Masculinity and Militarism
I’ve said this before, but American men need to take a moment for some introspective analysis. For many American men, masculinity has become increasingly militarized in recent years, and that can be extremely dangerous. Let me start by clarifying that I’m not here to pedal the belief that masculinity is inherently toxic — though it can become perverse when left unchecked, such as in cases where men feel like violence is a useful way to assert their manliness; we all know that guy who brags about how many fights he’s been in — I think masculinity generally serves a useful purpose in how our society organizes itself and how individuals understand themselves, and allows for a certain level of cultural stability. Plus, it has had undeniable evolutionary benefits.
A common, positive aspect of masculinity is the man’s role as a protector, but that can be taken to an extreme, and I believe that’s what’s happening in cases where civilian men voluntarily adopt an arbitrarily militarized persona. Many men have bought into a sheepdog mentality where their masculinity is related to their ability or duty to defending others. The trouble comes in when these men don’t acknowledge just how boring everyday life is for most people in America. Rather than working to defend others from common, tangible threats, they spend their time obsessing over what they would do in various, wildly improbable scenarios to protect people (but importantly, only those whom they deem as worthy of their protection) from imagined threats of impending violence/warfare on American soil; it’s a self-aggrandizing exercise that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when they prematurely escalate situations, consciously or otherwise, to live out their grizzly, heroic fantasies (often in situations where violence could’ve been avoided entirely).*
These men aren’t difficult to spot. They have American flags, rebel flags, and “don’t tread on me” flags everywhere. They have camouflage on everything, and they typically drive obnoxiously large and boisterous vehicles. They’re probably ashamed of their attractions to men, their small wieners, or both. They have preoccupations with excessively deadly firearms and other weapons of war (I’m not talking about your uncle who hunts, I’m talking about that nut at the pawn shop who has a closet full of illegally obtained automatic weapons and hand grenades). Additionally, they may well be police officers or first responders. Whether they occupy one of those roles or not, they’re all but guaranteed to harbor an obsessive degree of respect for police officers (and armed service members), as well as fire and EMS workers, to a lesser extent.
One only has to look to Nazi Germany to see how a militarized idea of masculinity can lead to widespread violence. The notion of defending one’s country can easily be mistaken as being congruent with xenophobia: defending your country does not equate to opposition to anyone who is foreign or different. On the other hand, we can look to Boy Scouting as an example of a program that uplifts masculinity while toeing the line between instilling a deep respect for our country that actually leads many young men to service, without resorting to the dangerous notion that masculinity can ONLY be achieved through service (which many who haven’t served interpret as a call to nationalist aggression).
American men who have been ensnared by that perverse misrepresentation of masculinity need to realize that while defending loved ones is a desirable masculine quality, it is foolhardy to preoccupy ourselves with preparation for a war that will likely never come, especially while plenty of real threats exist which we could direct our energy toward neutralizing, from public health issues like vaping and obesity, to privacy issues like Facebook and others companies profiting from unethically collected data, to societal issues like intolerance and the lack of credible media sources. While we focus our attention on reinforcing our masculinity through displays of aggression and militarization, we allow the real threats that endanger our loved ones to flourish.