About a year ago, I read Whipping Girl, and this point stuck with me:
If you require any evidence that femininity can be more fierce and dangerous than masculinity, all you need to do is ask the average man to hold your handbag or a bouquet of flowers for a minute, and watch how far away he holds it from his body. Or tell him that you would like to put your lipstick on him and watch how fast he runs off in the other direction. In a world where masculinity is respected and femininity is regularly dismissed, it takes an enormous amount of strength and confidence for any person, whether female- or male-bodied, to embrace their feminine self.
Which is definitely true for me: the idea of working on a strongly female-oriented game, Sorority Life, amused me, but publicly wearing the Sorority Life hoodie that I was given made me feel noticeably uncomfortable. We’re talking about a hoodie, not a handbag or lipstick, the only thing identifying it as girly (aside from the zipper being on the wrong side) was the name written on it, but still: it stayed in the closet.
Or at least it stayed in the closet for most of a year; but then I got fed up at some egregious sexist bullshit around me, and started wearing that jacket as a sort of symbolic (and doubtless almost completely unnoticed) silent protest. My discomfort at wearing it was still there, but it mostly went away after a day or two. But the presence of that discomfort seemed interesting, seemed worth interrogating.
Which, admittedly, I haven’t done very much of. But that desire to interrogate is showing through occasionally now: I had a fun time going jewelry shopping for Liesl and Miranda when I was at PSL (though I didn’t get anything for myself; there was one necklace that I wasn’t sure Liesl would like, and I would have taken over that one myself if she didn’t, but as it turns out she did), I’ve been following fashion links and browsing the linked-to web sites more than I had been (nice to see Science Fiction Fashion & Style start posting again), and I did get a stunning (though, sadly, a little tighter than optimal) set of fuzzy rainbow leg warmers to wear last month.
So: baby steps. And I’m not planning to change my default clothing away from something ostentatiously bland (at least apart from the socks that peek out from under my jeans). I might go a bit farther than I have been, though—watching Miranda get lots of earrings over Christmas (she had her ears pierced after her thirteenth birthday) hasn’t gotten me to actually want to get my ears pierced, but it has gotten me thinking about what sorts of jewelry I might want if I were to do that. (Longish asymmetry, probably.) Who knows, maybe an ear cuff is in my future?
I used to spend rather more time thinking about this sort of thing, I think. I hadn’t actually worn them for years, but there used to be a couple of skirts in my closet. (And, in yet another sign that Liesl and I belonged together: she gave one of them to me.) If I’m remembering correctly, the motivation for purchasing that came out of an entirely stereotypical mathematician’s way of thinking: clothing choices are an apparently arbitrary distinction, I don’t see any a priori reason to prefer male clothing choices over female clothing choices, so let’s see what the other choice is like and try wearing a skirt? The answer turned out to be: it was physically freeing feeling in some ways, it opened me up to mild but noticeable opprobrium (from both external and internal sources) that I didn’t feel like actively fighting, and I really depend on having pockets. So that experiment didn’t last (and I feel like I need to give a shout-out to Steve at some point in this post, and I suppose this is as good a place as any); whereas other experiments that involved hair choices were much more successful, lasting for almost a quarter century by now. All these experiments came from the same place; it’s certainly not a coincidence that certain aspects of programming culture are aligned with unkempt beards (“Unix beards”) on the one hand and Utilikilts on the other hand.
Some of the other gender-linked rethinking that I did at that time has had much more of an effect than those skirts, though. When I was growing up, it was much much more likely for women to do all the cooking in families than men; I didn’t want to end up in that situation myself. If I’m remembering correctly, I got that first skirt at a summer math program I went to in Duluth; Jordan and I shared an apartment there that summer, and we took the opportunity to learn to cook together. Very much the right choice; Liesl and I cooked together occasionally even when we started dating, and decades on we regularly do that four nights a week.
(I imagine that choice turns out differently for young adults these days—from the outside, it looks like there’s much less gender distinction in terms of cooking than there was when I was coming of age, but it also looks like the way that distinction is erased has a little more to do with neither men nor women really learning how to cook than with men taking a more active role in the kitchen. I could be wrong, though.)
Maybe I started thinking about child rearing roles at about the same time, maybe I didn’t think about that until a few years later; hard to be sure. Either way, it led in the same direction: this is something where past societal models (and, I suspect, present societal pressures) would lean towards having Liesl do much more of the heavy lifting, and I didn’t want to shirk in that way. That’s turned out with a somewhat different texture than cooking has, because a lot of childrearing/childcare activities aren’t naturally done by both of us at the same time in the way cooking is, so there have been times in Miranda’s life when I’ve spent more time looking after her and times when Liesl has spent more time. Still, I’m comfortable and very happy with how that split has turned out, too.
That’s where I am, that’s how I got here. But reread the quote at the top of this post in light of that: I’d been trying to approach the question of how I respond to gender divisions by thinking things through abstractly, and thinking things through in a lens that erases differences. So: I’m missing emotional responses, and I’m missing differences as a resource.
Actually, rereading that, it’s a little unfair. Yes, I wanted to split the cooking and childcare because I felt it was the right thing to do; but I also wanted to do so because I thought they would both be very rewarding (especially childcare). And wow, good call on that. As to emotional responses: skirt wearing gave me a taste of that.
Still, there’s more room to explore. I haven’t been inclined to explore positionings that are actively girly; should I? I’m certainly not going to go deeply in that direction, but I’m sure there’s something I can learn.
I’m wondering, though, whether I’m also doing erasing in the other direction: ignoring differences, potentially rewarding ones even, that come from taking a more masculine approach than I’m drawn to? That, in its own way, is a way of thinking that I’m rather uncomfortable with. And I’m wondering whether that discomfort leads to me missing out on potential approaches, either for personal changes or for external rhetorical use.
And pitting manhood against boyhood is potentially useful rhetorically: not in the horrific vapidity of challenging somebody to be a “man” by doing something violent or stupid, but in the sense of “grow up and start relating to women as human beings, start accepting the complexity of the world around you, be confident enough of yourself to not have to fall into the traps of stereotypes and fears of the other that the world lays for you”. I seem to recall that Ta-Nehisi Coates has written some interesting posts along those lines recently; his take on The Forever War is one example.
But that’s mostly about pitting adulthood against adolescence. (To be clear: adolescence is an important stage in life, and I still reach back into thinking like an adolescent as a resource in certain situations. But it’s very much not the only tool I have, and the dangers of that mode of thought are real. And, well: I’m not an adolescent, and haven’t been one for a long time.) What about distinctions of masculine behavior versus feminine behavior? What active good can I see there?
So, reaching into stereotypes: men are hornier. That’s a fine thing; it’s one possible tone on the emotional palette, good to have access to. It’s a dangerous one because it depends so closely on interactions with other people, leading to a risk of erasing those other people as people, but by the same token it can bring people closer together if they find a fit. So sure: a fine thing, if that’s what you’re into (and a morally neutral thing in general), but not a fine thing in a way that is leading me anywhere interesting in the context of this post?
Men are violent. That is not a morally neutral thing: that is a bad thing. If we step back from it: the violence is from competition and one-upmanship. I play enough games that I won’t say competition is bad, but it leads in the direction of a zero-sum way of seeing the world that is at the least dangerous. Stepping back still further: competition (in particular as it relates to showing yourself off to women) is a form of displaying excellence. That starts to point in a direction that I can get behind wholeheartedly: I think it’s great for people to find something and try to be really good at it, and to show that to others.
Looking at stereotypical masculine and feminine roles in families: the women are the nurturers, the men are the breadwinners. If I want to find something positive in the second half of the split, it’s that men want to provide, to make sure the family has what it wants; that is a good thing. And it also recognizes the question of a balance between the internal family world and the external work world: both are important and should be acknowledged.
I dunno. The truth is, I don’t have much stomach right now for exploring the details of masculinity. I do find it interesting to see what my female coworkers point out about masculine behavior in our workplace: some of it I’m annoyed by, some of it I’m blind to and participate happily in myself, and there’s probably something to be learned there. But ultimately: I am male, I don’t have to explore or justify what that means, and nobody is asking me to. And right now I’d rather explore spheres that involve less violence, less one-upmanship, and more caring rather than the reverse.
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First off- I like this. It feels incomplete, but I like it nonetheless. :)
Secondly- as someone who spent a long, long time trying desperately to live up to various male stereotypes (and succeeding much better at some than others, but hating it the whole time) I have my own take on this.
Thirdly- this is going to be an interesting one- today the part of defender of masculinity will be played by… Me :)
So let me say this right away- I love men. I know that may sound funny coming from me, as I do *more* than my fair share of straight-up bitching about them and their behavior in various ways, and being in a lesbian relationship with another trans woman may take a chunk out of my credibility on this point too, of which I am aware… And I know I have told you before that > 90% of the men in my life have been huge disappointments, and I will hold to that… But yet still, I find myself saying that I do, in fact, love men. Isn’t that funny?? I think it’s kind of a riot :) And- I mean also- for all that I had to leave him, I still got my ex-boyfriend’s initials discretely tattooed on me long after he was gone- I loved that man deeply and part of me always will. So there’s that.
And it’s both because of him, and because of what I remember about my old self that I do believe there are good things about masculinity, some very good things even, and some of them you touch on.
But before I go all agreeing with you and maybe even adding more good things to the list, I have to make a distinction about horniness. Having experienced firsthand, both male and female sex-drives (hormones are an AMAZING thing!) I can absolutely attest to there being a large difference- absolutely. But to simply say that men are “hornier” is quite a shortcut, and perhaps one that doesn’t serve us very well if we want to have meaningful discussions about the differences between the genders.
I do believe it is absolutely true that men, in general, are easier to arouse, and that their biological imperative to reproduce expresses itself differently in many ways. But to simply say that they are “hornier” disregards the extremely powerful role that sexual desire plays in women’s lives. I actually believe that it has *at least* the same impact on women’s lives as it does on men’s. One thing I know, both from my own life experience, and from the experiences of some of my close girlfriends
is that women are *at least* as smitten into utter stupidity by a man who is a great lover as men are smitten by women who have great figures. And while we may not, in general, desire to have sex as *often* as men, it is actually more intense for us, and- to put it crudely, a good lay will keep a woman happier for longer than it will for a guy, who will probably be looking for another while we are still savoring the last one. We’re BOTH thinking about sex, it’s just that he’s thinking about more sex and we’re still thinking about the sex we just had. Different, but kinda the same… We may not need it as *often* but that fulfillment is just as *necessary* to our happiness, and we have gone too long without true sexual satisfaction, I believe it affects our psyches just as much, if not more. For one thing, our self-worth is often all tangled up with our desirability in a way it just isn’t for men. If a guy can’t get laid, he will almost always blame all of the prudish women, but if *we* can’t get laid? Well then we must be monsters- plain and simple. I can also say that myself and one of my bestest friends have both done *tremendously* *radically* stupid things for men who pushed our buttons just right- things just as, if not more, foolish than anything a guy has ever done to get with that Playboy model at the bar. As one woman I knew once put it “That man could make me write bad checks.” Also- we really can melt, swoon and get weak in the knees, not something I think men experience- and I know I never did until Estrogen. There is a deeper emotional component to our sexual desires, for sure, and that causes them to express themselves differently, but I do believe we need it just as badly in our own way.
Now, enough of that- on to the rest :)
I do believe that provider instinct you speak of is a very positive one. I view it as the flip side to the stereotypical desire that women have to keep a good home and be nurturing- it comes from a place of wanting to provide for your loved ones, and in its un-tainted form is a noble thing, and one of the few things I was ever able to feel truly good about living as a man.
Then there’s the violence… Yeah- men do reach for that solution orders of magnitude more than women do- without any doubt. But I also know this, men often fight and bully for status or to get their way, and will often cut the shit once they have shown themselves to be all tough. But when a woman becomes violent, she will probably kill you. In fact, a very good girlfriend and I were actually just remarking a few weeks ago that if we were in a different country, another woman we both know would maybe be dead by now… by our hands… So we DO think those thoughts, we DO have those urges, and they may be even worse in their own way, because there is no status involved, there is no chest puffing- there’s just a bottle of cyanide in your coffee and goodbye, and our reasons for not doing it are simply that we would probably get caught :) So- once again, the way I see it- it’s a trade-off between *frequency* and *depth* or quantity and quality if you will…
And, having had a big tough scary boyfriend on my arm for a while, I can say that I *valued* that capacity within him. I won’t deny it. Knowing that my partner was someone who not only *could* defend me, but WOULD if it came to it… Well- let’s say I would have written some bad checks too. And when I had to leave him and he told me that he would still come at a moment’s notice if I needed him to bust someone open, and I loved him for that too, and I can’t deny it.
And finally (mostly because I’m exhausted, not because I’m done) I think, David, that the exaggeration of the violence, the one-upsmanship and the lack of emotion are all just that, exaggerated by a society that is kinda fucked up. We have it in our minds that we need to MAX OUT our masculinity and our femininity in order to be acceptable in our gender roles. I think that underneath the cartoon levels we’ve taken it to here in 2013 America, these are good qualities, especially when balanced and moderated by un-exaggerated feminine counterparts- so I would posit, Chief, that it’s may not be masculinity you don’t have the stomach to explore more deeply, but rather our twisted and fucked-up view of it.
1/11/2013 @ 11:38 pm
And twenty years later, I do all the cooking for our family! So I guess our Duluth experiment was successful in that respect.
1/12/2013 @ 9:05 am
@Jordan: Yay Duluth! Or Yay us! Or something. (Yay food, certainly.)
@Joan: Thanks so much for the long comment. Which of course points out something about my situation that bothers me, or at least led to me running out of steam at the end: I don’t have to think about this in the way that you’ve had to, and I also don’t have the tools to think about this that you do. (And I keep on forgetting about the direct effect of hormones.) So I very much appreciate your openness to talk about these things, both here and elsewhere; I have to do too much work to get past the surfaces of stereotypes, and often I’m not up for that myself.
The only place where I’ll push back on your comment is the discussion of violence. I won’t argue that women aren’t violent in tonally different ways, but saying that men “will often cut the shit once they have shown themselves to be all tough” but “when a woman becomes violent, she will probably kill you” needs to be set next to the fact that it’s men doing the vast majority of the actual killing, not just the tough blustering. So maybe it’s true that, if a woman acts (physically) violently, there’s a higher chance of that violence being severe than if a man does; but that potential differential probability is, as far as I can tell, swamped by the vast difference in probability of engaging in physical violence.
Full agreement about our fucked up society exaggerating this.
And your chiming in here reminds me of one article you pointed out to me that I couldn’t find a way to work in: Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men. So I’ll leave a link to that in the comments, at least. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/308135/
1/12/2013 @ 10:35 am
Regarding violence:
I don’t and can’t disagree with what you’re saying at all- but what I will say is that that even though men are doing the vast majority of the killing, the vast majority of male-incited violence stops short of that- and is often done for status- which is an entirely different way of thinking/acting than what we see on the other side of the gender spectrum.
1/14/2013 @ 5:05 pm