Abstract
Synnott’s stated aim in this book is to reassert the ‘beauties and wonders of masculinity’ by reference to such archaic models as the Knight, the Gentleman and the Self-made Man, claiming that these mythical, elitist (and thoroughly western) identities have been lost due to the influences of feminism, which, according to Synnott, is drenched in a misandry which universally casts men as abusers and women as victims. Although he lacks the overt misogyny evident in such websites as The Spearhead or A Voice for Men, his position shares the preoccupations of the Men’s Rights Movement, in which questionable lists of ‘Hateful quotes from feminists’ are in widespread circulation, containing abundant misattributions, decontextualizations, unreliable citations and an elastic definition of ‘feminist’.
Although the polemic trend of some second wave feminist writing can indeed be mined for statements which can be readily construed as misandrous, particularly as Synnott conflates criticism of patriarchy as a system with criticism of men as a sex, such maverick figures as Valerie Solanas and Germaine Greer, who are taken by Synnott as indicative of the movement, have a far higher profile in popular culture than they do amongst feminist scholars. In some places Synnott is quite simply unfair in order to prove his point. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi (2000) sympathetically documents the lives and challenges of dozens of disparate men, from perpetrators of domestic abuse and porn stars to born-again Christians concluding that: ‘Men’s task is not to figure out how to be masculine – rather their masculinity lies in figuring out how to be human.’ This statement, claims Synnott, demonstrates ‘amazing hatred’. He interprets this to say that Faludi literally believes men are sub-human (his italics). Perhaps Synnott fails to realise that in this context ‘humanity’ implies transcending the constraints of normative gender dualism – or perhaps he sees no distinction between criticizing the social construction of masculinity and hating men. In fact, the critical dialectic of sex and gender, of male and masculine, is so frequently muddled within the work, that the latter position is possible. His vision of masculinity is woefully schematic – he posits a horizontal continuum from macho to sissy, and claims that ‘men are the heroic sex’, in the tradition of Robert Bly’s hammy mythopoetics. In fact, like Bly, Synnott’s ideal seems to be a form of benign sexism rather than equality – he repeatedly descends to the wreck of the Titanic to summon the phantom of chivalry, and to demonstrate the merits of a period in which women could not vote. Whilst the ethic of saving the weak is genuinely, meritoriously altruistic, the maxim of ‘women and children first’ makes gender a problematic proxy for weakness – and disregards the fact that such ‘chivalry’ was far more likely to benefit the wives of prosperous men than the many ship’s maids and cooks who perished alongside the men of their class.
Synnott’s vision of oppressed masculinity is often plaintive and personal; his example of educational bias against boys is the fact that his son found a school trip to the ballet tedious, as if no girls were ever bored by ballet, or no boys were ever inspired to become danseuses. It also occasionally has disturbing overtones. Female birth control is described as emasculating, without qualifications – carrying the unpleasant implication that his definition of masculinity lies in men’s ability to coerce pregnancy. Taking his argument into popular culture, he neglects to note that misandry is often accompanied by a corollary misogyny (for every schlubby sitcom husband, there is a shrewish sitcom wife), taking a monocular view of the reinforcement of normative gender roles within popular culture and, bizarrely, attributing this to feminism rather than dualistic conceptions of gender. Synnott is also scathing about gender parity: ‘[t]his facile slogan appeals only to those who parrot it, with no thought behind the parrot brain’, he states, finding the principle so self-evidently ridiculous that he considers this peculiar, clanging insult to pass muster as an adequate discussion.
Strangely, a large part of the book is barely relevant to his position. At great length, he trawls sources such as Time magazine’s most influential people list and International Who’s Who to list high-achieving males, as if men’s achievements and contributions to society were anywhere in question, seemingly untroubled by the fact that such lists, which overwhelmingly feature men rather than women, rather tend to undercut his thesis that feminism has wrought an age of arrant misandry.
Rather than the radical rethinking Synnott promises in his title, this book is a reassertion of archaic modes of masculinity, and a confused and confusing attack on feminism. As one of Synnott’s models of idealized masculinity is the Knight, it is difficult not to envisage the author as Don Quixote, beguiled by chivalric fictions, tilting at windmills.