Why do some men apparently regard wearing antimicrobial face masks as unmanful? Writing in The Week magazine, contributing editor Bonnie Kristian describes the apparent conflict between the masculine imperative to protect others, and the other masculine imperative, to never appear weak. Unfortunately, Kristian has the same shortcoming I’ve seen from many people who discuss manfulness, from either side: they lack a meaningful definition of masculinity.
Since Kristian published this article, I’ve tried to find anyone specifically, unambiguously calling mask-wearing unmanful, and failed. You might find something, but I have a day job. The only inverse correlation between masculinity and mask-wearing I’ve found, has come from people arguing against that correlation. But even if people don’t endorse that position explicitly, it’s nevertheless implicit, when President Trump, a man notorious for wanting to appear strong, refuses to wear one.
Similarly, I don’t have any more thorough a definition of masculinity than Bonnie Kristian. However, as a construction worker, I do have experience within an almost entirely male workplace. (In our area, we have two women electricians, and one woman who intermittently works a concrete pump truck; otherwise, the industry is a sausage fest.) And with such experience in a dude-centered environment, I think I have qualifications to make certain generalizations.
I believe Bonnie Kristian makes one important point in describing her masculinity paradox: she sees manhood as an internal philosophical precept, as something you just inherently are. The men I work around probably wouldn’t agree. Manhood, in an all-male environment, requires constant demonstration to reassert its prerogative. Masculinity evidently isn’t something you are, it’s something you do, and as such, it needs constant re-affirmation in deeds and, especially, in words.
These men, among whom I spend most of my waking hours, constantly spar aloud to demonstrate their manfulness. These words include cheap insults, sexualized banter, and “jokes” that verge into the territory of ad hominem attacks. This “sexualized banter” often includes rape jokes. Much workplace repartee includes men’s attempts to prove themselves as cruel as possible to anyone they perceive as weaker than themselves, including women, homosexuals, and animals.
Their prize for these verbal battles is the right to continue battling. Though I haven’t heard the phrase “man card” used recently, the underlying philosophy remains intact: that manhood is something conferred by other men, and which needs constantly reinforced, lest it be rescinded. Importantly, the earliest use of the “man card” concept I can find comes from a beer commercial, demonstrating that those who define our social roles, generally have something to sell.
Let me emphasize that, here as in Bonnie Kristian’s exposition, there’s a difference between what men say, and what they do. About six weeks ago, my co-workers and I discovered where a feral cat gave birth in the insulation underneath our job trailer, then, for whatever reason, left the kittens abandoned. When I nested the kittens in a box with a towel, these men, who’d previously joked about dumping animals beside the road, tried not to be seen openly cooing over the kittens.
So, manfulness apparently requires men to demonstrate their masculine credentials externally. This makes manliness as much a theatrical presentation, as any runway model demonstratively swishing her skirts during Paris Fashion Week. Being manly isn’t a matter of having virtues of character, as Aristotle and Epictetus asserted; rather, it’s a matter of macho posturing, which men must maintain constantly, for other men’s benefit.
Therefore, if men find wearing a respirator mask to Wal-Mart emasculating, it isn’t because they believe the mask makes them weak; it’s because they believe the mask makes them appear weak to other men. Consider the equally theatrical demonstrations of manfulness we’ve seen recently: protestors storming public buildings and ordering submarine sandwiches while carrying large-caliber weapons. Masks make men look weak; guns make men look strong.
I’d say these men think the mask makes them look fearful, except what else is openly toting an AR-15 except an expression of fear that someone will attack? No, going maskless and carrying armor-piercing ordnance share one common characteristic: the desire for control. To these men, conscious of being perceived as insufficiently masculine, the ideal of theatrical virility requires being seen as in control of every situation.
This isn’t, I’d suggest, a sufficient definition of modern masculinity. Better philosophers can wrangle that later. Rather, it’s a sufficient identifying marker of this specific masculine expression, and why it becomes vulnerable to toxicity. Macho men demand to be seen in control of every situation. And they demand control because they know they don’t really have it.
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