Macho Machiavellianism

By Carly Campbell

Decoding the masculine cannon and the association between strength, power, and masculinity with violence and domination.

“It is better to be feared than it is to be loved” - Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

It is better to be feared than it is to be loved.

Even before having come within proximity to political readings, I was aware of this phrase.

Even before hearing the words so officially ordained, I was aware of this principle.

Aren't we all? Aren't we all made to feel this. Through our upbringing and in our subtle behavioural training- good behaviour begets rewards, bad behaviour must be beaten down. It's just how it works, right?

Parents take upon this cruel stance often, "I don't care if you hate me" - and they punish the unruly child. Hated teachers dominating a classroom turn into hated bosses, petitioning that we must obey the feared bottom line. We all operate in a world ordained through fear, the fear of consequences- the fear of someone's power over yourself.

I learned soon, subtly, that those you fear, are also those respected. I was afraid of my most ruthlessly angry teachers, they were respected in retrospect. When afraid of anger we train to never dissapoint. The unfortunate truth of our world is that the scariest people earn the most respect, the shy ones, the most rebuttal.

When did we start to live accordingly? Accepting this ideology necessarily means beleiving some of the worst truths about human nature. I imply here that "The state of nature is war”, but where did I get this from?

Im reminded of the dreaded political rationalists.

Thomas Hobbes, one of those ancient theorists who have earned the title of being “fundamental”- he wrote simply that humans can never be trusted. He said humans are naturally greedy, selfish, power hungry- beings. Left to our own devices, life is nasty, brutish and short- man versus man. As a result, he advocated political power- as in, political overpower-ing. Machiavelli takes it further. Writing The Prince as a how-to guide on rulership, he argues that "it is better to be feared than loved". Ruling with compassion, morality, or goodwill would never work. The prince, the ideal ruler, shall never break- he will never be conquered. Feared and he's powerful.

These ideas may be ancient, but that's what makes them so important. They nestled themselves into academia, read by those with influence and flicked the first domino on the chain of events that have created our modern world. They perscribed the iron-fisted approach and whispered that disastrous secret into some of the most brutal dictators- (cough cough- Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin). However, this is not all they did. These ideas did more than create the conditions for rulership, but the conditions of masculinity.

In a feminist course I took, the professor asked the class “what is masculinity”. Stereotypes- "blue" "sports" and "cars" all being the first thoughts on our minds. Yet behind these shallow comments, there was a variety of words indicating something more concrete, similies of “powerful," and "strong” forming the picture of masculinity.

which sounds an awful lot like what Machiavelli wanted the prince to be.

Immediately after this experiment, my professor asked for the same practice to be undertaken for the… other gender. Other than words like "pink," "gossip," and "shopping," femininity was declared as "sensitive," "emotional," and "weak".

The patriarchy is a social order that places man in charge, and so it seems to have been as long as I can remember. Machiavelli wrote to man, Hobbes wrote to man, man writes to man because they had the power to do so, and were the only ones who had the power to rule. These men had seemingly decided, based on a crude understanding of society itself- what power was, and we see through these texts that it was defined as an encapsulation of strength and force. Masculinity was solidified and has been eternally reproduced.

Today men still embody a depiction of the prince in their behaviour, and our world still tells them they should. How do we raise boys if not to cultivate strength? Put the young boy into sports and tell them to be strong, never cry. Never does the prince show weakness, and similarly, never does a man.

Where does that leave women? I can trace the creation of man through academia, politics, and history but it's harder for us to understand women because - well- they were excluded from these discussions entirely. But does this not say enough? Women were never rulers, never in charge, rather, they were property. They are the second tier in the patriarchal ranking. A product of Adam's rib. A wife, valued like livestock.

I don't have a dowry, but women have never entirely escaped this rank. "the male gaze" as it has been called, is the governing force I'm referring to and “male fantasies” are more harmful, less obvious than just perscribing certain traits to the genders.

Unfortunately, dear reader- we're going to have to untangle the patriarchy, make it clear why I argue against it.

In the beginning God created man, and from him- woman.

Well, let's put religion aside.

Biologically, men and women developed from the same organism. There is no female essence, no male essence either. That is a fact. The differences we see now have been implemented socially- but yes i’ll concede, we cannot discount the impact which socialization has had. External realities train our behaviour- they restructure our minds from the inside out.

Women at the outset had one difference: they were dealt the childbearing hand (goddamn it eve!). Males were, as many love to flaunt, ordained with a body more apt for physical strength. Hunter-gatherer societies reflected this dynamic. Think about it like organizing a team, of course each member would be sorted the task reflective of their skillset. So, a woman would do domestic tasks, men would hunt. The first mother, the first man.

Thus, we see the genders before the fall. Yet I pushback- as there is no reason I see here defending that “weakness” is something inherent to a woman's second x chromosome. What is weak about childbirth? What does being sensitive or emotional have to do with it?

The problem with these categories is not how they function, but as they began to order themselves on a heirarchy. When creating man and woman— it was not just that one did something different, one was made better.

Simone de Beauvoir, feminist scholar has said that women are the "other" of our world. What she means is that the patriarchy exists by understanding men as the “normal” and women lesser, merely because they are not men.

Otherness is a way of thought; it's a concept we use in understanding the things around us. We have used goodness, for example, to understand badness. Darkness to understand what lightness is. So, if a man wanted to see himself as powerful, if he was to be “better”, how could he prove that? a woman ! She must be the opposite.

“Male fantasies run our world” means that although gender is a fantasy, masculinity prevailed. It means femininity must be perpetually weak, regardless of what traits the female even holds.

The patriarchy imbues all things feminine through the eyes of the male beholder and poisons them as bad before even understanding why. The second half of the patriarchy is the picture of masculinity we created- the one tied to machiavelli which I began with.

I have said “this is a man’s world” previously without thought, but now I say it with meaning. Power is strength and fear because men decided that. Power is strength and fear because men were created off of the ability to dominate and conquer. “Nature is a state of war” we say, but this is not a fact- this is the patriarchy at work.

But the building is flawed! The patriarchy is wrong! I can see the flaws of it today, all around us. We have poisoned our lives by tying the human spirit to the ghost of some gendered understanding of ourselves when in reality, men have no real merit to claim this power as to be innate. Acting like a man brings a prescribed sense of power, which leads to an obsession with domination and strength. It stifles women, but men as well.

Let's take emotions for example. Despite what the patriarchy has made us believe, both genders do in fact feel emotions. We do, nonetheless, process emotions differently.

For women the most common response is to rely on something scientists call “cognitive rumination”. This is fancy speak for overthinking. Women have adapted this response simply because of their stature in the heirarchy. Aware of herself as an object, she is more inclined to think before speaking. Introspect. As a result, Women have been found to feel more shame, fear, sadness and guilt. Thus the sensitivity title emerges.

On the male side- they have been trained to cope differently. God forbid they feel an emotion- they take it out, punch drywall- whatever it is. This is because they lack the burden to engage in introspection.

But also- as masculinity has been convoluted with such an idealised vision of unconquerable strength, and propped up with a hatred of all things feminine, a man does not, he will not submit to any sort of weakness. This makes the male species more quick to anger than to shame. They do not think about how they have appeared, what they have done, plus- emotion bad. Thus emotion is thoughtlessly expressed, done away with, left unexamined but to return again, almost as quick as it went.

The patriarchy is a form of behavioural training. I read an article based on the phenomena of “throwing like a girl”. As a girl, who has always thrown like one- I felt interested to learn my deficit is somewhat a product of this training which I just mentioned. Iros Marion Young observed a study taken of 5 year olds, in this she found that "the girl of five does not use lateral space." but even at age 5, a boy "stretches his right arm windward and backward, twists, turns and bends- supporting his throwing almost with the full strength of his total moratorium."

Women are not biologically inept at playing catch, women are trained to be. She is an object- she must perform, and therefore- she is constrained under a gaze which sees herself as an intruder and she operates self consciously. This is not just in throwing, but in everything. Women walk in a certain way, talk in a certain way- restrain, restrain, restrain. If a woman has become this embodiment of weakness, it's only because she was told to be, told to be for so long we don’t even realize that this external limitation is only a product of the female condition. The weak traits which form femininity, the deep deep feelings, the self consciousness and meekness- it all comes from this training.

As a woman, I suppose I have always perceived my femininity as a flaw. I somehow could not see the cycle and of course, blamed myself. I used to read the prince and think he articulated the truth, using it as a “how to” for my own path of improvent. If this is a man's world, I thought, If power is created by fear, I could get ahead by getting rid of my weakness and in short- become a man.

Yet- I must say, I do not think becoming a man is in any way better. I also deny that the masculine form of power has any value.

I have talked about what the patriarchy does to women, but I must think of what the man's world does to men itself. Boys don't cry has been weaponized as frequently as "you throw like a girl". That is because masculinity is unforgiving.

Let me ask one question: why is it that men got the power over women so long ago? The answer is unfortunate, but it is related back to that biological difference I equipped the first man with. Physical strength. What did a man do to oppress the other gender, what made him win the war of the sexes? Ding ding, it was violence. The underlying threat of violence is what really founded male power, helped to create their ensuing definition of it.

Violence is the subtle dynamic which facilitates oppression. “The prince must use violence when necessary to remind his subjects he has the power”. I mean, hey, it really is unquestionable, if someone beat me to a pulp, I would be afraid to retaliate. Power is a result of violent domination, masculinity is the embodiment of this brutish understanding of life. But again I am not talking about the past, I am merely understanding it.

And how do we see this now? How does this form our relationships?

"It's because he's a man",

my roomate had told me after a failed romantic endeavour, something which is unfortunately quite common for a woman in her early 20's. He is just a man—and therefore, of course, he could not understand me in the same way a woman does; of course, he could not degrade himself from the position of power to the level of weakness that permits vulnerability. Also- of course I should take masculinity as a rational defence, after all, boys will be boys. It is natural?

My inclination in failure was again to act like a man, to show no emotion- to be strong. Take back the power, show him who is boss! If nature is a state of war, I could win.

These are the games of the man's world, and in retrospection, they show me why our ideas of power are so innately harmful.

This disposition I had, I must acknowledge, is cowardly. Forgive me for saying it, but it is weak. Being a man is weak in all the ways we are told it’s strong. The idea that vulnerability is weak is only a consequence of patriarchal logic but it gets us nowhere, except, alone. Win what? I ask, what are we gaining from competing?

A man's world. This sounds reductive, and to the male readers out there, I don't mean to repeat this mantra offensively. Man and Women are not just words, they're categories, trained roles. If I criticise anything, it's that. The masculine canon tells women they're weak- but also forces a man to repress his "womanish" feelings. It embraces violence and domination. It tells us all that to succeed is to conquer - alone. It draws a line in the sand saying “you go here” and “you do this” - telling us that we shall never cross. Under this principle, we are all restricted and created to be the brutes which are only greedy for power, the type of human which Machiavelli warned against.

I offer a different way, one taken from the “others”, from the woman.

I know I am trapped under that glass ceiling, but what I have learned under here is not all bad. I have found some of my most fulfilling relationships amongst women and this is connected to the womanly, the “weak” disposition. Self-awareness makes women more self conscious, but also more empathetic, more cultivated in considering others, more knowledgable about emotion and willing to share themselves without worrying about conquering. I have been able to break down crying to friends and find acceptance in them, in what the world calls weakness, I gain compassion and understanding. Female friendships (when not corrupted by competition) see an acceptance of others for themselves, a companionship of equals. This connection however, it is only plausible once the idea that we must dominate is relinquished. When our identities are no longer constrained towards winning, but embrace- weakness.

I see now that oppression is the true evil behind the patriarchy. Not just the oppression of women- but this strange idea that oppression is innate to human nature, and that the one who oppresses is the strongest. I think now, Machiavelli is wrong. It’s better to be loved than feared, and human nature is not so fixed as to desire this power as he would have you believing.

We have created the conditions of isolation in creating the patriarchy. We have oppressed our own compassion and praised domination. Machiavellianism, masculinity- it is nothing but a narrative, one maybe befit for 18th century war- but which pollutes our brains and bonds today.