There is an unprecedented global shift in gender relations taking place. Until our communities recognize and respond to this shift, the critical task of deconstructing the accepted rules of masculinity will remain undone, and the difficulty of finding suitable marriage partners will continue to frustrate us all.
Many young Muslims are experiencing some difficulty in finding a suitable partner for marriage, amidst a global shift in gender relations. This shift has been outlined with depth and considerable style by Hanna Rosin in her article, “The End of Men,” appearing in the July/August 2010 issue of The Atlantic. I strongly recommend you read it in its entirety, as it places a wider social frame on the issue. When Zeba Iqbal writes here on Altmuslimah that normalizing basic gender relations between Muslim men and women is critical, we must keep in mind that the norms of gender relations that have existed for centuries are being turned upside down for everyone, not just Muslims. As Rosin points out, for years women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But it may very well be that equality is not the end point. Rosin suggests that modern, post-industrial society may be simply better suited to women. Given the weight of her argument, and she marshals evidence from many points of view that support her case, it becomes increasingly clear that somewhere near the heart of the phenomenon of the difficulty in finding a suitable marriage partner is profound confusion over what it means to be a man.
Current social conditions have undercut the relevancy of traditional notions of masculinity; meanwhile, modern media’s messages and expectations about masculinity are a decidedly mixed bag. As Dr. Steven Stosny remarks in “Lions Without a Cause,” an article appearing Psychotherapy Networker’s May/June 2010 edition:
Through much of history, the idea that men and women should consistently engage in intimate conversation and validate each other’s emotional worlds would have been laughable. As historian Stephanie Coontz puts it, previous generations widely assumed that men and women had different natures and couldn’t truly understand each other. The idea of intergender emotional talk independent of the need to protect didn’t emerge until the dissolution of the extended family, which began [in the West] in the middle of the 20th century.
This suggests to me that part of the problem with normalizing gender relations between Muslim women and men today may be that our current expectations are historically unprecedented. (For more from Coontz, check out this C-Span panel on “Men and Marriage” in which she participates.) The argument is not that Muslim women’s expectations for civil discourse with men are inappropriate; rather, it is that both genders are historically ill-prepared for the task. Dr. Stosny argues that the instinct to protect is a potent factor in men’s self-value. So what happens when women don’t need protection?
In Rosin’s “End of Men” article, she cites Mustafaa El-Scari, a teacher and social worker who runs discussion groups in Kansas City for men ordered there as an alternative to jail after failure to pay child support. When he meets with the group, they do an activity which challenges the men’s expectations and notions of masculinity. El-Scari asks, “Who’s doing what?” He writes on the blackboard: $85,000 “This is her salary.” Then: $12,000. “This is your salary. Who’s the damn man? Who’s the man now?” A murmur rises. “That’s right. She’s the man.” Even if this is an oversimplification and an overstatement of the situation many of our Muslim sisters find themselves in, the example highlights a key issue in our gender relations. The sheer competence, accomplishment, self-possession, and vitality of so many of our sisters seems to be intimidating to many Muslim men, as they see their most deeply held notions of their role invalidated by the forces of social change. Further complicating this issue is the fact that many women continue to buy into a narrative that conflates,(among other things) earnings with masculinity .
The difficulty faced by Zeba Iqbal and so many others is that she represents the vast gender role-reversal going on, which is threatening to men’s idea of what it means to be a man. The ill will and conflict Zeba notes between the genders is a reflection of the stress of this unprecedented change. Both Muslim women and men have to reconsider the many ways in which our expectations for gender role performance are unrealistic. I think women in these times have something of a head start on this because they tend to have examined their own roles more thoroughly than men. But unless our sisters can make some progress in deconstructing their notions of masculinity as well, they will continue to be frustrated. The cougar trope that started out as a joke about desperate older women, which has now gone mainstream, will inevitably surface among Muslims, in a kind of mockery of the relationship between our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his beloved first wife Khadija, may Allah be pleased with her.
Meanwhile, the level of self-awareness and ability required for men to articulate the emotions stirred by conflicting cultural messages, many of which devalue them, continues to be rare indeed. It seems to me that development of this ability, and the discourse required for men to reframe their notion of masculinity, has yet to appear at any kind of significant social level. Yet absent this discourse, men are likely to continue to play out their unrecognized internal conflicts about their role in dysfunctional ways, in their relations with women, in the workplace, at the masjid, by themselves at home as they sit in front of the tube watching the NFL or UFC (that’s “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” ladies) – or even worse, at a training camp in a ‘stan somewhere.
Anas Coburn is a mental health clinician who serves as the managing director of Project Sakinah, an initiative of Dar al Islam to address domestic violence in the Muslim community.
“Men marginalized as protectors of their families are likelier to struggle for power and control over their wives or girlfriends. They compensate for loss of the capacity to protect with dominance and/or violence.” This could be extended to the control over culture-at-large I suppose.
Anas – Great article – and hopefully the beginning of a dialogue on this and other gender issues we face. You comment on protection – and women not needing or wanting it. Women need and want the protection of men – but we can’t just walk around saying that because we have to be self-sufficient – at our jobs and in our lives – particularly if we are single and living far from our families. This NYT article on another aspect of this gender imbalance in general society is interesting too –
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27Paglia.html?ref=opinion
You are right that there has to be outreach from men to women and women to men – each assuming the best of the other while accepting the imperfections – to move this conversation forward.
Omar G – I sincerely respect you and your comments – but with regard to the one above – I respectfully disagree (perhaps I misunderstood them?). Islamically men are supposed to financially support women – but realistically that is tough for many families – and most self-respecting women do not say – my money is my money – and your money (father, brother, husband) is my money. That is just not the way that it is. I have not accepted money – outside of birthday gifts – from my father since I started working full time. And that is the same with my brother. My burden on my dad – has been that of a child – not of a daughter specifically.
“Thus, if indeed women excel more than men, I???d argue its on the backs of the men to support them, provide for them and helped them get a head start in the first place.”
Same point – I am speaking from my personal perspective – what is it that my father has done more for me than for my brother? ie- if my brother excels it is on my dad’s back too. What is it that my father has done for me – that my mother hasn’t done (by being a good housewife and supportive mother). ie – why is it that if women and men excel it is on the backs of the previous generation.
Sorry – I meant – ie – if women and men excel isn’t it on the backs of the previous generation – not one gender or the other?
The only reason I am pushing back is because – I hope InshAllah we can move beyond credit, blame, shame and on to forward looking efforts and over time – solutions.
@Zeba: Well, you and I are in the same boat, then.
In any case, I can only argue based on my personal experiences. At my university, I see many fine young men who drop out or take “too many” years because they have to work. Such cases seem more rare among females. And of course, I overhear many a conversation that leads me to believe there is a great deal of reliance on “Daddy”. The religious Muslimah students seem to have an even more ingrained sense of entitlement, assuming that men are supposed to support them while raising the cry of “and Shariah doesn’t even require me to cook, clean; he has to hire that out if the marriage contract says so. Ha!” So, that does not constitute a scientific study, but it is what I myself encounter all too often.
I have much to say about this concept, but will begin with the statistics of majority of university students being female:
>> The sheer competence, accomplishment, self-possession, and vitality of so many of our sisters
Perhaps its because women are taken care of by men: fathers, brothers, uncles, and especially husbands. They have the luxury of extended, less-stressful schooling without *having* to work endless hours, the luxury of participating in critical extra-curricular experiences, volunteering and internships. By delaying childbirth, they do not have those burdens to distract them even into their twenties.
Us men, on the other hand, are expected to earn our own keep, which often means long hours at jobs we often do not like which shorten our average lifespans. I’m sure many of the “deadbeat” guys just see this as a raw deal and decide not to participate.
Thus, if indeed women excel more than men, I’d argue its on the backs of the men to support them, provide for them and helped them get a head start in the first place. In the post-male world when we have ceased to be even that important, we will end up not with the disappearance of that sacrificial role, but merely with another class of females themselves who have to do it.
>>the discourse required for men to reframe their notion of masculinity,
>> conflated with earnings
@Anas: how?? Even the Quran is thrown at us whenever women need something from us, and thrown at women when men want to (re)assert the “reasons” for their authority over women: “Men are the maintainers of women (ar-rijaalu qawaamuna 3alaa an-nissaa’)”. How do we get around such a Quranic ayah and still stay true to our Islamic mores??
@OmarG maybe it’s a class difference? But more likely fathers are protecting their daughters. However the performance of females over males occurs in high school as has been measured in several articles I’ve read. So while you’re concern may be valid it doesn’t negate the general trend.
Separately I am concerned about the level of flexibility in society when all adult members have to work. So no one is available to address a long-drawn out illness, take care of children, or cushion other aspects of life not reflected in work.
It seems pretty important to be able to be educated, to be able to work, because you never know when you’ll need to. Not all females have economic or physical protection (mainainers). However there is an aspect of the availability of female energy to families (nuclear and extended) and society that provides cushion and it is being drained away.
Always a complex issue.
Thoughtful comments!
@Ghina (first coment)—the phenomenon of displacement of frustration onto an object unrelated to the source of the frustration is commonplace—and takes all kinds of forms. Even chickens have pecking orders. I think as one moves beyond the performance of gender at the level of interpersonal interaction to the level of ‘control over the culture at-large,’ other cultural and sociological factors become relatively more weighted—so it all becomes harder to sort out. But I do think that frustration around issues associated with masculinity can be one factor leading to extremist behavior.
@OmarG—I very much appreciate you engaging here. I think you’re sharing heartfelt reactions and observations—and that is what it is gonna take from all of us to get the discourse moving. I want to speak just a little to your ‘how’ question. It will take us (collectively) a while to understand how to ???read??? the signs of what it means to be a man in the current cultural situation. As I understand it, the word ???qawwamuna??? refers to ???a degree??? ??? the question becomes what is it that constitutes this degree, or authority, or responsibility?
Let me be clear, I am in no sense qualified to make tafsir of Qur???an. I do try to read the ayats, the ???signs??? in the culture around me and make sense of them, and that???s what I am trying to do with the article, and in this response to you. So again, what constitutes this ???degree??? that men have?? and for that matter, what precisely does ???men??? mean? Stosny (in the ???Lions????? article cited in my piece) suggests that protection of the family is close to the core of the behavior of mature (mammalian) males generally. Some say it simply means men must financially support their women and families. Even if this is the case (and I think it means something more basic and broad than this), it doesn???t follow that earning more means one is ???more??? of a man. When I speak about conflating earnings and masculinity, this is what I mean.
@ Zeba. Thanks for your response. You say, ???Women need and want the protection of men – but we can???t just walk around saying that because we have to be self-sufficient – at our jobs and in our lives – particularly if we are single and living far from our families.??? I agree. What I was trying to indicate was that, at least in terms of financial support, women are now much less dependent on men for that than they used to be. This is a good thing, but it does force us to look at our gender role expectations with regard to economic support.
You say, ???Islamically men are supposed to financially support women????? followed by some caveats. I agree that has historically been the construction made of our sources. But when I think about the seerah of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, I recall ahadith to the effect that there was sometimes no cooking fire in his house (meaning no cookable food) for months at a time. We know there is an ayat in which his wives were given the choice to be divorced from him if they wanted the life of this world. So ???men are supposed to financially support women????? doesn???t mean the woman is entitled to a particular basket of economic goodies.
My own feeling is that the support for women that men are supposed to provide is deeper and broader than that. We live in a technological time when all aspects of human behavior tend to be viewed through a lens of technique, and through this lens, all human behavior tends to be reduced to functions of production and consumption. So relatively speaking, the importance of economic support is given more weight than it previously had, and the skewed weight it has in our minds requires us to struggle harder with ourselves to come back into balance.
The process of deconstruction I???m talking about involves exploring what constitutes this deeper and broader (than simply bread-winner) meaning of what it means to be a man. Rosin???s article is pointing to many ways in which the received notions of the man???s role are being shattered by current social realities. Obviously??it is not ???the end of men,??? but it is certainly a step toward the end of the construction of masculinity we???ve all been making ??? the end of ???men,??? if you will.
@Ghina ??? second comment: ???Separately I am concerned about the level of flexibility in society when all adult members have to work. So no one is available to address a long-drawn out illness, take care of children, or cushion other aspects of life not reflected in work.
It seems pretty important to be able to be educated, to be able to work, because you never know when you???ll need to. Not all females have economic or physical protection (mainainers). However there is an aspect of the availability of female energy to families (nuclear and extended) and society that provides cushion and it is being drained away.
Absolutely, Ghina! The technological imperative tends to atomize, society??breaking it into individual units of production and consumption, and, for efficiency???s sake, encouraging very high mobility among these individual units. So flexibility is loss on the level of family, because the society is constituted to maximize economic flexibility. Globalization is a loss of flexibility on the level of nation-state to the global technological system. What you speak of as ???cushion??? is viewed as ???untapped economic potential??? and the technological system looks for ways to bring this potential into ???production.???
A training camp in a ‘stan somewhere? Since this IS personal innuendo, I’d like to say that just because I watch PTV, it doesn’t mean I’m in Pakistan. Secondly, what is wrong with learning things?
The article made some good points about gender relations in the middle. But my overall feedback for altmuslimah is that frequently the opposition gets too personal in nature and offensive.
People may mistake it with the religion, and I think that would be wrong.
Actually I read these posts and comments more thoroughly and they are improving.
I think the issue of men feeling demasculated by women who want to work or achieve things has to be addressed, because sometimes the reaction is to diminish women and their aspirations.
Also, women’s roles in this post-industrial society are very fluid, meaning you don’t always get to do one thing at a time. Women in the U.S. and other countries often have to be prepared for work, domestic life, and motherhood. It can be good, but I think its good to recognize the level of expectation involved.
Hi Saadia,
Just to be clear, in the last sentence of my article, i said:
“…men are likely to continue to play out their unrecognized internal conflicts about their role in dysfunctional ways, in their relations with women, in the workplace, at the masjid, by themselves at home as they sit in front of the tube watching the NFL or UFC (that???s ???Ultimate Fighting Championship,??? ladies) ??? or even worse, at a training camp in a ???stan somewhere.”
In the comment about “a training camp in a ‘stan’ somewhere,” I was trying to communicate that one way men’s unrecognized internal conflicts about their masculinity may play out is by deciding they must lash out against others in so-called ‘jihad,’ and to do this they may make a trip to Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Khyrgystan…(a ‘stan’ somewhere) to go to a ‘terrorist training camp.’ I am sorry if somehow this was offensive to you. I can assure you it was not intended in any way as ‘personal innuendo.’