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Thursday
In her 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi looked at the various ways that men were attempting to undo feminism’s gains. The Trump administration and the modern Republican party appear determined to double down on those efforts, what with firing high-placed women in the government and the military, continuing their assaults on women’s bodily autonomy, and (with the SAVE Act) doing all they can to disenfranchise women voters. And then there’s Elon Musk, who in addition to his drive to impregnate as many women as he can, struck the following macho pose in an e-mail to one of his baby mamas:
In all of history, there has never been a competitive army composed of women. Not even once. Men are made for war. Real men, anyway… I am in full war mode. Going to the front lines today. Must win PA.
The only women that Trump appears to countenance are those who slavishly fawn over him. These he has sprinkled liberally throughout his cabinet.
What misogynists don’t realize—but what authors throughout history have shown—is that toxic masculinity is a guaranteed way of making men permanently anxious and miserable. When a man defines his manhood by his ability to dominate a woman, all a woman has to do is have an affair with another man to destroy his self-worth. This is why, from Chaucer to the 20th century, one finds in literature an obsession with cuckolding jokes. Sexual jokes, so Freud informs us, are a means of finding relief from our deepest anxieties.
One example of a man caught in the trap of toxic masculinity is the Wife of Bath’s husband #4: when he seeks out other women, she pays him back by messing around herself. “I made him a cross of his own wood,” she declares, and “I made him fry in his own grease.” Another is the husbands and dandies in William Wycherley’s Country Wife, who are so afraid of spousal infidelity that they inadvertently end up pushing their wives into the arms of other men.
One of my favorite examples of an author highlighting how toxic masculinity can rebound on men is Lady Mary Wortley Montau’s “Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband.”
In this angry poem, written in 1724 but not published until 1972, Montagu imagines what must be going through the mind of Mary Yonge, estranged wife of William Yonge. Although the two had separated, largely because of his many affairs, when Mary herself took a lover he sued both her and the man. He won both dowry and the bulk of her fortune in the ensuing court case.
Appalled by the double standard, Montagu uses her poem to defend Mary Yonge. Wives have it even worse than servants and slaves, the speaker contends:
All bargains but conditional are made;
The purchase void, the creditor unpaid;
Defrauded servants are from service free;
A wounded slave regains his liberty.
For wives ill used no remedy remains…
To this legal defense, Mary Yonge then adds a plea for understanding:
And I have borne (oh what have I not borne!)
The pang of jealousy, the insults of scorn.
Wearied at length, I from your sight remove,
And place my future hopes in secret love.
She gets no sympathy from her ex, however:
But you pursue me to this last retreat.
Dragged into light, my tender crime is shown
And every circumstance of fondness known.
Beneath the shelter of the law you stand,
And urge my ruin with a cruel hand…
Although she is ruined by the law and shaken by social exposure, however—her love letters were read aloud in court—Mary Yonge has one consolation: she is free of her tyrannical husband whereas he lives an ever-anxious life. “I prefer this low inglorious state/ To vile dependence on the thing I hate,” she writes, pointing to how he must suck up to the rich and powerful.
His situation is currently being experienced by anyone in Trump’s orbit, including all the members of his cabinet. William Yonge must not only court Prime Minister Walpole but flatter his aging wife:
Go: court the brittle friendship of the great,
Smile at his board, or at his levee wait;
And when dismissed, to madam’s toilet fly,
More than her chambermaids, or glasses, lie,
Tell her how young she looks, how heavenly fair,
Admire the lilies and the roses there.
And now for the kicker. Even if Yonge gets what he wants from all this bootlicking and flattery—he hopes his second wife will be a Walpole cousin with a fortune—their children will not have his genes:
Your high ambition may be gratified,
Some cousin of her own be made your bride,
And you the father of a glorious race
Endowed with Ch——l’s strength and Low——r’s face.
Montagu herself had had an affair with John Churchill so she knew the man, and Anthony Lowther was a notorious gallant. In other words, the philandering William Yonge can expect to be fried in his own grease by a young second wife.
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband (1724)
Think not this paper comes with vain pretense
To move your pity, or to mourn th’ offense.
Too well I know that hard obdurate heart;
No softening mercy there will take my part,
Nor can a woman’s arguments prevail,
When even your patron’s wise example fails.
But this last privilege I still retain;
Th’ oppressed and injured always may complain.
Too, too severely laws of honor bind
The weak submissive sex of womankind.
If sighs have gained or force compelled our hand,
Deceived by art, or urged by stern command,
Whatever motive binds the fatal tie,
The judging world expects our constancy.
Just heaven! (for sure in heaven does justice reign,
Though tricks below that sacred name profane)
To you appealing I submit my cause.
Nor fear a judgment from impartial laws.
All bargains but conditional are made;
The purchase void, the creditor unpaid;
Defrauded servants are from service free;
A wounded slave regains his liberty.
For wives ill used no remedy remains,
To daily racks condemned, and to eternal chains.
From whence is this unjust distinction grown?
Are we not formed with passions like your own?
Nature with equal fire our souls endued,
Our minds as haughty, and as warm our blood;
O’er the wide world your pleasures you pursue,
The change is justified by something new;
But we must sigh in silence—and be true.
Our sex’s weakness you expose and blame
(Of every prattling fop the common theme),
Yet from this weakness you suppose is due
Sublimer virtue than your Cato knew.
Had heaven designed us trials so severe,
It would have formed our tempers then to bear.
And I have borne (oh what have I not borne!)
The pang of jealousy, the insults of scorn.
Wearied at length, I from your sight remove,
And place my future hopes in secret love.
In the gay bloom of glowing youth retired,
I quit the woman’s joy to be admired,
With that small pension your hard heart allows,
Renounce your fortune, and release your vows.
To custom (though unjust) so much is due;
I hide my frailty from the public view.
My conscience clear, yet sensible of shame,
My life I hazard, to preserve my fame.
And I prefer this low inglorious state
To vile dependence on the thing I hate—
But you pursue me to this last retreat.
Dragged into light, my tender crime is shown
And every circumstance of fondness known.
Beneath the shelter of the law you stand,
And urge my ruin with a cruel hand,
While to my fault thus rigidly severe,
Tamely submissive to the man you fear.
This wretched outcast, this abandoned wife,
Has yet this joy to sweeten shameful life:
By your mean conduct, infamously loose,
You are at once my accuser and excuse.
Let me be damned by the censorious prude
(Stupidly dull, or spiritually lewd),
My hapless case will surely pity find
From every just and reasonable mind.
When to the final sentence I submit,
The lips condemn me, but their souls aquit.
No more my husband, to your pleasures go,
The sweets of your recovered freedom know.
Go: court the brittle friendship of the great,
Smile at his board, or at his levee wait;
And when dismissed, to madam’s toilet fly,
More than her chambermaids, or glasses, lie,
Tell her how young she looks, how heavenly fair,
Admire the lilies and the roses there.
Your high ambition may be gratified,
Some cousin of her own be made your bride,
And you the father of a glorious race
Endowed with Ch——l’s strength and Low——r’s face.
Back to our current resurgence of toxic masculinity. It wasn’t only women who were liberated by the 1970s feminist movement. Men too had a chance to escape restrictive societal roles. Or putting it positively, we got to explore other sides of ourselves just as women did. Consequently, male-female relationships became more dynamic as couples explored new ways of interacting. Speaking from my own experience with my wife and with female work colleagues, new possibilities arose that made life richer and far more interesting.
Granted, it wasn’t always easy. Centuries-old gender expectations don’t disappear overnight. But the reason that many of us are determined not to go back—men as well as women—is because we would rather experience life in three-dimensional technicolor than one-dimensional black and white. And because toxic masculinity, in addition making one vulnerable to intense anxiety, is so predictable and so dull.
