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Some distance down the page I suggested that masculinity has always been basically pathological. What I suppose I mean by this is that masculinity is a sort of mirage that tempts and terrorises us - an image of human identity that is at once captivating and totally false. Its form changes, of course, over time, but its basic effect is always the same. It is a punishingly vivid and unattainable illusion. And I suppose I think the same is true of femininity, though femininity always seems to be defined primarily in negative terms - it is simply the opposite, the absence of that blazingly powerful image of the masculine self. Despite the efforts of some essentialising feminists to create a positive female identity, there is nothing to hang here except the grim necessity of biological function. To be a woman is basically to be nothing at all, or at most - as you say - a baby-machine. I don't see how the dream of either masculine or feminine identity can be redeemed, even by trying to blend aspects of them together. I don't even know that this is possible: trying to blend gender ideals seems to risk simply creating grotesque caricatures of one or the other (witness the hyper-masculine female monsters of our age: Mrs Thatcher or Mrs Clinton). The only alternative, it seems to me, is to walk away from it all completely - like the boy at the end of Julie Taymor's Titus who simply puts down his toy soldiers and abandons the dream of gendered violence altogether. If we choose, we can walk away from the idea that the configuration of our genitals creates an ideal model of behaviour we must conform to. But simply tinkering with the meaning of manhood isn't going to cut it. |