A ‘traditional’ man is hard to find

Jessica Meyer is Professor of British Social and Cultural History at the University of Leeds. She a historian of masculinity, specialising in the First World War era.

In 2019 the American Psychological Association issued guidance for working specifically with men and boys which defined the concept of ‘traditional’ masculinity as marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression. This caused some cultural debate in Britain at the time, with Piers Morgan claiming on Good Morning, Britain that this was a definition of simply ‘being a man’. Yet, as gender studies scholars have increasingly articulated, the idea of what we mean when we speak of ‘traditional’ masculinity, far from being self-evident as implied by Morgan, is complicated, contradictory and culturally contingent.

Historians of masculinity, a specialism which has developed over the past forty years in concert with the growth of women’s history, have been at the forefront of discussions over nuancing definitions of ‘traditional’ masculinity. While some masculine ideals associated with the concept, perhaps most commonly that of the male warrior, recur across time and cultures, other ideals and their expression are not only contingent on the cultures in which they emerge but also ebb and flow over time in response to social and cultural changes. For example, in the British context, the male bread winner norm, the idea that a man should act as sole economic provider for his dependents, only emerged as a socially dominant ideal in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of waged and salaried labour outside the home. Nor do such changes only occur over long periods of time. In the early years of the First World War, men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps were stigmatised as ‘slackers’ because they served in a non-combatant, care-giving role. By the end, they were celebrated by other servicemen as ‘Knights of the Red Cross’ for the care they provided. Indeed, their ability  to face the enemy without the psychological reinforcement of carrying a gun was celebrated as particularly courageous.

Histories of masculinity also demonstrate the manifold nature of gender identities. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fathers played with their children, worried when they fell ill and mourned when they died, even as they exerted dominance over their households. British soldiers in the same period adopted war orphans and wrote poetry, much of it expressing the emotional bonds they shared with their comrades. Sir Henry Havelock was celebrated as a hero after his death almost as much his devotion to his wife and religious faith as for his military achievements during the Indian Mutiny.

Recognizing the complexity and multiplicity of historic masculinities is an important contribution to the current debates over gender and men’s status in contemporary society. By showing the diversity of ways to be a man in the past, such histories give us tools to challenge commentators who invoke a monolithic ‘traditional’ masculinity to manipulate psychologically vulnerable young men and justify misogynistic abuse. More than that, it challenges us to think critically about masculinity as a complex a gender category, rather than as one defined solely by the limiting qualities of stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression.