Make masks butch again
Masks and “masculinity” – you’d think that was about as random as masks and mustard or masks and Mars, but no, apparently masks are a threat to the Rule of Testicle-havers.
When HIV emerged in the United States, a key part of the public health response was to urge consistent condom use. Although the advice made obvious sense, in some pockets of the population, people resisted it. Researchers began to dig into the social factors that motivated this resistance. They found that among men who were having sex with women, “masculine ideology” was associated with rejection of condom use.
Ah so that’s the culprit! Have we come up with an effective vaccination for it yet?
At the time the research was being conducted, three factors were cited as the pillars of this ideology: status, toughness and anti-femininity.
And you can’t really do the “anti-femininity” thing without at least a tinge of misogyny. To put it another way, why be “anti-femininity” at all unless you think there’s something bad and tainted and disgusting about being female? And if you think there’s something bad and tainted and disgusting about being female, well…that’s misogyny.
In other words it’s a kind of loop we’re stuck in. We all learn as toddlers that boys are stronger than girls; we learn it at a minimum as part of the rules of engagement. At a primitive level, stronger=better. This means that being seen as, or called, girl-like is a profound threat to male people. Boom: misogyny is born.
So here we are. Male people who are never taught, or who refuse to learn, that female people are not in fact inferior by virtue of having less muscle mass become people who refuse to wear masks because ew girly.
Today, the concept has been expanded a bit to encompass other features. The American Psychological Association has defined this ideology as a “particular constellation of standards” that demands that men ascribe to “adventure, risk, and violence.” Certainly, choosing not to wear the simplest of protective gear during a pandemic is both a risk and an adventure.
But the risk is greater for other people, so that shouldn’t count in the masculinity score, but it does anyway.
Perhaps not surprisingly, where this conceptualization of manliness prevails, the dominant avatars who embody it are white men with epic swagger. As one researcher described it, this “celluloid masculinity” muscling around on screens, perhaps most famously in the form of characters played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, represents a “dominant Western exemplar of manhood.” These characters, you see, despite the copious body armor and weaponry they tote around in their films, would never, ever don simple barrier protection devices because viruses can sense fear.
Well, body armor suggests combat, heroics, noise, smoke. Masks suggest hospitals. No Enemy Soldier ever quailed at the sight of a dude in a little cloth mask. Maybe we could issue men olive green masks with images of grenades and assault rifles on them?
Yeah but not giving a shit about other people is super manly.
I have two thoughts. One is that in the tacti-cool look that all the kids are trying to emulate the “operators” often wear face masks to conceal their identity.
Two, if we actually wanted to increase mask useage, officials should be telling the COVIDIOTS that the government doesn’t want them wearing masks. Under no circumstances should they enter a place of business with their faces covered. Boom, 90% mask useage overnight.
Honestly, there’s a segment of the population (but particularly loud an well-armed in the States) who if you said “never let anyone shit in your mouth” would turn to the person beside them and say “you don’t have to go to the bathroom, do you?”
“At a primitive level, stronger=better. This means that being seen as, or called, girl-like is a profound threat to male people. Boom: misogyny is born.”
To make clear something that’s implied there, but maybe not to the level that it deserves: Men are socialized to be violent. The ability to inflict violence, to impose your will through force, is deeply embedded in our cultural understanding of manliness, and it’s imposed on boys from a young age, beginning as soon as they graduate from firetrucks to sharks and dinosaurs (the carnivores are the best!) and becoming more explicit as they move to superheroes and GI Joe, then action movie heroes, and as adults it’s gun and military fetishism. Think of every trope of the ‘manly man’ staring down an opponent until they submit, of getting in barfights, of being a ‘good guy with a gun.’ They grow up immersed in the idea that physical power is what they should strive for, and a way to solve problems.
I just got back from the grocery store. It’s like a battlezone, because so few people wear masks and rush right at you, almost like on purpose. I got the feeling my mask was like a challenge to them…can we manage to breathe on that woman? A few couples had one of them masked; it was always the woman. About 2/3 of the elderly women were masked, and about half of the elderly men. Not a single man under the age of about 50 was masked, except for one young man who was running the register (and they don’t require masks for that, so it was clearly a choice on his part. To be fair, since my husband isn’t sure he is a he, masculinity may not be the biggest concern to this particular young man).
About 1 out of every 6 young women was masked; none of the ones who had kids. Many of them drive around in pickup trucks with macho stickers, though the trucks belong to them and not their husband. A lot of the women around here value “tough”, too, a type of tough believed to be consistent with being a woman, which ends up looking a lot like Trump tough.
This entire region inhales the tough masculinity meme, but has a differential buy-in to the femininity meme, with women often coming down on the “tough” side because the feminine women are seen as bookish coastal elites, and, interestingly, suspected of being feminists.
Masks here are definitely a political statement.
I know these types of men–I’m sure that we all do. Thankfully they seem to be a tiny minority in my city. I went to the store yesterday and absolutely everyone was wearing a mask, and half the employees were constantly wiping down carts and baskets and credit-card readers with disinfectant wipes. And STILL, even with all these measures, the infection rate here in Washington is merely “holding steady” rather than going down.