Yup. I went to New York City for the Super Bowl. In the extremist masculinity hierarchy, that ranks somewhere between pissing in the woods and growing a mustache at 13. In New York, I proved that I know the difference between warriors and thugs. The Broncos were the warriors riding the Charge of the Light Brigade at the evil Sea Hawks. Also, by going I gave myself authority, subjectifying myself through useless knowledge of bizarrely esoteric skills. But mostly, I got my consolation prize. I may spend my average day at the mercy of powerful (moneyed) interests, but "we" went to the Super Bowl. By joining in, I gave myself a stake in the dickish system that is extreme masculinity.
Well, maybe it's more complex than that.
The Super Bowl is not entirely as evil as it is often made out to be. Human trafficking and sex slavery does go up during the Super Bowl, but not any more so than at any other major event, sporting or otherwise. Also, domestic violence does not raise substantially when the home team loses. Counter intuitively, it seems that domestic violence upticks slightly when the home team wins. When we think about this fact, it makes sense. When we win, we are more confident in our masculinity, and that means we are more likely to forgive ourselves a little of that extreme masculinity aggression and violence. Hey, I just confirmed that I am an awesome dominant manly dude. What do you mean you don't agree? Didn't you see the Super Bowl?Nevertheless, football itself, and even the masculinity parade that is the Super Bowl is not the problem. Sports and athleticism are important in daily life, and if anything American men are too lazy in their gigantic houses with their haze-inducing glorified minivans (i.e. S.U.V.'s and 4 door pickup trucks). If they only took sports more seriously maybe we would be able to put an end to America's terrifyingly high obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates. Yet, somehow sports feel excessively masculine.
Because they are masculine, often excessively.
Teddy Roosevelt said football would toughen us up, big words coming from the man who named the teddy bear. The New York Knicks are better known than the New York Liberty only because they are men. Men are more likely to be sports' viewers. People have been desperate to tie sports to masculinity for decades, but the women's movement refused to accept that sports were inherently male, and in doing so they showed that the relationship between sports and masculinity was as forced and false as the relationship between Rand Paul and reality.
Title IX is so successful because it takes sports out of traditional masculinity and makes them accessible to girls, and the women those girls become. Girls who join sports teams through Title IX are more successful on and off the field/court. They are healthier, better students, and less likely to suffer from emotional handicaps. Without a doubt, sports can be a positive influence on women as well as men. It is a part of the traditionally masculine platter that women picked up and said, "Yeah, we like that."
And that is exactly the point of men's liberation. Men too, should be able to pick up what they like from femininity and say, "Yeah, we like that." And as significantly, men should be able to put down those parts of masculinity that are dickish.
The trite thoughtless response to that goal is, "why can't men do that now?" If you've been reading this blog you probably already have some ideas, but the short answer is that most men don't even know that they want it. Just as many women in the fifties honestly told themselves that they didn't want to leave the home and join the work force, many men today honestly don't want to learn how to maintain a house, raise a child, or engage in meaningful healthy relationships. And the task of convincing men that using only what they want from masculinity will make them happy is harder than the task of convincing women because the consolation prize for men is so much better ($1.22 on every dollar that a woman earns, for example).But the consolation prize is looking more hollow after the Great Recession. The successful job, the stability, and all of the toys were never more than a chimera, but now they are completely out of reach to a younger generation of men. We are looking at the two big platters of masculinity and femininity, and thinking, "I'd like a little bit of this, and some of that, and maybe a pinch or two from over here."
The Super Bowl, like most things including suburban living, S.U.V.'s and even the military, is a complex of the terrific alongside the terrible. Some things, like the community that I felt wandering Times Square with hundreds of thousands of other football fans, are great. Some things, like the suicide rates of pro football players after suffering head traumas, are tragic. Liberation isn't necessarily about doing things differently. Liberation is having the wisdom to know what parts of our lives make us happier, and the courage to dump the rest of the bull shit in the face of people who lack the aforementioned wisdom.
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