What is a Masculine Hegemony? (Takin’ it to the Hedge’)

I have found in various writing and discussions on Buddhism and politics  I often find myself using the term “masculine hegemony”. I use the term lots, eg, when I am facing the yawing void of mean-hearted corporate vacuousity, I am,  “battling the masculine hegemony”.

When I  realise how my liberties to act without harming anyone else are compromised, it’s the same.

Frankly, I think my wife, who is a big feminist and taught me most about hegemonies  is  pretty  bored of it! "Here we go again.. Mat is ranting on about Masculine hegemonies... Babylon... yawn:)"

I never promised her a rose garden... but I think that hegemonies are important to see around us, they are a problematic. They, by definition, will only tend to make more laws and fewer freedoms.

So this little essay is about these masculine hegemomnies.

The Hegemony

A hegemony is a social relationship  where one party dominates the other by enforcing a compromise.

It is a very broad term. A totally totalitarian state is hegemony. It dominates by enforcing a compromise between concession and violence.

An organised religion is a hegemony. It dominates its followers  by enforcing a compromise between salvation and damnation.

Corporate Fast Food is a hegemony, and often a very tasty one.

My belief is that to be an informed citizen one needs to be aware of the hegemonic relationships one partakes  in.  Some hegemonic systems seem absolutely inevitable. Death and Taxes and all that. Others seem trivial and there may be others one doesnt even know exists. Again it is important to see that  there is not one hegemony above us but a vast interwoven complex of hegemonic relationships and some of these may be much more unfair than initially thought.

For example, when you look at the hegemonic equation between the state and the person taxed  I think it appears that  there is an awful disparity between ones wishes as an individual and the emergent wishes of the Taxing society.

As a general rule of thumb, with any such relationship I believe an informed analysis is to ask oneself :

• What am I giving up?
• What am I getting in return?
• What are my options?

These kind of questions will start to highlight that the dominating complexes consists of Hegemonies with particular traits and conditions.

The Masculine Hegemony

A masculine hegemony is a type of hegemony that has a masculine psyche – importantly, I think, this doesn’t mean it would be run by men necessarily, but more like that it, as a whole, behaves like a man would. This is important because we can see how this masculine personality becomes embodied in the laws of our nations and institutions.  If we swapped all the men for women we would stull be dominated by masculine institutions.

The Masculine Psyche isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly distinct from the feminine. For example, in the following list of pairs, it seems clear which are male and which are female traits.

• Competition over cooperation.
• Epic over acute.
• Now over later.
• Profound over specific.
• Big over small.
• Global over local.
• Velour over Chintz.

Note that there are no slights there,I am not saying one gender is more honest or greedy or what have you than the other. These are just natural distinctions of gender that will have their roots in evolutionary advantages between the male and female species... err... I mean genders. The key point is that they are also traits of social systems.

So in and of themselves I don't think masculine hegemonies are necessarily bad. One needs just look to the Space Program to see that, with men in charge and masculine agendas, we certainly seem to get the job done. I am not at all saying that had women been in charge over history we would still not  have  discovered metallurgy but would all have many lovely and neatly arranged  bunches of coconuts in our mud-huts( with the badly parked Ox cart outside). I am not saying that at all!

But the problem is, whereas you do want a man doing the stuff men are good at, like hunting and engineering and fighting  you wouldn’t want them doing the stuff they are bad at, like looking after children, tidying up the house or running a just and fair nation where citizens are protected and conflicts resolved without violence by fair laws and just courts and where personal rights are balanced with social duty, where  petty laws avoided and truth, beauty, love and compassion are prized above an imaginary money that buys empty status as an offerings to an imaginary Phallus god. If ya gets ma drift;)