Violent Manhood. J. E. Sumerau
to violence against women; people of color regardless of gender identities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people; and one another. I also outline men’s opposition to efforts to lessen violence in society. Finally, I illustrate some ways that transforming societal notions of what it means to be a man may be essential to the success of any program, policy, or reform targeted at reducing violence in the United States. In developing these ideas, I encourage readers to shift from viewing violence as “just something men do” to something people who wish to be seen as men embrace to be recognized by others as men. As such, I argue that challenging violence ultimately relies on not only changing the things men do, but also revising what it means to be a man in contemporary U.S. society.
How a Person Becomes a Man
One of the hallmarks of gender scholarship over the past half-century is the recognition that men are not born—they are made.[6] Although this may sound strange to anyone socialized by contemporary American notions of inherent or essential manhood, the vast body of research on gender continuously reveals that what it means to be a man—or any other gender identity—arises from a complex set of individual, organizational, and structural patterns that depend on what people do, think, and affirm within and between groups.[7] Especially for readers who are less familiar with these empirical observations, it may be helpful to start our discussion with the processes whereby people begin to become men.
To become a man, first one must be born into a social context where something referred to and known as a “man” already exists.[8] Put simply, one cannot become a man unless there is an identity category already in existence that others will recognize and accept as a man. As identity construction scholars have long noted,[9] the development of any type of self requires some social understanding of the possibility of such a self. Those seeking to be thin, or beautiful, or a soccer player, for example, must first learn what any of these things are from other people before they are able to become them. At the same time, there must be something these things are not (fat or average, ugly or plain, or someone who doesn’t play soccer) to distinguish between what one is (soccer player) and what one is not (not a soccer player). Since social life builds on the identities and meanings of previous generations, someone can only become a given gender identity (man, woman, genderqueer, agender, etc.) if there first exists recognition (within a specific group or more broadly) that the given gender identity exists and that there are ways to demonstrate that one is that given gender identity and not a different one.
An illustration of this process of “becoming” any type of social identity or member of a category may be useful here. If, for example, a person is born into a social context (a family, a city, a town, a culture, or other location) in which there is nothing people already know about called a Dreadnought, then that person has no way to become a Dreadnought. If, on the other hand, a person is born into a social context in which the members of that group (family members) or residents of that location (people who live in that city) are devoted fans of a messiah-type, supernatural being called Dreadnought, then said person could be encouraged by others to act like Dreadnought and someday develop into a Dreadnought-type being or character. In fact, it would not be surprising if some readers right now are asking, for example, “What is a Dreadnought?” or “Is a Dreadnought a real thing?” while other readers recognize this reference right away and might wish to be like this character type in their own lives and behaviors.[10] In either case, as social psychologists have long noted, a person can only become a given type of “thing” or “person” or “object” (i.e., develop an identity as a man or a Dreadnought) if there is already a version of that thing, person, or object that others recognize and thus may encourage said person to emulate and, over time, become.
Emerging studies of relationships between religious and non-religious children, families, and communities provide another example of this type of process at work.[11] If, for instance, people are raised in households where family members believe in a higher power they call a god, then these people are likely to understand at some point that there is a god in their home, there are ways to act godly or god-like in their own lives, and there are people who expect them to act in such godly or god-like ways. At the same time, however, when people are raised in households where family members do not believe in or even mention a higher power of any type, they may not understand that there is a god in other people’s homes or that they could or should act in a way suggested by such god. For people to know about a god and thus become godly, there must first be a type of god created, promoted, and evidenced in their own social world.
In the contemporary United States, this first step in becoming a man is rarely noted in conversations or discussions about the topic of manhood.[12] This is because assertions of the existence of an identity named man and the ways people should behave to be seen by themselves and others as manly or man-like are constant, widespread, and normal.[13] Whether one looks to religion, science, media, politics, or other cultural meaning systems, said viewer will find narratives or scripts for what a man is, how a man should behave, and how others should behave around such manly or man-like beings. Although the type of manhood promoted by a given source of authority or influence may vary dramatically, both newly born human beings and those who are ushering such beings into our world will consistently be taught that there is something called a man and specific ways a given person may become one.[14]
Within this context, most American media, religion, science, and other powerful systems of meaning align manhood with being assigned male by society at birth.[15] Although many people live as, are seen by themselves and others as, and identify as men without ever having been assigned male at any time or by any social authority, contemporary U.S. society typically defines manhood in relation to male sex assignment and often claims that one who is assigned male by society will and must become a man within the society. As Candace West and Don Zimmerman[16] note, this assigned-sex to performed-gender pathway is a quintessential element in the social construction of the identity man, the articulation that such an identity exists, and that this man identity contains specific behaviors, beliefs, practices, and expectations in a given society.
As such, the second step in becoming a man involves being assigned male by social authorities, usually at birth and by medical doctors. When people are assigned male by social authorities, such authorities alongside parents and other significant relations will generally expect them to become men, will identify them as boys who will become men in their own interactions and mental expectations, and will work to create manly or man-like qualities and behaviors that the person in question must perform to avoid punishment, criticism, or other negative results. As Barrie Thorne[17] observed almost 30 years ago, much of childhood thus involves social authorities training people who have been assigned male to learn how to think, behave, and react in ways culturally expected of those who will identify as men.
Regardless of results, research consistently notes that such training—or masculine gender socialization—is generally effective in the reproduction of both an identity people recognize as man and in the creation of new people who see themselves and others as men from generation to generation. As noted at the start of this chapter, even those—like me—who do not conform to the assigned-male-becomes-a-man script experience life constantly aware of and impacted by the ongoing efforts of people to maintain and enforce this script. At the same time, however, recognition of this process of creating and becoming men reveals the malleability of both the identity “man” and beliefs about what it means to become and be a man in society. Throughout this book, my respondents outline how their own experiences being trained to be men necessarily involved violence. In so doing, however, they also reveal that this does not have to be the case, as social authorities and significant others could revise such training programs to transform what it means to be a man in a wide variety of ways.
Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts
To understand both why my respondents’ definitions of manhood necessarily included violence and how such notions of what it means to be a man could be changed, however, also requires examining what it means to be a man in U.S. society at present. Put simply, if one is being trained to become a man (instead of a Dreadnought or some other type of