06: Archetypes completed

I believe the simplest way to usefully mobilize archetypes is to think of them not as models for (in our case) masculinity, rather as elements of self (which may or may not be gendered). For example, I’ll list some elements that first spring to mind when I describe myself (in no specific order): writer, thinker, father, husband, loner, son, neurotic, visionary, polemicist, contrarian. All these words describe elements that go towards the construction of my complete sense of self, but no single one gets anywhere near that complete sense of self. Indeed, to pick any single word almost immediately suggests a narrow perception of self that borders on pathological.

Thinking archetypically in a useful way would therefore involve identifying a range of individual elements and fashioning from them a sufficiently nuanced sense of self. Some of these elements (such as father, husband, or son) may have a clear connection with biological sex; most will not. Any archetypal element that is not based in biological sex is socially constructed and therefore available to all people, male or female. The conspiracy works by reducing the number of elements available to a person to a very low number (say, one to four elements), and then—in practice—assigning those elements exclusively to either men or women. To counter the conspiracy we make any number of elements available to the individual and allow them to be assigned to any individual, in any way the individual sees fit (this is not about prescribing values, after all, rather enabling possibilities, which may not always be pleasant).

The result is an “elemental suite” or an “archetypal suite” that is bound by nothing other than the individual’s values, characteristics and desires. It is unlikely that a sufficiently nuanced suite could be described as either masculine or feminine. But, importantly, this does not reduce the suite to being “gender neutral” (as Mansfield would have argued in the History chapter). Instead, the suite is “gender unique,” each one bearing witness to the specific way the individual navigates their complex journey between biological sex, the expectations of a prescriptive conspiratorial model of gender, and aspirations for freedom from that conspiratorial model.

Importantly, some of those suites may look identical to a conspiratorial understanding of gender, as genuine freedom must allow for any particular combination. The big difference is that in the model I am suggesting, the suite that resembles the conspiracy is achieved via a proactive choice to construct that suite, not because it is “natural” or “appropriate.” This is the fundamental difference between my message and the message you will read in most popular books about masculinity. When I critique conspiratorial models of masculinity, I am not denying those models (although I am showing how they are problematic); rather, I am denying the conspiratorial claim about what masculinity should be, and offering not a specific alternative but the freedom to choose.