A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do

The Hindu

15 hours ago

This week, the poster boys for toxic masculinity have been all over the news. Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to starve the people of Palestine. Its brutal actions, which have flattened neighbourhoods, killed tens of thousands of people, and decimated hospitals and schools, amount to genocide, according to many experts, writes Aaratrika Bhaumik in this explainer.
For some, Israel's response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, may not have been entirely unexpected. Back then, Major-General Ghasan Alyan from the Israeli Defence Ministry warned in a video, 'Human beasts are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza – no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell – you will get hell.'
The mastermind of the Hamas attack was also a ruthless, bloodthirsty man 'married to the Palestinian cause', Yahya Sinwar. As Stanly Johny said, on the rise and fall of Sinwar, 'violence defined his method.' Sinwar was killed in 2024 by the Israeli Defence Forces, but the scores between Israel and Hamas have still not been settled.
All this bluster — which Netanyahu described best in 2014 when he said, 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' — has nearly wiped out an entire region. In a 2019 academic paper titled Masculinity, war and militarism, Claire Duncanson wrote, 'Boys and men are socialised into thinking that being tough, being aggressive, being in authority, in control, are important markers of being a man.' She quotes various feminist scholars as arguing that 'men do not dominate in the world's militaries because they are naturally more violent, aggressive and tough,... but because in many cultures... proving oneself on the battlefield has been deemed an important way to prove oneself a man.'
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has organised photoshoots of himself riding horses bare-chested, or walking through the wilderness brandishing a gun, and who continues to wage a war against Ukraine, is one of the prototypes of this stereotype. With their blind (or perhaps calculated) rage and thirst for revenge, Sinwar and Netanyahu, who have together brought Gaza to its knees, are the others.
Elsewhere, U.S. President Donald Trump, whose government has been aiding Netanyahu in the war, had yet another emotional outburst this week. On July 30, he hit his 'friend' India with a 25% tariff along with an 'unspecified penalty' for buying Russian oil and weapons. Trump rode to power calling several women, from Kamala Harris to Nancy Pelosi, 'unhinged' and 'crazy'. But today, by terming India's economy 'dead', he is the one putting painstakingly built India-U.S. ties at risk. The Hindu editorial says that 'something does seem to have shifted in India-US relations'.
One of the primary objectives of patriarchy is the expansion of power. And this relentless pursuit of power without principles is causing moral bankruptcy, as Ashwani Kumar lamented in this piece earlier this month. Men with the most power around us are clinging on to it by doing whatever it takes: bullying, waging war, killing innocent people.
Where are the compassionate women and men and a leadership of empathy and care that the world so desperately needs? It is all too clear that decision-making, especially on world issues, cannot be left to the whims of manchildren who mask incompetence and insensitivity with bravado.
Toolkit
In this photo essay, Ritu Raj Konwar captures the hustle and bustle of Ima Market, which is run entirely by women in Imphal, Manipur's capital. The market hosts 5,000-6,000 women vendors, who sell vegetables, fruits, textiles, toys, fish, spices, and utensils. Male shopkeepers and vendors are not allowed to set up or run stalls in this centuries-old market, which serves to empower women socially and economically.
Wordsworth
Femi-genocide: This month, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, called for immediate global action to halt the unfolding 'femi-genocide' in Gaza. Alsalem said that existing concepts in legal and criminal frameworks can no longer adequately describe the scale and nature of the crimes inflicted by Israeli forces on Palestinian women and girls. 'What is happening to Palestinian women and girls is not collateral damage of war,' she said. 'It is the intentional destruction of their lives and bodies, for being Palestinian and for being women.'
Ouch!
Now girls are marrying at the age of 25. By then, many, not all, have been in relationships with multiple men. By the time a woman is 25, she is fully grown. It is only natural that by then, her youth has slipped away somewhere.
Aniruddhacharya, also known as Pookie Baba
People we met
Rohin Bhatt is a lawyer in the Supreme Court. In 2022, Bhatt had asked the then Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, to modify the appearance slips for lawyers in the apex court to include an additional column for people's pronouns so that they may be correctly used in orders and judgments. When asked how much further courts have to go to become more gender-sensitive, Bhatt points out problems of both infrastructure and attitude. As a queer lawyer, he says he is typecast. 'I am often called an 'LGBT lawyer' who does 'LGBT cases' but my work is so much more — across civil, criminal, and constitutional law,' he says. Bhatt imagines that in a truly inclusive space, he and others would be seen as 'not just lawyers who do queer cases, but as good lawyers in our own right who can argue other briefs with equal expertise, in addition to queer rights cases.'