 Scheibach, “Transition to Manhood,” 735–6. 63 The welfare state originated in direct response to the social evils of industrialism. The term “welfare state” appeared in Britain after the Second World War, describing a state that would protect people from dependency and destitution due to sickness, accidents, disabilities, unemployment, and old age. But the welfare state had precedents even in ancient times. Rome was the first welfare state. When the empire was at its height, hundreds of thousands were on the dole. They received free grain from government stores (and free entertainment at the circuses as well, not incidentally, which kept their minds off poverty and misery). As a result, the urban poor soon formed a permanent underclass. The modern welfare state, with its vast bureaucracy, is far more effective. One of the first was Bismarck’s Germany, which followed more gradual trends in France and Britain. His primary aim was to maintain the political status quo by beating the socialists at their own game. 64 Even in the new millennium, when many countries are becoming painfully aware of the financial burden that this system creates, very few people would (openly) advocate its complete elimination. Nonetheless, they do discuss unforeseen problems. Most modern states, including the United States, have run up staggering national deficits. And the rich are not eager to pay for welfare programs out of their tax dollars.   Another problem is even more contentious. Like ancient Rome, the United States now has a huge and seemingly permanent underclass. Every major social problem has many causes, and this one is surely no exception. One factor, though, is particularly important: the effect of a welfare system on families. The plight of single mothers has received a great deal of

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attention from journalists, activists, bureaucrats, politicians, and academics. In the run-up to welfare reform, some argued that these women found it easier to take money from the government, having one child after another, than to work for a living. Others argued that blaming these women was easier than fixing the economy. So far, though, relatively few politicians have asked about the plight of men in general and fathers in particular. President Obama took Father’s Day of 2009, for example, as an opportunity to scold men for abandoning their families or reneging on child-support payments instead of congratulating those who defied the legal and cultural forces against them and tried to be good fathers (Barack Obama, “Obama’s Father’s Day Message: Dads Need to Step Up,” 14 May 2009, The Hill; available online at: thehill.com/capital-living/in-theknow/98301-obama-welcomes-lady-huskies; accessed 14 October 2010). Fortunately, his address in 2010 was more benign. But on the ground, as it were, millions of fathers see not the slightest hope of earning enough to support their families financially. As a result of hopelessness, let alone factors such as the devaluation of fatherhood both legally and culturally, some do not stick around. What does this mean for their sense of identity as men? What does it mean for their sons (and daughters)? This problem is a ticking demographic time bomb. chapter three

  1 Hillary Clinton; quoted in Jerry A. Boggs, “The Greater Outrage for Female Victims of Governments’ Brutality Perpetuates Risk to Both Sexes,” 17 December 2003, Male Matters, online at: battlinbog.blog-city. com/governments_violence_against_the_sexes.htm, accessed 13 July 2010.  2 Ibid.   3 Nancy Astor, quoted in Juliet Nicolson, The Great Silence, 1918–1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War (Toronto: McArthur, 2009).   4 “Despite intensive research by historians there is not – and there will never be – a definitive list of the casualties inflicted during World War I. Where detailed record-keeping was attempted[,] the demands of battle undermined it, as the destructive nature of the war, a conflict where soldiers could be wholly obliterated or instantly buried, destroyed both the records themselves and the memories of those who knew the fates of their comrades. For many countries the figures only vary within the hundreds, even tens, of thousands, but those of others – particularly France – can be over a million apart. Consequently, the numbers have been rounded to the nearest thousand (Japan is an exception, given the low number) and the figures

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in this, and almost every other list, will differ; however, the proportions should remain similar and it is these (represented here as percentages) which allow the greatest insight. In addition, there is no convention as to whether the dead and wounded of the British Empire are listed under this umbrella title or by individual nation (and there is certainly no convention for those regions which have since divided). I have decided to recognise as many of the constituent countries as possible” (Robert Wilde, “Casualties of World War I,” European History, undated, online at: europeanhistory. about.com/cs/worldwar1/a/blww1casualties.htm, accessed 28 February 2011). Nonetheless, no one has seriously questioned the unprecedented number of casualties: 44% of those mobilized had been killed (which was a much lower proportion than in France, Germany, Austria, and Russia). Given the total population (approximately 35,000,000 in 1921), this meant that few families had not lost fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers. Wilde took his figures from Colin Nicolson, The Longman Companion to the First World War (London: Longman 2001) 248.   5 See Michael David-Fox, “Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism: On Recent Debates in Russian and Soviet History,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 55.4 (2006): 1–36. The definition of “modern” is very problematic, to say the least, for both political scientists and historians. Most people in countries such as Britain and the United States have come to assume an inherent link between modernity and high levels of education, industrialization, market economies, personal liberty, and political institutions that support liberal democracy. But modernity has had another face even in the West (let alone Russia and Asia). In Germany, for instance, liberal democracy did not emerge from local political and legal traditions. Instead, other countries imposed it on Germany after the First World War and then again after the Second World War. Like other Western countries, Germany – or at least German rulers – had experienced the Enlightenment. And that eventually produced many features that we now associate with modernity – but not institutions that supported liberal democracy. Does this mean that Nazi Germany was not a modern state? It would for those who make one or both of the following assumptions: that the definition of modernity should rely entirely on one model (such as Britain or France) or that countries must have every feature of modernity according to that definition (as distinct from most or many ­features) in order to qualify as modern countries. We agree, instead, with scholars who argue that there are at least two opposing paradigms of modernity. One paradigm originated under the rule of “enlightened monarchs” or “benevolent autocrats” such as Catherine the Great of Russia and

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Frederick the Great of Prussia. It led to modern totalitarian states, which (unlike earlier ones) have supported collectivist ideologies. The other paradigm originated in constitutional monarchies such as Britain or republics such as the United States (and France after several r­ evolutions and counter-revolutions). It led to modern democratic states, which have supported liberalism and individualism.   6 From our perspective here, “modern” refers to the period that began in approximately 1800. It is impossible on practical grounds for us to discuss warfare and manhood in all modern countries or even all Western countries. We refer to Western Europe, primarily in connection with the French Revolution and the First World War. We refer mainly, however, to the United States. This is partly because the American context will be familiar to most readers, but also because the American armed forces are more active than those of any other country in the Western world. This means that the stakes are higher for boys and men in the United States than they are elsewhere. By “modern,” moreover, we do not refer to the vaguely defined period in which we now live; intellectual historians often refer to this as the postmodern period.   7 Historically, India confined military service to one class (the Kshatriya), for example, and so did Japan (the Samurai).   8 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage Press, 1994), 228, 233–4.   9 By hiring out their bodies, mercenary soldiers were the male equivalents of female prostitutes. This observation does not rely on any moral judgment of either mercenaries or prostitutes; it is simply a factual observation, which should be useful to those who study the functions of men and women. 10 As George L. Mosse puts it, “Heroism, death, and sacrifice became associated with manliness, as did the discipline that had encouraged the military to advocate the introduction of gymnastics into the school curriculum. The new citizen army of the French Revolution was in itself a school for manliness. At first, the French Revolution had relied on volunteers for its defense, but in 1793 the Legislative Assembly proclaimed the levy of the whole of the male population capable of bearing arms. This was a new departure, the end of mercenaries who had fought for money or adventure. Now soldiers were conscripted in a noble cause that itself would inspire their struggle” (The Image of Man: the Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50. 11 The expression “social contract” was a common one among philosophers of the time, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract. This

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was not a contract in the current sense, because it was imposed by the state and was therefore not the result of negotiations between equals. Nonetheless, even the state now acknowledged the need to give something in return for compliance: full citizenship. 12 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). “In the long run, the establishment of universal conscription in the advanced states of continental Europe was matched by the extension of the vote, though for parliaments generally less responsible than those of the AngloSaxon countries and by processes that had no direct or visible connection. The result, however, was that, at the outbreak of the First World War, Europe was composed of states in most of which some form of representative institutions existed and all of which maintained large conscripted armies” (234). 13 Ibid., 228. 14 Here is John Keegan’s summary of events: “By 1917, the costs, psychological as well as material, of making every man a soldier began to have their inevitable effects. There was a large-scale mutiny in the French army in the spring of that year; in the autumn the Russian army collapsed altogether. In the following year, the Germany army went the same way; at the November armistice, on the return home, the army demobilized itself and the German empire was thrown into revolution. It was the almost cyclical outcome of a process begun 125 years earlier, when the French had rescued a revolution by appealing to all citizens to support it with arms. Politics had become the extension of war and the age-old dilemma of states – of how to maintain efficient armies that were both affordable and reliable – had revealed itself to be as far from solution as when Sumer had first laid out its revenues to pay for soldiers” (ibid., 234; our emphasis). Nonetheless, conscription has remained in place to this day in almost all European countries. 15 Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan, 1962). See also Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 16 In 1914, for example, Jewish men were looking for opportunities to prove in battle that they were worthy not merely of manhood but also of citizenship in the states that had recently extended full citizenship to Jews. 17 In many ways, the US Civil War was the first modern war. Both sides were industrial societies, although the North had moved much further in this direction than the South (unless you classify the plantation system as industrialized agriculture). Both sides relied on the mass production of weapons, on railroads to transport their troops, and on the telegraph to

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communicate with troops on the front lines. Much of the fighting was mechanized and therefore impersonal. For the first time, moreover, photographers such as Matthew Brady recorded the reality of war: bodies strewn on battlefields, the ruins of cities, and so on. In other ways, though, the Civil War was the last “traditional” war. Hand-to-hand combat continued with sabers, knives, or the bayonets on rifles. And photographers sometimes rearranged scenes in order to make their pictures acceptable for newspapers and magazines. The public preferred to maintain a romantic perspective on the war. They expected dead soldiers to look like sleeping heroes, not mutilated corpses. 18 Among Hitler’s early “accomplishments” was to rearm Germany by reintroducing military conscription in 1935. The United States has historically preferred to avoid conscription in peacetime, although the draft continued for twenty-eight years after the Second World War. Canada conscripted young men in both the First World War and the Second World War but refrained from forcing them into combat because of political pressure from Quebec, which resented fighting for the British Empire. Britain entered the First World War with a volunteer army but found it necessary to introduce military conscription for men by 1916. During the Second World War, Britain conscripted both young men and young women but expected only young men to serve in combat. Israel still conscripts both men and women, but expects only men – and not only young men – to serve in combat. Israel does, however, allow exemptions for Orthodox young men who are studying in religious colleges. Sweden, which has not gone to war for ­centuries, conscripts only young men for its army – even though Sweden prides itself on sexual equality. Switzerland conscripts only men for its army, even though it has not gone to war for many centuries – and even though Swiss women won the right to vote recently precisely on the basis of “equal rights.” Many European countries conscript only young men for military service but allow them to choose “alternative” forms of service. In that case, you might argue, military service would no longer be universal and therefore could no longer be a defining feature of manhood. If that were true, however, why do these countries not conscript young women and allow them the same choice between military and other forms of service? 19 Käthe Kollwitz; quoted in Anton Gill, A Dance between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars (London: Abacus, 1993), 36. 20 Three French monuments, however, express pacifism implicitly or even explicitly. Instead of depicting soldiers, they depict widows and children (along with names of the fallen). At Gentioux-Pigerolles, a child points to the following inscription: Maudite soit la guerre (Cursed be war).

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21 Edward VIII came to Arras, France, and dedicated this colossal monument in 1936. 22 Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929). 23 Ernst Johannsen, Vier von der Infanterie: Ihre letzten Tage an der WestFront 1918 (Hamburg: Fackelreiter-Verlag, 1929). 24 Kamaradschaft (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930). 25 Westfront 1918 (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930). 26 All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). 27 The same passage (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland”) appeared in several ironic contexts during and after the war. These include anti-war poems by Wilfred Owen, who described this passage as “the old lie” shortly before being killed in action, and Ezra Pound. 28 After a few years, some people in the victorious countries were having second thoughts of their own about pacifism. They now worried about being unprepared to face the threat of conquest by totalitarian regimes in Italy and Germany. Pacifism, it seemed to an increasing number of people, was still a luxury. But it was too late. 29 In the German Empire, approximately 11,000,000 men had been mobilized, 1,718,000 killed, and 4,234,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 54%. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, approximately 6,500,000 men had been mobilized, 1,200,000 killed, and 3,600,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 74% (Robert Wilde, “Casualties of World War I”). 30 See Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980). 31 See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (New York: Picador/Holt, 2003). 32 R.C. Sherriff, Journey’s End (1929; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987). 33 On 9 February 1933, after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, the Oxford Union sponsored its infamous “King and Country” debate. Its ­resolution, that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country,” passed by 275 votes to 153. 34 Pat Barker, Regeneration (New York: Plume, 1991); The Ghost Road (London: Viking, 1995). 35 In the French Empire, 7,500,000 men had been mobilized, 1,385,000 killed, and 4,266,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 75% (Wilde). 36 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937). 37 In the United States, 4,272,500 men had been mobilized, 117,000 killed, and 204,000 wounded: a casualty rate of 8% (Wilde).

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38 This book appeared only a few years before the United States entered the Second World War. By that time, Trumbo and his publisher agreed to suspend printing a book that would undermine the war effort. 39 Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (New York: Lippincott, 1939). 40 See J. Garry Clifford and Samuel R. Spencer Jr, The First Peacetime Draft (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986). 41 Walter Thatcher Winslow and Frank P. Davidson, eds., American Youth: An Enforced Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940) 30. 42 The Very Thought of You (Delmer Daves, 1944). 43 Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944). 44 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (New York: Time-Life, 1959) vol. 2, 486. 45 The Men (Fred Zinnemann, 1950). 46 The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946). 47 Matthew Nelson, “No Guts, No Cory,” Boy Meets World, episode 95, A B C , WV N Y, Burlington, Vt., 7 November 1997. 48 Many thousands of soldiers deserted on both sides, for instance, during the Civil War. Some were imprisoned, others executed and still others lynched by fellow soldiers. During the First World War, 20,000 soldiers from the British Empire alone deserted. During the Second World War, 20,000 American soldiers deserted. 49 The level of testosterone rises and falls dramatically every day. No testosterone high alone can explain why many (but by no means all) men can endure months or even years at war. As we say, it takes a massive cultural effort to make them do so. 50 See Theodore D. Kemper, Social Structure and Testosterone: Explorations of the Socio-bio-social Chain (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1990). Kemper was among the first to study testosterone in connection with not only endocrinology and physiology but also psychology and sociology. Moreover, he was among the first to depart from conventional wisdom in several important ways. For one thing, he challenged assumptions about testosterone that had relied on animal studies. “The animal research showed that dominance (often gained in violent encounters) or loss of dominance affected T [testosterone]. Thus, social dominance, or loss of it, among humans was conceived of as the critical independent variable … But some studies showed that another type of social encounter, though usually not as striking or dramatic, nor as compressed in time as in dominance attainment, could also lead to T elevation. This type of encounter involved recognition by a social group of significant personal

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attainment or contribution to normatively supported group goals. In this mode of social encounter, opponents did not clash, and no one was defeated. However, individually or collectively, others in the group found reason to grant approval, deference, reward, benefit, rank, and the like … The reasons for this [second mode] can be quite diverse: the other conforms to a group standard for performance, beauty, physical stature, worthiness of character, or valued ascriptive attributes; the other is of noble blood, for example. The social response here is to accord benefits, reward, attention, precedence, affection, interest, concern, and, at the ultimate level, love. In contradistinction to power relations in which compliance is gained through coercion, compliance with the wishes and desires of the other … is voluntary and uncoerced” (7–8). 51 C. Eisenegger, M. Naef, R. Snozzi, M. Heinrichs, and E. Fehr, “Prejudice and Truth about the Effect of Testosterone on Human Bargaining Behaviour,” Nature 463 (21 January 2010): 356–9. 52 “Testosterone Does Not Induce Aggression, Study Shows,” 9 December 2009, ScienceDaily, online at: sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/12/ 091208132241.htm, accessed 2 November 2010. 53 See Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (New York: Back Bay Books, 2009) and On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace (Milstadt, Ill.: Warrior Science Publications, 2008). From a ­primatological or ethological point of view, moreover, see Frans de Waal, Peacemaking among the Primates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). The author’s point is that non-human primates are reluctant to kill members of their own species. 54 During the First World War, 3,000 British deserters were sentenced to death and 300 executed. During the Second World War, 20,000 Americans deserted, 49 American deserters were sentenced to death, and 1 executed. 55 Whether they believed strongly enough to sacrifice their own lives specifically for the nation’s cause, as distinct from saving their comrades or other personal motivations, is something that we cannot know. And whether any state had a moral right to sacrifice them anyway is something that is not directly relevant here. 56 Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the words of “Onward Christian Soldiers” in 1865, and Arthur Sullivan set them to music in 1871. Nowadays, some Christians dislike the link between religion and war. 57 According to Shalom Spiegel, at least some of the early rabbis interpreted the story, what Jews call the “binding of Isaac,” in a very similar way (but without using it as a prototype, of course, for the Christian story).

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Realizing what his father must do in order to demonstrate faithfulness to God, Isaac actually helps Abraham perform the sacrifice. This makes him both a sacrificial victim and a self-sacrificing martyr. Spiegel adds, in fact, that the canonical version of this story probably had a prototype in which God does not call off the sacrifice. For Jews, at any rate, the canonical ­version is about God’s rejection of human sacrifice, not the prototype of a final human sacrifice. See Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice, The Akedah (New York: Behrman House, 1967). 58 See, for example, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23. A few early Christians took up the cross, sometimes literally, as martyrs. Most have done so metaphorically. Monks, for instance, sacrifice themselves by giving up ­various physical and material comforts. Some Christians in Nazi Europe, on the other hand, hid Jews at the cost of losing their own lives. 59 The ultimate goal of a Christian woman is likewise to sacrifice herself for others – but in different ways, which Catholics, in particular, have associated with motherhood. 60 John 15:13. 61 For Mary Daly, that presents Christian women with an insoluble problem. No woman, after all, can ever be a virgin mother. A paradox that might make sense on the divine level makes no sense on the human level. Ordinary women could be either mothers or virgins but not virgin mothers. See Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). Given her exclusive preoccupation with the needs and problems of women, Daly does not examine or even acknowledge the possibility that Christian men might have a very similar problem. Just as few women can appropriate the virginity of Mary (and no women at all could combine that with motherhood), no man can appropriate the divine sinlessness of Christ (let alone combine that with human sinfulness).   Moreover, Daly adds, the Catholic ideal for women is to be virgins – that is, nuns – instead of mothers (let alone the sensual and hedonistic women that Daly considers essential to femaleness). She assumes that the (for her, oppressive) virginal ideal applies only to women. But because Jesus himself never married (and presumably remained virginal), and because St. Paul said that marriage was desirable only as an alternative to “burning” with lust and therefore indulging in fornication, celibacy has been the ideal state for women and men. So, Daly ignores what should be an obvious parallel between imitating the Virgin Mary and imitating Christ. Just as no woman can be both a virgin and a mother, no man can be both sinful and sinless.

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62 Adelyne More [C.K. Ogden], “The One Thing Needful: A Suggestion to Members of Parliament,” Cambridge Magazine, 29 January 1916, 240; cited in Vincent Sherry, The Great War and the Language of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 67. The word “holocaust” (or “Holocaust”) refers now primarily to the mass murder of Jews in Nazi Europe. The Hebrew word for that event is shoah, which means catastrophe. By associating the mass murder of Jews with burnt offerings at the temple, however, the word “holocaust” implies that their deaths had some theological and atoning significance (even though that would make Hitler a metaphorical priest of God). 63 Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause: 1865–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980). 64 Katharine Lee Bates’s poem appeared in, America the Dream (New York: T. Crowell, 1930), 102; our emphases. 65 There are countless examples from every country that participated in the First World War (and other wars). The memorial at St Dunstan’s College in London, England, reads as follows: “These tablets are erected in order that the memory of those who gave their lives for the freedom of their country in the Great War, 1914–1918, may live as a perpetual inspiration to many generations of St Dunstan’s boys.” The headmistress, who led the dedication ceremony, referred also, of course, to the old boys who were killed during the Second World War (“Remembrance Ceremony 11 November 2010,” 2010, St Dunstan’s, online at: stdunstans.org.uk/news.php? news_id=1159, accessed 8 December 2010).   Here are two unexceptional American examples. The memorial plaque at the City Hall in Arlington, Washington, reads as follows: “In honor of the boys of the town of Arlington who paid the supreme sacrifice in the world war, 1914–1918.” Joe Mabel photographed the plaque (“File: Arlington, W A: City Hall W W I Memorial,” 16 May 2009, Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arlington,_WA_-_City_ Hall_WWI_memorial.jpg, accessed 8 December 2010). The text on this plaque, dedicated in 1924, is ambiguous. Who actually “paid,” after all, the town or the boys? The dates, 1914–18, are unusual on an American monument, because the United States entered the war in 1917. The memorial plaque in Palatka, Florida, is unambiguous in its imagery (although its dates, for some reason, are 1917–19): “Erected to perpetuate the honored memory of those citizens of Putnam County, Fla., who gave their lives in the world war.” Someone identified as Ebyabe photographed the plaque (“File: Palatka World War I Memorial,” 12 August 2007, Wikimedia

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Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palatka_WWI_memorial01. jpg, accessed 8 December 2010). 66 The poppy became a symbol of wartime carnage. John McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” in 1915, referring to the poppies that grew on one of the bloodiest battlefield. In 1921, the Royal British Legion began to sell artificial poppies for use on Remembrance Day. 67 Arkwright’s poem appeared in The Supreme Sacrifice, and Other Poems in Time of War (London: Skeffington, 1919); our emphases. See also Percy Dearmer, Songs of Praise Discussed: A Handbook to the Best-Known Hymns and to Others Recently Introduced (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 167. It has appeared ever since in hymnbooks such as The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada (Toronto: United Church Publishing House, n.d.) #525. 68 Siegfried Sassoon, “On Passing the New Menin Gate,”in Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: Norton, 2006); Sassoon wrote this poem between 1927 and 1928. Quoted here by permission. 69 See, for example, Leviticus 18:21, 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 32:35. 70 Billy Hughes; quoted in Takver, “Syd Nicholls, Radical Comic Artist; The I.W.W.-Fatty Finn Connection Revealed,” [dated] 30 April 1999, Takver’s Initiatives, online at: takver.com/history/nicholls.htm, accessed 7 December 2010. 71 For some reason, the English title is in the singular, not the plural: The Trench. The Nazis destroyed this “degenerate” painting. The same image appears in the central panel of Der Krieg (The War), however, which Dix painted between 1929 and 1932. 72 For one thing, the cross is made of wood. More significantly, the cross ­represents the new Tree of Life (just as Jesus represents the new Adam). 73 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (1515). 74 The Believers (John Schlesinger, 1987). 75 [Blogger number] 10, [identified as] Ravi, “The Opinionator,” New York Times, 18 March 2011; response to Peter Catapano, “On Libya, Suspicious Minds.” 76 Stephen Shapiro, Manhood: A New Definition (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1984), 210. 77 Ibid., 190. 78 Some memorials mix the two metaphors: soldiers who sacrifice themselves and mothers who sacrifice their sons. Here is the inscription on a British and French monument at Gallipoli, Turkey: Those heroes that shed their

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blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country … You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.” The words are those of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who dedicated the memorial in 1934. 79 Insook Kwon, “A Feminist Exploration of Military Conscription: The Gendering of the Connections between Nationalism, Militarism and Citizenship in South Korea,” International Journal of Politics 3.1 (2000): 26–54. 80 Ibid., 26; our emphases. 81 Ibid., 35. 82 Identity is not only a psychological matter but also a cultural one. It is a collective problem, after all, not only a personal one. Personal psychology and collective psychology are always closely linked, to be sure, because everyone either accepts or rejects the latter, at least to some degree, in ­connection with personal needs and circumstances. 83 The replacement of muscle by machinery did not happen all at once. Historical circumstances delayed the process in some places. Pioneer life in the American West, for example, meant that the status of physical strength remained high long after it had begun to decline in Europe. The realities of everyday life in the wilderness demanded it. After the frontier was closed in 1898, the high status of muscle might have diminished. But it did not. Instead, the cowboy and the gunslinger became symbols of loss and nostalgia. Fondly remembered was not only the kind of freedom that could not be tolerated in the modern, urban, industrial, and bureaucratic world but also the kind of masculinity that relied directly on distinctive features of the male body. Settlement of the West, moreover, had coincided partially with the founding of the nation itself. Consequently, American men can link the high status of masculinity in the form of machismo with national identity as well as personal identity. Not surprisingly, masculinity in modern America relies heavily on a “cult” of muscularity: the intense preoccupation of many men with organized sports both as participants and as spectators. Most American boys do not become professional athletes. Even so, most of them grow up in a world that places heavy emphasis on the athletic prowess of men. This emphasis has driven many boys to use steroids that artificially enhance their athletic ability.   There are historical precedents for this kind of anachronistic symbolism. By the late fifteenth century, chivalry was no longer a code of behaviour that effectively mediated social, economic, and political realities. The troubadours and courtiers had translated it into a largely ceremonial code of

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etiquette expressed in social, literary, and artistic conventions. Its function was no longer to protect the social order but to protect the status of aristocrats whose power was based on land against encroachment by merchants and traders whose power was based on money. The pageantry of late medieval chivalry was designed to hide the reality that aristocracy was economically (and sometimes politically) anachronistic. Likewise, the modern cult of machismo relies on empty rhetoric. This rhetoric hides the painful reality that size, speed, and muscle, the major advantageous features of maleness, are now economically and politically obsolete. And when it comes to brain differences, many people now either say or imply that the important ones favor women. Not every scientist agrees, however, that there are major brain differences between men and women.   According to neuroscientist Gina Rippon, for instance, male and female brains are very much the same; any differences are due to “the relentless drip, drip, drip of gender stereotyping.” She points out that “saying there are differences in male and female brains is just not true. There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology … You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same … differences in male and female brains are due to similar cultural stimuli. A women’s [sic] brain may therefore become ‘wired’ for multi-tasking simply because society expects that of her and so she uses that part of her brain more often. The brain adapts in the same way as a muscle gets larger with extra use. What often isn’t picked up on is how plastic and permeable the brain is. It is changing throughout out [sic] lifetime” (Gina Rippon; cited in Sarah Knapton, “Men and Women Do Not Have Different Brains,” Telegraph, 8 March 2014). 84 Democratic states conscript young men but not young women, even though these states explicitly strive for equality. Americans have conscripted young men, moreover, even though the Constitution explicitly promises all citizens that the state will protect their lives no less than their “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Fascist and communist states do not rely on rhetoric of any kind to gather armies, relying instead directly on coercive power. Even these states usually dress up the harsh reality, however, with stirring rhetoric about heroic sacrifice in the name of collective struggles. 85 Sweden has not gone to war since the early nineteenth century, for example, but nonetheless conscripts young men for its army. 86 Barbara Ehrenreich, “Wartime in the Barracks,” Time, 2 December 1996, 87.

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87 These laws are so closely related that we cannot discuss one without the other. Neither law functions effectively at this point: one because of the gap between theory and practice, the other because of the fact that no one at all is being drafted at the moment. But both laws represent what remains of the gender system. 88 During the Second World War, for example, relations between men and women in the military were very different. Consider June Halvorsen’s letter to the editor of Time: “I felt a great sadness as I read your report on the sexual harassment of women in the U.S. military [Nov. 25]. I asked myself, Why is life for a woman in the military today so complex and sometimes dangerous? … Whatever the cause, I feel sorry for the modernday young woman. About 50 years ago, I was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in England. I spent four very interesting, often exciting years as a transport driver at an R.A.F. station. Even though there were about 500 women to 5,000 men, never once during those years was I treated offensively by the boys I met, and I met many. Around our camp were ­several Yankee camps. The Americans invited us to their station for coffee, doughnuts and dancing. I never knew what sexual harassment meant. The boys I met were gentlemen and behaved very courteously. One winter evening I got on a train in London during a blackout. On boarding, I almost fell, when suddenly a light glowed in the compartment, and there in front of me were three American servicemen. We chatted for four hours, and one soldier took off his coat and put it around my shoulders. Finally, we arrived at my destination, so we all said goodbye. One soldier put a piece of paper in my pocket, telling me it was his address. Later, when I looked, I found it was an English pound note. The soldier had said earlier he was surprised and shocked to hear how little pay we got. What a difference between then and now! I feel so sorry for modern-day youth. I guess I lived in the days of innocence, and I was very privileged to do so” (Time, 13 January 1997, 6).   Today, career-oriented women have more practical reasons for joining the military: better-paying jobs, education, and travel. By contrast, career-oriented men think they are giving up better-paying jobs in the civilian world. Moreover, “many men are attracted to the military by its intensely masculine and deeply romantic character. The uniforms, the rank, the danger, the purposefulness, the opportunity to earn the respect of men and the admiration of women, all contribute to the military’s enduring hold on the imagination of men and boys. Such things have inspired many men to greatness, but they too seem embarrassingly puerile in today’s world. Progressive society prides itself with having evolved to a higher level where ancient

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impulses are deplored as childish machismo and where the most socially respectable motivations are, ironically, the most material and the most selfish. Young men today dare not confess their captivation with the romance of martial glory, even to themselves. Instead, when asked why they entered the military, they say patriotism. The more thoughtful among them have better answers, but they are equally evasive. Ask a young man entering a service academy today why he wishes to go there and he is likely to answer ‘to get a good education’ or ‘to pursue a military career.’ Such answers sound good but tell us nothing about the man” (Brian Mitchell, “Women Make Poor Soldiers,” in Women in the Military: Current Controversies, ed. Carol Wekesser and Matthew Polesetsky [San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1991], 35). Another military man comments: “Women, however, are blissfully unbothered by the psychological complications of masculinity. They are not impressed with physical prowess, they do not relish competition, they are not intrigued by danger, they do not need to prove their manhood, and they see little reason to hide their weakness, psychological or physical … The absence of machismo among military women is no advantage. In war, physical prowess is important, dangers must be faced, and petty personal concerns cannot be allowed to interfere with greater events. The military quite naturally holds physical infirmity in contempt. It encourages the suppression of personal hurts and stigmatizes those who hurt too easily … Good soldiers pride themselves on avoiding injury, ignoring illness and enduring pain” (Mitchell, “Women Make Poor Soldiers,” 36).   It has been argued that questions of masculine identity are also related to bonding: “The roots of group behavior among men run deep into our being. All-male groups have existed in virtually every known society. Most anthropologists agree that all-male groups produce a peculiar kind of nonerotic psychological bond that men crave and cannot find elsewhere. In some societies, bonds between male friends are stronger and more sacred than bonds between husbands and wives” (ibid., 37). Furthermore, it has been argued that “The military depends upon men acting as a team at the very moment when every man is under great temptation to seek his own comfort and save his own life. The personal bonds that men form with each other, as leaders, as followers, as comrades-in-arms, often enable ordinary men to perform acts of extreme self-sacrifice when ideas such as duty, country, or cause no longer compel. The all-male condition reinforces all of the military’s highest organizational values. The presence of women inhibits male bonding, corrupts allegiance to the hierarchy, and diminishes the desire of men to compete for anything but the attentions of women” (ibid., 38). Remember that this was exactly the rational for the formation

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of matrilocality by horticultural, warlike societies: remove men from the loyalty to their blood kin by having them move to the village of their wife and encouraging them to bond in the all-male culture of the male lodge. 89 Ehrenreich, “Wartime,” 96. 90 The fact that the attrition rate of women in the military has been high (Mitchell, “Women Make Poor Soldiers,” 33) has been blamed both on their inability and on sexual harassment. Yarbrough points to a double standard encouraged by women: “reformers want the military to stay out of private matters with regard to fraternization, pregnancy, family matters, and sexual conduct in general, but they call on the military to intervene in private matters involving sexual harassment, and to use the authority they are otherwise unwilling to acknowledge to reform offensive attitudes” (ibid., 43). She also notes that many of the traditional military techniques for instilling courage and a fighting spirit might be regarded as ‘sexual harassment’” (ibid.). 91 When faced with negative empirical evidence that they are not as capable as men for jobs requiring strength, speed, and so on, women usually argue that physical test results can change due to more and better training, more encouragement, and less harassment. (This is another version of the old culture-versus-nature debate, which is far from settled.) As for physical differences and their effects on the military, some men point to women’s premenstrual syndrome and pregnancy as female problems. Women counter this, however, by saying that they are more responsible, have fewer injuries, and so forth. As for aggression, women in the military and their feminist supporters argue that soldiers today no longer need it as much as they once did. Aggression is not always advantageous, moreover, because many military tasks are routine and others require submission to their leaders. And leaders, no matter how aggressive, should think twice before taking foolish risks. 92 Boys do not receive a clear message about war; instead, they receive a double message about it. From popular culture, especially video games, they learn that war is exciting and glamorous. The implicit message is that combat, unlike almost anything else, can still provide them with a collective identity as men. If so, then this would provide at least a partial explanation for why some male soldiers give their female colleagues a hard time. From elite culture, boys learn that war is, at best, a necessary evil. Male bodies equip men to engage in combat, which allows them to contribute something that is ambiguously good, not something that is unambiguously and therefore inherently good. Put together, you could argue, the two messages say that masculine identity is a necessary evil or even that boys and men are necessarily evils.

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93 War and conscription are not necessarily linked, because nations can fight wars without resorting to conscription – the United States is now doing so – but they have been closely linked for a long time. The implicit link goes back many thousands of years. Neolithic boys grew up with enough cultural conditioning to become warriors. Later, some boys of one class ended up as knights or the vassals of knights. Still later, many more boys ended up in armies due to the coercive power of states. This explicit link goes back two hundred years. Since then, all boys in most countries have grown up with the expectation of becoming soldiers. chapter four

  1 Lynn Snowden, “Sperm and the Single Girl,” Elle, November 1991: 182.  2 F I NR R A G E; quoted in Made to Order: The Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Progress, ed. Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 212.   3 Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2001).  4 Father Knows Best aired on cbs from 1954 to 1955 and from 1958 to 1960 on nbc from 1955 to 1958.  5 The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet aired on A B C from 1952 to 1966.  6 Home Improvement aired on ABC from 1991 to 1999.  7 The Simpsons has aired on Fox since 1989.  8 Family Guy has aired on Fox since 1999.  9 Shameless has aired on Showtime since 2011. 10 Modern Family has aired on ABC since 2009. 11 Breaking Bad aired on AM C from 2008 to 2013. 12 Mad Men has aired on AM C since 2007. 13 Colin Harrison, reviews of My Dad, by Niki Daly; My Ol’ Man, by Patricia Polacco; and Papa Tells Chita a Story, by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, New York Times Book Review, 18 June 1995, 25. 14 Ibid., 25. 15 Ruth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 16 Bailey refers to it only four times, en passant, in connection with birth control, but she could have devoted a whole chapter to something that was (and remains) the central symbol of social, cultural, and political conflict in connection with both sex and gender.

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17 The Protestant Reformation, for example, began as an attempt to reform (but maintain) the Church; nonetheless, it soon turned into a religious and political revolution and eventually (though indirectly) fostered the rise of secularism. Although Bailey’s main point is to challenge conventional wisdom about the Sexual Revolution and clearly shows how demands for mere reform led eventually to revolution, she says nothing about the definition of “revolution.” 18 Bailey highlights ambivalence, contradiction, and even outright expediency on all sides. In the epilogue, though, she acknowledges her own admiration for what could be called the liberal side as distinct from the conservative one. All in all, she says, the sexual revolution has done more good than harm. And yet she shows no evidence to support that conclusion. She could have taken more seriously the law of unintended consequences – which is, after all, the basic premise of her argument. 19 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture (New York: Knopf, 1999). 20 Many statistical compilations exist, and all are subject to interpretation and debate. The effects of fatherlessness are among the most contested topics. Advocates for fathers generally argue that children need fathers no less than they need mothers and therefore suffer from father absence. Advocates for single mothers and divorced mothers generally deny that women are responsible for father absence and that, in any case, children suffer no damage from father absence – or would not suffer if only governments were willing to fund more programs to support single mothers and divorced mothers. (For an example of that approach, which we would classify as ideological, see Trish Wilson, “Myths and Facts about Fatherlessness,” 2002, online at: nownys.org/docs/fatherlessness%20article.pdf, accessed 7 April 2014.) Either way, we need raw data, for which governments are usually reliable sources. Given the importance of extreme precision in citing statistics, we offer here a quotation from one summary of the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest figures (bearing in mind that Statistics Canada and the equivalents in other Western countries report similar trends). Everyone agrees that the number of children who lack fathers at home has grown rapidly, and not many argue that the effects on children are either unimportant or desirable. Why did this situation occur? What can we do about it? These, of course, are other matters.   “In 2009, 7.8 million children lived with at least one grandparent, a 64 percent increase since 1991 when 4.7 million children lived with a grandparent, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Among children living with a grandparent, 76 percent also were living

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with at least one parent in 2009, not statistically different from the 77 percent who lived with at least one parent in 1991. ‘The people with whom children live affect their well-being,’ said Rose Kreider, a family demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau. ‘These statistics give us a lot of detail about the number of parents children live with, as well as whether they live with siblings, grandparents or other relatives.’ These statistics released today come from the household relationship module of the Survey of Income and Program Participation collected in 2009 and published in the report Living Arrangements of Children: 2009. In 1991, 5 percent of white, 15 percent of black and 12 percent of Hispanic children lived with at least one grandparent. By 2009, 9 percent of white, 17 percent of black and 14 percent of Hispanic children lived with at least one grandparent, a significant change for white children but not for black or Hispanic children. Many children who do not live with a parent live with a grandparent. More than half of the children living with no parents were living with grandparents. Percentages for black children (64 percent) and non-­ Hispanic white children (55 percent) did not differ from Hispanic children (61 percent), but the percentage of Asian children living with no parents who lived with grandparents was lower, at 35 percent. In 2009, 69 percent of the 74.1 million children under 18 lived with two parents. Four percent (2.9 million) of all children lived with both a mother and father who were not married to each other. Between 1991 and 2009, children living with only their mother increased from 21 percent to 24 percent. The percentage of children living with their mother without a father present varied widely among race and origin groups in 2009, from 8 percent for Asian children to 50 percent for black children. Seventeen percent of non-Hispanic white children and 26 percent of Hispanic children also lived with their mother only. Seven percent of all children lived with one unmarried parent who was cohabiting. The percentage of all children who lived with a cohabiting parent ranged from 2 percent for Asian children to 9 percent for Hispanic children. Falling between these were non-Hispanic white children (6 percent) and black children (7 percent), not different from each other or the percentage for all children. Overall, 16 percent of children lived with a stepparent, stepsibling or half sibling. Thirteen percent of children living with one parent and 18 percent of children living with two parents lived in these blended families. Most children (78 percent) lived with at least one sibling. Among those, most (83 percent) lived with only full siblings from the same biological mother and father. Fourteen percent of children who lived with siblings lived with at least one half sibling, sharing only one biological parent. Living Arrangements of Children: 2009 examines

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the diversity of children’s living arrangements in households in the United States and describes extended family households with relatives and nonrelatives where their presence may have an effect on the development and economic well-being of those children. It also describes the degree to which children are living in married-couple families, single-parent families or with stepparents, adoptive parents or no parents while in the care of another relative or guardian. The sample size in this survey does not allow for comparison estimates for American Indians and Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders and people of more than one race” (U.S. Census Bureau, “Census Bureau Reports 64% Increase in Number of Children Living with a Grandparent over Last Two Decades,” U.S. Census Bureau, dated 29 June 2011), online at: census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/ cb11-117.html, accessed 7 April 2014). For the full report, see Rose M. Kreider and Renee Ellis, Living Arrangements of Children: 2009, (Current Population Reports P70-126), Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011. 21 See Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2006), 215–17. 22 See Nathanson and Young, Spreading Misandry, 194–234. Second-wave feminism began with the admirable belief that men and women were of equal value and should therefore have equal rights and equal duties. It ran into trouble, however, with the somewhat naïve assumption that men and women were not only equal in value but also (more or less) identical in function. Ideological feminism came later, in the United States, and echoed a parallel transition from the Civil Rights movement to the Black Power movement. Ideological feminists have adopted a world view that differs in no significant way from political ideologies on both the left and the right and reveals many features that all have in common. Among the more important ones are dualism (life as a titanic battle between “us” and “them,” expressed as the conspiracy theory of history), essentialism (“we” are inherently good and “they” inherently evil), hierarchy (“we” are superior to “them”), one form of consequentialism (the end can justify the means), and collectivism (group interests take precedence over both personal and societal ones). 23 American laws that banned abortion were unconstitutional, according to the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), because they prevented women from enjoying a right to privacy (as articulated in the Fourteenth Amendment’s due-process clause). Even so, the Court ruled that this right diminished as pregnancy continued and that the right to abortion must be

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balanced by two compelling state interests in regulating abortion: protecting the health of both the mother and the fetus. In other words, the court still banned abortion after “viability.” In 1969, new Canadian legislation allowed abortions as long as physicians declared that it was necessary for the physical or mental health of mothers. In R. v. Morgentaler (1989), however, the Supreme Court struck down that law as unconstitutional. This made abortion neither legal nor illegal. Because the government failed to pass any new abortion law, abortion on demand became, in effect, legal. 24 Many feminists, to judge from their Internet blogs, now agree with Carol Smart (“There Is of Course the Distinction Dictated by Nature: Law and the Problem of Paternity,” in Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987], 98–117). She argues against joint custody (because this arrangement assumes that fathers have a distinctive place in family life), against the right of adopted children to trace their ­biological parents (because this assumes the importance of genetic ties), and against the ideal of both a mother and a father (because single mothers are perfectly capable of doing the job alone). All of these things, according to Smart, are sinister attempts to assert paternal – that is, “patriarchal” – authority. There is no such thing, in short, as a paternal right. Paternal duties are another matter entirely. Smart does not argue against placing financial obligations on biological fathers! Apparently, fathers should accept legal burdens but not expect any legal rights. (There is no such thing as an absolute right for any person or any group, because rights often conflict with each other; this is why we need supreme courts to balance competing rights.) This has nothing to do with equality between men and women; it has everything to do with the autonomy of women. Because only women can be virtually autonomous (thanks to their reproductive function), of course, it has everything to do in addition with the supremacy of women over men. This is why many feminists demanded access to both abortion and artificial insemination by donor for all women (married or single, straight or lesbian) with precisely the same fervour that they denounced access to surrogacy and ex utero technologies that would have given at least some reproductive freedom to men. “To the extent that the medical profession, official inquiries, the state and the mass media have chosen to endorse the conceptive technologies,” writes Michelle Stanworth, “it is only by denying the force of this trend towards autonomous motherhood” (Stanworth 24). Because people “construct” culture, people can deconstruct it and then reconstruct it to suit their own needs or interests.

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25 Consider a recent case from Kansas. Replying to an ad on Craigslist, William Marotta had donated his sperm to a lesbian couple in 2009 and signed a contract in which he waived paternal rights. Because the women had not hired a licensed physician to perform the artificial insemination, however, Judge Mary Mattivi ruled that Marotta was “more than a sperm donor.” He was legally the “presumptive father,” in fact, and thus legally obliged to pay child support for many years to come (Michael Winter, “Kansas Sperm Donor to Appeal Ruling over Child Support,” USA Today, 24 January 2014). Was this due to a lack of foresight or ignorance on the part of Jennifer Schreiner, the inseminated mother? Or did she deliberately exploit him in order to have a child of her own but avoid the inconvenience of providing it with a father? At issue here are two problems: extracting money from a man who had never intended to become a father in the sense of interaction with his child and encouraging the notion that fatherhood amounts to nothing more than money. “The state encourages single motherhood in all kinds of ways,” wrote one journalist, “because the state … believes a woman can bring up a child as effectively alone as with a father in the picture, and that – in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – children suffer no special harm growing up fatherless” (Barbara Kay, “State Supports Mothers Who Want the Child But Not the Costs,” National Post, 23 January 2014). 26 See Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56. 27 In ancient times, for instance, relatively rich husbands of infertile women simply married additional wives or “lay” with their female servants. One obvious example would be from the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah. Because Sarah was “barren,” Abraham sired a child by Hagar, the handmaid. 28 The first new technology was in vitro fertilization. Louise Brown, who had been conceived in a Petri dish, was born in 1978. This provoked intense debates over the potential dangers for both infants and women. Would in vitro fertilization lead to genetic engineering, baby factories, or sex selection? Would it lead to abortions of the unwanted fetuses (produced by in vitro techniques)? 29 To produce a clone, scientists empty the nucleus of a somatic cell (with chromosomes from both the mother and the father) and transfer it to an egg (with chromosomes only from the mother). The result is an egg that functions as a fertilized egg. 30 In a way, parthenogenesis is “asexual” reproduction. In another way, though, parthenogenesis is all-female reproduction. It would still require

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eggs, after all, but not sperm. And it would produce only female offspring. Consequently, it would create enormous symbolic problems, let alone moral ones. Parthenogenesis is what religious traditions call “virgin birth,” but it is no longer solely in the realm of either religion or science fiction. In 2007, Hwang Woo Suk, a South Korean scientist, produced the first human embryo from an unfertilized egg. The primary reason for developing this technology would be a practical one: to create stem cells that genetically match the cells of women who have degenerative diseases. Derivatives of stem cells could be used also, however, to grow organs for them and thus avoid the need for transplanted organs, which the body’s immune system attacks as foreign objects. 31 Controversy over abortion did surface in some religious circles, however, because it was a side effect of technologies such as in vitro fertilization. 32 See Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Religion and the Fall of Man (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). In that book, we show how ideological feminists tried to confer metaphysical status on motherhood by “reviving” goddess cults of the ancient world or by “restoring” a Great Goddess (often called Sophia) to Western god-centred religions such as Christianity and Judaism. To do this, they usually argued that goddess-worship was the original religion and that a Great Goddess had presided for thousands of years over a peaceful and happy world. Then, one of two things happened. Either men rebelled against the Great Goddess (although it is hard to see why they would have rebelled against such an idyllic society under the aegis of a benevolent divinity) or patriarchal societies invaded this primeval paradise, which meant that their evil gods usurped the wise Great Goddess and created a patriarchal nightmare. 33 Women, however, are by no means the only people with a stake in the continuing debate over abortion. 34 They organized as the influential Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, which worked closely with government agencies in many countries. 35 They worried about experimental techniques, for instance, that could endanger women. It was of particular importance that most of the physicians and researchers were still men. 36 They rejected surrogate motherhood, for instance, because that meant turning poor women into “rented wombs” for rich but infertile couples (even though they supported sperm banks, which turned men into genetic carriers). Both men and women could be infertile, of course, but it was

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infertile men who bothered feminist activists most of all. They saw no reason for women to use their bodies in a potentially dangerous way in order to give infertile men genetically related children. 37 Ex utero technologies such as the artificial womb, for instance, threatened to eliminate or marginalize the most fundamental source of identity for women: the ability of their bodies to gestate and lactate. 38 At first many feminists opposed surrogacy. They claimed that it exploited poor women, who gestated children for rich women. Several high-profile cases showed what could happen, moreover, when surrogate mothers refuse to honour their contracts by not giving up after birth the infants whom they have gestated. 39 “History of FI N RRAG E,” 2008, , available online at: finrrage.org/history/ html, accessed 3 February 2010. 4 0 F I NR R A GE has been active mainly in Australia, Europe, and Canada. In the United States, it has faced considerable opposition from libertarians. 41 See Patricia Baird and others, Proceed with Care: Final Report of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies (Ottawa: Minister of Government Services, 1993).   In 1989, The Canadian Government established a royal commission to study new reproductive technologies. Many Canadians had come to believe that legislation should govern their use. Among the most vocal in calling for government action were feminists, especially members of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE), who advocated a moratorium even on research in the field. They believed that these technologies would have harmful effects, both symbolic and physical, on women (although they were indifferent to any harmful effects, whether symbolic or physical, on men). They referred to the institutionalization of experimentation on women’s bodies in connection with in vitro techniques, for instance, and the “commodification” of women’s bodies in connection with surrogate motherhood (“renting” the wombs of poor women to serve the needs of rich couples). The commissioners did not study established technologies, however, such as abortion and contraception. As it turned out, this commission was a hotbed of political strife, which provoked controversies that delayed its final report several times. Proceed with Care appeared in 1993 and included 293 recommendations – among them, changing the Criminal Code to ban some technologies and establishing a national agency to regulate others.   When the commissioners began their deliberations, feminists wanted a moratorium on all research in this field. They certainly did not want any technologies that might endanger either individual women or the collective

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identity of women. Nor did they want any technologies that might hinder the reproductive autonomy of women, which is why they tried to deflect attention away from abortion. They opposed surrogacy, in particular, which could lead to genetic mothers bearing children for adoptive mothers and then losing all rights to those children after a change of mind.   Legislators did not by any means agree to all recommendations of the commissioners. Some feminists were outraged in 1995, when the minister of health required only a voluntary moratorium on the use of what feminists considered harmful technologies. In 2004, after four attempts to pass legislation, Bill C-13 (the Assisted Human Reproduction Act) became law. It banned, among other things, human cloning, the sale of human ova and sperm (although it allowed the donation of ova and sperm), “rent-awomb” ­contracts (although it allowed informal arrangements for surrogacy), and sex selection.   By now, though, feminist opinion was changing quickly in view of the debate over gay marriage. Some feminists, after all, were gay women. Female couples wanted access to sperm banks, but the supply of sperm was diminishing now that no one could buy it in Canada. Male couples wanted surrogacy, on the other hand, but the supply of surrogates was diminishing now that it was illegal to pay them in Canada. (American law allowed payment, but paying American surrogates cost much more than paying Asian surrogates.) In any case, gay women wanted to know that the rights of fathers would never trump those of female partners or wives in conflicts over custody, which meant emphasizing various social or functional definitions of parenthood. It was now all about providing access to reproductive technologies, not banning or discouraging them. 42 The original title of this periodical was Reproductive and Genetic Engineering. 43 Gena Corea, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 44 See Spreading Misandry, 108–36. 45 F I NR R A GE; quoted in Made to Order: The Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Progress, ed. Patricia Spallone and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 212. 46 Political debates notwithstanding, the fact is that no one can be truly “autonomous,” because our species is a social one. 47 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985). 48 Zipper and Sevenhuijsen 125–6.

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49 “Mothers for Hire: The Battle for Baby M,” Newsweek, 19 January 1987. 50 Quoting scientists such as Alan Trounson, director of The Institute of Early Human Development at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and John Parsons, registrar and lecturer in obstetrics at King’s College Hospital in London, the British magazine New Society reported that “the technology exists to enable men to give birth. Although such a birth would be dangerous, one expert said ‘undoubtedly someone will do it’ … Male pregnancy would involve fertilizing a donated egg with sperm outside the body. The embryo would be implanted into the bowel area, where it could attach itself to a major organ. The baby would be delivered by caesarean section … To achieve pregnancy, men would have to receive hormone treatment to stimulate changes that occur in women during pregnancy … The embryo creates the placenta, so theoretically the baby would receive sufficient nourishment, the article said” (Associated Press, “Mr. Mom: Scientists Say Men Could Give Birth,” Wisconsin State Journal, 9 May 1986, 2). 51 Stanworth 16; our emphasis. 52 Canada introduced no-fault divorce in 1968. In 1969, California became the first American state to do so. 53 See, e.g., Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963). 54 Not all women idealize or romanticize motherhood. Consider the title of Rozsika Parker’s Mother Love/Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal Ambivalence (New York: Basic Books, 1996). Parker uses psychoanalytical theory to say what most people have always known: that mothers – like all other human beings – have mixed feelings about themselves and their families. (Parker discusses this from the mother’s point of view; others, including anthropologists interested in the symbolism of motherhood, discuss similar ambivalence as experienced by the children.) Although she acknowledges the practical problems that mothers face in our society, Parker is concerned in this book only with their inner lives. For that reason, along with the fact that not everything about their inner lives is edifying, some feminists would want to ignore her.   In a double review, Anne Roiphe discusses Parker’s book along with a very different one by Diane Eyer (“Crimes of Attachment: Two Different Points of View on Just How Binding the Bond between Mother and Child Really Is,” New York Times Book Review, 12 May 1996: 29).“What [Parker] describes is recognizable to most mothers,” writes Roiphe. “It’s the way we feel blissful and in love with the nursing infant and also, less consciously, afraid of being depressed, devoured, consumed, with our anger turned against ourselves. It’s the way we feel guilty when we are too

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furious with a child over the spilled milk. It’s the way we get overly anxious about the health of our children, have frequent dreams in which a child is run over or a piece of roof falls on her head. These dreams – what mother hasn’t had them? – express an anxiety that rises from our hostile impulses against our own babies. The human mind represses, banishes the unwanted murderous thoughts that rise against those we love, that breach our sense of ourselves as civilized, decent, moral people. But the nasty thoughts, the impulse to have all the cake for ourselves, to retaliate when we are threatened, to give to ourselves alone – these primitive impulses survive in the subterranean soul and run like so many dark alligator-filled rivers through our internal geography.”   Next, Roiphe considers a heavily ideological look at motherhood by Diane Eyer: Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1996). Far from arguing for a “maternal instinct,” one that gives women some essential superiority to men, Eyer argues the exact opposite. For her, in fact, mothers are of interest primarily as victims of patriarchal evil. She believes that the attachment theories of “baby gurus,” in particular, are part of the conspiracy to exploit women. Convince women that babies actually need their mothers, in other words, and you are using guilt to create what amounts to forced labour. As Roiphe points out, though, the “psychological needs of parent and child do not go away just because they are politically inconvenient and hard on feminists.” 55 Sylvia Ann Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America (New York: Morrow, 1986). 56 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970). 57 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971). 58 Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (New York: Harper and Row, 1984). 59 Mary O’Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). See also her Reproducing the World: Essays in Feminist Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989). 60 Juliette Zipper and Selma Sevenhuijsen, “Surrogacy: Feminist Notions of Motherhood Reconsidered,” in Reproductive Technologies, Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 124. 61 Ibid. 62 See Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (New York: Perigree Books, 1983), 181–8, 191–2.

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63 There had always been single parents due to the death or abandonment of the other parent. Moreover, there had always been a few single parents due to divorce. But the relative ease of no-fault divorce raised the number of single parents so dramatically that the phenomenon was no longer the same. What was once an exception to the rule ceased to be an exception, not immediately but quickly. The experience of being a single parent, or the child of one, was therefore different from what it had been. 64 Here is a selected list of books published only in English, only during the 1990s and only those in the library of one university (McGill) under the subject “single mothers” (other headings being “Afro-American single mothers,” “unmarried mothers,” and “divorced mothers”). Louise Armstrong, Of Sluts and Bastards: A Feminist Decodes the Child Welfare Debate (Monroe, M e: Common Courage Press, 1995); Alex Bryson, Reuben Ford, and Michael White, Making Work Pay: Lone Mothers, Employment and Well-being (Work and Opportunity Series, 1 [Layerthorpe, England: York Publishing Services, 1997]); Martin D. Dooley, Family Matters: New Policies for Divorced, Lone Mothers, and Child Poverty, (Social Policy Challenge, 8. [Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1995]); Kathryn Edin, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (New York: Free Press, 1994); Susan D. Holloway and others, Through My Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the Cultures of Poverty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Terence Hunsley, Lone Parent Incomes and Social Policy Outcomes: Canada in International Perspective (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997); Kathleen Kiernan, Hilary Land, and Jane Lewis, Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Melissa Lundtke, On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America (New York: Random House, 1997); Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Virginia E. Schein, Child, Parent, or Both: Who Should Be the Focus of an Effective Parenting Program? (New York: Garland, 1995). 65 Lyn Cockburn, “‘We’re Complete as We Are’: Let’s Stop Saying SingleParent Families Are Broken,” Montreal Gazette, 15 June 1992: C-5. 66 Ibid. 67 The welfare system, too, has contributed to the displacement of men within the family. When the state pays, men’s role as providers is no longer necessary. The aim of President Clinton’s welfare reform was to make families more self-sufficient, especially those headed by single mothers, and

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thus relieve the tax burden. With this in mind, officials tried to find jobs in the private and public sectors for welfare recipients. Also, they tried to ensure that fathers pay child support. Unfortunately, they considered fathers only as sources of revenue, not as members or potential m ­ embers of family units. It did “little,” writes Vanessa Gallman for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, “to encourage job-training or parenting programs for those not receiving the cheques, namely fathers. ‘I think it’s by design,’ said Derwin Brown, an Atlanta police lieutenant whose Fathers Foundation Inc. teaches young men how to raise their children. ‘I don’t think the system is set up to help the family unit. The goal is to relieve the tax burden, but not so much to put the family back together. They have a place for black men and boys, and that’s prison’” (Vanessa Gallman, “What about the Fathers? They’re Left out of Clinton’s Plan to Get Families off Welfare,” Montreal Gazette, 19 June 1994, B-7).   One answer to Brown’s argument is that single mothers and their children do form families. In that case, though, there is no point in trying to convince fathers that they are needed within the family; they have been made obsolete by the state. Otherwise, how could we explain the fact that mothers now receive the training that they require for jobs in the public sphere but fathers do not, for the most part, receive the training that they require for child care (let alone jobs in the public sphere)?   Our society has abandoned the conviction that fathers are significant members of the family unit. And the evidence went largely ignored until the United States and other Western countries began to consider the purely financial burdens imposed by welfare states and the resulting problems for mothers, especially single mothers. Even after thirty years of attempts to reform the family in ways that have marginalized fathers, many people still refuse to acknowledge that something has gone wrong.   One segment of ABC’s 20/20 was devoted to a solution proposed by Charles Murray (“Where Are the Fathers?” 20/20, A B C , WV NY -TV , Burlington, Vt., 15 April 1994). The author of Losing Ground (Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984) argued that the only way to keep fathers within the family was to eliminate a welfare system that makes unwed mothers and their children dependent on the state and thus undermines the position of fathers. The result of this proposal was, of course, a massive outcry. Murray did not find a desirable solution, but he did provoke what could have been a useful discussion.   When interviewed by John Stossel, Soledad Santiago announced that “welfare checks do not make babies, sperm makes babies.” Her point was that Murray’s proposal would penalize women unfairly. To the obvious

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charge that women, too, are responsible for the choices they make (except, of course, in cases of rape), Santiago replied: “We’re expecting a sixteenyear-old to be able to do that?” Well, why not? For centuries, for millennia, young people – both male and female – knew that there were limits to self-indulgence. And those who ignored the limits were expected to pay for the consequences. How could they not know? Every time they met socially it was under the surveillance of chaperones. No one would say that the chaperone or the “shotgun marriage” were ideal solutions. Even in the past, no one said that. Forcing two people to marry because of a “mistake” could hardly be expected to generate happy families. The “shotgun marriage” was a deterrent, not an ideal. Its most useful function was to prevent problems, not to cure them. To say that young people are simply incapable of resisting temptation is both historically false and psychologically unsound. The chaperone system was only part of the solution, after all, and anyone who really wanted to have sex could do so. But everyone knew what the consequences could be. In any case, things have changed, and we are unlikely to revive that system (although some religious groups do advocate that). Today, the cultural context rarely acknowledges moral responsibility; nor does it expect social ostracism. Only financial destitution is taken seriously. One woman told Stossel: “People don’t care anymore. Their moral standards have dropped.” But she referred only to the moral standards of men – that is, to the fathers who abandon their girlfriends and babies. It did not occur to her, evidently, that the moral standards of women, too, had dropped. Neither men nor women expected to marry in case of pregnancy.   Other critics noted that there would not be so many unwed mothers were it not for unwed fathers. This was true, of course, but trite. There would not be so many unwed fathers in the first place were it not for the message from popular culture that fatherhood is both trivial and irrelevant. As long as men are told that women alone can raise children perfectly well, that raising children is “women’s work,” then at least some men will lack the incentive to participate fully in family life – or even to stick around at all.   And the solution will require more than reforms in a welfare system that penalizes poor mothers who marry. In addition, it will require reforms in a cultural system that discourages both poor and rich fathers from sticking around. Informing men that their status as married fathers is i­rrelevant will prove just as harmful (though in a very different way) as informing women that their status as single mothers was sinful. It will inevitably ­contribute to the creation of more families in need of the material, psychological, and spiritual resources that could have been provided by fathers.

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  Although single parents get a great deal of attention these days (partly because there are so many more of them now than ever before), most ­people would agree that the ideal situation is to have two parents (or, in extended families, clans, villages, and so on, even more caregivers). The reasons have been given so many times that little is left to be added here. An extra parent means sharing the load of chores, obviously, and augmenting income. Moreover, it means increasing the psychological resources available to children in the process of individuation. Finally, it means adding security, especially if one parent dies or leaves. 68 Given the popularity of single motherhood by choice, the growing popularity of single fatherhood by choice should come as no surprise. “Statistics on single fathers by choice are few, but there are indications that while they make up a sliver of the demographic, their numbers are growing. Surrogacy agencies, surveys on adoption and father support groups all say that they are seeing more single fathers by choice. Most of these men are gay, agencies say, but there are also straight men seeking to become fathers” (Mireya Navarro, “The Bachelor Life Includes a Family,” New York Times, 7 September 2008). 69 In this context, recall the historical functions of families. From the beginning, as it were, families have fostered renewal of the community, let alone the species, by ensuring care not only for the young but also for the elderly and the sick. Family life involves an intergenerational cycle.   At least since the rise of urban communities several thousand years ago, moreover, families have had an economic function as well. At first, this was due primarily to the division of labour by sex. Gradually, though, families in many societies became economic units in a broader sense by contributing specialized goods and services, one generation after another, to the larger community. This is easy to forget now, in a society that rewards individualism (in some senses), when families seldom own or operate their own businesses and when children seldom continue these in any case.   Finally, and most often forgotten in our time, families have had social functions. They have not only socialized and educated children but, in addition, created an environment that sustained the civil society and the state. Even in societies that develop complex legal codes, some forms of behaviour continue to be regulated less formally by moral codes and enforced by the threat of public shame. Until recently in our own society, for example, sexual relations were controlled largely (though not entirely) in that way. Men who took advantage of women sexually (by indulging, for example, in what would now be called “date rape”), used lewd

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language in the presence of ladies, or even made lewd innuendoes about them, were known as “cads” by those considered respectable members of the community. These offensive and potentially dangerous men were were denounced. They were isolated from male friends, ostracized by women who might have considered them potential mates, and often disowned by their own families. This was not merely a form of punishment for disgraceful behaviour; it was a form of self-defence as well, because associating with aberrant people, including your own children, could tarnish an entire family’s reputation (or even that of an entire minority community). And that could have dire consequences for other children, because their eligibility for marriage depended on coming from “good families” (defined not only by economic status but by moral reputation as well).   Today, the economic function has largely disappeared. Not many people, as we say, go into the family business. If they do, it is usually by choice. As for the social function of families, even the rearing of children has passed largely into professional hands. And lamentably few people would still consider family disapproval a serious impediment to indulgence in any form of sexual expression. For the time being, at any rate, we are left with the family’s role in reproduction and childrearing. 70 Jean Renvoize, Going Solo: Single Mothers by Choice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). 71 Renvoize dismisses the need for fathers. She argues not only that gender is irrelevant but also that the masculine version of gender is destructive. In that case, of course, we would do well to eliminate it by eliminating from the family those who have traditionally transmitted it: fathers. 72 Even lactation can be done artificially, with bottles. 73 Darren Star, “Walsh Family Christmas,” Beverly Hills 90210, C TV , C J OH, Cornwall, Ontario, 24 December 1992; originally broadcast by Fox, 19 December 1991. 74 Katherine Gilday, Women and Men Unglued (National Film Board of Canada, 2003). 75 The Bachelor has aired on ABC since 2002. 76 The Bachelorette has aired on ABC since 2003. 77 The ritual involves a male suitor falling to one knee and asking a woman – whom he names formally – to marry him. The allusion is to an imagined ritual in medieval Europe and hardly exemplifies modern notions about the dignity of either women (who must wait for men to make the proposal) or men (who must lower themselves, both literally and metaphorically, to induce a positive response). For some reason, this ritual became

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de rigueur, at least in popular culture, during the late twentieth century and continues in the twenty-first. 78 Paul Nathanson, “Pop Goes the Family: Marriage in Popular Culture,” in The Conjugal Bond: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Institution of Marriage (under review). 79 Margaret Carlson, “Why Quayle Has Half a Point,” Time, 1 June 1992: 46. 80 Ibid., 46. 81 See Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (New York: Summit Books, 1985). French takes aim at religious asceticism, for instance, which she considers inferior to life-affirming “women’s spirituality.” 82 Since the 1990s, social scientists have been gathering data that indicate the negative effects of divorce and single parenting on children. To put it very succinctly, the children of single parents are statistically at far greater risk than other children for every social, educational, legal, psychological, and economic problem. There are those who explain this in connection with poverty, not surprisingly, but the risk factors affect even middle-class children. We will discuss several studies on fatherhood in the final volume of this series. 83 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Dan Quayle Was Right,” Atlantic, April 1993, 51. 84 “How do we begin to reconcile our long-standing belief in equality and diversity,” asked Whitehead, “with an impressive body of evidence that suggests that not all family structures produce equal outcomes for children? How can we square traditional notions of public support for dependent women and children with a belief in women’s right to pursue autonomy and independence in childbearing and child-rearing? How do we uphold freedom of adults to pursue individual happiness in their private relationships and at the same time respond to the needs of children for stability, security, and permanence in their family lives? What do we do when the interests of adults and children conflict? These are the issues at stake in the debate over family structure” (ibid., 48). She could have been more specific in those last two sentences. 85 John Leo, “A Pox on Dan and Murphy,” US News and World Report, 1 June 1992: 19. 86 “In the concern over health and safety, however, some say the core ethical issue of donor insemination – its effect on the children – has been lost” (Peggy Orenstein, “Looking for a Donor to Call Dad,” New York Times Magazine, 18 June 1995, 31). 87 Dana Kennedy, “Kidding Around: Adoption Gets the Star Treatment,” Entertainment Weekly, 3 May 1996, 16.

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88 Lynn Snowden, “Sperm and the Single Girl,” Elle, November 1991: 180. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., 182. 92 Ibid. 93 “What Fees do Sperm Banks Charge?” 9 September 2009, SpermCenter. com, online at: spermcenter.com, accessed 18 April 2011. 94 “Find a Sperm Donor,” undated, Sperm Bank, Inc. online at: spermbankcalifornia.com/find-sperm-donor.html, accessed 18 April 2011. 95 Amy Harmon, “Hello, I’m Your Sister: Our Father Is Donor 150,” New York Times, 20 November 2005. 96 “Who Is a Single Mother by Choice?” [dated] 2009, Single Mothers by Choice, online at: singlemothersbychoice.com/ accessed 5 March 2010. 97 “Philosophy,” 2009, Single Mothers by Choice, online at: singlemothersbychoice.com.philosophy.html, accessed 5 March 2010. 98 Emily Bazelon, “2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family,” New York Times Magazine, 1 February 2009, MM30-38. 99 The goal of many articles and websites is to glorify single mothers, who heroically endure hardships such as poverty, by featuring stories about celebrities who become single mothers (even though celebrities seldom have to worry about poverty). Although a few of these celebrities try to bring in “father-figures” for their children, most do not. At any rate, reporters seldom record the thoughts of these celebrities about bringing up children without fathers. This helps to explain the widespread impression that children need time and money but not fathers. Consider the cover story on single-mother Kate Winslet (Natasha Poliszczuk, “Kate Up Close (and Very Personal),” Glamour Magazine [UK], February 2014, 142–51); the magazine’s website added brief stories about other moviestar single mothers. The Huffington Post regularly featured stories such as “8 Celebrity Single Moms We Love” (11 July 2011), “Our 11 Favorite Celebrity Single Moms” (11 May 2012), “Connie Britton Opens up about Being a Single Mom” (16 July 2013), “Bethenny Frankel Dishes on Being a Single Mom” (15 August 2013), and “Watch: Single Mom Receives the Ultimate Gift” (20 June 2013). Even when outlets of popular culture refrain from glamorizing single mothers, they usually ignore fathers (except, occasionally, single fathers). One article in a women’s magazine advised single readers not to have children because of the extra stress involved, but said nothing at all about the possible need of children for fathers (Maura Kelly, “More Women Choosing to Have Babies Solo: A Good Thing?” Marie Claire, 7 May 2010). The cumulative result is clear

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from surveys of public opinion. An American poll of people under 50 “found that 42 per cent of unmarried women without kids would consider having a child on their own without a partner including more than a third, or 37 per cent, who would consider adopting solo … The AP-WE-t v poll also found that few Americans think the growing variety of family arrangements is bad for society. However, many have some qualms about single mothers, with some two thirds – or 64 per cent – saying single women have children without a partner is a bad thing for society. More men – 86 per cent – felt that way compared to 59 per cent of women” (Associated Press, “Rise of the Single Mother,” Mail Online 30 May 2013). But the poll said nothing, once again, about any need for fathers (as distinct from “partners”). Dana Kennedy, “Kidding Around: Adoption Gets the Star Treatment,” Entertainment Weekly, 3 May 1996, 16. Some women are never satisfied. Susan Chira, for example, admits that single mothers are often portrayed in popular culture, usually in a sympathetic way, but laments that “films today present no unified vision of unwed motherhood (“Unwed Mothers: The Scarlet Letter Returns in Pink,” New York Times, 23 January 1994). But why should movies present a “unified vision” of unwed mothers or of anything else? Not all women appreciated men who were out of work, no matter how useful they were in the home. The out-of-work father was often a disposable father. “I don’t need another child,” as one joke put it, “to feed or care for.” Nathanson and Young, Spreading Misandry, 79–89. For more on the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998, see Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56, 130, and 147. Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, Sanctifying Misandry: From Goddess Ideology to the Fall of Man (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 3–20. Ibid., 270–4. Some social scientists, however, buck the trend. See Judith Rich Harris, for instance, rejects biological determinism in favour of what she calls “peer determinism” (The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn out the Way They Do (New York: Free Press, 1998). See Nathanson and Young, Legalizing Misandry, 125–56. The truth is, moreover, that even women often feel uncomfortable with men who become too involved in family life. These women do not want their identity threatened by men taking over their distinctive role in family

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life. Mothers are considered natural parents, supposedly, and therefore better parents than fathers. This is illustrated by the comic strip “Adam.” The father – generically named Adam Newman – is a househusband. When his wife notices how warmly the children respond to him, for example, she flips. “Actually,” says Laura, “I’m jealous! Jealous because Nick has become so attached and dependent on him that I might as well not even exist” (Brian Basset, “Adam,” Montreal Gazette, 4 October 1988: D-12). Junior (Ivan Reitman, 1994). Caren Weiner Campbell, review of Junior, Entertainment Weekly, 2 June 1995, 64. Infertile women, too, are cut off from childbirth, unless they can make use of some reproductive technology. But this does not necessarily undermine their collective identity as women; genetically female, they are merely exceptions to the rule. Men, on the other hand, are by definition cut off from childbirth (although even that could change with the introduction of an artificial womb). See Chai R. Feldblum, “Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 17.1 (2005): 139–84. Feldblum began to write this essay in 1996 (according to a version of it that appears on the internet at law.georgetown.edu/moralvaluesproject/ Library/Papers/Feldblum_Gay_is_Good_Marriage.pdf) and thus reflects the primary arguments of that period and ever since. Her own argument focuses heavily on the pros and cons of marriage, especially for  women and gay people. She seldom mentions children at all except in connection with the equal right of gay adults to produce children. See Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, “The Future of an Experiment,” in Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers of Canada’s New Social Experiment, ed. Daniel Cere and Douglas Farrow (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press for the Institute for the Study of ­Marriage, Law and Culture, 2004), 41–62. We did not invent the idea that children need both mothers and fathers. The United Nations acknowledged this as a right in Articles 6 and 7 of its Declaration of the Rights of the Child: “He shall, wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of his parents” and “The best interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents.” In 1959, of course, no one could have foreseen the fragmentation of parenthood twenty-five years later: birth mothers, genetic mothers, social mothers, genetic fathers, social fathers, and so on. The authors

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of this declaration assumed that the ideal environment for children was with both their mothers and their fathers. Whitehead, “Dan Quayle,” 52. Peggy Drexler, Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 2005). Postmodernists sometimes use words such as “diversity” and “pluralism” as fronts for ideological goals – which they should deconstruct, in theory, but seldom do. Only by deconstructing what they claim are oppressive older institutions can they make room for their own ideological ones. The word “pluralism” is particularly confusing. It usually refers to tolerance: a society that allows people to believe whatever they like despite personal disagreements. But this word often takes on a connotation of either moral expediency or indifference to truth: personal acceptance of many beliefs, even conflicting ones, at the same time – which would make no sense. To deconstruct the historic family pattern, activists often claimed that being gay conferred advantages on parents, which is to say that gay fathers made better parents than straight ones. Others compared the best of their own model (happy families of single people, say, or gay couples) with the worst of its opposite (unhappy families of straight couples). Ultimately, they claimed that the traditional family had been designed to foster rape, incest, “hegemonic masculinity” and other horrors. Sara Miles, “Jane vs. Jane,” Out, January 1998: 130. Among the jurisdictions that have passed legislation to replace “mother” and “father” with more (politically) neutral words or taken similar steps are Massachusetts, Virginia, California, Ontario, and Spain. For a detailed examination of this in connection with increasing interference by the state, see Elizabeth Marquardt and others, The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs (New York: Institute for American Values in cooperation with the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, the Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law, an Culture and the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, 2006). Justice Colleen Kenney of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench had to make sure that a son would know his father. She called the mother “selfish,” in fact, for trying to deprive the son of his father (Sharon Doyle Driedger, “What Is a Father,” Maclean’s 110.3 (9 June 1997): 62–3. Apart from anything else, this was one example of increasing interference by the state to serve the needs of adults, sometimes at the expense of children. Not only did the children of gay couples not necessarily have a right

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to know both of their genetic parents, they also did not necessarily have a right to information about their more remote ancestors. Anthony Giardina, “My Lesbian Problem,” GQ, December 1997: 169; his emphasis. Peter Menzies, “Fathers Wonder Whether They Are Still Needed,” Calgary Herald, 15 July 1998: A-10. The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010). Thaddeus Baklinski, “Children from Same-Sex Households Much Less Likely to Graduate High School: Large Study” [dated] 9 October 2013, Life Site News, online at: freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3076980/posts, accessed 11 August 2014. Many advocates of gay marriage, like those of no-fault divorce forty years earlier and those of single motherhood by choice more recently, argued that the problems of fatherless or motherless children had an effective solution: providing them with “father figures” or “mother figures”: friends or relatives, say, in addition to their coaches, teachers, and so on. But what if the occasional presence of these “role models” were not enough? What if children need the enduring presence of both a man and a woman? To this, advocates of gay marriage, like those of no fault-divorce and single motherhood, replied that there had always been children who lacked one parent or even both. But others pointed out that the mere existence of a lack through history did not recommend it. Societies have found ways of helping children who lack one parent or even both, to be sure, but not by denying the exceptional status of those children. When any phenomenon ceases to be an exception, moreover, it becomes, in effect, a new phenomenon. The children of divorce, too, were once unusual exceptions. That was no longer true by the 1990s. Susan C. Turrell, “A Descriptive Analysis of Same-Sex Relationship Violence for a Diverse Sample,” Journal of Family Violence 15.3 (2000): 281–93. Kathleen Nutt, “Scottish Schools Ban Father’s Day Cards,” Sunday Times, 22 June 2008. The other two functions were provider and protector. Both now apply equally to women, who either do those things for themselves or rely on the state for help in doing so. The state, in fact, has almost replaced men. Only as progenitors, or fathers, can men have a healthy collective identity. e p i lo g u e

  1 Karl Marx borrowed this utopian ideal from Western religions, however, which look forward to an eschatological paradise in which, as St Paul put

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it, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

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abortion. See reproductive technologies adrenaline, 11, 14, 17, 77 adultery, 17 Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, 98 aggression, 11, 30, 42, 50, 53, 76, 78 Agricultural Revolution, 24–5, 38, 65, 91. See also civilizations Agta people, 145n7 All Quiet on the Western Front, 70 Allward, Walter Seymour, 68 alpha females, 25, 36 alpha males, 20–1, 29–32, 40, 50, 98 American Revolution, 64 androcide, 108, 110 anti-intellectualism, 53 Arkwright, John Stanhope, 83 armies: citizens in, 88, 173; deserters in, 73, 76, 78, 177n48, 178n54; infantry, 91; and knights, 63; and mercenaries, 63, 173n9, 173n10; military technologies of, 7–8, 26, 90, 174n17; and peasants or serfs

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in, 25, 30, 63, 65; professional soldiers in, 62; strategies of, 32; training of, 32; and veterans, 74; volunteers in, 75; women in, 91–2, 186. See also collective identity (men); combat; conscription; war art, 6–7, 50, 90 artificial insemination, 105–6, 108, 122. See also sperm banks artificial womb, 108 Astor, Nancy, 60 Atwood, Margaret, 109 authority, 29, 36 Axial Age, 156n73 Ayres, Lew, 70 Aztecs, 25, 155n64, 157n84 Babylonians. See Mesopotamians The Bachelor/The Bachelorette, 118 Bailey, Beth, 100 Barker, Pat, 70 Bates, Katherine Lee, 82 The Believers, 86 Bellah, Robert, 35 Benin, 154n64 Best, Deborah, ix

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The Best Years of Our Lives, 74 Bettelheim, Bruno, 57 Beverly Hills 90210, 116 birth control. See reproductive technologies Blanchard, Mary Warner, 161 boarding schools, 55 Boxgrove (Palaeolithic site), 143n3 Boy Meets World, 75 Boy Scouts of America, 55, 169n51 boys. See “wild boys” Breaking Bad, 98 Brownmiller, Susan, 142n5 Buddhism, 26, 35, 156nn72–3, 157n86 Buganda, 154n64 Buid people, 146n17 business, 43, 53, 74, 123, 164n36, 201n69 Canadian National Vimy Memorial, 68 Canadian War Museum, 85 Carlson, Margaret, 119 Carnes, Mark, 47 children: birth rate, 167n38; early preference for mothers, 129; fatherless, 102, 117; as means to other ends, 118; need for fathers and mothers, 206n115; “right” to have, 109 Chinese, 25, 90, 154n64, 156n73, 162n15 Christianity: and athletic metaphor, 34; feminization of, 49–52, 164n36; on human sacrifice, 158n89; and martial hymns, 178n56; and martial metaphors, 52; as Muscular

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Christianity movement, 53; and sacrifice (atonement theology), 29, 79–88; and self-sacrifice (imitation of Jesus), 79–88; and sentimentality in art, 50–1, 164n 36; and Social Gospel movement, 50, 163n35; Virgin Mary in, 179n61; and “willing conscripts,” 81–9. See also Young Men’s Christian Association cities. See civilizations Civil War, 50, 54, 67, 79, 81–2, 161n3, 168n40, 174n17, 177n48 civilization (word), 40, 42, 52, 54 civilizations (early); and bureaucracy, 35, 61; and ideal of the just king, 30; philosophy, 12, 24, 27–35; and rationalization, 61; and religion, 24–37; and social stratification, 25; and specialization, 7, 13, 24, 30–1, 35–6, 155n67, 201n69; and state formation, 7, 23–33; and trade, 90, 182n83; and urbanization, 7, 24–6, 30–1, 33, 36. See also war Clark, Marcia, 114 cloning. See reproductive technologies Cockburn, Lyn, 114 Cohen, David, 26 collective identity (men), 9; requires distinctive, necessary, and publicly valued contribution to society, xi, 4–5, 26, 89, 93–4, 136–7, 164n36, 186n92; in agrarian societies, 30, 38; and combat, 22, 30, 67, 88, 92–3, 167; and conscription, 89–94; and culture, 182; and education,

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155; and fatherhood, 24, 35–6, 56, 96–136; and fraternal lodges, 14, 46–55, 166n36, 168n39, 169n50; healthy or unhealthy versions of, xi, 4; and imitation of Christ, 87; and Industrial Revolution, 39, 44; investing in future of society, 106, 132; in Judaism, 30; lack of, leads to social problems, 137–8; and maleness, 7, 13, 30, 39; and marriage, 43; and middle classes, 44; need for, 139; and Neolithic revolution, 13; and pacifism, 75; possibilities for, 51, 138; and religion, 63; and reproduction, 110; and sexual segregation, 14, 20–1, 31, 37, 44, 51, 159n93, 160n94; and state formation, 7, 23–33, 61; and status ranking, 56; and upper classes, 44, 56; and work, xi, 26, 39–44, 56, 138 collective identity (women), 106, 116, 206; and education, 155; and motherhood, 112, 206n112; need for, 139; and reproductive technologies, 110, 193n35, 194n36, 194n40; in India, 155n67 collectivism, 120, 138, 190 combat, 10, 33, 38, 53; as one defining feature of masculinity, 93; as adventure fantasy, 77; bribes and threats for recruits, 78; in Christianity, 80; cowardice in, 34; and endurance of pain, 167; and human sacrifice, 159; and journalism, 73; as masculine duty, 71; in medieval Europe,

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62–3; mercenaries in, 30, 63, 173; and natural reluctance to kill, 77; in Neolithic societies, 11–13; passive periods, 71; in pastoral societies, 8; as patriotic duty, 77; physical and psychological skills for, 63, 94; promised rewards for survivors, 78, 88; and rape, 92; and sacrifice, 159; and self-sacrifice, 88, 158n89; stress of, 71; as ultimate destiny of male citizens, 91. See also military revolution; conscription coming of age, 91, 14. See also initiation compassion, 157 competition: in America, 54–8, 161n2, 163n35; and female soldiers, 185; in Greece, 26–33; in horticultural societies, 10, 18, 21 conscription: and anomaly of the “willing conscript,” 62, 76, 80–9; and citizenship, 64–6; as coming of age, 91; and conscientious objectors, 70; and deferments, 75; and deserters, 73, 76–7, 177n48, 178n54; draft riots, 66; financial costs of 174n14; history of, 60–95, 107n12; and human sacrifice, 84, 158n89; informal coercion (press gangs), 63; and instrumental world view, 94; as legal anomaly, 92; male bodies as state resources, 108; and mass death, 67; and moral agency, 94; as a slave system, 65; in South Korea, 88–9; “universality” of, 64, 92, 173n11, 183n84. See also collective identity (men)

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consequentialism, 190n22 conspiracy theory of history, ix, 44, 107, 164n36, 190n21, 196n53 contraception. See reproductive technologies Corea, Gena, 107 counterculture, 100 culture, xi, 25; conditioning by, 95; debate over nature vs., ix–x, 77, 141–2; masculinity created by, 31, 56; massive cultural effort to prepare men for combat, 11; and public sphere, 54 Dahomey, 154n64 De Waal, Frans, 178n53 deconstruction: and boundaries, 138; of culture, 191n23; of democracy, 131; of historic family, 133, 207n118; of men as hunters, 143n3; of motherhood, 110; and political expediency, 128, 207n118; and postmodernism, xi, 207n118; of sex per se, 142n5 Depression. See Great Depression Divale, William, 14, 132,155n66 diversity, 101, 115–16, 121, 132– 3, 188n19, 203, 207 divorce: the “divorce culture,” 102, 114; effects on children, 203n81; effects on men, 14, 16, 43; initiated by women, 16; and mothers, 104, 111–27; the “no fault” clause, 111; and single mothers, 114–27; rate of, 111; and reproductive technologies, 111–27 Dix, Otto, 86

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double messages, 43, 186 double standards, 110, 116, 130, 138, 175n18, 186n90 Douglas, Ann, 39 draft. See conscription Drexler, Peggy, 132 dualism, 40, 113, 128, 164n36, 190n22 Durga (hindu goddess), 158n87 Dworkin, Andrea, 109, 113 eco-feminism. See ideological feminism egalitarian feminism, 105, 190; on diversity, 132; on economic autonomy, 112; on motherhood, 111, 129. See also ideological feminism egalitarianism, 4, 8–9 Egyptians, 31, 154n64 Ehrenreich, Barabara, 92–3, 143n3 Ember, C.R., 13 Enlightenment, 61 equality, 4, 26, 60 Eriksen, Karen, 147n30 essentialism, 40, 105, 109, 113, 128 ethics. See moral philosophy euthanasia, 95 Eyer, Diane, 196n54 false memory syndrome, 128 families: fragmentation or diversity of, 115–16, 121, 132; birth certificates, 207; functions of, 201; in popular culture, 132. See also children; fathers; mothers Family Guy, 98 Father Knows Best, 97 fathers, 24, 55–6, 97, 101, 137; as assistant mothers, 127; and

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custody, 104, 114, 127; as “deadbeat dads,” 127, 129; as distinct from mothers, 129, 191n24; dual fathers, 130; duties of, 191; egalitarian feminism on, 127; “joint paternity,” 17; as last remaining source of healthy identity for men, 164n36; as liabilities, 130; and love, 133; as luxuries, 129; and maleness, 55; Barack Obama on, 129; as pariahs, 41; as pater familias, 104; presumed obsolescence of, 103–4, 122, 127, 134, 198n67, 202n71; public indifference toward, 119, 129; Dan Quayle on, 119; replaced by state, 128, 198n67; rights of, 191–2n24; and sons, 35, 48, 57–8; as “teaspoonful of sperm,” 124; and unemployment, 58, 205n101. See also collective identity (men); children, fatherless; single fathers Feil, D.K., 21 femaleness, ix–x, 4, 12, 141; and aggression, 76; and combat, 11; dominance in lore, 15; fight or flight, 147n27; and menstruation, 17–18, 143n3, 151n50. See also collective identity (women); femininity; mothers; women femicide. See gynecide femininity, ix–x, 4, 41, 43, 46, 51, 75 feminism, 51, 75, 190; “personal is political” in, 97, 119; and reproductive technologies, 88, 191n24. See also egalitarian feminism; ideological feminism

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Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (finrrage), 107–8 feminization and masculinization, 39–59, 161n3, 164n36 Ferguson, Brian, 8 Firestone, Shulamith, 112 First World War, 56, 60, 66, 82–8, 161n3, 168n38, 169n50, 171n4, 172n5, 173n6, 174n12, 175n18; in the arts, 68–72, 99, 162, 168; casualties in, 171, 176; deserters in, 177n48, 178n54; as a “holocaust of young men,” 81; “lost generation” of, 67, 100; and “shell shock,” 71. See also war memorials foraging societies, 4 fraternal lodges, 14, 46–55, 166n36, 168n39, 169n50 Frederick the Great, 63 Freikorps, 70 French, Marilyn, 120 French Revolution, 64 Friedan, Betty, 111 gay marriage, 130–4, 194n40, 207n121, 208n126 gender, ix–x, 4, 91, 101, 152, 165, 184; and Agricultural Revolution, 34; divine prototypes of, 25; and employment, 56–9, 76, 170n63. See also collective identity (men); collective identity (women); femininity; masculinity; men; women genetic fathers, 106, 116, 133 genetic mothers, 106, 116, 133 Giardina, Anthony, 134

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Gilday, Katherine, 118 Gilmore, David D., 5, 9, 144 Girard, René, 148–9 gods and goddesses. See religion Gohain, Bikash Chandra, 149n34 Goldstein, Joshua, 11, 13 Great Depression, 55–9, 72, 79, 100, 169n53 Greeks, 26, 31–4, 79 Greer, Germaine, 112 Gregor, Thomas, 17, 146n17, 147n25, 151n49, 151n52 Grosz, George, 85 Grottinelli, Christiano, 148n32 The Guns of August, 66 gynecide, 108, 110 Harrison, Colin, 99 hazing, 41 hedonism, 100, 111, 120, 122, 138 hell, 49 Herdt, Gilbert R., 19, 152n57, 152n58 Hewlett, Sylvia, 112 heteronormativity, 133 heterosexism, 133 hierarchy, 21–7, 36–7, 155n65; in armies, 184n88; and dualism, 190n23; in fraternal lodges, 48; and military caste, 63; reversal of, 116, 164n36 Hinduism, 34–7, 156n72, 158n87 holiness, 30 Home Improvement, 98 honour. See masculinity Horticultural Revolution. See Neolithic societies horticultural societies, 12, 47; and feuding, 9; and food supply, 10; overpopulation in, 150n45;

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peaceful exceptions, 8–9; and sexual segregation, 31; tendency toward violence, 9–10, 18, 148n32; tied to land and water, 10; transitional societies, 15–17; and vulnerability of men, 22–4. See also collective identity (men); masculinity; men; Neolithic societies human sacrifice: in agrarian societies, 154; among Aztecs, 157n84; in ancient India, 158n87; in ancient Near East, 84, 154n64, 178n57; and early chiefs, 23; echoes in biblical story, 158n89; in popular culture, 84, 154–5; symbolic substitutes for, 29 hunting: dangers of, 4–5; moral ambiguity of, 5–6; motivation for, 4–6, 42; in Palaeolithic societies, 6; as a rite of passage, 154; and women, 143n3. See also Palaeolithic societies hunting and gathering societies, 4 identity, xi, 138, 182n82. See also collective identity (men); collective identity (women); personal identity identity politics, 120 ideological feminism, 102, 105–6, 127, 190–1; on alternative families, 132; on historic family as a source of misogyny, 133; on men, 96, 108, 112, 113, 142n5, 164n36, 167n37; on female superiority, 112–13, 129; as male feminism, 86; on motherhood, 112, 128–9; on no need for men, 115; on patriarchy,

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109. See also egalitarian feminism Im Westen nichts Neues, 69 imitation of Christ. See Christianity immortality, 32 Incas, 25 infanticide, 17 Indians, 26, 35, 149n34, 173n7. See also Hinduism individualism, 23–6, 30, 55, 120, 122 Industrial Revolution, 38–59 inequality. See hierarchy infertility, 104 initiation (boys), 14–15, 20, 41, 143n3, 152n58; circumcision as, 9, 12; into fraternal lodges, 47–9; among Greeks, 32; among Hindus, 35; spiritualized versions of, 35; war as, 11–13 Inuit people, 6 intersexual relations, 43, 184 Israelites. See Christianity; Judaism Jainism, 26, 156n72, 157n86 James, Henry, 50 Japan, 35, 156 Jencks, Christopher, 122 Jeremiah, 158 Jesus. See Christianity Joan of Arc, 164n36 Johannsen, Ernst, 68 Judaism, 29–30, 158n89 Junior, 130 justice, 26, 29 Kali (Hindu goddess), 158n87 Kamaradschaft, 68 Kaminer, Wendy, 125

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Keegan, John, 65, 174n12 Kemper, Theodore D., 6, 177n50 kibbutz, 115 The Kids Are All Right, 135 Kollwitz, Käthe, 68 Kwon, Insook, 88 law: civilizations (early), 24–8, Industrial Revolution, 39; “law of nature,” 60–1; as social contract, 64–5. See also conscription Lea, Tom, 74 leadership, 71 Leo, John, 121 Levy, Robert, 9 literacy, 24 lodges. See fraternal lodges Louis XIV, 61 Low, Bobbi S., 141n1 Macke, August, 66 Mad Men, 99 Mahabharata, 34 male feminism. See ideological feminism male gestation. See reproductive technologies male teachers. See men, as teachers maleness, ix– xi, 54, 89, 141n1; and aggression, 78; as alienation from childbirth, 112; and automation, 59; and danger, 11–13; distinctive contributions of, 3–4; and envy of women (couvade and ritual bleeding), 9, 18–29; and the “inner savage,” 52; and iron plough, 26; and “instinct,” 52; and libido, 53; marginalization of, 7, 10, 91; and

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masculinity, 24, 30–1; mobility, 30, 172; in Neolithic societies, 11–13; and penis, 6, 19, 150n43, 150n 46, 162n15; and psychosomatic illness,162n15; and reproduction, 196n50; and sperm, 123; as strength, 4, 30, 56, 63, 90; and testosterone, 76; as vulnerability, 17; and warfare, 11. See also collective identity (men); fathers; masculinity; men manhood. See collective identity (men); maleness; masculinity; men Marc, Franz, 66 Margolis, Maxine, 4, 13 marriage, 102; “brothel” model of, 113; companionate model of, 55, 169; complementarity model of, 4; monogamous model of, 155; “shotgun” weddings, 198n67; and wedding industry, 118. See also divorce; gay marriage Marotta, William, 192 Marxism, 138 Masai people, 149 masculine ideals: the ascetic, 156; the athlete, 31–4, 53, 56, 182n83; the healer, 30; the macho jock, 46, 55–6, 182n83; the pacifist, 68, 70, 176; the public servant, 27–8, 30, 67; the religious leader, 29–30; the scholar, 30, 147n 25; the selfsacrificial follower of Jesus, 49, 164n36, 173n10; the prophetic seeker of justice, 29–30 masculinity, ix–x, 4, 70, 72; in America, 182n83; anachronistic

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chivalry and, 67, 182n83; in the arts, 164n36; and bonding, 14, 47, 184n88; and citizenship, 26, 33; and coming of age, 14; as compensation for maleness, 112; as compensation for vulnerability, 17; as courage, 12; as denial of vulnerability, 45, 137; and hazing, 41; and heroes, 32; honour and shame in, 13, 33, 41; and hunting, 5; and maleness, 30–1; as managerial skill, 90; as martial skill, 11–13, 30, 34, 92; martial values become ascetic ones, 34; in matrilocal or matrilineal societies, 13–14; in Neolithic societies, 7, 14; obsolete functions, 208n129; as pragmatic non-violence, 146; in patrilineal societies, 7, 24; in patrilocal societies, 24, 149n40; in post-war period, 74; as “primitive,” 42–66, 98; proof of, 13; and risk, xi, 11–13; in Roman philosophy, 28; as “savage,” 42, 46–7, 52, 55, 66; stoic versions of, 12–13, 28, 35, 45, 92; and stress due to vulnerability, 17, 22–4, 43–5; and symbolic association with death, 28, 173n10; as “wild,” 42, 48, 55, 74, 168n39. See also armies; collective identity (men); conscription; war; wars; “wild boys” masculinization. See feminization matrilocal societies, 15 Mattes, Jane, 125 Mayans, 25 McDannell, Colleen, 50, 164n36 Mehinaku people, 17–18

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The Men, 74 men, 35; attitudes toward courtship and marriage, 39, 43; attitudes toward power, 25, 164n36; as citizens, 26, 33; as “civilized” or “over-civilized,” 52–4; and dependence on women, 21; as dropouts, 138; and envy of women, 18–29; “expendability” of, 67, 91, 147n26, 149n40; fear of failure, 44; high status for intellectual, artistic, or managerial skills, 91; low status for physical labour, 91; in matrilocal or matrilineal societies, 13–14; of the middle classes, 30, 40, 44, 46–7, 54, 89; in Neolithic societies, 7, 14; as a new underclass, 170; and personal autonomy, 5, 16, 23–4; as “pimps,” 109; in popular culture, 97–9; in post-war America, 74; and “primal needs,” 52; as proletarians, 65, 90; as protectors, 3, 93, 137, 147n25, 208n130; as providers, 39, 42, 104, 137, 208n130; as religious leaders and sages, 30, 63; and reproduction, 106–9, 196n50; as suicides, 28, 138, 156n72; as symbolic machines or weapons, 39; symbolically linked with the lower classes, 98; as teachers, 36, 55, 128; vulnerabilities of, 43–6, 137; and work 44, 48, 56–9, 76, 170n63. See also alpha males; Civil War; collective identity (men); combat; conscription; fathers; First World War; Great Depression;

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maleness; masculinity; Second World War; single fathers; Vietnam War; war; war memorials Mesopotamians, 25, 29, 154n64, 174n14 military service. See conscription military revolution, 60–95. See also armies; combat; conscription; maleness; masculinity; men; war; war memorials Millett, Kate, 112 Mills, Sherron, 124 misandry, 102, 120 misogyny, 102, 153n60, 164n36 Modern Family, 98 modernism, 66 modernity, 56, 64, 138, 172n5 Moloch (Canaanite god), 84–5, 158n89 moral philosophy, 27, 29, 95 Mosse, George L., 173n10 mothers, 40–1; childbirth, 4–5, 167n38; and daycare, 112; as dominant parents, 57; dual mothers, 130; in feminism, 113; and gestation, xi; and identity, 113; and lactation, xi, 25, lesbians as, 134; as mater familias, 104; and nature vs. culture debate, 111; as peacemakers, 112; and “primitive,” 196n54; as “prostitutes,” 113; as “rented wombs,” 108; reproductive labour of, 112; and sexual equality, 113; social, 106, 133; as virtually sacred, 130 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 121 Mundurucu people, 15–17, 150n43 Murphy Brown, 119 Murphy, Robert, 15

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Murphy, Yolande and Robert, 16 Murray, Charles, 199 Muscular Christianity, 50, 53, 163n35 Naga people, 149n34 Nama people, 21–2 Nathanson, Paul, 162n9 National Christian Association, 51 nationalism, 65 nature: “contra-natural” vs. “unnatural,” 142n4; and culture, ix–xi, 11, 141n2, 142n4, 186n91, 191n23; as environment, 19–20, 113; and gender, 24, 31, 37, 133, 191n23; and “law of nature,” 60; and sex, 40, 54, 126, 130; symbolism of, 42, 542, 133. See also culture; femaleness; maleness; sex Neolithic societies: chiefdoms, 22–4; headhunting, 12, 29, 148n32, 154n64; instability, 23; men vulnerable in, 4, 10, 22, 43; raiding, 10. See also foraging societies; horticultural societies; hunting-and-gathering societies; pastoral societies neurasthenia, 44–5 New Age movements, 120 New Deal, 58 Nicholls, Sydney Wentworth, 85 Nixon, Richard, 75 nurses, 51, 168n40 Obama, Barack, 129, 125, 170n64 O’Brien, Mary, 112 Ogden, C.K., 81 Orenstein, Peggy, 122 Owen, Wilfred, 84

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pacifism, 68, 70, 176n27, 176n28, 176n33 Paige, Jeffrey, 147n30 Palaeolithic societies, 3–4, 6–7 parents, 56, 121, 127, 195. See also fathers; mothers Parker, Rozsika, 196n54 parthenogenesis. See reproductive technologies pastoral societies, 7–8 patrilineal societies, 7, 24 patrilocal societies, 24, 149n40 peaceful societies, x–xi, 8–9, 15, 18, 93, 146n17 personal identity, 138. See also collective identity (men); collective identity (women) philosophy: and conscription, 65; in early civilizations, 24, 27–8, 31, 33–4; and “just war” theory, 62–3; and limits on government power, 64; in modern times, 79; and “social contract,” 173n11 pluralism, 132–3, 207n118 Poliakoff, Michael, 31, 33 postmodernism, 128, 138. See also deconstruction promiscuity, 101 puberty. See coming of age; initiation reform, 51–2, 64. See also revolution religion, 12, 25, 144, 193. See also Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Jainism; Judaism Remarque, Erich Maria, 68 Renoir, Jean, 71 Renvoize, Jean, 116, 202n70 reproduction, 104, 106. See also fathers; femaleness; maleness;

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mothers; reproductive technologies reproductive revolution, 104–36. See also sexual revolution reproductive technologies: abortion, 17, 95, 103–8, 150n45, 190n23, 191n24, 192n28, 193n31, 193n33, 194n41; Canadian royal commission on, 108, 194–5; cloning, 105, 108, 192; contraception, 102; control of women’s bodies, 108, 124; ex utero technologies, 105, 196n49; and gestational mothers, 130; in vitro fertilization, 105, 192; male gestation, 105, 196n50; parthenogenesis, 105, 110, 192n30; sex selection, 106, 110; and social mothers, 130; surrogacy, 105–6, 109. See also genetic fathers; genetic mothers; social parents revolution, 61, 64, 66. See also reform Rippon, Gina, 182n83 Roiphe, Anne, 196n53 Romans, 27, 32, 157n78, 157n82 Romanticism, 42, 54,82, 120 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 72 Roosevelt, Theodore, 40, 50, 54, 167 Rotundo, E. Anthony, 40 sacrifice. See human sacrifice; selfsacrifice; war Sagan, Eli, 13, 23–4, 139n34, 148nn31–2, 154nn63–4, 155n65, 157n85 Sambia people, 19–21 Samburu people, 149n35

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San people, 6 Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 13, 148n32 Santiago, Soledad, 198n66 Sasson, Siegfried, 84 Scheibach, Michael, 38, 57 Second World War, 56; in the arts, 73–4, 78–9, 175n18, 177n38, 178n54, 180n65, 184n88; conscientious objectors in, 69; deserters in, 177n48; and GI Bill, 74, 101, 134; and gold-star mothers, 82; migrations during, 101 self-sacrifice, 33, 80–1, 84, 89. See also Christianity; human sacrifice; sacrifice; war Semai people, 8–9, 146n17 semen, 17, 106, 123 Sevenhuijsen, Selma, 112 sex, ix, 101–2 sex differences, 4, 141n2 sex selection. See reproductive technologies sexual polarization, 19–21, 43, 109, 153n60 sexual revolution, 99–104. See also reproductive revolution sexual segregation: arbitrary classifications for, 31; and fraternal lodges, 168n39; and law reform, 39; public vs. private domains, 4, 9, 64–5, 111–12, 119; purdah, 159n93; and sexual polarization, 20–1; and work, 44 sexual violence, 113 Shiva (Hindu god), 158n87 Shameless, 98 Shapiro, Stephen, 86 Sherrif, R.C., 70 Simpson, O.J., 114

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Since You Went Away, 73 single fathers, 121, 200 single mothers, 55, 111–27, 130, 132, 136, 170n64, 188n20, 191n24, 192n25, 198n64, 198n67, 201n68, 204n99, 205n100, 208n127 single parents, 114, 116, 120, 130, 198, 203n82 Skidmore, Clive, 27 Smart, Carol, 191 Snowden, Lynn, 122 social constructionism, 128 social contract, 64 socialism, 67 sperm banks, 105, 122, 127, 135 Spiegel, Shalom, 178n57 sports, 53–4 Stahlhelm, 70 Stanworth, Michelle, 110 Steinem, Gloria, 113 Stern, Elizabeth and William, 110 Stossel, John, 199n67 Stravinsky, Igor, 66 stress, xi, 10, 21; and adrenaline,11; and combat, 26; and vulnerability, 22 suicide, 28, 138, 156n72 Sumerians. See Mesopotamians surrogacy. See reproductive technologies Tahitians, 9 technology, 8, 91 testosterone, 76, 177 therapeutic movements, 102, 120 Trigger, Bruce, 25 Trumbo, Dalton, 72 Tuchman, Barbara, 66

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urbanization. See civilizations Utilitarianism, 116 Versailles Treaty, 67 The Very Thought of You, 73 Vietnam War, 74–5, 87–8 violence, 6; aversion mechanisms, 146n17, 148n32; cannibalism, 12, 29, 148n39; and “character,” 53; and civilizations, 62; confined to warrior classes, 34; double standard on, 130; in gay and straight couples, 135; institutionalized, 10; and “rape culture,” 142; in Neolithic societies, 9–29, 42, 47, 148n31, 153n60; and socialism, 68; and the state, 26; and “testosterone poisoning,” 76; torture, 12–14, 22, 29, 42, 47, 148n31, 153n60; transition from martial to ascetic values, 34; among “wild boys,” 41–2 war, 10, 54, 73. See also armies; combat; conscription; First World War; maleness; masculinity; men; pacifism; Second World War; Vietnam War war memorials, 79, 180n65, 181n66, 181n78; and pacifism, 175n20; and sacrifice or “selfsacrifice,” 180n 65; and “unknown soldier,” 82. See also First World War; Second World War war profiteers, 70, 84 wars. See Civil War; First World War; Second World War; Vietnam War

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Watson, J., 21 Weiner, Caren, 130 welfare state, 170n63 Westfront, 70 Westfront 1918, 68 Whissell, Cynthia, 141n2 Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe, 110, 114, 121, 203n84 Whitehead, Mary Beth, 110 “wild boys,” 39–59, 138 Wilson, Charles, 81 women: and adrenaline, 14, 17; autonomy of, 16; and Christian imagery, 179; and collective autonomy, 103–27, 191n23, 194n41, 203n84; and claims of moral superiority, 51, 60; in combat, 88, 153; and conscription, 91–2; as consumers of “culture,” 40; health of, 106; as hunters, 143; in Neolithic societies, 10; oppose fraternal lodges,

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51; on “pedestals,” 39–40; and power, 36, 51, 106, 112; as “primitive,” 196n54; as “spiritual,” 43; symbolically linked with middle classes, 98; as teachers, 40, 129; threatened by househusbands, 205; as transmitters of culture, 50; and violence, 153; as wartime cheerleaders, 13; and work beyond home, 58 Wood, Frances Derwent, 85 World War I. See First World War World War II. See Second World War Xinguano people, 146 Yoruba people, 25 Young Men’s Christian Association, 50, 55 Zipper, Juliette, 112

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