Man down：Hunting a new model for masculinity
May 6th 2016, 12:09 BY A.M.
2016年5月6日12：09
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TIM SAMUELS hasbeen on lots of dates. Near the beginning of “Who Stole My Spear?”, hisinvestigation of 21st-century masculinity, he describes some of them:disastrous dates, comical dates, scary and baffling dates (“Why do I keepattracting fascists?”, he wonders). He is a Tinder aficionado: in five minuteson the app, he notes, “I can view more single women than my great-grandfatherwould have seen in his entire lifetime in his village.” Judging by theseopening chapters, you might expect his book to be an amusing take on big-citysingle-manhood in theonline age. But, while it is often very funny, it is also insightful, bothindependently and in the context of broader thinking about the predicament ofcontemporary men.
蒂姆·塞缪尔斯已经参加了很多约会。在一篇对于21世纪男性特质的调查研究 “谁偷了我的矛”一文的开始，他描述了其中的一部分：灾难般的约会、滑稽的约会和可怕尴尬的约会。（他一直在琢磨：“为什么我总是吸引法西斯主义者？” ）他是一位Tinder①的狂热爱好者：花五分钟时间在这个app上，他注意到：“我能看到的单身女性比我的曾祖父在他村庄中一辈子看到的还要多。”从这些起始篇章来判断，你没准会以为他的书是一次对于互联网时代中大城市的单身男性的一次有趣呈现。然而，虽然这种想法常常是有趣的，但对于现代男性气概的困境，无论是独立地或是在更广范围情况下地思考，也是十分具有洞见的。
There is a mini-boom in books aboutmales: the young ones parents raise, often with stereotypicalideas of what a boy should be, and the adult kind that women, and menthemselves, get lumbered with. Another new take is “Man Up”, apowerful, thought-provoking call to arms by Rebecca Asher, author of a previousbook on the troubles with modern parenting. She and Mr Samuels adduce similarwoes to explain why the attention on men is necessary: their much higherinvolvement in violent crime, as both perpetrators and victims; boys’ higher likelihood of educational failure; untreated mental-healthproblems and, compared with women, vastly higher suicide rates. The recentrecession led to an estimated 10,000 extra male suicides in Europe and NorthAmerica, according to research Mr Samuels cites. (The financial crisis and itsaftermath also led, says a Harley Street plastic surgeon he interviews, to aspike in penis augmentations.) He links his theme to big-picture issues, too,such as mass shootings in America and the rise of Islamic State. “When a youngman swaps his Primark uniform in Portsmouth for military fatigues in Syria,”hesurmises, “surely there’s anillusion of masculinity being chased”
男性相关的书有了小型的快速增长。那些被父母养育的年轻人经常接受着一个男孩该是怎么样的陈旧观念，还有成年后男性们被女性、甚至男性自己所强加在身上的观点。另外一种新的说法是“男子气一点“，这个强有力且引人深思的呼喊源自于Rebecca Asher丽贝卡亚瑟，曾著有一本有关现代父母教育问题的书。她和塞缪尔斯列举了类似的悲惨事例来解释为何将注意力放在男性上是有必要的：他们有着更高的暴力犯罪参加率，无论作为行凶者或受害者；男孩们的教育失败风险更高；未经治疗的心理疾病，和远超女性的自杀率。根据一项由塞缪尔斯引用的研究表明，最近的经济衰退导致欧洲和北美地区增加10,000名男性自杀案例。（一位他所采访的哈利街外科整形医生同样指出，经济危机和其后果也导致了阴茎增大手术的数量高峰）他也将他的主题联系到更宏观的问题上，比如美国的大规模枪击案件和伊斯兰国的崛起。“当一个年轻人在朴茨茅斯用普利马克制服换取叙利亚的军用工作服时，”他猜测道：“这无疑会产生一种男性特征正被人所寻求的错觉。”
In this evolving literature, onestriking aspect of Mr Samuels’s outlook is its approach to feminism. For manyfeminists, including Ms Asher, his essentialist views on some aspects ofgender, and his attribution of some behaviour to biology, especially malehormones, will seem controversial. For example, in a chapter on the challengesof monogamy, he compares the size of human testes to those of other primates,promiscuous and otherwise. He believes that “from the day they are bornand bite harder on the mother’s nipple, boys are different.” He wants torenovate the concept of masculinity; Ms Asher thinks it bust beyond repair.
在这份逐渐进展的文献中，塞缪尔斯的观点中有一个引人注目的地方，是他对于女权主义的解读。对包括亚瑟在内的很多女权主义者而言，他针对部分性别的本质主义的观点--和他将某些行为，尤其是雄性荷尔蒙归结于生物--是有争议的。比如说，在挑战一夫一妻制的一章中，他比较了男性和其他灵长类及各式各样物种的睾丸大小。他坚信“自从他们出生之日更用力地咬母亲奶头的一刻起，男孩是不同的。”他希望革新关于男性特质的概念，而亚瑟则认为他早已无药可救了。
And yet, though he writes from a zestily maleperspective, Mr Samuels is also an avowed feminist himself, raising an implicitquestion about the relationship between belief in sexual equality andbiological determinism. “Forgive men if, at times, we are a little unsure of ourfooting,” Mr Samuel says of the many discombobulations men have experienced inpublic life, at work and at home. He is clear that women continue to have itmuch tougher, still, for instance, being responsible for most of the childcareand housework, and suffering the fall-out of the male pathologies hechronicles. He also knows that many of these disorienting advances should becelebrated more than lamented. (One such is the evolution of a new, morerewarding model of fatherhood, though, as Mr Samuels points out, even as somedads change more nappies, millions of children—including a third of Americanchildren—now grow up without a father in the home.)
然而，尽管他从一个热情激昂的男性视角出发，塞缪尔斯同样还是一位公开承认的女权主义者，这便引起了一个隐含的、关于相信性别平等和生物决定论的相互关系的问题。“原谅男人们，如果有时，我们产生对于自身社会立足点的一丝不确信。”塞缪尔斯指的是男人在公共环境、工作和家中碰到的许多令人困窘之事。当然，他明确了女人仍然会面对更加艰难的状况，比如，对绝大多数的孩子抚育和家务劳动负责，或忍受因男性通病而导致的后果。他也知道很多这样令人困惑的发展应当被人庆祝而不是遗憾。（这其中就存在一种新的、更有益处的父亲形象。但是，塞缪尔斯指出，尽管有些父亲换更多的尿布--包括美国三分之一的孩子在内--数百万的儿童仍在没有父亲的家庭中长大。）
Many of the laughs in “Who Stole My Spear?” come in hisrecollections of his Jewish upbringing in Manchester, England. The passage in which he describes how, as a cub reporter(literally: he was 13), he succeeded in interviewing Morrissey, who came to hishouse for tea is a particular delight. But some of his memoirish reflectionsare serious. He explores his own moods and, in asection about the consolations of religion, gives a moving account of hismother’s death when he was seven. He remembers waving goodbye to her “asshe left the house in a beige overcoat to go to hospital—an image I can stillsee like a faded Polaroid”. And, in an ambitiously hybrid form, he bolstersthese observations with reporting (he is a radio host and televisionjournalist, who has covered immigration to Britain and America’s death row),plus research into the anthropology and history of masculinity.
在“谁偷了我的矛”一文当中，许多趣事都来自于他对自己在英格兰曼彻斯特受到的犹太式教育的回忆。他在文章中讲述了自己是如何作为一名初出茅庐的新闻记者（毫不夸张地说，他当时才13岁），成功地采访到了莫里斯，谁去他家喝茶都将会是一种特别的喜悦。但他的某些回忆是严肃的。他探究了自己的情绪，并在文章有关宗教所带来的慰藉部分中，讲述了他七岁时母亲的去世。他回忆起向她挥手告别，“她穿着一身米黄色大衣离开家去往医院时——这场景我仿佛仍旧能从一张褪色的拍立得照片上可以看得到。”与此同时，在一种野心十足的混合模式中，他用新闻报告支撑着这些观测（他是一个电台主播和电视新闻记者，曾经报道过英国移民和美国死囚监狱），而且他也对男性特质的人类学及历史的研究分析。
Heattends a pick-up bootcamp in Miami, at which he is dispatched to chat up aRussian woman (“I deploy my full repertoire—glasnost,perestroika, pogrom”). He visits the set of a porn film in LosAngeles, then towns and villages in Ghana in which he hears of porn-inspiredrapes and its role in the spread of HIV; he is frank about the damage inflictedon both porn stars and to the sexual expectations of consumers. The impacts ofopen-plan offices, and of always-on technology, on men’s psychic well-being areamong his particular bugbears. “Raised on a diet of Bond and Bourne,” hesummarises, men are “set loose to hunt in a world of PowerPoint and 360-degreeevaluations”.
他参加了一所位于迈阿密的搭讪训练营，在那里他被分到与一位俄罗斯女士交谈(“我部署了我全部的技能——公开，改革，屠杀”)他参观了位于洛杉矶的色情片拍摄场地，接着在加纳的城镇与村庄中听说了因色情影片引发的强奸事件和其在艾滋病传播中起到的作用。他对色情片主演和顾客对性的期望所遭受的伤害直言不讳。开敞式办公室和常开技术对男性心理健康的影响是他特殊的棘手难题。“在007和谍影重重类电影的养育下长大，”他总结着，男人们“开始在一个充斥着幻灯片和360度评估的世界中放手去捕猎。”
Theremedies Mr Samuels recommends are largely sensible—and, despite their verydifferent points of origin, there is some overlap with those suggested by MsAsher. He would like the media to promote healthier models of masculinity andfor fathers to enjoy more flexible paternity leave. He is also keen on updatedcoming-of-age rituals and physical activity; he wants men to seek fulfilmentoutside work and to nurture their friendships. There is doubtless much more tosay about modern manhood, but these books demonstrate conclusively that theconversation is worth having, even urgent, and that there are many differentways of conducting it.
塞缪尔斯提供的补救策略是十分合乎情理的，并且，尽管他们的来源不同，他和亚瑟提出的有些部分是重合地方。他想要媒体促进更健康的男性模型，让父亲们能享受更有弹性的陪产假。他也热衷于更新成年仪式和体育活动。他想要男性在工作之外追求成就，培养彼此的友谊。毫无疑问，关于现代男性气概有更多可以在此说明，但这些书决定性地证明了交谈回话是有存在必要，甚至是十分急迫的。另外，有很多不同方式可用来引导。
① Tinder是一款国外的手机交友配对app
发表于 2017-2-5 16:14:57
