Reclaiming masculinity from "manhood"
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:13 pm
I'm cross-posting this from my LiveJournal commentary. Here is the link:
http://scottgardener.livejournal.com/2229.html
Or, if you don't want to leave this page, here is the essay in its entirity.
Commentary: reclaiming masculinity from "manhood" (addressing the machismo-homosexuality complex)
Popular culture in the United States, and perhaps to some degree in most developed countries, and absolutely more so in less developed nations, place an enormous amount of social pressure on male members to "be men." From early childhood, I was put through an emotion-suppressing regimen that would have made Spock impressed. Today, television continues to bombard me with images of men refusing to eat vegitables and loving their giant pickup trucks. Shows of emotion and feeling is paired with the implication that a man exhibiting such must be gay. This connection is an irrational one, but it is very pervasive throughout popular culture, and from my experiences, most men buy heavily into it.
Even as women have risen up and begun to free themselves from the pressure of the receeding dress size and the perponderance of twenty-year-olds on television, hardly anyone of male gender has addressed our equivalent. Women have through the past fifty years been pressured to appear younger and skinnier, being made to feel old at thirty and overweight at 150 pounds; the former is perhaps 1/3 of the way into a life-expectancy, causing a woman to spend the majority of her life being branded as "old," while the latter is for most heights and body types a normal and healthy weight, if not a little underweight. But, women are now calling to task how nearly all food ads aimed at them involve counting calories and how little biological sustainance their new favorite meal will provide. But, conversely, most men blithely play along when we're subjected to advertisements that make fun of vegitarianism and insist that we clog our arteries with as much USDA-branded beef as can be stuffed, by the pound, into our meals. We are subjected to beer commercials that crush "weaker" men who favor comforts or emotion. And movies frequently show any affectionate contact between heterosexual men as an accident that happens while sleeping, that upon awakening is presented with the task of destroying any evidence that could be misconstrued that one is gay.
The implication that one is gay if one does not conform is the driving force of this cultural brainwashing. Social conditioning instills within men what I now refer as the machismo-homosexuality complex. This is a belief architecture that operates as follows: one must not be homosexual, and one must not appear to be homosexual at any and all costs. To do otherwise risks an unspecified great peril, the least of which involves ostracism, but also invites contact with actual homosexuals, who represent some great terror of cosmic proportions. Therefore, to avoid gays, one must follow certain rules of behavior, namely to suppress affectionate behavior, to eat a diet heavy with meat, to act tough and surround one's self with tough paraphenalia and to avoid effeminate paraphenalia, and to follow traditional male instincts, such as hunting and fighting rivals.
The "threat" represented by homosexuals is a fictional one. I have encountered in my travels actual homosexual and bisexual men, and they do not appear to be any more aggressive or dangerous than their heterosexual counterparts. The past twenty years have called to task the long-standing assumption that anything could be inherantly wrong with homosexuality. Arguments that it is "unnatural," for instance, whether or not that in and of itself is meaningful in a society that lives in air-conditioned buildings and eats hamburgers and French fries, falls flat when research finds it in every mammalian species in which we have looked for it. But, debunking the presumed threat of gays getting married and raising children is above and beyond the scope of this essay; it is the perception of a threat that drives the psychiatric complex, regardless of its accuracy.
As a result of others operating inside the confines of this complex, I have been mistaken for gay by a number of people. But, I have myself broken out of that complex, so it is not an insult to me to be misidentified, just a categorical error. (As a side note, the machimo-homosexuality complex includes a misidentification between sexual preference and gender identity, and thus men under its influence are also deeply offended when they are mistaken for women. To me, now liberated from the set of notions, I should find that sense of offense itself offensive, as it implies that there must be something wrong with being a woman. An insult to women is an attack on my beloved wife, my dear mother, my sister, and fully half the human population.) As I am no longer bothered by this mis-association, I am free to enjoy not only a more comfortable daily life, but a more secure and emotionally rewarding one, as I am able to touch or hug more freely.
Without this complex to define masculinity for me, one wonders how I identify with my gender? It is still a work in progress, as the machismo-homosexuality complex is merely part of a larger problem that dates back hundreds of years, in which men have subjugated both themselves and women inside rigorous social confines. And, I must confess that as a transhumanist, my sense of core identity does not rely heavily on having a sense of gender, though being male is pretty heavily "grandfathered in" by my past experiences, and I do have the same strong aggressive tendencies and sexual drive as others of my gender. So, there must be something to being male beyond the "manhood" of the machismo-homosexiality complex. The challenge I face in rediscovering true manhood is learning more about the underlying motivations of the hunting instincts, the aggressiveness, and my infatuation with technology and mathematically driven venues, and finding ways of working with these tendencies towards instead of against my own personal evolution.
One overriding theme of manhood is freedom. We men are compelled to seek independence and self-sufficiency. It is part of the reproductive instinct, to seperate from our parents as a prelude towards founding our own families, appearing in adulescence to drive us to the brink of madness while we wait for graduation. The theme often appears to come up again, typically in the mid-forties during the "mid-life crisis." Men under the influence of the machismo-homosexuality complex still believe that they are pursuing this masculine objective. But, I challenge those men instead to stand up for themselves and break free of the notion that they have to drive a big truck, eat meat, wear jeans, and talk about football games instead of personal feelings. A real man is not afraid to be something other than a fake man. A real man is free from having to be a "real man." And thus, in enjoying metrosexual comforts like spa days and hugging friends even if they are other men, I am more a man than those who brand me less of one.
http://scottgardener.livejournal.com/2229.html
Or, if you don't want to leave this page, here is the essay in its entirity.
Commentary: reclaiming masculinity from "manhood" (addressing the machismo-homosexuality complex)
Popular culture in the United States, and perhaps to some degree in most developed countries, and absolutely more so in less developed nations, place an enormous amount of social pressure on male members to "be men." From early childhood, I was put through an emotion-suppressing regimen that would have made Spock impressed. Today, television continues to bombard me with images of men refusing to eat vegitables and loving their giant pickup trucks. Shows of emotion and feeling is paired with the implication that a man exhibiting such must be gay. This connection is an irrational one, but it is very pervasive throughout popular culture, and from my experiences, most men buy heavily into it.
Even as women have risen up and begun to free themselves from the pressure of the receeding dress size and the perponderance of twenty-year-olds on television, hardly anyone of male gender has addressed our equivalent. Women have through the past fifty years been pressured to appear younger and skinnier, being made to feel old at thirty and overweight at 150 pounds; the former is perhaps 1/3 of the way into a life-expectancy, causing a woman to spend the majority of her life being branded as "old," while the latter is for most heights and body types a normal and healthy weight, if not a little underweight. But, women are now calling to task how nearly all food ads aimed at them involve counting calories and how little biological sustainance their new favorite meal will provide. But, conversely, most men blithely play along when we're subjected to advertisements that make fun of vegitarianism and insist that we clog our arteries with as much USDA-branded beef as can be stuffed, by the pound, into our meals. We are subjected to beer commercials that crush "weaker" men who favor comforts or emotion. And movies frequently show any affectionate contact between heterosexual men as an accident that happens while sleeping, that upon awakening is presented with the task of destroying any evidence that could be misconstrued that one is gay.
The implication that one is gay if one does not conform is the driving force of this cultural brainwashing. Social conditioning instills within men what I now refer as the machismo-homosexuality complex. This is a belief architecture that operates as follows: one must not be homosexual, and one must not appear to be homosexual at any and all costs. To do otherwise risks an unspecified great peril, the least of which involves ostracism, but also invites contact with actual homosexuals, who represent some great terror of cosmic proportions. Therefore, to avoid gays, one must follow certain rules of behavior, namely to suppress affectionate behavior, to eat a diet heavy with meat, to act tough and surround one's self with tough paraphenalia and to avoid effeminate paraphenalia, and to follow traditional male instincts, such as hunting and fighting rivals.
The "threat" represented by homosexuals is a fictional one. I have encountered in my travels actual homosexual and bisexual men, and they do not appear to be any more aggressive or dangerous than their heterosexual counterparts. The past twenty years have called to task the long-standing assumption that anything could be inherantly wrong with homosexuality. Arguments that it is "unnatural," for instance, whether or not that in and of itself is meaningful in a society that lives in air-conditioned buildings and eats hamburgers and French fries, falls flat when research finds it in every mammalian species in which we have looked for it. But, debunking the presumed threat of gays getting married and raising children is above and beyond the scope of this essay; it is the perception of a threat that drives the psychiatric complex, regardless of its accuracy.
As a result of others operating inside the confines of this complex, I have been mistaken for gay by a number of people. But, I have myself broken out of that complex, so it is not an insult to me to be misidentified, just a categorical error. (As a side note, the machimo-homosexuality complex includes a misidentification between sexual preference and gender identity, and thus men under its influence are also deeply offended when they are mistaken for women. To me, now liberated from the set of notions, I should find that sense of offense itself offensive, as it implies that there must be something wrong with being a woman. An insult to women is an attack on my beloved wife, my dear mother, my sister, and fully half the human population.) As I am no longer bothered by this mis-association, I am free to enjoy not only a more comfortable daily life, but a more secure and emotionally rewarding one, as I am able to touch or hug more freely.
Without this complex to define masculinity for me, one wonders how I identify with my gender? It is still a work in progress, as the machismo-homosexuality complex is merely part of a larger problem that dates back hundreds of years, in which men have subjugated both themselves and women inside rigorous social confines. And, I must confess that as a transhumanist, my sense of core identity does not rely heavily on having a sense of gender, though being male is pretty heavily "grandfathered in" by my past experiences, and I do have the same strong aggressive tendencies and sexual drive as others of my gender. So, there must be something to being male beyond the "manhood" of the machismo-homosexiality complex. The challenge I face in rediscovering true manhood is learning more about the underlying motivations of the hunting instincts, the aggressiveness, and my infatuation with technology and mathematically driven venues, and finding ways of working with these tendencies towards instead of against my own personal evolution.
One overriding theme of manhood is freedom. We men are compelled to seek independence and self-sufficiency. It is part of the reproductive instinct, to seperate from our parents as a prelude towards founding our own families, appearing in adulescence to drive us to the brink of madness while we wait for graduation. The theme often appears to come up again, typically in the mid-forties during the "mid-life crisis." Men under the influence of the machismo-homosexuality complex still believe that they are pursuing this masculine objective. But, I challenge those men instead to stand up for themselves and break free of the notion that they have to drive a big truck, eat meat, wear jeans, and talk about football games instead of personal feelings. A real man is not afraid to be something other than a fake man. A real man is free from having to be a "real man." And thus, in enjoying metrosexual comforts like spa days and hugging friends even if they are other men, I am more a man than those who brand me less of one.
It's true, it's too stupid to make up. To this day my own brother (from the same mother and father) still refers to me by the "N" word from time to time.
sorry for all the lower case i's my shift just stopped working
