Boys Do Cry

“If you do ever decide to go on testosterone, 
build yourself into a good man. 

The last thing the world needs 
is another misogynist prick."

["One in Every Crowd", Ivan Coyote]

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of going to a book reading by Ivan Coyote.  It was an excellent time.  It was insightful.  It was emotional.  I came away with an incredible reverence and respect for Ivan as an excellent speaker and masterful storyteller.  Ivan is not just spouting off a few ideas from a text here; this is an emotionally-charged experience for the listener and I can only imagine gut-wrenching for the speaker.  I am astounded that they have the fortitude to do this day in and day out, sharing so much of themselves with others.  I know, from my own experience, how draining writing something deeply personal can be.  Frankly, I've sometimes cried when writing certain entries in this blog.  (A few of late would make for pretty obvious guesses.)  I often re-read things I've written in the past, and sometimes cry again when I do.  To me, the idea of standing before a crowd of people to read something like that aloud, multiple times a week or even a day... I am amazed and impressed.  They have a huge heart.

Ivan is an altogether fascinating person.  This was their eleventh book, and they were holding a writing seminar a few days later.  I haven't read any of these books, though I do hope to some day, because from the excerpts I'm sure I would find them quite fascinating.  They have a clever way of playing with blending particularly fine details with broader strokes in a way that focuses your attention to put you in a similar emotional space.  These days, sadly, reading is one of those things where my aspirations far exceed the time I allot to them, and I have a backlog of "books to read" dating back a few years stacked on and in my nightstand.  I look forward to retiring some day and getting caught up on all this stuff.

I thought long and hard about going to their seminar but eventually decided not to.  My relationship with my own writing is kind of a strange one.  It's complicated, but I'm not sure I'm ready to get into why right here right now, so let's put a pin in that.  (This collection of pins lately is starting to grow.  I'll get to them some day, I swear.)  I will just add this:  it's not my intention that my writing will only ever be exclusively about the current elephant in the room.  There are a number of well-written parent-of-transgender blogs out there, and I don't want to ever confine myself to writing about one particular topic or one particular aspect of my life, and especially when there are already better writers to be found on those topics.  Yes, gender-related issues have been a big part of what's on my mind this past number of months, obviously, but certainly not the only thing.  (Since the last thing the world needs right now is one more vitriolic rant about why a certain American candidate for president is lower than pond scum, I'll spare you that one though.)

However, having said that, since issues around "masculinity" and what "man" means have been forefront in my mind these days, apologies, but... here's one more trip to that same well.

There were things that Ivan said that struck chords with me.  There were a number of things.  And now, a few weeks later, several of them are still swimming around in my head.  I knew they would be when I left that room that night.  I shook their hand and told them they were a good storyteller, because I knew they had done to me what the very thing I endeavor to do to others when I write: they left 'splinters in my mind'.

There's nothing more insidious than a clever idea, is there?  Weeks later: splinters still in my mind.  If I ever see Ivan again, I'll want to shake my head, say "bastard", shake their hand, and hope they know how much a compliment that is.  (I probably won't, but I'd like to.)

The most prominent splinter right now is the idea of 'smashing the patriarchy'.  I'd already been thinking and writing about 'what is masculinity anyway?'  Perhaps Ivan caught me at just the right time, really.  I'd already been dwelling in a place, mentally, where I was saying "machismo has to go".  I have come to think a lot these days about "what kind of a man" I want to help Dan become.  Ultimately, he will be who he will be - I get that - but right now I'm in a position to help, to influence.  I am in a position to show, by example, what I consider 'positive masculine traits' to be.

This a responsibility I feel every parent bears.  I take responsibilities very seriously.  It's simply insufficient to tell your child how to behave.  You have to show them.  The idea of kids "turning into their parents" when they grow up is a cliché precisely because it's so bloody common.  Can I content myself with the idea that I'm "a good guy" or do I not have a larger burden to "be the guy worthy of that child's admiration and emulation"?

So I'm making a commitment to cry more openly in public.  

Yep, you read that right.

It was one of Ivan's asks for males.  Let's destroy the macho myth of stoicism and insensitivity.  Screw that.  Let's tear that statue down.  I'm there.  Now I'm not talking melodramatic bullshit, obviously.  I'm talking genuine displays of emotion.  I'm not one for faking.  I have a hard time even mustering up a smile for a photograph.  No, no, I just mean not even bothering with the "there's something in my eye!" excuse.  Get hit in the feels?  Own it!

I've cried quietly at Pixar movies in the past but hid it.  Hell, I'm sure I've welled up at commercials more than once.  No more hiding.  Maudie made me well up, but I didn't quite get there.  (Great film though!)  I don't recall what else of late has hit me right in the heart.  Oh wait, right.  Duh!  Ivan made me well up too.
 
I want a world where men are allowed expected to have feelings.  I'm planting my flag.  I'm taking my freedom.  I want a world of passionate, sensitive, caring men.

I've allowed myself a lot more raw emotionalism of late than I have in a long time.  Shedding the invisible cloaks the charlatan tailors stitch for us isn't easy.  But it is worthwhile.  It's been rough at times.  There was a period of days after Truth Table where I felt like I was walking in a daze and just wanted to curl up in bed and stay there a while until I felt whole again.  That particular sentence in the middle of it was so hard to write.

I believe that accepting the authenticity of your own life experience without denying yourself things like grief is key to personal growth.  How are you expecting to develop fully if you deny half the inputs?  So much of what holds us back, so much that separates us from the happiness to which we all aspire, are the very chains we forge for ourselves when we invest too much concern in the opinions of others.  The myth of macho is just one of many such things.  And yeah, I'm just as foolish and fragile as anyone.  I care, when I know I shouldn't.  I like the approval, no matter how much I know I shouldn't let myself require it.  I'm not claiming to be better or braver than anyone else.  

I'm just saying that I believe it's worth the struggle.  Struggle to be honest with yourself.  Struggle to be honest with others.  Struggle to be honest that you're struggling.

And goddamn, I do enjoy a good rom-com now and then, ya know?

Satyagraha

"First they ignore you, 

then they laugh at you, 

then they fight you, 

then you win."

[Quote frequently misattributed to Mohandas Gandhi]

The quote above is burned in my mind, though I only recently learned of the fact that it's likely misattributed.  Gandhi never said it, or at least not quite the way that is so often quoted.  It is a rough paraphrasing of things he wrote when discussing the idea of "Satyagraha", a Sanskrit compound word combining satya ("truth") and agraha ("polite insistence", or "holding firmly to").  Ideas about non-violence as a path to social and political reform always find firm footing with me:  a key element in Taoism is 'overcoming through acquiescence'.  If that sounds silly, go ahead and laugh.  It's important someone does.

The quote was adopted by both the Sanders and Drumpf campaigns in US presidential race, but horribly out of context from what I can see.  Gandhi isn't talking about your average schmuck, and he's not talking about someone facing an average challenge.  He's talking about the oppressed and the marginalized.  He's speaking to the struggle for equality and for freedom.  He's talking about a struggle that is daily, not periodic.  And he's saying violent revolution is not required, because in the end, sooner or later, the truth always wins.  So "hold firmly to the truth", and trust that it will win.

That fact that I have a skeptical mind and a tendency to rant about things from time to time, lends itself to an overall impression that I'm a very cynical person.  But I feel I'm not, really.  I'm actually a pretty positive person much of the time, at least inside my head.  It's not rose-coloured glasses, to be sure, but I try to maintain a very balanced outlook on life.  I'm usually pretty happy with my life these days.  I hold hope for the future.

It's hard to maintain a balanced outlook sometimes, what with all that's going on with the American elections, with BlackLivesMatter, with the struggles of trans folk of which I'm now much more keenly aware.

That quote, however, is the thing that springs to mind for me, and it actually lifts me up.  The way I see it is this:  if you look back at civil rights movements, what is being described by that quote is a process.  It's a repeatable process.  It's a repeating process.  It's an inevitable process.

First, racial equality wasn't even a discussion.  Then it was just lots of "nigger" jokes.  Then it's a movement, and people are arguing on both sides.  Finally, we see things like the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Yes, absolutely there's still issues that still need solving.  That part is clear.  But my point is that the pattern is there, and progress has certainly been made.

The idea of women's suffrage first wasn't even an idea.  Then it was considered a laughable one.  Then comes the fighting.  Then comes the vote.

In my youth, no one was talking about what "gay" even was at first, and then came the "fag" jokes and Three's Company practically building a whole sitcom around making fun of homosexuals.  Next came a decade of arguing over marriage equality, and now, province by province, country by country, things are changing.  We're watching as the truth win.

So when the likes of Jordan Peterson... ...let's be clear, I don't even truly consider this political activism, I just think he's an asshole.  If I'm introduced as Patrick and I shake your hand and say "please, call me Pat" and you insist on calling me "Mr Constantine" I'm going to think "what a rude douchebag", not "oooh, perhaps he's a clever person making a intellectual statement of some sort".

I digress.

When people like Jordan Peterson fight about so simple a thing as paying someone the effortless courtesy of the pronoun they use, I remember the words attributed to Gandhi, and in doing so, try not to become disheartened or angry.

Because Jordan not ignoring trans people.  He's laughing and he's fighting.  And so long as he's laughing and fighting, it means things are well on their way.  Get ignored.  Get laughed at.  Get fought.  Win.

So you keep fighting, Jordan, because it just means we are getting closer to winning.  You're furthering conversation, and making it impossible for people to be ignored.

We need only politely insist on holding to the truth.

By the way, you may have noticed that I didn't refer to Gandhi above as "Mahatma".  It seems he didn't much care for the honorific "Mahatma".

I think it fair to call him by the name he chose to use.

"Often the title has deeply pained me, 

and there is not a moment I can recall

when it may be said to have tickled me."

[Mohandas Gandhi]

Women

"Know the role of the male;

stick to the role of the female."

["Tao Te Ching", Lao Tze]

So I wrote about masculinity a little while ago...

But I always find women far more fascinating.  Perhaps that's just because I'm so stereotypically hetero-male.  Perhaps that's because of my mother.

Of my parents, my mother was the dominant one.  She was still old-fashioned when it came to gender roles, but that I would always see her as the more potent of the two wasn't something she could prevent.  So if there was supposed to be a women-as-weak lesson in there, I guess I missed it.  Ergo, I've always had a healthy respect for women.

Dad was a "manly man", mind you: the kind who would bite into a raw onion and drink pea juice from the can.  The sound of a car hood being lifted somewhere in the neighborhood was like a beckon call for him, and despite the fact that he knew nothing about cars he'd have his head underneath that open hood in moments.

I accepted long ago I was never going to "put hair on my chest", as he put it, and be "manly".  I am, and always have been, more comfortable in front of a keyboard than a steering wheel, and my hand fits better around a video game controller than a pistol grip.

So I wrote a tongue-in-cheek ramble about the fact that modern culture seems to be struggling with its now inability to clearly provide a decent benchmark definition of what masculinity is, but in truth, to me the real answer to the question of "what makes a man" is this:  being a man is much like being cool.  Either you are or you aren't, and if you have to ask, you're not.

This notion of be is true of much of life.  Ultimately, success requires that you learn to just... be.  Happiness, it seems, largely stems from allowing others to just... be.

Fact is, I think the absence of a modern benchmark is a good thing.  It is the beginning of the dissolution of machismo, itself a cornerstone of bullying, misogyny, and rape culture.

I look at Dan with a respect, admiration, and perhaps even a touch of envy:  he is, and so long as the world lets him be, he will continue to be an altogether fascinating person who does what he likes and finds ways to embrace every part of himself.  There's no blue-for-boys/pink-for-girls here.  There is simply what he likes and what he doesn't like - as well it should be.  If only we all possessed both this courage to be and the tolerance to let everyone else be as well.

Sadly, the world is not quite ready for people like him.  But it's trying to be.  It's trying to find that tolerance.  It's my heartfelt hope that it's not that far away.  Is there a better pursuit than every person having the freedom to live with authenticity?

There's a lot going on in the world right now, and a lot of the conflict always stems from this inability of people to let others just be.  And from what I've seen recently, this inability rests more largely with men.

I recently told a friend I was disappointed with men in general.  Obviously, I'm not speaking of particular ones, but of the whole outdated subculture of masculinity to which so many cling.  The context of the conversation at the time was related to a seeming inability to accept gender non-conforming children.  I'd expected resistance to stem primarily from religion, only to be disappointed that it appears to stem more from machismo than anything else.  (Doubly-disappointed, since I really do love beating up on organized religions.  Oh, nevermind.  I never have to search far.)

Honestly, it feels like a microcosm of a larger picture.  I gave it some thought, and my gut feeling is:

Gentleman, we're being out-evolved. 

Women wanted their equality, and culturally, I feel like they have spent the last half century in North American adopting the positive qualities of masculinity, while maintaining all the positive aspects of femininity.  They've learned the benefits of male aggression as it pertains to pursuing dreams and finding empowerment, but maintained emotional intelligence and compassion to keep from becoming the callous ignoramuses we so often are.  They're much more restrained in knowing how far is just enough and how far is too far.  They're pursuing life and liberty in equitable ways we don't even seem to understand any more, and I believe if you listen to the sounds of the voices behind social justice, more and more often those are women's voices, not men's.

I'm not in a hurry to usher in the age of Akasha a la Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned (and never should have admitted the vasectomy since it destroys my value as breeding stock, damnit!).  So us men need to do some work to catch up.  Serious work.  Work that starts with tearing down our very selves by being brave enough to question the things we've been lead to believe.  We need to ask ourselves how we see men and women, how genders behave and interact, and about how we want to see the world work and what we have to be willing to change or give up in order to see that happen.

I don't think that's being hyperbolic, though I know many of you will take it that way.  Am I being hyperbolic?  Or are you being old and crusty and resistant to change?  I think if you look at the acceleration of the cultural revolution within the last century and then the last decade, I believe there's a certain momentum right now that screams "get on board or get left behind".

When people speak of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, it's actually misleading to translate is as "superman".  The original root means "mankind", not simply "man".  It's not a superman he was predicting, it was a superperson.  So if we men want to be a part of some new world order, perhaps it's time we ran to catch up.

Judge, Dread

[Originally drafted but never published:  early June 2016]

"Before you cross the street,
Take my hand,
Life is what happens to you,
While you're busy making other plans"

["Beautiful Boy", John Lennon]

As any parent of a young child knows, as that child grows you find yourself in a steady state of trepidation about what waits for them out in the world.  Shelter them as you will, some day the world will come knocking, and the wolves at the door can only be held at bay for so long.  You do what you can to let it in slowly, a little at a time, and to prepare them as best you can for it.

Cry fair or cry foul, call me sexist or realist, but in this reader's humble experience, many of the sorts of fears you hold for what awaits your child are rooted in gender.  

Raising a young girl, you worry about her being a victim more than a perpetrator, particularly when it comes to things like physical aggression or unwanted sexual encounters.  Sure, she'll probably break a few hearts along the way, but the thought of your daughter or step-daughter sexually assaulting someone isn't something that creeps into your mind from the blackest depths of the cripes-please-no abyss.  Rather, you live in the fear of things happening to her.  For a guy still getting over the Smencil it can be quite staggering if you let yourself dwell.

Raising a young boy, on the other hand, is a little different.  You undoubtedly realize the probability of school-yard fights is higher, and while keeping him safe from pedophiles is still just as real a stomach-churning worry, you don't really consider much the chance a young boy or girl his own age will gift him an unwanted sexual episode.  Instead, from the blackest depths comes he wouldn't, right?  Of course not.  He couldn't possibly be the harasser or physical aggressor!  But then, I'm sure that other kid's parents think that too...  Or do they?  Wait.  Are all the some-day sexual predators just children of delinquent parents, or are some from good parents who simply slipped when it came to properly guiding and counseling their otherwise normal-but-hormone-driven young man?

Being a feminist, I'm fully in agreement with the notion of "how about instead of teaching young girls to avoid rape we should teach young boys not to be rapists", but there's a large gap between ideology and action.  Sure, there's conversations you have about consent and about appropriate or inappropriate touching, and hopefully you're a brave enough parent to have them before they're required and not after it's too late.  But this is an area fraught with perilous misunderstandings even for adults with considerably more experience and - we'd like to think - better judgement.  It's not exactly an easy lesson to teach.  When are you being permissive?  When are you letting it go too far?

And stepping back from that, even our attitudes towards violence-as-a-solution have changed and evolved over our lifetime, and I'm glad for that.  When I was a young man fist-fights were occasional, and the idea that "sometimes someone just needs a punch in the face" was a way of life in the neighborhood where I grew up.  Nowadays, I try to shoo live bugs out of the house if I can.  But teaching non-violence and non-aggression in a violence-laden culture isn't easy.  Hell, I still watch MMA and play plenty of violent video games, and the kid knows it.

But for all the idealistic non-parents out there, in case you haven't figured this part out yet already, allow me to disillusion you:   

Us parents... we're just winging it.

There's no training.  There's instruction manual that gives you all the right directions for all the kids in all the situations.  And you don't tell a child once, and they hear and follow those instructions precisely while ignoring everything they see on MTV/YouTube/etc.  Rather, parents exercise judgement and do the best they can, forever trying to nudge their child in the right direction again and again, while constantly worrying their own judgement is flawed and they can't possibly be doing enough to make things turn out right.

So you live with the dread of what might be done to them, and act as judge and jury for preventing or punishing the missteps of what they might do.

When first faced with the idea of having a transgender child, my inclination was to think I was merely exchanging one set of problems for another.  I thought things would be different but not harder, or at least not much.

I was wrong.

When you're dealing with a trans child, it's simply not true.  As higher-than-average victims of abuse and crime, you get to have all the what might be done to fears.  More, even.  And with a child who is or was a young man, possibly being socialized to the pervasive "boys will be boys" mentality as they learn their way through the tweens, you also need to consider what he might do.

I want to now raise a 'proper man' - and I use the term 'man' pretty loosely these days, we know - but certainly not some idiot man-child or cock-swaggering frat boy with false notions of entitlement and a part of modern rape culture, and I have to do this without the typical benefit of an 11-year warmup.  Add to all this the whole unique set of issues that comes with raising a trans teen, issues with which other parents are unfamiliar, many of which they might not even guess.  Scratching your head?  Here's an assortment of words just to get you started:  washroom, swimsuit, sleepover, summer camp.  When you think you've wrapped your head around that, head here.  When you return, know you've still only just begun.  It's a long road.

Just before Liza-Ann left for a short vacation, we noticed he'd become very physically affectionate with a friend of his (a lot of hugging).  Discussions about consent and appropriateness were in order and were had.  Then, last week, while Liza-Ann was away, he had a physical altercation at school.  I immediately assumed - wrongly - that he was the victim.  But then he explained he was the aggressor: he'd lost his temper and grabbed another kid by the neck and thrown him down.  He knew it was wrong the moment he did it.  He knew how wrong it was.  He knew why.  He knew to apologize.  He knew he would be punished, both by the school and by his parents.  He knew it was a failure in social skills.  He knew there were plenty of other non-violent solutions.  He knew it would come with lectures.  (I held myself to two.  Okay, yes, I still have a third swimming in my head.)  And we both knew there was little I could say that would be enlightening, but that it wouldn't go without saying.  He would endure the lectures.  He would endure the punishment.  He would do his best to never lose his temper in such fashion again.  How much is enough punishment?  How much re-affirms the gravity of the situation without being unnecessarily punitive?  Everyone has a different answer, I'm sure.

He's a good kid.  It's a single incident.  Do you have any idea how many fistfights I was in through my youth?  I am old school.  I was a part of generation that considered a few fist fights a rite of passage growing up.  But those video games he sees me playing?  Even when you're talking cartoonish or unrealistic (zombies, etc.) ones, he still prefers "peaceful mode" whenever one is available.  He's not interested in the conflict.  Perhaps there's more hope for him than for me.

But this was the event that opened my eyes.  This was the thing that made me accept not just different, but more, so very much more.  My risk assessment list has tripled.

But don't take this as me being overwhelmed, just challenged.

All I'm saying is that I want others to understand some of the challenges one faces when you have a gender-creative child.

I will rise to this challenge, just as I rise to every other challenge life throws at me.  I don't ask "why me?"  I ask "why not me?"  I'm a very capable person, surrounded by good friends and family.  If someone is going to rise to meet these challenges, why not me?  I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

I'm a positive person.  Sure, life has thrown us a curve.  Yes, he had a misstep, a mistake, one of many challenges to come, no doubt.

But it was the same week THIS happened.

People think me cynical because I consider the average human being to be pretty goddamn stupid, it's true.  But I'm also hopeful.  Because things are getting better.  Consider how far human rights has come in the last 50 years, the last 10 years, the last 5 years.  Stop for a moment and consider:

Are we the generation ushering in a new era of mankind that may finally see the rise of meritocracies, a universal belief in genuine compassion, and a reverence for mindfulness?  If not us, our children?  Our grandchildren?

Look how far we've come.  Surely, it's not that much farther.

"See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me. "

["46 & 2", Tool (covered by kids)]

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
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