"Know the role of the male;
stick to the role of the female."
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.
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.
