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You learned about the Women's Suffrage Movement (First Wave Feminism) and the struggle it was for women to earn the right to vote. While Suffragists pointed out that women were subject to laws which they had no say in, and Suffragettes took radical action in order to draw attention to the cause, opponents to Women's Suffrage turned to centuries old arguments which deemed women to be either too frivolous or unreliable and therefore unable to make informed political decisions.

At the same time, anti-Suffrage propaganda often depicted a reversal of traditional gender roles in the home if women were given the right to vote. The "Suffragette Madonna" (above left) was one of many which depicted men as being emasculated through having to take care of their homes and their children while their wives went off to vote.

Fast forward to the other year and TV talk show host Piers Morgan setting off a controversy by "Dad-shaming" actor Daniel Craig--Agent 007, James Bond--for carrying his young daughter in a papoose baby carrier. Morgan tweeted, "Oh 007 ... not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond." A number of people reacted on Twitter with pictures of dads carrying their children in like carriers; and Captain America himself, actor Chris Evans, chimed in on the debate. Likewise, this is not the first time that the fatherhood of 007 has set off a controversy, Pierce Brosnan appearing on a 1997 cover of Redbook with Keely Shaye Smith as she breastfed their son; and even in the most recent movie, No Time to Die, the plot hinges on Bond discovering he has a daughter and his efforts to rescue her and her mother from the villain's lair.

In a somewhat related story, a Florida father of 3, Donte Palmer, posted on Instagram in 2018 a photo of himself squatting in a men's bathroom as he changed his son's diaper. Frustrated with the lack of baby changing stations in men's restrooms, Palmer started the #SquatForChange handle in a call for other fathers to share their own stories and to petition for the increased instillation of changing tables in public facilities (see below).

Also, earlier this semester you read Michael Ian Black's "The Boys Are Not All Right," the op-ed becoming the basis for his later book, A Better Man, a (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son; and in the assigned excerpt, Black discusses how becoming a father and his son coming to him for comfort was the greatest gift because it allowed him to be a dad. Black writes, "The simple secret of manhood is love. It's almost embarrassing to write that down. Not because it sounds so hokey, but because, deep down, it's something all of us already know. And yet . . . we men have an especially hard time admitting it to ourselves."

What does the incidence of Piers Morgan dad-shaming Daniel Craig tell you about the conceptualization of masculinity today? Of fatherhood? What does it and Palmer's story tell you about how gender roles were nearly a century ago and how much they have changed (or not) since then? What does Michael Ian Black's "The Secret of Manhood is Love" reveal about the perpetuation of antiquated notions of manhood and fatherhood, the notions underlying Morgan's Tweet, and the struggle to undo their hold on contemporary society?