Men of the World: Genders, Globalizations, Transnational Times

Charting the particular, changing forms of rigidities and movements of and around the taken-for-granted social category of men may be a means of interrogating the possibility of the abolition of ‘men’. This may sound strange, but I think the time has come to, first, name men as men, and next, consider, perhaps promote, the abolition of men – that is, abolition of the gender category of ‘men’ as a social category of power – the bleating hegemony of men. On the one hand, ‘men’ is an incredibly powerful social and political category: dominating the worlds of work, business, religion, militarism, energy, transport, and so on; on the other, there is no strong reason for a fixed category of ‘men’, and especially of ‘men’ as a category of social power, and as expectation, individual and collective identity, legal prescription, and fixed historical concept.

This is similar to trying to consider that it might be useful to consider demystifying, taking apart, abolishing, the raced category of ‘white people’ (Schwalbe, 2014: 146). And when I talk of abolition of the gender category of men I should make it very clear that I certainly do not mean abolishing actual corporeal beings, individual or collective gendercide, or any kind of personal bodily harm or destruction. That is not a good idea at all! Indeed the people called ‘men’ are as precious as all other people. In fact, they are reduced as ‘men’.

So I do not see this as a matter of enlisting men in their own personal abolition, nor is about male biological redundancy (Cherfas and Gribbin, 1984), much less still to do with the idea that the supposed dominance of women in schools and workplaces brings ‘the end of men’ (Rosin, 2012; cf. Hearn, 1998a). As far as I can see, patriarchies, transpatriarchies, are alive [Page 200]and well.1 Rather, I mean a long-term socio-political subversion of the social category of men; this might usher in a coming together of radical and materialist feminism, with queer and transgender theory which argues for assertion of difference rather than reassertion of gender stereotypes.

The case for this comes from many directions. One is the need to question and move beyond the two-sex model, and recognize the possibilities of a third … and fourth and fifth sex/gender/gexe, and multiple gender ideologies. The sex of ‘male’ is a variable, a ‘summary’, category, summarizing many and various bodily – or assumed to be bodily – variations. Some of these can be changed to some extent, some not. ‘Male’ is used to include creatures ranging from some foetuses to traces of the long dead, human and non-human.

Second, a wide variety of approaches, studies, and writing have shown the limitations of both a view of gender as just one thing or another, as overly dichotomized or in any fixed relation to sex. These include cross-societal analyses of ‘multiple gender ideologies’ (Meigs, 1990), in which in some societies people's relation to sex or gender is not necessarily fixed across their lifetime, representing movements with ageing beyond a gender binary. This perspective also problematizes the relations of male, men, masculinities, and masculine. When we start to think that way, the mixing, and even confusion, of what is a sex and what is a gender is such that I prefer to talk of gender/sex – or simply ‘gex’, as denoting non-equivalence (Hearn, 2012a).

A third set of approaches for thinking towards the abolition of the category of men comes from what might be summarized as queering ‘men’: various doings, undoings and redoings of genderqueer and overlapping genders. Even in the 1970s, and also much earlier, so-called ‘pre-queer’, there were movements such as effeminism (Dansky et al., 1977). There are many and various non-hegemonic, specific multiple multiplicities and gender variances and non-conformities: agender, bigender, pangender, third sex/gender, various transgenders, MTFTM, FTMTF, ‘bois’, ‘tomboys’, ‘cissies’, ‘pansies’, ‘pretty boys’, feminine men, midlings, androgenous persons, masculine women, masculine-off-centre (Hill and Mays, 2011), female masculinities, possibly queer heterosexualities. This fits with the deconstruction of sex/gender. Simple equations of male, men, masculine, and masculinities are not so viable.

A fourth approach derives from seeing gender in a long-term historical view. Just as there are macro-historical changes in class relations, so too there are long-term historical dialectical changes, subversions, of sex and changes in gender relations. The possibility and prospect of the abolition of men can be part of such historical (dialectical) processes of transformation of gender, and of men (as a class). Part of these changes concerns possible long-term implications of technologies, including bio-, socio- and information and communication technologies.

[Page 201]A further inspiration is taken from the wider politics of abolition (cf. Mathieson, 1974; Lorber, 2005; Spade, 2011; Schwalbe, 2014):

This all might sound a bit far-fetched, a bit abstract or theoretical or disconnected from everyday life, ‘as we know it’. But actually I would see it as very down to earth, very grounded. Counter-hegemonic ways of being men and subversions of logophallocentrism, the hegemony of men (the double message that men are a gender category, and men are individual and collective agents as men) go hand in hand.

As Amanda Sebestyen wrote in On the Problem of Men: ‘I see men as my political enemies. I don't want to kill them, that's too conservative a solution. I want them to stop being men any more’ (1982: 229).2 I see abolition as a further step, with the envisaging of many different possible gender categories. And how is it for men to stop being men, and why is it, for many, so easy for men to pass as men? For men, I recommend coming out publicly as profeminist, but is that enough? I am not so sure.

Most simply, it is time to take apart the taken-for-granted category of ‘men’ – and instead create, produce, improvise, practice, make, a large number of possible gender positions. Seen through these lenses, perhaps the most obvious broad area for change is that of male/men's homosociality, paradoxically and ironically often heterosexual homosociality – men's preference and valuing of heterosexual men in terms of company, information, and satisfying most needs. In all sorts of everyday places and arenas, men reproduce themselves as men, apparently perhaps mystically as supposedly unproblematic. In these everyday practices men make each other, mutually and reciprocally, on and on and on. You can see it in workplaces, the street, bars, meetings, religious ceremonies, universities, political parties, governments, corporations, and the rest.

One fertile area for this mutual conspiracy is sport. If people want to compete in sport, why would it be so terrible to forget sex, gender, gex? You can have all sorts of possible sporting arrangements, based on gender positions, [Page 202]strengths, abilities, orientations, not just ‘single sex’ (in most sports) or the infamous tennis ‘mixed doubles’. I am reminded of playing cooperative games many years ago, where the variety of gender positions, strengths, abilities, orientations, was part of the fun.

Another obvious area is the military and militarism. In around 90 countries, male conscription and various forms of compulsory military service still prevail, for men. In a few, this applies to women too. So, what's at stake here in keeping men as a category of power? Let's just abolish men! Life would be so much simpler …

This approach to men, as subject to redefinition, undoing, Othering, and deconstruction, brings together materialist theory, queer politics, and transnational studies. The category of ‘men’ is becoming more problematic for a variety of reasons, in part from various possibilities for multiple sexes/genders complicating, and perhaps challenging the hegemony of men.

Transnational change involves not just doing things differently and building on existing structures, but arises from attempts to create something different across borders, what I call trans-forms of life (Hearn, 2012c). These can be framed in terms of (transnational) political entities, (transdisplinary) knowledge construction, and (transinstitutional) strategic initiatives. Such initiatives are more than the sum of their parts, and may prefigure new material discursive forms of life. However, trans-forms of life are not necessarily emancipatory, as seen clearly in the transnational far right and transnational violences. Trans-forms of life bring multiple contradictions, for example the emergence of new forms of citizenship and trans(national) patriarchies or in the complex impacts of various and changing ICTs. Working with and across trans-forms of life also raises many specific practical challenges. Perhaps most urgent is how to work transnationally, transdisciplinarily and transinstitutionally, so that environments, materialities, and inequalities are not forgotten in the effort to work reasonably fairly and democratically. And this is all the more so as the transnational, the transdisciplinary, and the transinstitutional, though resting on each other, do not neatly integrate into one simple trans-form of life.