WCF

History, politics, and culture articles and forum discussions.

General history

- By

Will masculinity studies programs emerge in the future?

If a student wanted to engage in a course of study which used a “masculinity” or “masculine” approach to history, could it be done?  Probably not in today’s academic circles.  But as academics search for new areas of the past and under-exploited perspectives, masculinity studies programs could emerge as a discipline rich in scholarly content.

So what are masculinity studies?  Think of a feminist studies program, but focusing on men (generally straight, white men who are otherwise neglected as an explicit focus of study) and men’s issues, rather than women and women’s issues.  Strange that we use the term “masculinity studies” to describe this rather than “masculinist studies” since we don’t refer to “femininity studies”, but that’s just the way it goes.

The natural objection to such a program of study is fairly predictable: history courses are so dominated by men that masculinity studies are implicitly part of the status quo.  We’ve already been studying this all along, and we shouldn’t address an issue that has already been addressed time after time.  At best, it would be like beating a dead horse; at worst, it would be disenfranchising all the other areas of study that merit consideration and funding from academic institutions.

1024px-Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_InWhile acknowledging these concerns, I think that they miss the point of masculinity studies.  In general history courses, men are often the focus, but masculinity is incidental to that field of study.  Those courses may be dominated by men, but not by what makes men the men that they are.  There is no sense of exclusivity on masculinity in current fields of study, and this makes all the difference in the world.  Without exclusivity, students can only learn about a topic in a superficial manner.  It’s like watching an episode of M*A*S*H and thinking you’re getting educated in military medical treatment.  You get exposure to a certain topic but you do not learn it in the kind of systematic manner that leads to deep understanding .

What I envision is something which consciously focuses on that masculinity in the same way that feminist studies programs consciously focus on issues related to women.  What issues do men face that women do not?  To what stimuli do they respond, to what cultural forces do they formulate decisions, and what burdens do they carry as men?  If basic issues like the prospect of being sent into battle and working outside the home have traditionally been tied to gender, then they merit consideration based upon gender divisions.  Surely, there has been a plethora of other personal, family, social, and national demands placed primarily on men’s shoulders, and these in turn have been tied to region, culture, and chronology.

The future of masculine studies

So will masculinity studies programs emerge in the future?  Yes, if the logic driving academia today continues into the future.  After all, to exclude an explicitly masculine view is to show bias against men – the same type of bias that feminist studies programs presumably try to undo.

- By

The Year That Was: 2023 in Review

Given that this is a website dedicated to history, I think it’s really quite germane to reflect on events of the past 12 months. I try to do this every year, even though it seems like I don’t do justice when I’m rushing to get it done in the waning days or the old year, or the first few days of the new year. With that in mind, here I will present the highlight reel of events and issues that have popped up in the last year that I think have been particularly important.

The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Although this broke out relatively late this year (early October), the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, and the subsequent response by Israel toward Gaza, has consumed much of the news cycle for the last few months of the year. It has been a brutal conflict, and at least in the early stages it seemed like it could break out into a larger regional, or even global war. Tensions waned a bit by December, but we will have to wait until many months into 2024 to see how it all plays out.

One of the most peculiar developments of this conflict has been how various external parties have reacted to it in the West. The usual anti-colonialist leftists have coalesced against Israel, but they have been pitted against more traditional leftist Jews/anti-racists who support Israel. Meanwhile, anti-Jewish voices on the right have been pitted against traditionally pro-Israel conservatives. There are also other positions that don’t fall squarely within any of these camps, which is why it is all so bizarre. I am part of the group that sympathizes with Israel’s plight while also being very leery of treating Israel as the 51st state, which could trigger U.S. involvement in World War III if we’re not careful.

The Waning Ukraine War

While the Russia-Ukraine War was one of the top stories in 2022, the topic seems to have slowly petered out in interest in 2023. It has been maddening that U.S. politicians seemed far more interested in funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into a war on the other side of the globe than into one of the major domestic problems happening in the U.S. right now, but such is the state of affairs when an empire is in decline. But at least the money is going to help Ukraine beat Russia, right? Well, not so fast.

In recent months it was reported that the U.S. and Europeans are “quietly” discussing peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia because, well, the war does not seem to be winnable for Ukraine. One of the reasons for this, according to the article cited above, is the decreased “public attention the war in Ukraine has garnered since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a month ago”. If we extrapolate some ideas from this, Ukraine’s success on the battlefield was evidently linked to keeping the story in news cycles as much as possible, which presumably would put pressure on public officials in the West to keep funding the war effort. While I can understand this strategic need for continued funding by Ukraine, something seems incredibly raw if U.S. taxpayers were having their money shipped overseas because of the charming salesman techniques by the Zelensky, particularly if his country was fighting a war that wasn’t exactly winnable in the first place. It also raises a massive question about the alleged torpedoing of peace talks by the British early on in the conflict. Why in the world weren’t we pushing for peach talks all along so that the world could deal with Russia diplomatically? How many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and hundreds of billions spent, for nothing?

Again, this is why it has been so maddening.

The Border Crisis

Another maddening story of the past year isn’t a new story at all. It’s simply more of the same insane things that happen when, again, an empire is in decline. It turns out that as bad as illegal immigration was in past years, President Biden and Congress have decided that it needed to get even worse. As a result, 2023 saw the most illegal immigration in U.S. history.

At some point, everyone kind of needs to realize that our illegal immigration crisis isn’t an accident or due to horrible management, but a conscious ideological decision.

The rise of

- By

B.C. and A.D. vs. B.C.E. and C.E.

I first heard about the usage of BCE and CE to signify historical dates around 1990, and I imagine the idea must have gathered steam in academia well before that time.  If it was supposed to replace usage of BC and AD it hasn’t entered the mainstream quite as well as may have been planned. 

The problems with using “BCE” and “CE” 

I can’t really think of a major reason to remove the BC and AD date designations other than to remove traces of Christian-historical interpretation from the study of history.  As we know, AD stands for “Anno Domini”, or “Year of Our Lord”, and BC means “Before Christ”. Obviously, these are heavily Christian terms which frame secular dates within this particular framework. Replacing these with CE or “Common Era” would effectively make historical study more “neutral”, and therefore more scientific, or so the argument likely goes. There are several problems with this:

1) Both BC and AD have been used as shorthand signifiers of time for so long that the underlying meaning of the words gave way to what they represent.  In other words, the meaning of BC or AD is a secular one, rather than a religious one. Just as the word “Saturday” is known and used apart from its meaning as being the day belonging to the Roman god Saturn, BC and AD represent distinctly secular concepts, even if they retain their religious descriptions. Calling for such a monumental change to the date system on this ground is simply not convincing.  

2) BC and AD have been entrenched in our consciousness so that trying to “tinker” really only serves to make things more difficult to understand. While some students today may learn the dating system using CE and BCE terminology, they will still be required to be familiar with the BC/AD terminology because that is still in use as well. Adopting the new terminology really only serves to confuse people when talking about history and history becomes more esoteric to the masses. 

3) Along these same lines, even if BCE and CE were adopted on the large scale, it’s not as if all the academic materials that used to use BC and AD previously would all of a sudden disappear.  All it means is that now two systems of signifying dates will be in use, making things messier and more confusing than when only BC and AD were used.  One can’t read through historical materials and information without knowing what BC and AD mean anyway, which makes the adoption of modern terminology seem almost redundant.

4) If the use of BCE and CE were motivated by political correctness (which I suspect is the case), it’s a bad, bad proposition.  Attempting to revise something as major as the dating system should never have been based upon whimsical or political reasons. In effect, it’s an attempt to replace one historical approach or ideology with a different historical approach or ideology (yes, political correctness is an ideology).  The casualties of all this are common sense, practicality, and clarity.  It really makes learning more difficult and more confusing – all things that are quite the opposite of what learning is supposed to be.

Perhaps this website for kids made the best comment: “Some people use B.C.E. instead. That stands for Before the Common Era, and is used in order to avoid Christian references. History for Kids feels that since this is a Christian dating system, it’s a little silly to try to hide that.”

WCF