Interview with the philosopher Olivia Gazalé, author of The Myth of Virility — A Trap for the Two Sexes (Robert Laffont).

What led you to look into the subject of masculinities ?

Initially, I wanted to write about women. I was trying to understand why, while feminism has been winning the ideological battle in most of the major Western democracies for several decades now, there is still so much to go in the field of violence and discrimination. However, by studying the origin of male domination and its main mechanisms, I understood one essential thing: the problem does not only come from the perpetuation of female gender stereotypes – women have been constantly questioning them for two centuries – but also from the perpetuation of male gender stereotypes, which are rarely questioned. even though they date back several millennia.

You make a distinction between " masculinity " and " virility ", expressing that the latter is a " myth " that has trapped both genders. In what way is it " virility " that is the problem ?

Masculinity, or rather masculinities, refers to the multiple ways of inhabiting the male sex, depending on the morphology, personality and sexual preferences of each person. On the other hand, virility is a normative model, an ideal, a fantastical representation of what a man should be, born in Greco-Roman antiquity and still dominant today. The myth of virility is the postulate of the natural superiority of the masculine over the feminine. Where women are naturally programmed for motherhood, gentle and loving, but governed by their emotions, passive, fickle, fragile, fearful, weak, irrational, submissive, gullible and incapable of abstract reasoning, man is, on the other hand, naturally master of himself, rational, strong, courageous, ambitious, powerful, domineering, conquering, warlike and victorious. Historically, this ideology has led to the inferiorization and domestication of women, but it has also represented a terrible alienation for men.

You mention the " male malaise" and the suffering of men linked to stereotypes and injunctions to virility. How can this reality be heard in a context where many gender inequalities are still detrimental to women ?

The duty of virility has, in all periods of history, represented a burden for men. First of all, because he is coercive: to be recognized as " virile ", a man must display the markers of power and never show his weaknesses or tears. At certain times, the virile young man was the one who ardently wanted to die in battle, to give blood and to shed blood.  To create this desire for the " beautiful death ", the heroic death, requires an education that has often been akin to training, from Spartan education to military service, including corporal punishment or hazing...

Secondly, because this war myth is profoundly discriminatory. In order for there to be " real " men, we must designate " sub-humans ", starting with the " effeminate ". But virilism has not only fueled violently homophobic policies, it is also at the root of xenophobia, racism, imperialism, colonialism, class contempt and all forms of exploitation and annihilation of man by man : all derive from the idea of man elaborated by those who have always passionately claimed it in order to better enslave others. So much so that we should not say " men have always oppressed women ", but " part of men has always oppressed women and another part of men "... In the very name of virility.

How can we engage men in the feminist fight today, when equality requires them to question a certain number of privileges they have in fact (positions of power, pay gap rather to their advantage...) ?

Why should feminist victories necessarily be interpreted as defeats for men ? Isn't having a qualified wife or partner, who can support herself and contribute to the expenses of the couple and children, a positive development, a lightening of his burden as a " provider of resources " for a man?

Too few men understand that society, as a whole, suffers as much from female sexist clichés as from male sexist clichés, in particular the injunction to sexual performance (very burdensome and very anxiety-provoking), the obsession with conquest (of power, success, women...) and the culture of violence, which are at the heart of the myth of virility. The reinvention of new masculinities, freed from gendered assignments, would offer men the historical possibility of breaking out of the trap in which the warrior myth has trapped them for too long.

The revolution of the feminine will be fully accomplished when the revolution of the masculine has taken place, when men have freed themselves from the alienating representations that maintain, often in a perfectly unconscious way, misogyny and homophobia, both of which stem from a repulsion towards the feminine from the depths of time. For men to change the way they look at women, they have to change the way they look at themselves. Antisexism is an emancipatory fight for both sexes.