Community Conversations

 

Men

A paper based on the Community Conversation of 18 April 2007 at Fritz Creek General Store prepared for the Pratt Museum by Dr. Deland S. Anderson

Thirteen women and two men showed up at the Fritz Creek General Store to talk about men. Only half of the men spoke. All of the women did. Most of what they said was drawn from their own experiences of living in a “man’s world.” The ages of the participants spanned seven or eight decades. And these women came from all walks of life. What they had to say, then, covered a broad range. They spoke to their experiences as combat nurses, single mothers, army mechanics, executives, teachers, scientists, and housewives. A common thread in their remarks was the liberalizing of laws and social norms during the past half century that had opened up new educational and career possibilities for women. Differences emerged, however, about how far that liberalizing had come or how far it should go. Concerns were voiced about the wage gap that persists between men and women even in the same field of work. At the same time some bemoaned the loss of chivalry in today’s society. The group wrestled with the difficult problem of preserving gender roles while promoting equality. THE MAN WHO SPOKE commented on this. His rural upbringing in the Deep South had provided him with a code of chivalry that was clearly out dated or otherwise misplaced in Alaska. He said he had to quickly re-tool his social skills in order not to be perceived as a chauvinist for offering to “help a lady”, for example, when she was a fully capable Alaskan woman who might well resent the offer. There is a local joke on this score: Homer, Alaska where men are men and women are too.

If you work in this town, chances are your boss is a woman. If you are a woman, that’s one thing. If you’re a man, it’s different. It’s different because most mature men today don’t know how to work for a woman. They have the wrong role models, images, and ideals because they grew up in a time when the boss was a man. Now, as it sometimes turns out, the boss is a woman and she resents the fact that you are a man. Reflection on this situation led some women at the conversation to express sympathy and concern for males today. As they put it, men aren’t sure what to do with themselves any more-- they just know that most of what comes naturally to them is considered wrong. This is largely the perception around the country today, but things are perhaps magnified in our little Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea. And there’s a reason for that. It’s in our history.

Look around the town of Homer and you will see something remarkable. Women are in power. The Pratt Museum, Homer Council on the Arts, Homer Foundation, Kachemak Bay Branch of Kenai Peninsula College, US Fish and Wildlife Service Islands and Ocean Visitor Center, NOAA Kasitsna Bay Laboratory, and The Homer Public Library are all under the direction of women. Many non-profit organizations, businesses, and task forces in this community are also headed by women. The two weekly papers in town have women publishers.

By way of contrast, if you want to find a male authority figure in this town, you have only a few places to look: the Post Office, the Principal’s Office, the Police Department, the pulpit, and City Hall.

Some of the elders at the conversation said that the power of women in this area has been conspicuous ever since the homestead days. Back then men often left the homestead to take cash jobs, leaving the women in charge of everything else. For many years Homer’s mayor was Hazel Heath. Ma Walli ran the town’s general store. Even after the homestead period began to wane, this pattern has recurred. During the crab boom of the 70s and 80s, for example, men rushed to sea to reap the bounty. Most women were not strong enough to handle the huge king crab pots, and so they stayed ashore. And they took over the business of running the community. During the non-profit rush of the 90s women again were in the forefront. And today, as Homer, Halibut Cove, Fritz Creek, and Seldovia remake themselves as arts and cultural destinations, women are leading the way.

Women here are empowered in another important sense. Call it the Alaska Factor. Women here skipper boats, fly planes, drive trucks, weld, run heavy equipment, log, wrestle—pretty much whatever they want to do. And few people voice objections. When a household is involved, this means the partner takes on many of the traditionally female roles. One does not have to imagine such scenarios as, “Honey, I’m sick of bucking up logs. I’m going hunting for a few days. Take care of the kids while I’m gone.” And he does.

That means local men, like their female counterparts, tend to be cross-trainers. In a reversal of homestead days, many households now are in the control of the man, while the woman is the one who brings home the cash. This is due not to local conditions primarily, but to nationwide changes. Women have entered the workplace in ever-increasing numbers since World War II. Partly this is due to many women wishing to establish a role for themselves outside of the home, to pursue a profession that does not require apron strings. This is partly due to increasing relative costs of living that have forced both partners to seek work outside the home. This has become the norm rather than the exception in the last generation.

One of the concerns voiced at the conversation in this regard was that changing gender roles in the family and the work place have led to a noticeable absence of male role models, at least temporarily. The rugged characters portrayed by Clark Gable, John Wayne, and Kirk Douglas, for example, are obsolete in today’s society. So, what exclusively male roles are there left to model, professional baseball or football players? A generation ago, astronauts, soldiers, firefighters, CEOs, and heads of state were all male. Now those professions are gender neutral.

The group also considered how changes to gender roles have affected rituals of courtship and rites of passage. According to some there who are parents of teens, open gender social groups and much-delayed marriages have replaced the old standard of boy meets girl, falls in love, gets married, raises children, and lives happily ever after. Now to not marry is an accepted social option. To fall in love with a person of your own gender is also an accepted option. To have no children is an acceptable choice in the eyes of society. In this rapidly evolving social scene who-does-what-next in a relationship is not well defined. This is especially true for the teen set, but older couples face similar questions. Who is there to show them how to act with one another? One mother noted that most young people today follow the example set by television shows and movies. And that, she remarked, only provided them with a “Wham, Bam” model of behavior completely devoid of courtship ritual. With regard to rites of passage, the group considered what the cues are today to let a young man know that he is mature. It’s surely not when he can earn a man’s wage, or when he can support a family, because wage and family have become gender neutral. Perhaps it’s as simple as when he moves away from home, just as is the case for a young woman in today’s world.

A few of the participants spoke to uniquely male virtues. They spoke of their fathers and grandfathers, the fathers of their children and step-children. In this context the man’s energy, strength and presence were noted as critical assets in raising children to maturity. Some spoke from their experience as single mothers, who maintained that no matter how they tried, they simply could not fill the role of father. Others spoke as daughters who had been raised by single mothers. They too noted an absence.

But, as one participant noted, in a family where the father is abusive, as is far too often the case on the Kenai Peninsula, that absence becomes a necessity. Men today are acutely aware of the fact that they are the principal perpetrators of domestic violence, murder, and war. The group discussed why this might be. Is it because men are naturally brutes who are driven by their biology to defend their ego and existence by preemptory strikes against any and all who approach them? Is it rather because historically men have wielded power? Power, it has often been said, corrupts, making tyrants of rulers. Is it then the drive to remain in power that is the root cause of violence in all of its forms? In this case, men would be murderers, not according to their nature, but because of the role they have played throughout history. Depending how this question is answered, one might argue, as the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone does, that men simply need to be eliminated to assure the welfare of the species. Alternatively, one might argue that the greatest threat to the welfare of our kind is the power of the executive, and that the solution lies in the redistribution of power in governments and families alike. Needless to say, we did not solve this one.

During the week before and the week after the Community Conversation the facilitator was contacted by several men who said, half-tongue-in-cheek, that they were afraid to attend the talk at the store. Perhaps these men were reluctant to open up publicly about their roles as men in this society. Maybe they knew they would be unfairly criticized just for being a male. Or it could be they feared being justly scolded for taking advantage as a man. In any case, based on these comments, “men” doesn’t seem to be a polite subject in this town. In closing we might reflect on the reasons for that.

Throughout the Western world, men have been criticized for holding on to an age-old advantage over women. In simple terms, men in power tend to promote the power of men. And that unfair use of power is increasingly considered to be against the spirit of humankind. This awareness fuels a cycle of social change. First the practice is deemed reprehensible. Activism initiates the changes needed to balance the power. Protests are made, values are shifted, new laws enacted. Society attempts to adjust. That is all well and good. And though this may seem painful to some men, and even downright wrong-headed, in the end it is apparent that it is good not just for women, but also for men, as well as for society in general.

But some of the activism is fueled by resentment and anger against men and this results in a certain amount of sand-kicking in the face of whatever man is closest. The tendency to use anger and hatred toward men as a means to social change is not unknown even in this community. A man can easily find himself playing the role of “token male” in all sorts of social and professional contexts. This role playing involves everything from patronizing banter to outright scorn. For whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of this in our community, and so men are quite aware of what it means to be a target. There is a collective consciousness among men that they are just not welcome some places, and that they must be ever so careful in their actions and words. One of the women at the conversation remarked on this by saying that men can’t hug women the same way women can hug men, not without being suspected of sexual intent. What might be a subtle difference in the social standards for men and women on the adult level is obvious when adult-child relations are involved. The example one person presented was that a male teacher can’t hug a little girl student while a female teacher could. This is even true of a male teacher and a little boy student. What appears to be innocent affection or a sign of praise in one case appears in the other to be incipient predatory behavior. Some of the women present remarked that in the old days (or even today in unenlightened circles), men and boys use sexual language, gestures, and contact to control females. Today, in this community, there is plenty of that coming from the other side. Females use these same tactics, not to flirt, but to dominate. Surely this has something to do with why some men felt it unwise to participate in a talk about men.

One of the women in the group remarked how the solution to these abuses and about-faces is to be found in simple words and actions where one relates to another as a person rather than as a man or a woman. The example was given of the Post Office door. People hold it open for whoever is behind them. It matters not a bit whether it’s a little old lady or a burly man.

Perhaps these little deeds will take root among those of the younger generation. Parents remarked how their teenagers socialize without as much gender awareness and the correlative sexual tension known to previous generations. If one grows up in a racist household, there are two choices: imitate the behavior of one’s parents and be a racist or reject those prejudices outright. But even with the more enlightened choice, it is not easy to think without the category of race. So, even if one is not a practicing bigot, one still relates to others along the lines drawn by race. To minorities, however, this is a burden. The same is true with regard to gender. Growing up in a chauvinistic household predisposes one to think in terms of gender. Joining a social movement to break the back of male chauvinism also disposes one to play the gender card, though in a more reflective and less destructive way. Yet it is still a burden for a male to be treated as a “man” just as it is for a woman to be cast as a typical “female”. But the new, more egalitarian social practices of the Baby Boomer generation are fostering a generation of less gender-conscious people. When the work of caring for home and family, earning a living, and leading a community is shared between men and women without prejudice, gender becomes defused. In that new world, perhaps men won’t be afraid to come out and talk about being a person.