It is a truth universally acknowledged that men and women, once they acquire a fortune of revisionist education, which is nothing but gibberish, must voice their demand for a Men’s Day. Perhaps all year long, but especially on International Women’s Day. This is how the logic of symmetric signalling works: Every symbolic acknowledgement must have a mirror image.
No matter whether a Men’s Day actually exists (November 19; yes, run with it). No matter whether even a Women’s Day achieves precious little to bring equality to the second sex. The issue is not the absence of recognition; it is the presence of someone else’s recognition.
“Man represents both the positive and the neutral,” observed Simone de Beauvoir, identifying Woman, in this symbolic order, as “the Other.” Trying to correct the historical, religious, and socio-political attitude and reality that ensures Man as the baseline clearly needs more than symbolic days. The citizen, the worker, the intellectual, the soldier — all these archetypes and more were implicitly male. But men must have their day, too. They cannot bear even a day of not being in the spotlight, however performative that spotlight may be.
Writer Sara Ahmed talks about the politics of complaint through her book on complaints of sexual harassment, bullying, and racial abuse, et cetera. Whenever marginalised groups complain about inequality, the focus frequently shifts away from the inequality itself and toward the supposed excess of the complaint, and the rare eventual punishment. The complainant becomes the problem.
The what-about-men question operates as a discursive strategy to unseat women, even from the position of receiving the crumbs. This framing fails to achieve anything for men, except social media relevance for a few hours. It’s a fascinating study of men’s behaviour. Yet another glimpse into the psychology of privilege. The meltdown when they become aware, however briefly, that they might not be the centre of every narrative.
Maybe women should gift this day, which has anyway come far from the celebration of the suffragette movement and equal gender rights to offering discounts (with the mandatory fine print) on pink tax-ed products, to the protesting men. Maybe then men will, yet again, feel like men. Because 364 days aren’t enough for them, and this one day robs them of essential masculinity, which, by the way, is good for women.
Masculinity has saturated the cultural and institutional fields. Men are tired. They are barely keeping it together while women continue to knock at the door. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Men are struggling to be men when being men is questioned. They need a rest. Perhaps even to reflect on how they are “feeling” within and about their bodies. Science is also unfriendly. Men are also discovered to have post-partum depression now. Who’d have thought!
The crisis of masculinity, a political mobilisation war cry, is real, we are told. So, why are men not taking a break? They really need to get off the treadmill. They perhaps need a spa day, too. Will they, then, begin to understand that they have a high, very high, concentration of nerve endings in their fingertips, too? Or that patriarchal systems are tying them up in the endless rebellion-resistance cycle? These are essential lessons for men in both the sheets and the streets.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that societies distribute not only economic resources but also symbolic capital in terms of recognition, prestige, and legitimacy. Symbolic attention, in this view, functions like a scarce commodity. If women receive it today, men must necessarily be losing it. Hence, “I’ll have what she is having,” with the familiar twist.
Let men have it. But, then, let women have the crown, the nuclear codes, market control, reproductive rights, street superiority, obscenely higher wages, clubs and cliques, under-the-table deals, negotiation rooms, director’s chairs, music guild halls, art gallery dominance, staggering book deals, unlimited supply of the benefit of doubt, and, above all, a victimhood that never ages.
Shall we do the swap?
Happy, yet another, Men’s Day!
Nishtha Gautam is an academician and author. The views expressed are personal
