Les Couilles sur la table

Masculinity is not simply a collection of personality traits. Peer recognition and workplace authority distribute gendered power. Who receives approval, who can cross another person’s boundaries, and who gets to call an intrusion a joke are related questions. Les Couilles sur la table uses interviews to turn the explanation that men are simply like this into social processes that can be investigated. Created by Victoire Tuaillon and produced by Binge Audio, the show currently names Naomi Titti and Tal Madesta as hosts. Its founding and current hosting roles are distinct.

Recognition among men

A useful starting point is the first full interview, “Il n’y a pas de crise de la masculinité”, released on September 14, 2017, and running about 38 minutes. Tuaillon speaks with anthropologist Mélanie Gourarier about her research on a small community of seducers. The discussion connects relations among men, masculine friendship and the learning of self-control. Women may appear to be the objects of pursuit while other men supply the audience that evaluates performance and distributes recognition.

This shifts the question. Asking whether a man likes a woman does not explain why he needs to demonstrate that interest to his peers. Success may also depend on whether a story wins approval and whether emotions conform to expectations. Desire does not thereby become unreal; it acquires a social form through narration, comparison and reward. A study of a small group offers a window onto a mechanism, rather than a psychological portrait of every man.

Another entrance is “Qui sont les harceleurs au travail ?”, released on December 7, 2017, and running about 29 minutes. Guest Marilyn Baldeck works with AVFT, an organization opposing violence against women at work. The episode description foregrounds her experience of relevant trials. Treating harassment as an inappropriate private approach misses the question of how employment relations enable repeated boundary violations while leaving someone else to bear the costs of refusing, complaining or losing work.

Explanation and responsibility

Understanding masculinity as socially learned does not absolve people who cause harm. Peer approval can help explain why conduct persists without proving that its perpetrator has no choices. Individual decisions, colleagues’ silence and organizational responses belong in the same account; otherwise condemning one person may leave the environment that rewards him intact.

Interview evidence also has limits. An interpretation of a particular group, cases encountered by an activist and population prevalence are different kinds of knowledge. Figures in early episodes belong to their original evidentiary context. Continued publication of the show does not automatically make them current statistics. These two starting points invite a comparison of how guests move from cases to mechanisms, and where further research would be needed.

Reading alongside bell hooks’s The Will to Change extends the question of emotional training and masculine authority, rather than treating intimacy as private self-improvement detached from politics. Colette Guillaumin’s analysis of the appropriation of women moves the inquiry from identity performance to control over time, bodies and labor. The approaches differ, but both make masculinity a way to investigate the distribution of power rather than merely describe a style.