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The Place Where Jordan Peterson And The Gillette Ad Backlash Intersect

Is it emasculating to ask men to stop engaging in constant dominance jousting?

Photo by Jan Zikán on Unsplash
  • This is excerpted in part from a prior conversation with Vasana in which we discussed why so many men, including him, reacted negatively to the recent ad.

“Identity is honed by conflict,” said social critic, Camille Paglia, in her 2017 conversation with Jordan Peterson. Peterson then went on to add that, “The thing about men interacting with men again — isn’t that they respect each other’s viewpoints; that isn’t exactly right. I know a lot of men whom I would regard as remarkably tough people for one reason or another, and everything you do with them is a form of combat. So it’s not that men are automatically giving respect to other men; it’s that combat is there and it’s expected.”

Many men who objected to the recent ad by Gillette, expanding on their tag line, “The best a man can get,” complained it was emasculating. The ad primarily showed men breaking up fights amongst boys, intervening in bullying, and indicating to their friends that harassing women on the street wasn’t cool. The voice-over said,

Bullying, the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, toxic masculinity. Is this the best a man can get? — Is it? We can’t hide from it, it’s been going on far too long. We can’t laugh it off. Making the same old excuses — boys will be boys. But something finally changed. And there will be no going back because we — we believe in the best in men. “men need to hold other men accountable. To say the right thing, to act the right way. Some already are, but some is not enough. Because the boys watching today will be men of tomorrow.

It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more that we can get closer to our best.

The social system of the United States is a dominance hierarchy, and a part of that is gender-related, in other words, a patriarchy.

This is because in order to obtain your place in a pyramid-shaped pecking order, you have to constantly vie for that position. Bullying and harassment are not the only ways to vie for position, but they are commonly used ones. If men are being encouraged to behave differently and to speak up when they see it taking place, it is, in fact challenging the societal norms around jousting for position.

But, as the Gillette ad so aptly showed, those norms harm both men and women. It’s often talked about the tolls that abuse and harassment exact on women, and to a lesser extent the tolls that being bullied or shamed takes on boys and men. What is less often acknowledged is the toll that the emotional isolation of always trying to joust for dominance exacts even on the boys and men who are successful at it.

Men who suffer from a lack of emotional connection typically struggle with higher levels of stress, alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, failed relationships and shorter lifespans.

So, why don’t the men who are also suffering at the hands of this destructive social system recognize it as being an issue? Why do they so often turn their attention towards feminists or some other external factor as the source of their wounding and pain?

Vasana: Perhaps it’s because men want to have their wounds rubbed by the big JP.

Elle: This is precisely why Peterson is so huge. He taps into the pain aspect and then says, “Mostly what’s wrong here is the outside world full of feminists and neo-Marxists. If you just clean your room, stand up straight, and are allowed to be as ruthless and competitive as is in your nature, then all will be fine again.” Meanwhile, that element of ruthlessness IS the root of the wounds, because in a dominance hierarchy one must constantly joust for position and try to rise at the expense of those around you. And it’s not natural or inevitable for humans; it’s an endless performance of brutality, which encourages bullying others at the expense of your own soul.

Peterson is also keeping men from really doing deep self-inventory by putting their focus on SJWs and other externals as the real problems. Peterson is wrong — dominance hierarchy is neither necessary nor valuable. It’s destructive to all, including the very few at the pinnacle of the hierarchy. We don’t need to make hierarchy and ruthlessness more acceptable again. We don’t need more Donald Trumps in the world — a man who seemingly has it all and yet lives a hollow and vapid life devoid of any actual love or even friendship. We need a more partnership-oriented society where encouraging men to stand up for each other and take care of each other doesn’t spark outrage or claims of emasculation.

I’ve heard Peterson say that part of the element of respect that underlies interactions between men is that they know that if they need to, they can resort to fisticuffs — but you can’t do that with a woman.

My reaction to this is, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!? You don’t know how to comport yourself without having to engage in what is essentially dominance posturing and violence? That’s what you honestly rely on as the foundation of your interactions.” That’s not the world I really want to live in.

The notion that it’s desirable to have the option to resort to violence is completely wrong, but I do believe it’s a part of what was poked at in this ad. Solving your problems through violence is baked into our current ideas of what it means to be masculine, even if it's mostly subconsciously; even if you aren’t personally the kind of guy who typically behaves in aggressive or violent ways.

https://centerforpartnership.org/shifting-from-domination-to-partnership/

As bell hooks says, “Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.” (bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love)

In the end, patriarchy gives only a few men access to power in society, and most men some small access to power in relation to women, robbing all men of core aspects of their humanity. This is a raw deal of monumental proportions. I see this as the core source of violence: the physical, emotional, and spiritual brutalization of boys and men.”

That’s a quote from Miki Kashtan Ph.D., excerpted from my article on The History of Patriarchy. So yes, men have a lot of wounds, but instead of really looking at them and dealing with them, many of them lash out at the women (and others) who are pointing out that they are tired of being shit on. “Everything was fine until the feminists started agitating until the #MeToo movement started whining…..” Meanwhile, everything was not fine at all — for women or for men.

Vasana: This has really stuck with me, especially the last bit:

It’s also keeping men from really doing deep self-inventory by putting their focus on SJWs and other externals as the real “problems.”

That is so chillingly true, my goodness.

This helped me figure, when my attention is diverted by my indignance about being attacked “as a man,” it is certainly not able to move into the deep trauma which contributes to and results from wearing the mask of masculinity, or rather, masculinity as a mask.

And again, when I do finally come into contact with this pain, my displacement of blame onto SJWs and Neo-Marxists and feminists and women is still stopping me from taking awareness deeply into the pain.

That is fucking truth right there, Elle.

Thank you xxx

There are no current societies that are entirely Domination Systems or Partnership Systems. It is a continuum, but the United States is currently on the domination end of the spectrum. Encouraging movement towards the partnership end seems to me like the only sane thing to do — on behalf of us all.

I do believe that identity gets honed through facing challenges, but purposely seeking out and creating conflict in order to do so is simply barbaric and anti-social. It’s a seriously outdated model. Identity can also be honed by deeply excavating your wounds and inner landscape so that you aren’t run by those from behind the scenes like a puppet. That’s a much more worthy use of time and attention than constant jousting for dominance.

Image: Center for Partnership Studies

© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.

Masculinity
Bullying
Jordan Peterson
Women
Society
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