My thinking is that trying to construct any identity for straight, white men is a wasted effort. As I said above, I think it is more constructive for such men to engage with other ‘identities’ rather than try to construct a corporate one for themselves. Evidence is given to this by Alex Linley’s comments posted above, where he posits the ideas as essentially choosing between competing identities.

This misses the point entirely.

Briefly, I think there may be a conflation, as the comments proceed, of arguments about whether men’s societies within universities are warranted and the broader question of whether men ought to spending time assessing their masculine identity etc. etc..

On the former, my response would be a fairly straightforward no, albeit one without familiarity with the circumstances, given what appears to be a significant likelihood that even well-meaning efforts may be co-opted by forces which are actually in favour of strengthening the beer-swilling, Top Gear watching identity.

On the latter question, I’m more in two minds, but then it seems to be that feminist thinking may be too. I’m struck, for example, by Susan Faludi’s provisional support (in ‘Stiffed’)for the Louis Farrakhan’s ‘million man’ march of the late 1990s, on the basis that it was an attempt to develop a masculine identity different from the traditional post-war conception of the working man. On the other hand, such support seems to rely on the reasoning that there is in fact some kind of a priori hunter-gatherer-cum-problem-solving male psyche which has been ‘stiffed’ my the shifts in the post-war American industrial ‘way of life’, and I’m tempted to think that any organisational construction around the male identity is bound to end up reconstructing an identity favourable to the retention of a power status quo when, as Bob suggests, the real task to be undertaken is about capital/labour inequities.

All half-thought through. I’ll come back to it.

Bob, I think you’ve actually missed the point. Plenty of young people end up committing suicide as a result of the tension between what they ‘are’ (or rather how they are seen by others) and what they are expected to be. So I think it’s superficial at best to dismiss it all with the claim that every minority, every individual should simply be who they want. They can’t.

Social influences are an important factor in determining who each of us are, and if we’re lucky enough not to experience the tension above, well then we can be glad for ourselves – but it is simply not the case with everyone.

Even the vaunted concept of ‘ability’ is socially constructed; genderised ‘norms’ as to what young people choose to study (for example) are still very much operative. It would be better if they weren’t, of course, but wishing doesn’t make them go away. They go away when we fight for it.

And even ‘ability’ is moderated by the fact that women are still chained, to an extent, by the expectation that they’ll get a good job, bring up the kids, tidy the house and still be up for sex every night (Laurie Penny always has good stuff on this, usually written in amusing hyperbole). These expectations are not laid on men; the archetypal male (of popular culture) has disposable income, is single, likes to drink til he drops and has all the moral qualities of a particularly perfidious rodent.

Finally, my ‘privileged Western lifestyle’ allows me to consider all these things – if you’d read this blog more than just skimming on article, you’d note concern for jobs and a raft of other things. I write simply to understand how all these things interact to create a world, rather than considering any of them in abstract, since they don’t exist in abstract and can’t be dealt with one by one.

How I behave/live/dress/speak is utterly irrelevant. I’m not gay, I like pink (the colour, not the musician), I write poetry, I cook, I iron. I also box, kick box, ride off road, drink beer, and gamble. I also know many women who do all of these things. Are you all so insecure that you *require* some label to know who/what you are? How is this even considered important?

I’m aware of the arguments about “representation” in various arenas, but as far as I can tell it is only when things are judged on ability – jobs, “salaries” (you can tell it’s the few % of the populace who earn large amounts of money talking about earnings and inequalities in pay – the rest of us are on an hourly rate which is the same for everyone, irrespective of gender. Typical crap assuming they know about/can speak for everyone), etc – that this kind of intellectualisation of abstract, unimportant, self righteous tosh falls by the wayside.

How about, instead of indulging in the sort of “debate” your priveleged western life allows about male/female only stereotypes/roles blah blah blah, you consider important things. Feeding everyone. Population issues (the only other organism that is remotely similar to humans is the virus. We SERIOUSLY need to address population levels, and now). The accumulation of most of the world’s resources by a tiny percentage of the population.

Mind open.

Of course though, in practice…

And I don’t think that’s Orwellian; what we have now is a centralised method for discriminating against people who live their lives on the edges of what is ‘approved of’ by the media, standing its self-appointed place as Vox Populi. Abolishing that and allowing anyone and everyone to take over the role is much more democratic.

In the meantime, discussion always helps – but allowing what is, as I alluded to, the ‘default’ identity in Western liberal democracies to form official groups is probably not going to facilitate discussion – certainly not in these specific instances. Better to combine such discussion into a wider forum, such as – at Oxford – the Left Forum, where anyone can take part and debate the issue.

I think the key point is that women’s groups are formed in order to take specific action on women’s rights; there is no equivalent need for men. And if such groups are formulated, the actions they can most readily take turn identity issues into a zero-sum game. Such as trying to establish Men’s Welfare Officers, or trying to eliminate the idea of only women standing for any particular office.