In the essay "how do you build a man" by Anne Fausto-Sterling, stressed out that there are many books, research papers or articles about masculinity and male development, all representing scientific findings, but always written in neutral or abstract language. The author agued whether nature, science or society makes a man and to express her ideas used John Money's theory of construction of masculinity and his 10 road signs directioning a person to the paths of male or female. The author also explained the studies about SDY-gene and how XX gene individuals are born female and XY gene individuals are born males and how physicians fear that a male born with a 0.6 in. of penis and below will not develop their way into masculinity to accomplish male’s main object in our society, reproduction. These 3 points of ways that could affect a male’s personality are actually in 1 same category “contradiction”. To explain my point of view I could use Mao Tse Tung’s theory “The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist”. In other words the interdependence of Nature, Science and Society form, made, build or create a man. For example a male baby could have perfect male testosterones, but it’s actually in the childhood part of life where a male is push by Society either to be a male or a female according to the Nature gender of how he/she was born or the fact of how the Science transformed the individual because Nature played a wrong part and it will not be accepted by Society. Many researches tried to decide whether Nature, Science or Society made a man, but if they actually see the big map that Nature is nature and that it’s why we have Science, to fix our nature in order to be acceptable by Society. It’s a circle of contradiction.
I just discussed the fact of how men are made, and when I say made I mean masculinity. As a reality of life humans just born with two types of gender "Male (man) and Female (woman)" but masculinity is the actual behavior of a male. But a male is born male because of the penis and a female is a female because has a vagina and the only thing we can argue about is masculinity (male behavior) or feminine (female behavior) and how the interdependence of nature, science and society could make it. Man not necessarily means masculinity. Male behavior is called masculinity by definition of the toughness in every possible way in coparrison of a female. But this complex word had been misinterpreted by our own society with the word virility which by definition means the masculinity property of being capable of copulation and procreation.
Man, masculinity and virility derivates from one and only word PENIS according to our society but is actually more complex than that. In the end of the road,man and masculinity are entirely different. Males are born, but the masculinity of that male is made.
The connection or in fact analogy you make between Fausto-Sterling's discussion of contradictions which accompany the assignments of sex as well as gender to humans, and Mao Tse Tung's theory is wonderful. I agree that contradictions do facilitate how we grapple with concepts of nature, science and society, which as you point out are interconnected. Therefore, to understand one we employ the terminology/knowledge about the other. As you note, we explain the male sex(nature) using science(how doctors define and quantify male sex), which is then performed for the society at large using gender. You did a great job with distinguishing the difference between sex and gender. But if you review Fausto-Sterling's argument, actually reproduction is not the main objective for males- remember preservation of the ability to reproduce is emphasized in female children-the importance is placed on size of the male member,which needs to be large enough in order to penetrate a female in the act of heterosexual act. Also, if a male lacks virility, which for many is synonymous with masculinity, is he still considered a male?
ReplyDeleteI think according to our society, even if a man lacks virility, he will still be considered as a male, but the only thing is that he will be tagged with adjectif effeminate. Now if you ask me how much effeminate is too effeminate to still be considered as a mle, that's everyone's own personal judgement. And that judgement will be dictated by society conventions.
ReplyDelete