Vīrietība un līdztiesība
Masculinity and Equal Rights

Summary/Abstract: The article may be characterized as an attempt to identify the trends of thought of the several last centuries, marking the technologies of the selfhood of man. Selfhood is not to be understood as identity, for it involves the very being itself. Which is to mean that the identity of man is not to be considered in a purely theoretical vein, but should involve an answer to the question: What does it mean to be a man? Such an answer turns into various discoursive practices. The author makes a special point to distinguish between various praxes of discourse, and mutually interconnected discourses cum praxes. The whole body of discoursive practices is regionally variable and temporally successive. This is to mean that the considerations advanced by the author contain only some basic ideal-typical features and elements. Therefore the present deliberations, even if recorded in the form of assertions, are to be looked at only as hypotheses, even though they are drawn from separate elements in a variety of texts. It is worth noting, that the discursive practices are extended in time and have become a sort of text-generating engines producing ever-new variable texts in conjunction with the specific praxes and their elements. It is maintained in the article that masculinity has not served as a universal form even up to the 18th century. Masculinity or manliness is a model reflecting the power relations, yet it is not universal. A nobleman and a peasant at any given time are two completely different entities. While a queen, for example, may also be king, assuming the forms of self-representation of the latter. There is a hierarchy and respective catalogues of morals pertaining to each particular estate. The gender differences here are not of particular importance, and a monogeneric model is an actuality. This may be characterized in the following way: a woman is the same as man; only man is incapable of creation. This fact is reflected in the political anatomy. The two-gender model based on empirically perceptible biological facticity begins to appear in the 18-th century. This model serves as a fore-runner of the idea of sexuality. At that time the vernacular world is still in existence, as this is rightly stressed by Ivan Illih (1926 – 2002). The two-gender model appears in the industrial world, dominated by generically neutral economic relations tending towards unisexual prolongation. Thus, man and woman may become equal only as unisexual labour force. Such an economic order is not compatible with attempts at overcoming of sexism and non-equality. In developing of these ideas, and by way of analysis of various practices according to the ideal-typical features, the author comes to the conclusion that the present-day impatience with masculinity originated in the 18-th century, and for this reason the idea of sexual equality is highly problematic.

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