Does Candice Owens know Masculinity?
The never ending news cycle that permeated the airwaves since the 1990’s gave us CNN, has been given a warp drive thanks so much to social media. Now, the news that comes at you fast ,comes at you even faster with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik-Tok.,etc.
Our daily lives are inundated with Tweets from celebs, politicians, and pundits just like this one above. Most of the time I ignore it. I don’t care what Demi Lovato says, which Kardashian has a makeup line, who owns Taylor Swift’s music, or whatever The Donald Tweets. However, it’s hard to ignore when the media picks it up and runs with it so it ends up on my web browser the moment I open Google.
I can’t escape it.
“Celebrity X opens up about…,”
or
“Celebrity Y reveals…,”
or
“Celebrity Z responds….,”
etc. ad nauseum. It feels like an assault and personally, I’d like to file charges.
I digress.
I am ashamed to say, however, that one did catch my attention.
Candace Owens doesn’t like that Harry Styles wore a dress for Vogue magazine. A rock/pop star wore a dress?! NO! Iggy Pop? Freddie Mercury? David Bowie. This isn’t, or shouldn’t, be news. There’s always “gender bending” or ambiguity in the rock world. It’s to the point, now, where it’s almost a cliché. (Sorry, Harry).
But even P!nk pointed out androgyny in her speech at the MTV movie awards when she addressed the audience about her daughter Willow’s comment to her that, “I’m the ugliest girl I know. I look like a boy with long hair.” ( You can view the speech here. ) The popstar mother of two young children pointed this very ambiguity out in her speech. She brought up Bowie, and Annie Lenox, and Prince, and so many more artists.
I don’t care either way about Harry Styles in a dress. I’ve heard him sing, I’ve heard him induct Stevie Nicks in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I think he’s smart, and he’s talented but I really, just now, had to look up what boy band he was a part of (because I’m almost 40 and I’m old.) Again, to me, it seems like a typical “Rock Star” thing to do (ala Cindy Crawford shaving K.D. Lang on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1993).
I do care about Candace Owen’s tweet, however.
“There is no society that can survive without strong men,” Owens writes. “The East knows this. In the West, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack.”
I’m a gay man. I’ve been out since my early twenties. I am also a writer, an author, I’ve written eight books in my time as a queer writer, and one of the things that an author has the privilege of doing (or the compulsion) is to try and work out their own shit. They wade through their experience, and in an effort to make sense of the world, they pick things apart and turn them over.
One of these themes has been masculinity. What does it mean to be a man? The natural follow-up question would be, What does it mean to be a woman? Where do these things intersect? Where do they diverge? Furthermore, what does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be feminine?
It’s really a nebulous area. The answers are, quite frankly, as amorphous as the questions themselves.
But I do know my history concerning gender.
Up until the early 20th century, women were forbidden to work in certain jobs, including politics and the law, because it was seen as a masculine environment. That’s why women were denied the vote for so long. Men believed women were too emotional to be reasonable. A woman didn’t have the stomach to send a country to war, they didn’t have the fortitude, the constitution, to make ‘hard decisions’ for the sake of the nation. They were also denied entry into major universities and in other fields such as science, medicine, and journalism.
There have been countless movies made about women who ‘broke the glass ceiling’ in their pioneering efforts to change these world views, or at least, elbow their way into these fields as respected members. Americans love these movies because Americans love the underdog. (See a list of said movies, here)
The irony in this tweet, however, is that Candace Owens becomes a victim of her own social views on gender roles. In short, Candace Owen would be criticized by the same “men” she lauds, in an era she longs for, for being too masculine. To say nothing about being a black woman in her chosen profession.
Candace Owen is a recipient of the work women and women of color did in breaking gender stereotypes like Justice Clarence Thomas was a recipient of Affirmative Action. These people and these laws, opened doors for them to be indignant and disrespect the work that brought them to a point where they have set about destroying the same path they walked, with a machete. To hell with anyone who wishes to follow.
For what, though.
The approval of the same men who march with Tiki-Torches shouting “Jews shall not replace us,” as they wore their khaki pants and polo shirts?
I don’t see ‘masculinity’ in that. I see fear.
And if that is masculinity, someone call Vera Wang for me. I need to order something strapless and open-toed.
