Hey Brett Favre, It's Alright for Men to Cry

Posted by Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon at 10:28 AM on March 17, 2008.

Wow, this is a telling little light shone into the anxious masculinity that defines the conservative "revolution". (Via.) Apparently, Brett Favre teared up at his retirement press conference, an understandable action considering the high emotions that have to be flying as you end a career as prestigious as his. And Laura Ingraham, who knows her audience very well, decided this was a good opportunity to call Favre a woman.

"All these years, and I didn't know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL."

"Brett Favre...we're watching this in the studio, obviously retiring from the NFL, great quarterback, handsome 38-year-old man, he gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen."

"That's a great message for young boys. 'Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby."

Then, in her best impersonation of a crying toddler with its favorite toy taken away, she wah-wah-wah's while uttering in a mocking tone, "It's about me, it was never about me, but it is about me, bla, bla, bla" before returning to her regular voice and stating, "I could not believe what I was seeing."

Unfortunately, the reaction from too many sporting outlets has been, essentially, "Nuh-uh! He's earned the right to cry a little without having his masculinity taken from him. And you're not a woman, so there!" Which really isn't probably going to hurt her feelings, because clearly she doesn't think much of women to consider it an insult to call someone a woman.

What the Yahoo sports blogger is buying into is the concept that masculinity is a fragile thing, always in danger of being infected by the feminine and immediately perishing. It's this fear that drives so much of what's fucked up in our culture, from war-mongering to date raping, this sense that masculinity has to constantly be shored up, lest it disappear completely.

From Stephen Ducat's indispensable book on the subject, The Wimp Factor:

It suggests that being biologically male is not sufficient to confer or sustain masculinity. Instead, it must be asserted through repetition, words and actions. The everyday vocabulary and common-sense notions of gender remind us that in the majority of patriarchal cultures, the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman.

As you can see, the idea that masculinity is fragile and has to constantly be shored up is accepted not just Ingraham, but also the sports blogger who offered that Favre had some kind of masculinity bank, and he'd saved up enough to afford this feminine indulgence.

In order to be a successful right wing talk show host, you need to build up enough fear in your audience to keep them tuning in, but you also have to offer hope of some sort, or at least an ego boost, so they get regular rewards as well for tuning in. Considering the masculinity obsession, what this amounts to is telling a non-stop story about how American masculinity is dying under an onslaught of feminist and liberal do-goodery that infects one with the vagina from the inside. Make your listener feel his dick is likely to fall off any minute. Even better, obsess about the dicklessness of young men these days, as if to say to the listener, "You have put up a successful show of masculinity your whole life, but now your son is going to swish around, limping his wrist at people and everyone will know that you weren't really a man all along because your sperm couldn't even make a 'real' man." Sow these fears, but also give the listener reason to feel superior, by telling him that even though America is being "feminized", he's been a tough enough man to continue the hard process of having no real feelings outside of anger, hating women, hating foreigners, etc. If you can strike the right balance between fear-mongering about masculinity and ego-boosting, you'll get your audience.

You can see both how Ingraham is a real pro at this, and how there was no way to pass up picking on Favre. The story is just too easy to fit into the model. You have the story about how the feminine menace is growing all the more powerful, turning even that icon of masculinity Brett Favre into a woman, a real "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers" moment. You have the "your son will grow up queer and then everyone will know you were shooting woman sperm all along moment" with the fear-mongering about how your boys will see Favre cry and decide that they can go just be women.

But the listener is not given complete reason to despair, because the underlying message is a big ego boost. "My god, what a manly man he-man you are! You're even manlier than Brett Favre, because he's up there crying and you're not.* You know that beating Favre in the Manly Olympics is like getting the automatic gold." Of course, you can't hang your man gold on the shelf and call it a day. The Manly Olympics are perverse games, with every day starting brand new, and automatic revoking of your manhood credentials should you ever decide to sit one out. Or that's what they hear. Everyone who plays in the Manly Olympics is to scared to find out what happens if you decide to just quit and find better things to do with your time.**

*Never mind that he's up there and the listener is not. Fantasy manhood is just as good--ask any warblogger who won't dare actually sign up to serve in Iraq. **You're happier and live longer, and your dick is still perfectly serviceable and you can even have more fun with it now that you own it instead of letting it own you.

Tagged as: sexism, women, masculinty, sports, favre

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the popular blog Pandagon.