What is the issue?
Recent series of news and reports quoting diverse incidents in public life has featured men at various levels of aggression.
What is hyper masculinity?
- Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behaviour, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.
- e.g Road rage and is almost always a male affair.
- Student disputes and clashes with the police, though not exclusively male, nevertheless often witness male-instigated and male-directed violence.
- Cow vigilantes, anti-Romeo squads, the goons engaged by various strongmen and political parties, extra-constitutional “militias”, khap panchayats, the list seem long and alarming.
- Hypermasculinism is about resisting any dilution of its essential attributes.
- It equates femininity with weakness and needy of its “protection” at all times.
- Strength lies in subjugation, in bending the disobedient to your will via force or violence.
- To preserve their masculinity it is imperative they contempt and reject feminism in all its form.
- Hypermasculinism despises hybridity, the stain of “impurity”, which is the basis of all culture, and indeed, of all creativity.
- Love jihads, conversions, ghar wapsi, honour killings, and all forms of moral policing are part of this anxiety that enforce “discipline” on those who defy.
- Violence is often its first resort, and its message is unequivocal.
- Everyone who does not subscribe to this regime is vulnerable.
- As a culture that has acknowledged androgyny, cherished hybridity, advocated non-violence and celebrated difference, we need to first recognise and renounce this.
Source: Indian Express
