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Intellectuals

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Intellectual Summary

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International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities

INTELLECTUALS

In most cultures literacy and literary work have been principally the domain of men. Women have frequently been excluded from formal education or denied respect as authors. This aspect of gender relations has had important consequences for ideas about masculinity. In European modernity, for instance, there has been a widespread belief that intellectuality and rationality are inherent in masculinity, while femininity is associated with the irrational and emotional.

It follows that in Western culture the bearers of intellectuality are culturally understood to be men (or ‘masculinised’ women). The Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith has developed this insight, proposing that the realm of state policy debates, academic life, science and research are part of a system of power, the ‘relations of ruling’, to which women are subordinated. Intellectuals as a collectivity are here seen as the bearers of patriarchal power.

But intellectuals have also been bearers of change in men’s lives. Alongside feminist women, prominent male intellectuals such as the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen and the British philosopher John Stuart Mill have articulated powerful critiques of patriarchy, making arguments for gender equality.

In the 1960s a movement of young intellectuals, the ‘new left’, engaged in debates about sexuality and personal life which led to dramatic changes in gender awareness—and to some extent in gender practice—through the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Intellectual leaders in the women’s movement, such as Juliet Mitchell in Britain and Nancy Chodorow in the United States, have had a powerful influence on modern thinking about men and masculinity.

With the short-lived ‘men’s liberation’ movement of the early 1970s, the longerlasting gay liberation movement and a growing diversity of ‘men’s movements’ around the world, a new role for male intellectuals has emerged—that of reflecting on, and strategising for, changes in men’s lives. Prominent examples are the Australian gay theorist Dennis Altman and the US poet Robert Bly. Research on men’s movements suggests that all have ‘organic intellectuals’ articulating their ideologies and goals for change.