Michael Chabon: Manhood for Amateurs

My Google News Alert for "masculinity" netted me this CBC interview with Michael Chabon today. I haven't read any of his work except for an essay about childhood (which I thought was quite good and you can find here) that seems to be included in his new book "Manhood for Amateurs". Anyway, I thought his responses to the questions Sarah Liss was asking him were pretty interesting. For example, when asked whether he thinks his boys have it better or worse than he did growing up, he says, in part:

...if you're asking about how there's been some criticism of, say, the educational system that expects boys to be more like girls or treats boys as though they are girls in a classroom setting, in terms of the demands on their attention or the time period they're expected to focus on a particular activity before going on to another activity — well, there's probably some merit in that.

What I don't hear so much anymore is that it would be better for boys if they were allowed to be more like girls, that they'd be happier if they were permitted to act in terms of what's traditionally considered to be girl-like. I get the sense maybe it's better for us, for the institution, if boys are more like girls: we want them to be quiet and pay attention. Maybe that's the problem.

There is a lot going on here. On the one hand, it's hard not to see Chabon as agreeing with the classic MRA refrain about the "feminizing" effect of education -- boys do badly because education is not addressing their innate or primordial characteristics or needs in some way. Boys, you see, simply don't have the attention spans to be sitting in a classroom setting for such long stretches of time without acting out.

But the second paragraph presents a different idea -- that boys would be happier if they were allowed to act in "traditionally" feminine ways, the obvious implication being that they currently are not. I'm reading this as an argument about the rigidity of gender roles and the harm such an arrangement can cause to children -- Chabon goes on to talk about the continued "aggressive segregation" of toys by gender, so I think his views on this are pretty clear. The point about it being better for the institution of education for boys to be more like girls is a little odd -- where are these characteristics of girls coming from? It's a little confusing, too, because following from the previous statement, it seems that we want boys to be "like girls" in some respects (docility) in some settings (the classroom) but not in others (at play).

Like I said, there's a lot going on here. I'd recommend reading the interview and the essay I linked earlier, though not necessarily for the same reasons.