A Thesis That Was Lost and Confused in Masculinity and Feminism – A lost exploration of how men can be active feminists
This thesis was about trying to explore how men could be feminists. That wasn’t what it was meant to be about originally. I first thought of working with men and emotional expression, but I have a habit of focusing too generally and also not focusing a committing to a specific topic and blowing in the winds a bit… so the project became about exploring how men could be active feminists.
This could have been interesting to work with… why was it not? Well reading Bell Hooks books The Will To Change – Men, Masculinity and Love was fascinating and as I read it the first time I typed all sort of personal reflections in the margins of the pdf-book-file… these reflection were interesting but they were also too personal to be sharing… I was struggling to find an appropriate distance from this topic, which I could present as a thesis. I needed to read more. And talk to more people.
I also needed a focus within how men can be feminists. I had the focus for a time of men who engage in feminism in an inspiring way. – like exploring are there role models for how guys can relate to feminism. But I went to broad with this… I did end up asking some guys questions about how they are active feminists … I ask a few friends who I knew were particularly open minded and trying to be good people and good men … but I asked them in a way which pigeon holed them into saying they were feminists … the subject of men identifying as feminists is a separate topic … but it felt wrong the way I asked Theo, Luis, Mathieu and Elias these questions in a very leading way and then put there answers in my zine. They all were nice, sound guys and didn’t make a fuss and answered my questions. I would think they answered the questions for the sake of helping me because they knew I was really struggling creating my thesis. I wouldn’t think they enjoyed answering the questions, or being in my zine, but I hope they don’t regret helping me. Part of feminism is about being loving and caring and these guys were that. They risked the embarrassment of answering these questions and having their answers in my zine, and I am eternally grateful for that.
What good can I take from this project? My zine ends with saying “I hope that with what this zine presents, you can continue to question your gender and start creating a more balance form of masculinity.” There is some good in that. Men questioning the norms around being a man. And the idea of trying to create a more balanced form of masculinity is intriguing. I can’t say doing this thesis has brought me any nearer to that. It maybe clearly gave me the understanding that women would like more love and affection from men. It reinforced the idea that I need to be come better as expressing my emotions, especially when I am feeling challenged. And the literature I have read continuously says that men are struggling with expressing their emotions and the men would benefit a lot from doing so. Unfortunately I did not scrape the surface of this topic with the exploration my thesis went through. I would love to do a project on men and emotional expressing sometime. I’ve been reading some more academic articles on the topic and read about groups that help men to connect from men’s sheds to men’s groups to a group in the UK called Andy’sManClub which takes the direct approach facilitating groups of men talking about their emotions and the group is describes as a suicide prevention group. So I would love to work with the topic of men and emotional expression sometime. I would be scared to work with it though. I have become lost twice working with the topic of masculinity. Once in second year and once in third year. I also am not always great at expressing my emotions either so then I don’t know if I should do a project on that. If I was ever to do a project on men and emotional expression again I would hope that I would choose something specific and focus on it and stay specific. Maybe I could work with men’s groups that try to encourage and facilitate men expressing their emotions. But that’s for the future. I hope it happens.
