In her article published in Vira Verita, academic İlkay Özkuralpli offers a critical look at the literature on “critical masculinity studies” by rethinking its concepts, methods and principles.
İlkay Özkuralpli
Only in the last year, with Turkey’s decision to withdraw from the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, which we know as the Istanbul Convention, the police violence against LGBTI+s after Pride Week and bianet’s report on Male Violence, we cannot say that the situation is very heart-warming for Turkish women and LGBTI+s. They are exposed to gender inequality and all kinds of violence in all areas of social life.
When we look at this picture, it would be an incomplete inference to say that the problem belongs only to women and LGBTI+s. Because, first of all, the struggle for survival and gender equality poses a problem for men themselves as the perpetrators of, as well as those exposed to the problem. Approaches to the necessity of men being a part of the solution and initiatives aimed at ensuring their participation in gender equality are being voiced on international platforms since the 2000s.
Similarly, in Turkey, for example, Gökdemir and Polatdemir’s report titled Gender Equality Mechanisms in Higher Education Institutions pointed out that men are not frequently encountered in gender equality mechanisms in universities. The Gender Equality Monitoring Association project, which started in 2017, added the thematic title of men to its 2020-2022 report and organised the Handbook of Critical Masculinity Studies Initiative and Nonviolent Masculinity Workshops to contribute to the creation of solutions.
“Since we are also engaged in imagining other futures for masculinity, we should be ready, even delighted, to see what trans men are doing to the ‘men’ category.”
These lines are from Butler’s interview in which she stated that “we need to reimagine the category of women”. I will invite us to rethink the male category together with your permission. Because we have a primary problem that I think is impossible to solve in a women’s struggle without men taking responsibility. This problem is “male violence.” Feminist studies generally address the issue of violence against women in a way that does not include direct male experience. Considering the research object of women’s studies, this result should not be surprising; but unfortunately, we cannot say the same for masculinity studies whose research object is men. This distance between masculinity studies and male violence, which resembles the silence of men about violence against both women and themselves, is a very serious issue, in my opinion. We can find clues about this distance in the relationship with men as research objects of masculinity studies and in the difficulty of talking about violence.
Masculinity studies examine male subjectivities in the context of power relations both between and within the sexes. To unpack this standard definition, the first aim of masculinity studies is gendering the man. Keeping men gender-free means that gender is exclusively female and that man is coded as (a normative) “human being”. For this reason, studies of masculinity attempt to explain the subjects that dominate with and are dominated by their gendered practices and experiences.
Therefore, it is located in a different, more mysterious place than others in gender studies because talking about or making male subjects talk is dangerous precisely because men are privileged (if not the only) perpetrators in patriarchy. The speech of a privileged group can fuel the system from which it has acquired that privilege; that is, in this case, it may be to the advantage of patriarchy, which I define as a dynamic system made up of complex power relations that do not possess a coherent absolute structure.
In this respect, this field, which is very conducive to the reproduction of masculine power from a feminist perspective, is located in a much more uneasy place than all existing gender studies. As a matter of fact, we can see this uneasiness in the fact that the field is sometimes called “critical masculinity studies” in order to diverge from the masculine line in masculinity studies. But since I can’t stand the creation of another privileged space for men, I think these “masculine” works need to be separated. Therefore, I will continue to call the field masculinity studies, with a very conscious political choice and an inherent criticism. Because in this uncomfortable position that is often overlooked, there is something that I believe we should talk about the concepts, methods and fundamental principles used in the field.
Masculinity studies that avoid giving any responsibility and agency to men and focus only on men’s victimisation are quite unsettling from a feminist perspective. To avoid misunderstandings, I want to clarify that men are definitely victimized by the heterosexist patriarchal gender system. Especially when it comes to trans men, gays, bisexuals or any gender identity that falls outside the binary gender system of heteronormativity, it is not possible to think otherwise. Therefore, what I am trying to say is this: When the victimization perspective is prioritized or not used in masculinity studies, the perpetrators of violence in all living things (and yes, animals) subjected to male violence are either ignored or positioned as victims. Yes, it is not “patriarchy equals men”; yes, “patriarchy is a system.” But patriarchy is not a giant cat on which we can blame everything.
*This article is an improved version of Özkuralpli’s presentation titled “Looking at Liberation from the Perspective of Privileges” presented at the Critical Psychology Symposium. It has been shortened in its translation. To access the full version of the article in Turkish, click here.