21.11.24. Manhood on censored

21.11.24. Manhoodon the censored

In the context of the American presidential election and Donald Trump's win, she late appeared in "Die Welt" (6.11.2024) interview of writer Wieland Freund with American author Jonathan Franzen. 2 days later (8.11.2024) her text in Polish translation was published by “Gazeta Wyborcza”. It is said in this conversation, among another things, that America is presently experiencing "a crisis of manhood, which is defined by dominance". With respect to the presidential election, the conclusion of this message so means that a simultaneous vote "on the future of manhood". This diagnosis is accompanied by the following explanation: Franzena:

Various studies say the same thing: there are more men who feel threatened by the imagination of a female president than women who feel disgusted by Trump misogynism. Technology in various forms, along with the overall complexity of the modern world, deprives more and more men of the feeling that they are inactive capable of effective action according to elevated patterns. Trump embodies their grief and gives him a grotesquely primitive voice: he likes villains for them, whom they can blame and hate.

Judging by reading the old style, powerful – 600 pages each – of Franzen's novels, for example Freedom (Trans. Witold Kurylak, Katowice 2011) or Correction (tr. Joanna Garbarek and Arkadiusz Nakoniecznik, Katowice 2012), the author knows what he is saying. From the position of its protagonists, through their various entanglements, it shows in these novels the panorama of modern American society, and even the problems of the full Western world. This panorama includes a concrete social everyday life revealing its quality in multi-compulsive human family, neighbouring, generational, economical – including sex – and defined, of course, by the attitude towards capitalism, which translates into situations driven by differences of view between liberals and conservatives, and, on an global scale, results in decisions by large politicians in the function of leaders of the nation. There is besides an chance to reflect on the “feministic rigor” of the protagonists’ conversations, the “Patriarchal strategy of promotion and the phallometry strategy of performance measurement”. There are no shortages of older ones in the household on “Men's and Women's Obligations” and “the request for specified a distinction” and “the respect of tradition” if, for example, a fewer formulas characteristic of Franzen's fresh ideas...

All of this can be easy referred to the Polish reality, not even mentioning our seismic theatre after Trump's success and another speeches by right-wing politicians. For a long time, we have been presenting works by both Polish authors and translated from another languages on "scripts of masculinity and femininity", i.e. "models taken from homes" and their cultural consequences. possibly it is worth recalling any of these works.

Take, for example, Anna Kowalczyk's book illustrated by Marta FrejThe missing half of history. Short past of women on Polish lands (Warsaw 2018). The passage displayed on her cover speaks for itself:

Even if 1 mentions the heroes of the uprising, the brave Polish Mothers, or that it was the female who won the gold medal in the Olympics and Mount Everest for Poland, all these references are mostly of the character of "curiosts", "michałków" and give the impression that in our common past women, even outstanding, though they were changing, but not besides frequently and so frankly, at the end of the day, without large importance for the general picture.

Two years later, a book came out Clementine Suchanov This is war. Women, Fundamentalists and the fresh mediate Ages(Warsaw 2020). In the introduction, we read:

Do you feel lost, lost in what happens to our reality? In this, how does it match the stories of “handy” Margaret Atwood? You're right, something has been going on for respective years without precedent. You read news from Poland, Argentina, the United States or Italy and see the same medieval ideas circulating dangerously rapidly in the world. They endanger the wellness or safety of your and your loved ones. individual wants to take distant your right to decide about intimacy, body, how to love and who, and how to live. This book is about this.

Other notable feminist works could besides be indicated: Caroline Criado Perez Invisible women. How data creates the planet of men (for Anna Sak, Kraków 2020), Origin of women Elaine Morganwith Urszula Zajączkowska (Col. Małgorzata Danicka-Kosut, Kraków 2023), Lady Sapiens. The Real communicative of Womenwhich they describe Thomas Cirottaeau, Jennifer Kerner, Éric Pincas Aleksandra Weksej, Krakow 2023), as well as the book Kelly BarnhillWhen women were dragons Katarzyna Makaruk, Kraków 2023) or Ladies first. What men and women are fighting for in modern PolandWojciech Harpula and Maria Mazurek (Kraków 2023).

This fresh work begins with this story:

There are journeys in life that are more memorable than others. We like to return with memories to the expedition to Bajkał, besides due to the fact that the reality of Russian-Buriat villages is so different from our Polish-Cracovian world. 1 of the snapshots came back to us erstwhile the thought of writing this book began to sprout in our heads.
Evening, along with our guide, we go to his friend in a Siberian village. Welcome, the host invites you, even though this is an unannounced visit, and our group is simply a fewer people. We sit behind a table under the planet next to the home and abruptly there are girls and women around us from 12 to 70 years old. They pawn, bring, report, collect, put, add, take care, and make certain that no 1 is missing. And so for a fewer hours, due to the fact that the organization was late. erstwhile 1 of the men of our group stood up to take the dishes or go to the kitchen, the host looked at 1 of the women sitting on the side, and this 1 immediately approached the overzealous and lenient sadit’sya She put him in a chair. On the another hand, erstwhile 1 of the Polish women was breaking out to help, she was immediately assigned to work in a squad of caterers. And at the same table, the hosts fundamentally did not announcement them. They did not talk to them, and in answer to their questions, they turned their eyes on the man sitting next to the questioner.

For example, the problem of sex identity is not trivial. While it is inactive widely seen in various parts of the world, cultural ideas of women and men are increasingly being changed. It does not necessarily work as well as promoted in its own time by John Gray a division indicating that men are from Mars and women from Venus. For any time now, we have been talking more and more about the crisis of manhood. In 2020, he wrote to us about this Edwin Bendyk in the book In Poland, that is everywhere. The Thing About the Fall and the Future of the World, by devoting a clear chapter to this issue End of male domination. Among another things, he noted:

The crisis of masculinity has long been a subject of public debate in many places in the world. Boys mostly accomplish weaker results than girls in PISA teen accomplishment texts. In OECD countries, but Japan, women dominate among university graduates. It is akin in Poland. In addition, despite the low reading of books (hobby of little than 37 percent of Poles and Poles according to investigation by the National Library), gentlemen read little willingly than ladies. Only 15 percent of them are very fond of reading, with 20 percent of akin declarations from women.
Participation in another forms of culture is similar. [...]
The debate on the crisis of manhood, or even the end of men, started after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008. The recession caused by the collapse of markets affected mainly men. In the U.S., 3 of the lost jobs were men's, and in the first year of the crisis, 7 million jobs were vaporized. When, at the end of 2009, Accenture's advisory company asked company managers from around the planet about how the layoffs were going, most of the bosses declared that men were the first victims. In France, among the fresh unemployed, the gentlemen were 71%, in Switzerland 69 percent, in India 95 percent (pp. 177-178).

The references to the above works may, I believe, be for those curious in the past of masculinity and its contemporary perception of the starting point for reading a peculiarly interesting book in this field. I mean, an essay released late October this year, which is written by Wojciech Szmiej, prof. of the University of Silesia, literary student and polonist utilizing experiences accumulated during technological internships in German, French, Italian and US universities. His book is named After valor (Black Publishing, Beef). It is the first Polish past of our imagined “real manhood” immersed in the past. The author's analyses date back to the 19th century, and detailed reflections cover 3 periods, that is, the interwar twentieth, postwar from 1945 to 1989 and time after the systemic transformation to this day. In the preliminary part of laughter points out that the wider picture, it is

writing a comprehensive past of masculinity in Poland [...] would require [...] respective years of work of a full group of researchers and researchers, representing many different fields. specified publication would should be very extensive, most likely multivolume – as in the case of exceptional French Histoire de la virilité (p. 58).

He justifies the form of his communicative about the problems he has taken:

I effort to address my book to a wide scope of readers, but not neglecting academic ambitions – I balance between the theoretical proposal, rooted in the origin material, and rather a sudden, moments of anecdotal narrative.
I have so chosen the only correct genre expression – essay. It is authorial and free adequate that an essayist can afford more freedom in the selection of matter, not to hide his me, on generalization, hypotheses, asking questions. At the same time, however, the essay, especially the 1 with the technological schnitzel, requires the author to know the investigation field, existing theories, the state of research. The essay is intended to grow this field, inspire discussions, encourage polemics. Thus, it is possible that only this large form allows specified multifaceted, ubiquitous and elusive phenomena as manhood and describes the processes and changes to which it is subject (p. 59).

At the entrance the book laughter attracts attention with a cover with an excellent painting Karol Radziszewski Józef Piłsudski makes a decision not to enter the penalisation of homosexual acts in the penal code in 1932. I wonder if our right-wing politicians remember this story...

This cover “covers” in any case a comprehensive introduction – From manhood to manhood. Introduction – in which it turns out, among another things, how crucial is the awareness of the linguistic nuances characterising the phenomena and, above all, the fact that they are highly lasting historically. No wonder the above mentioned Lady Sapiens It's a beautiful fresh date. It's not like she's always been, says Laugh:

The most crucial thing a man must get is manhood. About the expeditions and rituals that the passing of which turns the boy into a full man, they tell uncounted texts of culture, from Gilgamesha rod Star Wars. The worst thing that can happen to a man is the failure of manhood. [...] The hazard of failure or deficiency of manhood concerns both individuals and full communities, specified as the nation” (p. 6).

And the key question is:

What does our dominant fiction, or dominant conception of manhood, look like, that which we take as apparent and undisputable, with which we associate all day, which we do not see, and which regulates our behavior, shapes our reactions, relationships and aspirations—my as individuals and ours as collectives? What is this dominant fiction? What changes and processes it undergoes, which strengthens it. And what threatens her? These are the questions that I will want to answer in this book about cultural manhood in Poland from the end of the 19th century to the first decades of this century (p. 7).

All of this means a circumstantial process of "rewriting history" and discovering what has been treated as natural, even transparent over time, and what can be the basis of opposition to the languages of political and spiritual power that impose on us a way of thinking, calling and performing top-down social roles. We read in the book Laugh:

Manhood has not so long been widely recognised as an apparent fact, as a biological inconversion, the foundation of social and sexual order, monolith. If individual was discussing it, it was usually a doctor, a priest, a psychologist, and as a problem it appeared to have achieved the default, perfect form of manhood, synchronisation with the desired role. The masculinity problem was an individual problem of a man who could not handle it, did not grow up to it or otherwise embezzled it [...] Of masculinity they besides had something to say about conservative moralists, informing that the departure from it – portrayed inactive invariably and rather vaguely, but with an authoritative speech – is simply a sign of the collapse of societies and degeneration, which supposedly flourished in good old times (p. 10).

In each of the 3 epochs, which due to the way of understanding, shaping and imposing ideas of actual masculinity is described by the Author of the presented book, these visions were concentrated on certain overriding concepts. With respect to the interwar 20th anniversary as the dominant fiction creating reasoning about the manhood of laughter indicates honor. erstwhile it comes to postwar times and PRL is this promotion, after 1989 the superior becomes success.

The last part of the book addresses the problems of cultural settlements with the ideas discussed today, and that it is simply a “hot” problem, at least the fact that there is simply a subcast entitled Of manhood again. In any case, the reader will find many references to both circumstantial events, circumstantial people or propaganda slogans typical of certain ways of seeing sex relationships in a given time and context. An example of the perception of masculinity will at any point be Lech Wałęsa shown from his wife's position (the additional context is suggested by the musical here 1989 and book Marcin Napiórkowski, Katarzyna Szyningery and Mirosław Wlekłego 1989. affirmative Myth, Kraków 2024). An example of propaganda and advertising is, among another things, an anecdote explaining the name present in each kitchen “Ludwik”, that is, the dishwashing fluid...

You read the book laughter well and it allows you to realize a lot. It should besides be added that there are many references to beautiful literature, including texts treated as compulsory school reading, specified as Sienkiewicz's or Żeromski's novels. These references clearly show that the interpretations of various works are mostly dependent on the intent and context of reading and on the categories utilized during their analysis. He laughs due to the subject he develops he looks at ways of creating and exposing in various novels the masculinity of selected heroes, and this – as we already know – depends on the ideas of masculinity present at the time. As a result, it turns out that individual, seemingly, characteristics of the given characters are – no less, more – only an expression of imposed cultural force and that in them 1 can discover rather different meanings than, as any would have wanted, unambiguously, for a long time in school the apparent "natures of literary characters" and repeated versions of the truth...