Iron Jason

A few days ago, British writer & feminist Laurie Penny asked men on Twitter how they were adversely affected by gender roles.  That led to a lot of feed back from men who had a lot to say on the subject.  A lot of it seemed to revolve around the expectations to be aggressive, unsentimental, and play sports.

It's difficult to get discussion about men's problems.  Sure, the concept of "men have it easier overall, but they are treated unfairly in some ways." Is not exactly quantum physics.  But it is two ideas in one, and that's a bit too many for our sound-byte culture.  On the one hand, people will say that men have it easier, so they can't complain about anything. On the other, people will claim that men have problems, therefore they're the real victims.  Those simplistic views have a tendency to derail the discussion one way or the other.

So how would I answer the question of what problems gender roles cause for men?  I think most of it comes down to emotions.  In most areas of human activity, women are far more limited in the way they act.  There are very specific ways they're expected to look, hold life priorities, and take career paths.  The one area where the tables turn is with a person's emotional life.  Specifically, the fact that women are expected to have them, but men are expected to have none beyond anger.  As with our expectations of women, the expectations are both restrictive and unrealistic.

It's not really clear whether men are making progress in breaking out of gender roles.  In the media, there seems to be plenty of stereotyping of male characters - as I've said before, advertisers can't get enough of dumb, childish men.  And it's seemed to me that men who prefer traditional masculine attributes are reasserting that masculinity, as a reaction to the uncertainty over gender roles.  In the same way that women have had to find a compromise in which women are free to pursue their own lifestyle, but without shaming those that retain traditional roles, men are going to have to find a similar balance.