The Inexpressive Male: Tragedy or Sexual Politics?

Sattel, Jack W.

doi:10.1525/sp.1976.23.4.03a00090

Cited by 26 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…Sattel (1976) argues that men use emotional in-expression to exercise power. Because women expect men to be inexpressive, they treat emotional disclosure as a gift.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Not Out to Start a Revolution”

Wilkins

2012

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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In this article, I use in-depth interviews with black university men to investigate race, gender, and emotions. Participation in dominant institutions requires African American men to exhibit extraordinary emotional restraint. Because anger is culturally associated with men, however, black men's suppression of anger violates masculine expectations. Thus, racial subordination not only creates difficult emotional expectations but may also create emotional dilemmas in which expected emotional displays undermine other identity expectations. In this article, I examine both how a group of black university men achieve emotional restraint and how they use their emotions to craft and manage their identities as black middle-class men. I argue that black men distance themselves from the controlling image of the angry black man by developing a shared identity I call moderate blackness. Moderate blackness entails emotional restraint, a moderate approach to campus racial politics, and the ability to get along with white people. These strategies work together to produce positive, restrained emotions and to manage anger and agitation, but they require black university men to "not see" racism. Black men use defensive othering to push the stereotype of the angry black onto black women. In doing so, they shore up their masculinity but leave women responsible for combating racial inequality.

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“…Sattel (1976) argues that men use emotional in-expression to exercise power. Because women expect men to be inexpressive, they treat emotional disclosure as a gift.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Not Out to Start a Revolution”

Wilkins

2012

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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“…Some men even talk about loving and intimate behaviour as feminine (Pease 2002a). Sattell (1989) argued that many of the theorists who focus on male inexpressiveness misunderstand the origins of men's emotional illiteracy. Their focus on men's inexpressiveness as a form of tragedy does not challenge the social forces that construct these phenomena.…”

Section: Revisiting Men's Emotional Inexpressivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sattell (1989) argued that many of the theorists who focus on male inexpressiveness misunderstand the origins of men's emotional illiteracy. For Sattell (1989), men's inexpressiveness is a prerequisite for preparing them for their positions of power and privilege, as it enables men who wield power to reduce their emotional involvement in the consequences of their practices. For Sattell (1989), men's inexpressiveness is a prerequisite for preparing them for their positions of power and privilege, as it enables men who wield power to reduce their emotional involvement in the consequences of their practices.…”

Section: Revisiting Men's Emotional Inexpressivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Connell (2000) has termed the set of interventions that respond to men's restricted emotionality as 'masculinity therapy', whereby men are encouraged to overcome their emotional illiteracy and face their vulnerabilities to achieve higher levels of intimacy with women, children and other men. One of the implications of this form of masculinity politics has been to underplay and sometimes ignore male privilege and men's social dominance and to portray men's difficulty in expressing emotions as a form of victimhood that contributes to their physical and mental health problems (Sattell 1989;McLean 1996). While populist writing about men focuses on men's emotions and neglects their social power, critical masculinity studies and profeminist masculinity politics have neglected the role of emotions in men's lives (Rutherford 1992;Seidler 1997;Petersen 1998;Connell 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The politics of gendered emotions: disrupting men's emotional investment in privilege

Pease¹

2012

Aust J Social Issues

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This paper explores the implications of the neglect of emotions in critical masculinity studies and profeminist masculinity politics. This neglect in part results from feminist and profeminist critiques of the literature on emotional inexpressiveness as a tragedy for men that ignores male privilege and men's social power. To focus on men's emotions is seen by some profeminist commentators as psychologising men at the expense of sociological understandings of men's social power. However, in neglecting the place of emotions in men's lives, critical masculinity studies has overlooked the ways in which men's emotional attachment to privilege can perpetuate oppressive gender relations and male violence against women. By exploring men's emotional investment in unequal gender relations, the article outlines ways in which emotions can also be used as a catalyst to disrupt men's attachment to male privilege.

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“…Another false parallel arises when we discuss Jack Sattel's (1976) article on "male inexpressiveness." He begins with the common complaint from women that their male partners do not want to talk about feelings…”

Section: Exposing False Parallelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sexism Visible: Birdcages, Martians, and Pregnant Men

2006

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PERHAPS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULTto teach about sexism. The vilification and trivialization of feminism in the mass media is long-standing, shifting over time only in rhetorical content (Aronson 2003;Bordo 1993;Hall and Rodriguez 2003;Kilbourne 1999;Morris 2002). In the last several years, we have heard students inside and outside our classrooms use violent terms like "male-basher" and "Feminazi," without irony, to describe feminists. 1 The three of us have taught courses on inequality in three universities (one research-oriented, two teaching-oriented) for many years. 2 During that time we have noticed students' patterned resistance to the idea that sexism persists and is a pervasive feature of U.S. society.Colleagues who teach conventional courses mistakenly believe that our classes are filled with progressive, left-leaning feminists who make our jobs easy. Our classes on gender inequality are largely peopled with women, and one might expect them to be open to feminist concerns. Yet most of our students-women and meninitially resist the idea that women suffer systematic inequalities because of their sex category and that men are correspondingly MAKING SEXISM VISIBLE: BIRDCAGES, MARTIANS, AND PREGNANT MEN*This paper offers six strategies for dealing with students' resistance to learning about the oppression of women: making the familiar strange, substituting race for sex, distinguishing between intentions and consequences, imagining men in women's bodies, exposing students' claims of equal gender oppression as false parallels, and analyzing some of women's desires as instances of false power. These teaching strategies, along with Marilyn Frye's (1983) metaphor of oppression as a birdcage consisting of systematically related wires, provide a framework for pre-empting or responding to students' resistance.

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The Inexpressive Male: Tragedy or Sexual Politics?

Cited by 26 publications

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“Not Out to Start a Revolution”

“Not Out to Start a Revolution”

The politics of gendered emotions: disrupting men's emotional investment in privilege

Making Sexism Visible: Birdcages, Martians, and Pregnant Men

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