Out of the Man Box: What to make of the problem of control when we consider sexuality?

Saturday, February 21, 2009

What to make of the problem of control when we consider sexuality?

I was reading a footnote by anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown to effect that “In American culture... we work hard to control our sexuality...” [Brown, Mama Lola, pg. 376] This got me to thinking about how I have previously identified the conventional masculine attachment to control as a key issue for men to address in moving beyond conventional behaviors and identity.

What to make of the problem of control when we consider sexuality? Feminists have already learned a lot about males dominating and controlling female sexuality. Clearly males must give up control of female sexuality.

But what of controlling male sexuality?

What do we think about control of our own sexuality?

What do we think about control of the sexuality of other males?

These questions deserve more discussion and thought.

about the editor, this blog & associated publications

I have been following the engagement of men in changing gender relations for a couple of decades now.

I have experienced both the difficulties and the great benefits of change. I have contributed a bit to the literature. I am on the advisory board of Voice Male Magazine and BKNation. I am a founding associate of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinity.

I have worked [now semi-retired] as a national security analyst. I am a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.

In that work I write critical studies of U.S. defense policy. I also spend time making information about national security issues available on the Web so that millions of people in the United States and around the world are better informed and therefore better prepared to engage in the politics of security.

In 2004 I watched while George Bush and Karl Rove successfully called John Kerry’s masculinity into question around a war in which Kerry had served with distinction while Bush had used family connections to avoid going. Given conventional gender performance expectations of men this seemed like an unlikely formula for political success!

But Bush and Rove used male insecurity and female attachment to the most fundamental of bargains in patriarchy (men protecting the women folk) to build an election victory.

I realized that in order to make it harder for men like George Bush to lead us into unnecessary 'wars of choice' we need to free as many males as possible from the tyranny of wondering if they are ‘real men’ -- so that they can confidently say ‘no’ to war (as well as other destructive behaviors!) And that will take men organizing their own liberation from the confines of conventional masculinity.

A friend called my attention to the literature of people who have trans-gendered. Reading their stories brought home to me how much of what we experience as our gender is socially constructed and can be reconstructed by our own agency.

If we allow ourselves to think outside the confines of the binary Male/Female, the possibilities for liberating males is huge and obvious.

In this blog I have sought to build out ideas and practice for the liberation of positive new masculinities. I call attention to instances of the expression of new masculinities and to collective action in support of liberation and an end to gender violence.

I started this blog in 2006. In 2015 I associated it with a curated publication called Out of the Man Box (on the Flipboard platform.)

This publication collects the best writing (also videos) I find on liberating masculinities from the so-called man box of conventionality.

Out of the Man Box is published in association with Voice Male magazine.

Charles Knight

Out of the Man Box

Man in Box

Saturday, February 21, 2009

What to make of the problem of control when we consider sexuality?

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