Kathleen Barry, on "Unmaking War, Remaking Men"

     On Monday night, in keeping with my recent streak of attending amazing lecturers, I went to a Chelsea bookstore for a presentation and book-signing by Kathleen Barry, in connection with her recent publication of Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves.
     I approached the lecture with a certain reservation. Though I’ll proudly declare myself a feminist even as they drag me thrashing into the quicksand, I have no patience whatsoever for misandry or guy-bashing, and I worried that the themes of the evening might encourage as much. Needless to say, my fears were laid quickly to rest.
     Kathleen Barry, who holds a doctorate in both sociology and education, and has functioned as an unstoppable activist since the 1960s, particularly in the arena of sexual slavery, scored points with me early on by unequivocally denouncing the idea that men are genetically predisposed toward violence, and also the idea that masculinity in itself is a violent entity. Rather, she centered her grievance on what she referred to as “blinding macho,” a socialized phenomenon that is responsible for an entire spectrum of destructive behavior, from sexual assault and domestic abuse to participation in that magnum opus of institutionalized violence – war. *
     Her thoughts about how “blinding macho” develops resonated strongly with my own experiences of masculinity, as conveyed to me by society. She argued that it begins with men being fed an overwhelming compulsion to operate in the role of protector. From the impression that protection is needed comes a perception of danger, and a sense that violence might be needed to meet that danger, and then, from that, the idea that whatever a man is called upon to protect must be inherently more valuable than he is. The end product is expendability, and nothing breeds and exacerbates violence like the feeling of having nothing left to lose.
     Yet Kathleen was careful to stay close to her agenda. Rather than dwell on the more abstract question of who or what fosters these predilections, she focused specifically on how the military takes advantage of them.
     First and most obviously, it makes expendability the keystone of the soldier’s psychology, and subordinates a man’s personal worth to a nebulous, rarely defined patriotism. Second, it creates a situation where men quite literally bond over killing, insofar as the only other way for a soldier to exercise his protector impulse is to “look after his buddy,” a “looking after” that makes killing a necessity. Finally, the idea that a buddy is in turn “looking after you” is the only factor that can counter one’s own fixation on worthlessness, wherein expendability again enters the equation.
     The answer to these ills, in Kathleen’s estimation, is employment of the titular empathy, but here, as is common with solutions, I felt a little more clarity was needed. Obviously, having empathy for your so-called enemies is the first step to undermining the “blinding macho,” but that’s hardly a new claim, and it left some issues unanswered. The question I had – indeed, the question I put to her in the Q & A session that followed – was how to preempt all that; how to help the young men and boys to counter the protector urge at that very sensitive stage when society first feeds it to them.
     To her credit, she didn’t pretend to have any answers, but suggested that among the many things in life we could stop biffing up, we might consider the beauty of nurture – freeing it from its feminine shackles, and allowing both men and women to participate.
     “Nurturing is beautiful,” she said, “and men can be beautiful nurturers.”
     It was good enough for me.




(* “‘Blinding macho,’ is grammatically incorrect,” Kathleen said, shortly after introducing the concept. “It should be ‘blinding machismo’ but I hate to give it that Latin edge.”)