Men,Masculinities,and the Demise of a State

Introduction

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a classic example of a “collapsed state.” The government is weak, unable, and/or unwilling to provide security and deliver vital public services. ¹ The government has no monopoly on violence and is lacking territorial control. Where the government does have control, state officials are largely corrupt and predation prevails. This article provides an analysis of the effects of economic, social, and political crisis on men and masculinities. It does so through case study of a small town of Kiliba, located in South Kivu, close to the borders of both Rwanda and Burundi. Until the mid-nineties, Kiliba was seen as a relative paradise amid widespread decay, due in part to an existing sugarcane factory, which, besides providing employment, also provided public services, such as health care, education, and agricultural support schemes. Kiliba’s prosperity did not last. Instability in the region and the outbreak of war led to the closure of the sugarcane factory, which caused large-scale unemployment.

When I first came into Kiliba and I did interviews with the former workforce, the feeling engulfed me that I was looking at a micro-example of the gradual state collapse that had happened on a national level, several decades delayed and a lot less gradual, but similar in almost every other account. Over the course of several weeks in between July and August 2010, I visited Kiliba seven times. I conducted around ten key informant interviews with people that had worked and lived in Kiliba for a long time. I also did three focus group discussions (FGDs), with approximately twenty people in every focus group. The FGDs were with former male workers, a mixed group of male and females who had worked for the factory, and a group of widowed and divorced women who were now the sole caretaker of their families. The large size of the FGD offers an interesting reflection of the unequal position between researcher and researched. While I prefer smaller groups, my arrival always triggered expectations and interest and attracted more attention than was needed or preferred. FGDs were always held in open spaces and while the discussion was going on, new people arrived who were often immediately included in the discussion by other participants. So every FGD started with expectation management and explanations of the exact research goals. In order not to induce suspicion or rivalry, I did not send people off. Only with the FGD with widowed and divorced women did I request new arrivals to leave, because of the sensitive nature of the discussion and the status of the women. Individual interviews were always strictly confidential and only included the interviewee, the interviewer, and the interpreter. My research in Kiliba was part of a much larger research that took me deep into both Uvira and Fizi Territoire. While I will focus mostly on the case study of Kiliba, the argument put forward in this article is also relevant for the other research locations.

This article will explain why traditional notions of masculinities in terms of hegemonic, complicit, subordinate, protest, and marginalized as theorized by R. W. Connell, lose some of its analytical value in situations of extreme distress. While it does not denote or refute Connell’s classification, it does argue that Connell’s theory inadequately captures the complexities of situations of enduring crisis and that it therefore needs to be expanded, by adding new subcategories. I argue that a new conceptualization is needed for situations such as the one in Kiliba, which this article attempts to do.

Kiliba: The Demise of a Paradise Amid Widespread Decay

The sugarcane factory was built in 1951 by a group of Belgian entrepreneurs from Antwerp. ² As a major industrial complex employing thousands of people, the sugarcane factory provided services that the government failed to provide in order to ensure a healthy, well-educated, and harmonious workforce. The owners constructed a hospital that offered better medical services than governmental hospitals, providing free health care to all their employees and their families. Several primary and secondary schools were built in the vicinity of factory and the best teachers from the region were recruited. The owners also took care of housing for their staff. In order to increase the production of the farmers who sold their produce to the factory, the factory management provided all kinds of agricultural training for the farmers and they provided them with high quality seeds and fertilizers. Kiliba was one of the most ethnically diverse places of South Kivu, and in order to promote social harmony between different groups, the factory management supported a variety of social activities outside of the work floor that brought the different religious and ethnic groups together. These social activities included churches, sport clubs, choirs, and dance groups, among others. According to the former workers, the factory even had its own banking and loan system for the employees. In the late eighties and early nineties, the factory employed over 3,000 people whose salaries supported an elaborate economy of shopkeepers, traders, farmers, butchers, cattle herders, bakers, sex workers, taxi drivers, mechanics, and so on. In the absence of decent state services, the sugarcane factory built an impressive infrastructure that rivaled and surpassed services delivered by the state to increase production and profit. Many of the inhabitants of Kiliba talked about the factory as if Kiliba was the territory of a state and the factory was its government. A state within a state: well organized, more resilient, and far more successful than its host.

The factory survived a series of events that brought the rest of the country to its knees. These included the Mulele rebellion in the sixties and the Zaïrianisation and thirty years of economic and political mismanagement under Mobutu, during which the country’s formal economy went largely bankrupt. In the late eighties and mid-nineties, the DRC was one of the poorest and most corrupt and unstable countries in the world (van Reybrouck 2010; Wrong 2000; Macgaffey 1987). However, the sugarcane factory in Kiliba has circumvented crisis through smart politics (e.g., having key people installed in the committee that oversaw the expropriation), exclusive use of US dollars to avoid the hyperinflation, and through diversifying their market to Burundi and Rwanda. In the year 1991, when the rest of the country was faced with hyperinflation, economic decline and the near collapse of the formal economy, the Kiliba sugarcane factory recorded its highest rate of production. ³

The factory suffered its first serious blow with the genocide in Rwanda, which was up till then its main export market. The genocide in Rwanda caused a plunge in the demand for sugar and it created large streams of refugees in the border area. The factory production records showed that in 1994, the drop in export demands reduced production by half, which also meant that a large number of people lost their jobs and that farmers in the region were able to only sell part of their produce. The factory never recovered. Throughout 1995, production plummeted. On the eve of the first Congo war in 1996, the factory stopped production altogether, maintaining only a very small unpaid workforce who were primarily responsible for protecting the expensive machinery from petty theft. It is alleged that the factory owners again bought off the various armies and rebel movements to prevent large-scale plunder by armed forces.

According to the nostalgic memories of the majority of people I interviewed, up till 1993, Kiliba was a sanctuary, a utopia if you like, shining brightly within a country that was in an advanced state of decay. From 1994 onward, the population of Kiliba joined the ranks of their fellow countrymen; poor, desperate, and waiting for a better future that was nowhere on the horizon. The impact the closure of the factory had on the local community was all encompassing: it impacted on practically every single daily lived experience of Kiliba’s inhabitants. In terms of gender, the closure of the factory turned everything upside down. Overnight, families that used to earn salaries high above the national level were earning nothing anymore. Husbands could no longer provide for their families, which meant that their wives had to contribute to the family’s survival. In many households, women became the primary breadwinners and children started to look to their mothers for support, rather than their fathers. Echoing the work of Chris Dolan (2010) and Desiree Lwambo (2011) the “men became women and the women became men.”

Gendered Consequences of the Factory’s Bankruptcy

In the late eighties and early nineties of the twentieth century, Kiliba was potentially the single most enabling environment in South Kivu for men to comply with societal gender expectations. Expectations held that “real” men provided nonviolent, visionary, and authoritative leadership. Men were expected to display wisdom and provide valuable advise to others. The most basic expectation of men was that they provided for and protected their family and that they had a high virility and sexual potency, resulting in many children (Hollander 2014; Dolan 2010, 34; Lwambo 2011, 4; Schatzberg 1988, 82; Mechanic 2004).

There were of course significant differences between different men. Connell’s (1995) distinction and classification between hegemonic, complicit, and subordinate masculinities also existed in Kiliba. In the social hierarchy, hegemonic masculinity stands above complicit masculinity and subordinate masculinity (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). ⁴ Hegemonic masculinity refers to a type of manhood that only a few men can actually achieve, while others position themselves in relation to it (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 832). Although hegemonic masculinity can be seen as the top of the chain, it does not necessarily imply domination; it implies hegemony. This is not achieved through violence, but rather by cultural complicity and social acceptance. According to Connell and Messerschmidt (2005, 832), hegemony means “ascendancy achieved through culture, institutions and persuasion.” Below hegemonic masculinity, there are complicit masculinities. These comply with aspects of the hegemonic ideal. Complicit masculinities live up to the basic expectations of manhood, but they are not top of the bill. Further down the hierarchy are the subordinate masculinities. These are the masculinities of men who are not really considered men, men who do not live up to societal expectations of what it means to be a man. They can be the masculinities of homosexual or transgender men, mentally disturbed people, the homeless, unemployed drunkards and junkies, and so on. While I think Connell’s model is adequate to explain differences in masculinities in precrisis Kiliba, I do agree with critique forwarded by Miescher (2005, 199) who refutes the “global gender order” and the “prospect of all indigenous gender regimes foundering under this institutional and cultural pressure.” While Belgian colonialism and the spread of Christianity indeed influenced the gender order, it did not lead to a collapse of the indigenous gender order, but rather induced a hybridity between traditional and modern notions of hegemonic masculinity (Hollander 2014). As many Africanist gender scholars have noted, hegemonic masculinity maintained distinct African features, often captured in the term “Big Man” (e.g., Miescher 2005; Holland 2005; Dover 2005). The image of the Big Man has changed over the centuries, they are no longer muscular hunters or fierce warriors, but rather hold prestigious offices, drive large cars, and live in large houses. Hollander (2014) argues that the central features of the hegemonic male, which are contained within Big Man ideals, are still intact. Interestingly, many of these features appear to be continental. Dover, for example, characterized the hegemonic male in Zambia as follows: “To give a thumbnail sketch: the man of power is self-reliant, hardworking, and successful. He provides all his family’s needs and helps his kin. He does not show fear; he is always calm and decisive, slow to anger but will defend his own and his family’s honor. He does not complain in hard times or show pain. He is generous and people come to him for advice.” These characteristics show remarkable resemblance to what I found in South Kivu, eastern DRC.

When transferring Connell’s and Messerschmidt’s model of masculinities to the realities of Kiliba before the closure of the factory, the Big Men were the factory managers, the directors of the hospitals and the schools, the local administrators, the head of police, and the religious leaders. These men had a level of power within Kiliba society, and they acted and were viewed as trusted father figures within the community. Schatzberg’s study on the dialectics of oppression also uncovered a similar pattern regarding power and the image of fatherhood. He argues that people in positions of power across the DRC, and most notably Mobutu himself, used the image of the father figure to portray themselves (Schatzberg 1988, 72–98). The father figure also implies hegemony through ascendency rather than violence. He held authority over others, was expected to be just but strict, wise but willing to share his wisdom through provision of advice and education, generous but fair in the distribution of his generosity, self-assured and confident, but not arrogant. Kiliba’s leaders had wealth. They drove large SUVs and they lived in the largest villas. They bestowed their wealth upon their family and elaborate patronage networks. They were expected to be jovial, kicking a stray football back into the pitch and laughing with the workers who were footballing, but not joining, as they needed to stand above them.

Below the most hegemonic males were the “complicit masculinities,” which constituted a very large group. The men belonging to this category were the teachers of the prestigious schools, the doctors in the hospital, and the technical staff of the factory who run some of the precious and complicated machinery. Below this group were the factory workers, the tractor drivers, the mechanics, the farmers, and entrepreneurs who derived their status from providing services to the workforce, such as bar owners, shopkeepers, owners of small hotels, taxi drivers, and so on. Further below this group were the waiters, the seasonal workers at the farms, gardeners, security guards, cleaning personnel, and others who earned small salaries. The status of these men varied and so did their level of complicity with the hegemonic ideal. However, what these men had in common is that they all earned salaries that enabled them to provide for the family and enjoy the rewards of the patriarchal dividend. While they couldn’t claim hegemony, they lived up to societal expectations of what it meant to be a man and in return they were given respect and obedience. Their salaries allowed them to provide dowry, either for themselves or for their sons, which allowed them to marry and sustain families. While the hegemonic men such as the managers and the directors were father figures within the society, the complicit men were the father figures within the family. They were perceived to be just but strict toward their children and wife, they acted as advisors and they were accepted as the head of the household (see also Dolan 2010; Lwambo 2011). In return, their wives and children were obedient, submissive, and they made the life of the provider as comfortable as possible.

Interestingly, most of my informants had suppressed the memory of subordinate masculinities in their nostalgic notions of the time when Kiliba was thriving. However, two of my key informants in Kiliba, a former schoolteacher and an nongovernmental organization (NGO) worker, had clear memories of the existence of subordinate masculinities in the form of idlers, beggars, and alcoholics. Here again, the continental overlap is clear: in the words of Dover (2005, 177), “The opposites of the man of power are the lazy man, the one who fears, fails and falls, and the drunkard.” According to the schoolteacher, the economic downfall of the rest of the country caused an influx of job hunters who often failed to find work in a job market that was saturated, which led to an increase in alcoholism, drug abuse, and heightened crime rates. Second, both the teacher and the NGO worker commented that the increase in alcoholism and drug abuse led to increases in domestic violence, which in turn led to an increase in divorces. So according to two of my informants, there were insubordinate masculinities before the closure, in the form of unemployed men, drunkards, beggars, and criminals, but this group did not appear in the memories of the other inhabitants of Kiliba that I interviewed.

While Connell has been widely acclaimed for his critique of (gender) role theory and transcendence of it through his classification of masculinities and conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity, which looks at power and resistance to power and incorporates change, his gender classification has also received some critique as being too simplistic. Demetriou (2001), for example, questioned Connell’s conception of the relationship between hegemonic masculinities and other forms of masculinities, arguing that Connell does not recognize the way that marginalized and subordinate masculinities can influence and change hegemonic masculinities. Michael Moller joins Demetriou in his critique that Connell’s theoretical model is too simplistic. In his words, “while much of Connell’s work articulates a need for tools which will generate critical analyses of the ways in which masculinity is practiced, it also tends to overlook the complexity of the phenomena it investigates: that is, masculinity per se” (Moller, 2007, 265). Moller (2007, 265) argues that the conceptualization of hegemonic masculinities leads researchers to look for “particularly nefarious instances of masculinist abuses of power,” while neglecting the everyday experiences and thoughts of most men.

Scholars such as Moller and Demetriou acclaim Connell’s important contribution to the field of critical men’s studies, but criticize it for its simplicity and inadequacy to understand masculinities in all their complexity.

Africanist gender theorists have argued that Connell’s theory fails to capture the emergence and transformation of masculinities in situations of poverty and deprivation. Groes-Green, for example, looks at how new masculinities based on sexual prowess and violence emerge and transform and both substitute and challenge masculine ideals that are centered on wealth and status. In a study about urban masculinities in impoverished and economic unequal Maputo, Mozambique, Groes-Green distinguishes the masculinities of middle-class youngsters, who he refers to as “showoffistas,” and the young men whose masculine ideal of wealth and provision are unachievable because of their situation of poverty and unemployment. Groes-Green (2009, 288–89) argues that the concept of hegemonic masculinities fail to capture the social inequalities and complexity of male powers. Connell’s concept of protest masculinities, generally referred to as a hyper-heterosexual masculinity of young men who miss out on the patriarchal dividend, is meant to capture the masculinities of the working-class youth who are poor, often unemployed and unable to live up to the breadwinners ideal. However, it fails to differentiate between the various masculinities that emerge among these groups of marginalized men. For the working-class young men in Maputo, Groes-Green identified two distinct expressions of masculine prowess; one was through violence and the other through sexual performance. In the words of Groes-Green (2009, 290), “Juxtaposing some young men’s increasing preoccupation with sexual satisfaction of female partners with other young men’s use of violence against their partners, it seemed that sexuality and violence emerge as bifurcated reactions to the problem of an unstable male authority brought about by unemployment and poverty.”

The work of Katrien Pype offers another illustrates of the diversity of masculinities in situations of deprivation. She did an ethnographic study on masculinities, violence, and youth cultures in the three communities of Lemba, Matete, and Ngaba in Kinshasa. Pype focuses on particular groups within these three communities, notably the “sportifs,” the “sapeurs,” and “staffeurs.” The “sportifs” are characterized by a fighting culture and they portray their masculinity through scars, muscular appearances, handmade weapons, and looks of fierceness and ruthlessness. The “sapeurs” and “staffeurs,” on the other hand, show their masculinity off by designer clothes, cars, the most modern mobile phones, and other flashy appearances. The observation that there are three distinct models of “strongmen” in the urban context of Kinshasa, and thus different interpretations of what masculinity means, leads Pype (2007, 266) to the conclusion that “one can no longer hold an essentialized and ahistorical approach towards gender. Embodying a certain type of masculinity is the result of the interplay of societal imperatives and personal concerns that leads to taking up a particular lifestyle; both are strategies of survival under compulsory systems.”

Like in Kinshasa and Maputo, the men in Kiliba were faced with deprivation of the ability to perform the breadwinners’ role, which necessitated a renegotiation of the masculine ideal and the emergence and transformation of new masculinities. However, there were also some major differences. First of all, Kiliba is a small town, not a major capital; second, in Kiliba, the deprivation of the “breadwinner” ideal was very abrupt; and third, the subjects were not youths, but adult males who all had experienced prosperity. As a result, the renegotiation of masculinities took different forms. The impact of the closure of the factory is aptly captured with a quote from a former employee:

The population is creeping in misery. The big problem we are encountering is that we were not prepared for the closure of the factory, and the closure was very sudden and abrupt. This meant that none of us were prepared to start another way of life or to venture into new areas. We had no income. We can’t even afford our medical care anymore. This brings a lot of problems in the household, for example in terms of child mortality. Many children die because of our plight. When my children fall sick and I bring them to the hospital, even if the child gets his medicine and is cured, I cannot pay the bill and if this happens, my child is maintained in the hospital as a prisoner, until I can cover the costs. So this makes me and other people not to bring our children to the hospital with the effect that many die in their houses. This situation destroyed the community in terms of integrity. Most people don’t even do any farming activities, but during the night they become poachers and they steal the crops of other people. They also do this with goats and cows. So there is a lot of envious behavior amongst people, which is also portrayed within inter-household relationships. When I see a case of unfaithfulness in the neighbor’s family, I become suspicious of my own wife. And this creates some kind of mistrust. So there isn’t any trust anymore in our society. This brings provocations, leading to robbery, and other forms of criminal behavior. The general situation brings an environment of disdain, where people become disdainful, arrogant, provocative and very suspicious of one another. ⁵

The closure of the factory had a deep impact on society. From one day to the next, thousands of people lost their jobs. As a result, Kiliba’s economy, which depended for a large part on the worker’s salaries, went bankrupt. Many people stayed in Kiliba after the closure of the factory, because they had nowhere else to go. They were forced to cope with life in another way. It was in this coping process that the gender balance completely turned upside down. Let me illustrate this with two quotes that highlight a male and female perspective:

In the family, the fact that the company closed down had a large impact on gender relations and gender roles, because it affects the loss of authority from the man. Looking at the time I was the breadwinner, I was the head, covering the needs of my family, in terms of financing. Traditionally, the role of the African woman was to maintain the social structure inside of the household. But the fact that I lost employment changed the role of my wife and made it that our children started lacking care. The role of the man became more of a theoretical thing than a realistic situation. This could be noticed in the sense that some of our children don’t recognize the father as the head of the house, and they turn to their mother instead. The whole situation brought up a mocking situation in which men are referred to as; ‘Wake up and eat’. The men mainly stay at home while it is the wife who goes out to get the food. So when she comes she can only tell the husband to wake up and eat, because he is idle. That basically makes us feel low, neglected. At times we may reach home and ask for water, and the wife says, ‘can’t you just do it yourself’. While in the past, you asked for these things and they will be brought. We used to be respected. But now, whenever I want to enforce order in the house, the wife says; ‘Can’t you just keep a low profile, unless you want me to expose you to shame’. This brings a distortion of the fabric of the household, which you could see through teenage pregnancies, prostitution, criminal behavior, including theft and even armed robberies. All this weakened the social fabric inside the society. ⁶

This man used to be one of the higher-ranking personnel of the Kiliba factory who could send his children to good schools and who could easily afford bicycles for his children. Yet, nowadays he can’t even afford to fix a tire, which will probably not exceed the price of one dollar. Yet, instead of receiving sympathy for his plight, the expectations of his position as a father hardened. “They don’t want to hear about excuses.” The mismatch between the expectations of family members and the reality of his daily-lived experienced led to a deep sense of powerlessness.

Renegotiating Masculinities in the Aftermath of the Closure

In a situation where scaling up to the ideal of hegemonic or even complicit masculinity became a privilege that none could attain, it was unavoidable that masculinities needed to be renegotiated. This happened in different ways. In many cases, as has been previously highlighted by Mechanic, Eriksson Baaz and Stern, Lwambo and Dolan, men became increasingly aggressive and tried to enforce their masculinity by the use of physical force. According to Dolan (2010), this can be explained because gender power is considered a zero-sum game. “For different reasons, gender identities, which both demand and are created by a combination of very specific behaviors, roles and powers, are equally problematic. In a context of severe poverty, impunity and endemic violence, male gender identity is particularly troubled, and some communities have specific terms to describe men who fail to live up to gender expectations. Whether or not one approves of changes in roles and the power of women and men relative to one another, where they are understood as having been totally inverted, as in the claim that ‘the men have become the women’, it is apparent that gender power is still perceived as a bi-polar and zero-sum game, rather than something which could be redistributed more equitably to the profit of both women and men. With such perceptions, the changes are a significant source of tension and conflict within households and communities, for they mean that the ‘enemies’ are no longer seen as just coming from outside, they are also believed to have found agents from within the home community.”

Dolan’s observation was echoed in many of the narratives I recorded. The clearest narration was from the human resource manager of the factory:

[The economic plight] results in men who are more aggressive, they adopt a more aggressive behavior, they lose hope and they stop trusting almost everybody else. They view the people around them as their enemies, which causes a lack of tolerance. They rebel against the social structure and social authority, including the state, which can be understood as a situation of lawlessness. The other human beings around him are no longer respected. When a man lives in such a state of mind, he becomes a mere male animal. No more human. He becomes animalistic. ¹¹

Protest masculinities are connected to men who do not have real power and who make claims to power via violence. Broude (1990, 103) describes protest masculinity in connection with “destructiveness, low tolerance for delay of gratification, crime and drinking” among other types of destructive behaviors. Connell (1995, 95–118) and Broude (1990, 120) place the roots of men who subscribe to protest masculinities in their childhood and youth. The men described by Connell dropped out of school at an early age, and with little skills or qualification, they ended up at the bottom of the labor market, unemployed, or engaged in criminal activity. They rebelled against the masculine power order through a general demeanor of toughness, hypermasculinity, and violence, rather than through wealth and intellectual prowess. It is here that the concept of protest masculinities fails to conceptualize what happened in Kiliba. After the bankruptcy, the established gender order existed in the form of memories, values, and norms, not in terms of daily-lived experiences, so the men were in protest against the memory of their former selves, rather than the masculine gender order. The workers in Kiliba weren’t at the bottom because they were unskilled school dropouts. Rather, the roots of significant changes in their masculinities lie in a rapidly changing socioeconomic environment in adulthood that they could not control.

Informants highlighted that some men coped with the mismatch of expectations and lived experiences by placing the blame of their situation of discomfort completely outside of themselves. Besides resorting to violence, victimization was a common strategy to renegotiate one’s masculinity. I use the term “victimized masculinity” to describe this type of renegotiated masculinity. I prefer the use of this term instead of the term violent or protest masculinities, because victimization became a central aspect of their masculinities. Men who expressed themselves in victimizing language could still continue to live with themselves and have a sense of self-esteem, as they themselves held no responsibility for their misfortune. Instead, they were victims of the government, of globalization, of the armed conflict, of NGOs and UN agencies that promoted women’s empowerment, of the factory owners who refused to reopen the factory, of president Kabila who had promised to reopen the factory but who didn’t, of their wives and children who disrespected them while they couldn’t do anything to change their situation, and so on. The victimized masculinities generally felt powerless to change their situation in a constructive way. This was clearly emphasized by some of my informants who talked of themselves as junks, as useless, and who articulated their inability to do anything to improve their situation and that of their family. Instead, they either turned idle, or they started to engage in criminal or other destructive behavior, like stealing, which was justified because they stated that the cause of their misery should be blamed on others.

This situation destroyed the community in terms of integrity. For instance, many men stopped farming, but during the night they go and start stealing people’s crops on the land and the same happens with animals. Many goats have for example been stolen, so nowadays, people are trying to hide the goats. ¹³

Victimizing oneself was a common and widely documented strategy that men applied to deal with the disconnect between the lived experiences of one’s masculinity and the expectations that they, their dependents, and the community had of them. However, I also came across an almost opposite reaction that was as common, but which has not received any scholarly attention. The opposite reaction was that men humbled themselves and that they made themselves inconspicuous in both their family and community. I labeled this type “effaced” masculinities. Effaced masculinities referred to men who made themselves inconspicuous or humble through modesty or obsequiousness and to keep a low or discreet profile. Throughout my research, both in Kiliba and in other places in South Kivu, it was very often articulated that situations of deprivation did not automatically mean that every man expressed himself in terms of victimhood or turned violent as a means to restore their masculine dignity. This quote from an elderly woman in Uvira was common:

I don’t think that there is a clear connection between men who lose their jobs and violence within the household. In most cases, it is not a one-way thing. Most men do not turn violent when they lose their jobs. Most men who lose their jobs keep cool and keep respectful. ¹⁶

Victimized masculinity was often the first reaction to extreme economic deprivation. And many of the men whose masculinities I would describe as effaced had initially reacted to the deprivation though victimization. This was not something bipolar, but should rather be seen as a slow reconfiguration in which people could either lean more to a victimized masculinity or more to an effaced masculinity. My data suggest that over the years, as the situation of deprivation became chronic, men tended to lean less toward the victimized masculinity and turned instead toward effaced masculinity, in which men became increasingly less violent and envious and instead effaced themselves. Eventually, many men whom I interviewed, especially elderly men, accepted that their own role within the family wasn’t as significant as it used to be, thereby accepting that they had to lower their standards and expectations of themselves and give up their omnipotent position in the house, which in reality they had already lost.

Conclusion

In a situation like the one in Kiliba after the closure of the factory, the traditional classification of masculinities into subordinate, protest, complicit, and hegemonic (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) is inadequate. When the comfortable and harmonious world came to end with the closure of the factory, the men in Kiliba were faced with a very serious crisis of their masculinities. In this situation, complicity with hegemonic masculinity became unattainable. While the general lifestyle of men after the closure of the factory would have made them subordinate as compared to earlier standards, the fact that every man was emasculated makes the concept subordinate masculinity a misnomer. Marginalized masculinities could be a more adequate description, although the term, as explained by Connell, refers more to certain groups (racial/religious) within society whose masculinities are collectively marginalized vis-à-vis that of others. However, the closure of the factories marginalized all men more or less equally. After the closure, men renegotiated their masculinities into something that did not adhere to expectations of hegemonic masculinity, but which also cannot be described as protest masculinity.

Performances of masculinities that comply with the idea of hegemonic masculinity need an enabling environment. Kiliba of the late 1980s and early 1990s represented enabling environments where men could perform their masculinities. The closure of the sugarcane factory changed all of this. In less than one year, living up to the ideal of hegemonic masculinity became a dream and even complicit masculinity became unachievable. While the ideal of the hegemonic male remained intact, men were collectively unable to live up to this ideal. This was already the case elsewhere in the DRC, and Kiliba stopped to be the exception. The changes in their social, economic, and political landscape disenabled men from achieving desired manhood, causing a friction in societal expectations and masculine performance, which resulted in a general crisis of masculinities.

Hence, these changes necessitated a renegotiation of masculinities. I identified two distinct ways in which men dealt with the sudden loss of their masculinity. I labeled the distinct renegotiations victimized masculinity and effaced masculinity. The victimized masculinity was centered on the idea of victimhood. The men placed the blame for their emasculation completely outside themselves. They were bitter, angry, and confused. The men with victimized masculinities were unable or unwilling to accept that they needed to reconfigure themselves in their changed environment. As a result, they were mostly idle and often overcome with understandable self-pity. Furthermore, victimized men often engaged in destructive behavior, such as alcoholism, if they could get money to afford it, domestic violence and fights with other men. This type of masculinity often blocked self-reflection, innovativeness, and proactive behavior, which were much-needed traits in those difficult times. The men who renegotiated their masculinities in victimized narratives were also more prone to use violence or engage in criminal activity. Their families and surrounding community members criticized their idleness and they responded to critique with the one masculine feature that they hadn’t lost, their physical strength. Especially in families where women became less obedient and submissive, violence was used to restore order, which also led to an increase in divorces.

The other form of renegotiation that I encountered was what I called “effaced” masculinity. The type of renegotiation involved men who effectively effaced themselves, both within the community and within the family. They lowered their self-expectations. They accepted income-generating activities that they traditionally considered to be below their standard. Furthermore, they recognized the newly found roles of their wives and they allowed them a position of more authority. Inability to live up to societal expectations and the shame derived from it caused them to move into the background and become inconspicuous. So while both types of masculinities exist on the basis of emasculation, the emasculation was acted out differently. Victimized masculinity was mostly centered on the past and inability to accept the present; effaced masculinity was more oriented on the direct needs of the present and the near future and on the acceptance of changed circumstances. Both represented a clear crisis of masculinities, but the way the crisis was managed was different.

While victimized and effaced masculinities seem mutually exclusive, they could coexist in one individual simultaneously, depending on their mood, or they could be phases within the long-term process of coping with emasculation. The victimized masculinity was a first reaction to extreme situation of distress. It depended on the character of the individual; the people around him and other external factors regarding how long this phase took.

While it is difficult to codify or with certainty explain the lasting impact, the enduring situation of crisis seemed to result in a slow shift in gender norms. During the period of field research conducted in 2010, the ideal man was still described as someone who commanded respect, provided for the family, and protected them from harm. However, I also heard both men and women arguing that the perfect man respects women, he allows his wife to take decisions, and he will provide completely equal treatment to daughters and sons. Notions about the importance for gender equality could be seen mostly from men with effaced masculinities, whereas victimized masculinities advocated more traditional notions about gender. What was clear is that the effaced masculinity was conducive for lowering levels of gender-based violence and increasing cooperative behaviors in families, while victimized masculinities had an almost opposite effect. As the perpetuated situation of deprivation and hardship continues, so do the shifts in gender performances. Arguably, the enduring crisis situation can slowly lead to a shift in gender norms. This could be of note to the various humanitarian and developmental organizations that are engaged in activities that seek to reduce SGBV and promote gender equality.