On Monday, we published an excerpt from Featured Author Leah Libresco Sargeant’s new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. On Tuesday, we published a response from Richard Reeves. Today, Aaron Renn weighs in.
Men have an ambivalent relationship with autonomy and dependence.
On one level, autonomy is a key attribute of masculinity. In his book Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, anthropologist David Gilmore surveyed how various cultures around the world conceived of masculinity. While there was no universal definition, some themes emerged, notably those of protecting, providing, and reproducing. But Gilmore observed that these required some level of autonomy to be fully realized. As he wrote about Mediterranean cultures:
The above [protecting, providing, reproducing] depend on something deeper: a mobility of action, a personal autonomy. A man can do nothing if his hands are tied. If he is going to hunt dangerous game and, like Odysseus, save his family, he needs absolute freedom of movement. Equally important as sex and economic resourcefulness is the underlying appeal to independent action as the starting point of manly self-identity. To enter on the road to manhood, a man must travel light and be free to improvise, and respond, unencumbered, to challenge. He must have a moral captaincy.
Men are supposed to make their mark in the world, not just have the world make its mark on them. This requires some degree of legitimate autonomy and agency in order to be able to decisively act. It’s important for men’s autonomy not to be denigrated.
At the same time, such autonomy is not without limits. Odysseus was not free to abandon his wife to her suitors (protection). The Greeks had to honor their pledges to fight for the return of Helen. In gathering resources for himself, this comes with the obligation for the man to share them with his family and community (provision). As Gilmore notes of the New Guinea “Big Man,” “The mark of the authentic Big Man is that he is a large-scale net producer, always giving away more than he receives.”
The type of autonomy championed by manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate is a parody of the real thing. Men were not made for the autonomous pursuit of pleasure and material accumulation without any obligation to other people.
Still, we need to be careful in talking to men about autonomy such that we do not inadvertently alienate them by denigrating a characteristic that is legitimately important to them.
Sargeant highlights an important aspect of dependency for men, namely the need to have others feel dependent on them. This helps give men a sense of purpose and meaning in life, that others are relying on them for something important. Men need more than this. They need to feel that they are valued for who they are, not just what they can do for other people. But being needed by and for other people is very important. As she notes, a lack of this can be a factor in men falling prey to drugs or suicide due to a feeling of worthlessness.
She also rightly points out that men are seldom needed for physical defense today. The Star Spangled Banner goes, “Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand, between their loved homes, and the war’s desolation.” But as Sargeant writes, “The public, shared dangers that formed men’s character and courage become rarer. If a man needs to defend his family himself, something has gone wrong with the systems of law enforcement and international diplomacy that are meant to anticipate and deflect or deter the blow.”
Provision is also more ambiguous today. Men aren’t typically hunting game except for sport, don’t grow food, etc. Instead, their material provision is also mediated by the marketplace. A man works a job to earn money, which in turn purchases provisioning. She notes how this can encourage society to think of a man’s value in terms of “a recurring direct deposit in his family’s bank account.” The non-material aspects of provision, or the value of relationship with the man himself, are undervalued. This leads to our tolerance for easy or even frivolous divorce. Liberals are loath to acknowledge that the vital role of the father cannot simply be replaced with cash payments from child support or welfare.
These changes in the protection and provision challenge men to intellectually justify their roles to themselves in a way that the more visceral versions from pre-industrial society did not require.
On the other side of the coin, men are, as Sargeant notes, dependent on others at times in their lives. This is especially true when they are babies or young children, but also perhaps in times of old age or disability. Interestingly, many societies have attempted to bifurcate a man’s life in ways that separate him from the dependency of childhood. In the rite of passage, a man undergoes a metaphysical transformation. He is no longer the dependent boy, but now a man. And part of what is being left behind is precisely that era of dependency, which, in a sense, is attributed to a different being.
Men tend to process dependency more as interdependency on a band of brothers, such as the hunting party or the warband. The military today can still provide this form of solidarity and bonding, but as with traditional male provision, this direct reliance on others has atrophied in the modern age.
What we can do is work to ensure that men have the opportunity to have friendships with other men. It’s no secret that many men today are isolated, lonely, friendless. Sargeant has some good suggestions as to how married men with children can be welcoming and engaging to single men within their home. But one more basic need is for women to recognize and make space for their husbands to maintain male friendships, not to resent time they might spend away from home “with the guys.”
Sargeant’s book is obviously written for women. She is not trying to appeal to a male audience. Her short chapter on men makes some good and useful points. They should be recapitulated into a masculine register in order to resonate with a male audience.
