Honorary male

An honorary male or honorary man is a concept from feminist theory, according to which a woman is accorded the status of a man without disrupting the patriarchal status quo. Such women can take on roles typically associated with men (such as being a monarch), but they may not substantially alter gender norms for the rest of their society. Examples include Queen Hatshepsut (ancient Egypt), Queen Elizabeth I (16th century England), and Margaret Thatcher (20th century Britain).

History

Ancient Egypt Queen Hatshepsut was the first female ruler of ancient Egypt after Sobekneferu to act as a full pharaoh. Ruling in the New Kingdom, Hatshepsut depicted and asserted herself as a male ruler. In artwork and sculpture of Hatshepsut, she is represented in the traditional pharaoh headdress, kilt, and false beard—a symbol of kingship; her breasts are reduced and deemphasized, and her shoulders are broad and manly. Hatshepsut executed several building projects and military campaigns and brought Egypt into a period of peace and prosperity. Hatshepsut's actions to improve the status of women during this time are unknown, although women in ancient Egypt could decide their own professions, marry whomever they desired, contract prenuptial agreements that favored them, divorce their husbands, own real estate, enter the clergy, and had access to birth control and abortions. Women in Egypt during this time held higher status than their counterparts in other countries, and more than Egyptian women would be in later centuries after the rise of Christianity in the 4th century AD and later Islam in the 7th century AD.

Iron Age

Female burials in the La Tène culture in Western Europe between 450 BC and 380 BC indicate the elite status of some women. Indicators of elite status in Central and Southern Germany in this period included objects of power similar to those found in preceding periods. High status graves in the preceding Hallstatt period (750 BC to 450 BC) included gold neck rings, bronze daggers, bronze drinking vessels, and four-wheeled wagons. Grave sites in the Hochdorf, Biberach region, excavated in 1970, found only elite male burial objects before and during the Hallstatt Period. However, in 480 BC, the number of elite male graves began dropping and were suddenly replaced by elite female graves. Around the same time these high status burials transitioned from majority men to women. War brought forth massive emigration of males, leaving behind women to fill the roles typically held by men. Similar shifts in population occurred in the Celtic regions of Europe. As most of Celtic society in the Iron Age centered around agriculture, the landowning class dominated. The ruling class also made up the military elite. As Warfare in Medieval Scotland increased, women soon found themselves in roles of land ownership and power. Competitive feasting, large events held by the now landowning women, involved large quantities of alcohol and food. The quality of the feast represented the host's socio-economic status. Equipment, dress, and methods for performing these feasts also influenced laws and values. Gold neck rings, symbolizing the highest status of a successful feast host have been found in female graves indicating that women continued the practices traditionally upheld by men. Women assuming positions of power in this patriarchal society was made possible by a lower population of men, not an absence. According to Bettina Arnold, author of "‘Honorary males’ or women of substance? Gender, status, and power in Iron-Age Europe", archaeological analysis of burial shows some women were honorary males as they were buried with both socio-economic as well as military symbols of power.

Prior to 1900s

In "Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence of Patriarchy", Allison Heisch describes honorary males as women who accept the values and practices of the male society in which they function, and internalize and follow them. She notes that honorary males tend to support rather than subvert patriarchal governance, and cites as an example Queen Elizabeth I, whose reign had little to no impact on the status of women in England. She also cites the example of Gertrude Stein sitting in her salon, smoking cigars and conversing with the men. Stein's participation temporarily modifies the after-dinner ritual in which men smoke cigars and talk amongst themselves, but does not permanently alter it. An exception is made for her because she is seen as different from other women; Ernest Hemingway once wrote in a letter, "Gertrude Stein and me are just like brothers".

1900s to present The honorary man, Carolyn Heilbrun writes in the 1988 "Non-Autobiographies of 'Privileged' Women: England and America", must isolate herself from the common run of women to maintain her "privileged" status. In this way, she exchanges one form of confinement (the domestic sphere) for another (the male realm). Comparing male domination of the political sphere in Zambia to that in the United States in 1998, Sara Hlupekile Longwe writes that honorary males are often also queen bees who have been "schooled to believe that women already have equality—because they themselves have reached the top"; she calls this the Thatcher syndrome. Such women, she claims, do not wish to empower other women, but rather to preserve their own exceptional status among the men. Margaret Atwood described the results of a study of book reviews conducted in 1972:

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