Fashioned Against Feminism

In all the recent accounts of teenage shootings, stabbings and fights, it's hard not to be struck by just how much testosterone-fueled anger there is around.

Whenever these cases come to court, what we hear about is young boys taking offense or warding off "disrespect" or insults, always trying to trying to prove their hardness and masculinity. Time and time again what comes over is a picture of boys trying to be cool, where cool is hard.

Looking at some pictures of the 1970s recently I came across one image that was almost shocking for the distance it marked between male styles then and now. It was a man in a pink boiler suit, with long curly hair. It may sound excruciating, one of those terrible fashion faux pas that just got worse and worse as the awful 80s approached. But I was surprised to find myself feeling nostalgic for these images.

My nostalgia wasn't for the fashion, that's for sure. But it was for what the fashion was trying to say. That message was the absolute opposite of the images many contemporary young men try to project. It was a message that said: I am a feminised male - I don't care if you see me as "unmasculine". More to the point, in that era, it also said: I am cool because I am on the side of the feminists.

That was the era when the cool blokes, those challenging convention, wanted to be identified with a movement that was asserting the value of women. Men like Raphael Samuel, who I first met when he was already a respected academic running the creche at a women's conference. That's what the sympathetic men did then, partly because of the politics but partly also because it was fashionable.

Of course as many feminists pointed out at the time, some of these changes were just that: fashion. Challenging and changing the deeper, sexist values and attitudes proved to be a longer, harder and more complicated fight. As a result in retrospect this era and its feminised fashions tends to be dismissed as a passing moment, when men showed their support for women by playing down their own masculinity. Later (from the 80s onwards), this masculinity could be reasserted, expressed in a more comfortable and relaxed way, as sexual equality and sharing childcare came to be part of the widely accepted culture.

Well that's the theory. But more and more when I read about the culture contemporary teenagers are surrounded by, I find myself thinking: if only there were more images around of men who take no pride whatsoever in "masculine" values. Wouldn't it be great if there were styles and fashions and "cool" blokes who deliberately dressed in rather "feminine" ways and didn't need everybody to know that underneath it all they were as "hard" as the next person? Above all, wouldn't it be great if there were some men around whose styles seem to say – as the 70s styles did – that "feminine" stuff is cool.

I put these terms in inverted commas because the attributes of masculinity and femininity don't belong in any simple way to men and women. They are attributes that both sexes have. At some periods of history, it's easier than others for "femininity" to be expressed by men or "masculinity" by women. At the moment, we've got a culture that glorifies masculinity. This is apparent among women who also often seem keener to be seen as hard and tough and "masculine" rather than soft and "feminine". Even gay men seem much more preoccupied now with conventional masculinity that they were in the 70s, when many gay men openly identified with the feminist movement and "feminine" values.

But above all it seems to be the case among these teenagers and young men where "femininity" seems to be despised. Values traditionally associated with women like caring, forgiveness and empathy have no place in a world obsessed with "respect", hardness and with avoiding taunts about "gayness". Some may want to say that these peer group styles are irrelevant and what matters is that these young people are simply lacking the love and discipline necessary to help them learn better ways of resolving problems. But the issues are connected. It seems that many boys who end up in trouble are looked after by single mothers. How can those mothers possibly manage to discipline and help these boys, if their peer culture is so contemptuous of women and feminine values?