Gender justice is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century together with the challenges that climate change and the reform of capitalism. This is how the French historian of the Paris XIII University estimates it, Ivan Jablonka (Paris, 1973), who addressed the matter in his award-winning novel ‘Läetitita or the end of men’ and now takes it up again in the essay ‘Righteous men’, recently published in Anagrama. But if the focus has usually been on women and feminism, he deals with men and new masculinities, the other side of the debate that has not ceased since it exploded with the #metoo.
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Jablonka takes a historical tour of the patriarchy, emerged already in the Upper Paleolithic, to end in the current era, when they have been put on the table, perhaps for the first time, the crisis that men are going through as a result of the latest feminist movements. The historian relates this crisis to populism and that experienced by some democracies, such as Brazil, Poland or Hungary, countries in which fundamental rights are being limited. To counteract this effect, Jablonka considers it necessary for men to carry out their own reflection, the one that women already did centuries ago. As he insists in this interview, “gender justice concerns our personal morality, but also public policies and education. Parents also have a responsibility, if they raise their sons as kings and their daughters as sweet creatures destined to please. to men. “
QUESTION. No offense, is your book an exercise in ‘mansplaining’ on patriarchy?
ANSWER. I am not offended! Criticism is essential in a democracy and in the social sciences. What I was looking for was to go back to the sources of male domination to find out how we can get out of it. This historical investigation is linked to that of a utopia, that of “just men.” My book is addressed to women, of course, but also to men, who seldom question masculinity.
Q. What did you want with this essay?
R. My main objective is to rethink the masculine, at the same time to make it more complex and to make it compatible with the rights of women. Patriarchy harms women, but also men, particularly those whose masculinity is deemed illegitimate, such as Jews, blacks, or homosexuals. Everyone knows the portrait of the self-defined “real man”: risk-taking, ability to endure alcohol, great involvement in his work, inability to verbalize his emotions or consult a therapist. Those are alienations that, in my opinion, many men suffer.
The #MeToo has been said to have “freed” the word of women, but the silence of men, who may express annoyance, indifference, contempt or hostility, has been less noted. That silence is also a silence about masculinity, an inability to think about it. Why is a misogynist often also a homophobe? Why do men read less than women? I wanted to speak, insofar as I am a man, about masculinity. My reflection is evidently compatible with feminist emancipation struggles.
“It has been said that #MeToo had ‘freed’ the word of women, but the silence of men has been less pointed out”
Q. I read a few years ago ‘Laëtitia or the end of men’. I think that story about the murder of an 18-year-old girl also inspired this book.
R. My book ‘Laëtitia or the end of men’, published in 2016 just before #MeToo, is part of the journey of a genre. My introspection began in childhood, because I come from a family where the division of tasks was globally traditional. However, as an orphan of the Shoah, my father was also a victim, that is, a vulnerable man. In adolescence, as I was neither a great footballer nor a great seducer, I felt a bit uncomfortable in the masculine. Subsequently, in my work as a historian, I have become interested in abandoned children and in the legal misogyny of the 19th century. Finally, ‘Läetitia’ asked the masculine in its most aggressive and pathological version. ‘The just men’ comes to prolong this reflection, but in a more positive way. After diagnosing the “end of men”, they had to be reborn under the features of “just men”.
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Q. In this book you explain that the patriarchy began as early as the Neolithic. Is it reversible?
A. Male domination stems from a long history. Probably a sexual division of tasks in the Upper Palaeolithic, linked to the “maternal cost” that weighs on women. The definitive establishment of male dominance undoubtedly dates back 5000 or 6000 years. This presence explains the immediate control of writing in the 4th millennium, of the State in the 3rd, of arms in the 2nd, and of religions in the 1st. We had to wait for the Atlantic revolutions in the 1770s. -1790, so that patriarchy is answered by a current of thought called feminist. Since patriarchy is a cultural institution, and not a biological fact, it is reversible. I say this with very moderate optimism. It would be necessary for men to get involved in the fight, alongside women who are already involved in it.
“Male domination stems from a long history. Probably a sexual division of tasks in the Upper Paleolithic”
P. What role does social class play in this matter? Throughout history, women from rich families have been able to study and even be more independent.
R. Machismo and gender violence exist in all media and in all countries of the world. The question therefore is not whether a man is rich or poor, white or black, Christian or Muslim, but whether his masculinity is compatible with gender justice.
P. In recent times a certain feminism of care related to maternalism has emerged. You criticize it because you consider it a conservative and essentialist, but it has been widely accepted by left-wing movements and parties. Is the left wrong?
R. I do not criticize the maternalist current. I recognize all the currents of feminism, because today we need their contribution, their strength and their radicality. Instead, I don’t think feminism merges into biology. Since the 18th century, feminists have been fought by many men, but at the same time they were supported by some pioneers such as Condorcet, Fourier, John Stuart Mill or Tahar Haddad. There are men who are victims of patriarchy, there are women who feel good about it. Society will have progressed when men recognize themselves in caregiving activities.
Q. On the other hand, there are women who identify with the Amazons: they talk about their sexual relationships, their independence, power, bravery … Are they women against feminism of care, of that maternalist feminism?
R. I want women to have access to all positions of power and responsibility. It is a moral requirement and a guarantee of social effectiveness. On the other hand, women are free in all things. I am not going to judge what they have the right to do or say. I am in favor of the equality of women and men, but also of the freedom of women and men.
“Society will have progressed when men recognize each other in caregiving activities”
Q. When we publish this type of topic about feminism, there is usually a furious reaction from men and some women. Why do you think this is so?
A. The privileges of men are material (in the political, economic and domestic sphere) and symbolic (a man will be more listened to than a woman). On the part of men, it is not always easy to recognize or understand. For women it is a form of supplementary violence.
P. This issue of male frustration and the crisis will affect our democracies. In countries like Poland and Hungary we have already seen a setback in democratic values.
R. Masculinism, which is a kind of anti-feminism, is one of the dangers that we must face. It is linked to populism, as we see in the United States, in Brazil, in Russia, in Turkey, in Hungary and elsewhere. This masculinism “from above” joins a masculinism “from below”, that of declassified workers who feel overwhelmed by a society that seems to them increasingly feminized. The 21st century will have several challenges: the fight against global warming, the reform of capitalism and gender justice. My book is about the third challenge.
“Masculinism, which is a kind of anti-feminism, is one of the dangers we must face. It is linked to populism.”
Q. You speak of refounding the masculine. What does that mean?
A. The eternal masculine does not exist, in the same way that the eternal feminine does not exist. Giving up a mandatory virility model is enriching other forms of masculinity. You have to escape the prison of gender, which consists of limiting yourself to a single way of living, with the canons of authority and beauty: being muscular, active, peremptory, etc. There are a thousand ways to be a man.
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Q. What is the new masculinity?
R. I propose three “new masculinities”: a masculinity of non-domination, which dissociates the masculine and the power; a masculinity of respect, which governs seduction and sexuality; a masculinity of equality, which consists of living in equality in the daily life of the couple, at work or on the street. But I conceive these masculinities from a single psychological and private point of view. When I speak of gender justice, I also think of state feminism and collective mobilizations. I think of a decisive role for intermediate bodies, political parties, unions, associations, religions. Gender justice concerns our personal morals, but also public policies and education. Parents also have a responsibility, if they raise their sons as kings and their daughters as sweet creatures destined to please men.
“We must celebrate the first gestures of Biden, who has appointed several women to important positions”
Q. You also speak of feminist leadership. Do you think Macron is a feminist leader? Is there a feminist leader?
R. The French president is not feminist at all. Its narrower circle is entirely male, and it has appointed men whose past is highly controversial as ministers. In Canada, Justin Trudeau calls himself a feminist. Many doubt it, but it is already a good thing that it is presented like this. At the same time, we must celebrate the first gestures of Biden, who has appointed several women to important positions.
Q. Should women and men fight together against patriarchy or is it a women’s issue?
R. Women are the ones who, historically, have taken up the fight against misogyny, inequalities and gender violence. That will continue to be the case and it is normal. But I think it is urgent, for men, to question themselves, to adopt other models that are not masculinity of domination, to fight against the patriarchy that poisons us all. We risk both private happiness and democratic legitimacy.
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