Masculinity Mondays: 23

 

Image shows a blue butterfly resting on a branch

Recently, British actor Danny Dyer observed that "boys are taught to be boys; they're not taught to be men."

That's true - society celebrates men who embody the Warrior archetype, which is an archetype of young men.  An archetype you are supposed to age out of.  An archetype you should surrender when you become a husband or a father.  

Society celebrates the shadow aspect of the Lover - men who are compassionate, considerate, generous lovers, who love slowly and deeply, who centre their partners in their love, rather than themselves, are seen as "unmanly" - even by women, who will then loudly wail about how "all men" are "toxic" - of course all the men you're encountering are selfish and shallow in their relationships with you when, through your mockery of men who stand fully in the light of their Lover archetype, through your constant questioning of the sexuality of those men, you've told the Universe that you do not want a secure, whole, and integrated Lover. 

(For what it's worth, gay men are often much more aligned in the enaction of their sexuality with what women consider "toxic masculinity" traits - because gay men are men who appreciate masculinity, and who understand that archetype-shifts are a transition process; they happen over time. You can't marry the man you will fuck you until you can't walk, whose abs are perfectly delineated, whose arse is pert and hard, who's succesful in a career that rewards him with considerable financial wealth, and then overnight, with zero support from you, demand that he calm down, become gentler, less risk-taking, more focused on community than cold, hard cash, less direct and aggressive in his sexuality... Women only associate "calm and compassionate" with "gay" because gay men have to tone down their sexuality a lot around their female friends.  Even when that sexuality isn't drawn to society's 'masculine ideals', gay male sexuality is a sexuality that is expressed as a sexuality primarily - not as a claim to want a relationship primarily; relationships are certainly a strong and genuine desire for many gay men, but they are pursued separately to the desire to fuck or be fucked.  This is actually cognitively the case for straight men, too - but women happily hold to the part of patriarchal socialisation which tells them they're not allowed to be sexual, and therefore straight men have to present relationship intention in order to get to the point of having sex with women.)

Society invests a lot in holding womens' hands through every single transition stage of their lives. Women's transitions are recognised, and honoured, even celebrated; who has ever congratulated their son on his first "wet dream", praised the fact that he's "becoming a man now", and brought him power tools and tickets to a sports event to affirm his social role as one of energy and strength?  But cloud servers and dead trees tattooed with ink are choked with the insistence that girls who have their first menstrual period be brought heating pads and chocolate, that every time a woman has her menstrual period, she should be "warm and cosy, without demands being made of her" - reinforcing the idea that women are helpless, easily overwhelmed, and basically equivalent to orchids; delicate, in need of constant, intense care.   We (rightly) offer generous maternity leave, and chastise countries that do not do so.  Increasingly, the talk is around providing "menopause leave", and treating menopause as equivalent to a "disability" in the workplace.  Meanwhile, andropause is derided as "not an actual thing!"  We're not offering men working patterns that align with their testosterone cycle.  Instead, we're trying to return men to the status of boys by insisting that every single health problem they experience is "because of low testosterone" - which has the effect of actually ignoring the high impact health crises of men who actually do have clinically low testosterone, rather than men whose testosterone is simply lower than some other men's, men whose bodies are built more for speed and agility than bulk and strength, men who genetically aren't coded for beards and body hair (frustratingly, the men on both sides of my family have never been able to grow beards...we get stubble and scruff, at best.  I'd love a beard, but my facial hair looks like trash whenever I try to grow it, and I'd prefer not to look like I got drunk and slept rough, so I have to be clean shaven...the story of how mocking men for not having beards is actually tied to poverty shaming is one for another day...look up the Victorian beard tax, though....)  Just as not every health niggle needs antidepressants or GLP-1s, not every health issue requires testosterone.  (And don't get me started on "trans people can't have gender-affirming hormones, because they're unproven and cause irreversible changes!, but we're happily handing out testosterone to cis women now, because they want the "energy and focus" benefits that the "low testosterone is the cause of everything that makes men feel physically sub-par" crowd claim.)

By not recognising the transition phases men go through the way we do with women, we've created a belief that men don't actually need societal support to become men, the way girls need societal support to become women; one day, boys leave school, and bam, they're men!  It just happens. It's not a learning process that family, older friends, and society need to do any work within.  And of course, to be an "adult human", male or female, you need to prove that you are sexually desirable to other adult humans, and, most importantly, that you are fertile - hence why men are often more excited about their female partners being pregnant and giving birth than they actually are about equitable parenting - society doesn't recognise and reward them as men when they genuinely co-parent their children; the pride and status, the affirmation of adult maleness, only comes with the proof of sexual desirability and fertility - the pregnant woman, the baby with your DNA.  But you can't just prove those things once; men have to constantly prove that we're still men - and "man" means "sexually desirable and fertile". If you're not fucking, not creating endless replications of your DNA, you're basically a boy playing pretend. Don't believe me? Look at the attitude society takes towards single men, even relatively young men in their twenties, who live with their parents in order to save more money for their future selves, and, potentially, future families, or in order to build a business.  Consider the creeping dialogue around how being childfree by choice is "selfish", and the rising tide of voices telling us we "need to stop harranguing women for being childless, and ask why men aren't having children!" - concerningly, the article of exactly that title I read a few weeks ago was written by a woman; hopefully it was just AI with a female name, honestly, because the idea that actual women believe either that men are able to "just have" children, without a woman's involvement, or that women shouldn't withhold consent, so that men can become fathers, is...concerning. Think about the recent controversy with Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast, where he mused aloud about whether the State should require women to have sex with misogynistic, antisocial men, because "we're losing all this DNA, these genetic legacies that never get to exist." (Darwin has something to say on "genetic legacies that never get to exist", and why that might happen, by the way...)

Something I've had to work through in myself has been anger at trans people embracing capitalism, and creating endless cards and merch around medical transition.  I didn't even get to take the recommended recovery time off work after any of my surgeries, didn't even get someone helping me with domestic chores, much less have anyone throw me a party to celebrate my "becoming a man." (I got a lecture from my church fellowship group on "how it affects other members of the group", and an ultimatum.  I got a violent knife attack from my mother, and an aggressive eviction from the family home.  Nearly 18yrs later, I've still not had one person actually recognise that I went through a lot to be the man I am...and I'm now having to deal with people shrieking that "You don't have to do anything! Your gender is what you say it is! It's all made up bs, anyway!" - no. Your gender is what you cohesively present to society.  That cohesion doesn't have to conform to stereotypes, but it does have to actually work as a presentation of "more likely than not to be X".  And some people just...don't experience their gender as something they can cohesively present. And that's okay - that's covered by "non binary" and "agender" (which are a lot deeper than a new, trendy label, or a way for trans men to soften the reality that they are men, they are masculine...)  

The whole "transition is just buying All The Affirming Things, and Speaking Yourself Into Being!" is another part of the problem of Western society's drift away from seeing life, and particularly adult life, as a series of observable transition points, each with their own need for community involvement, and education and support from elders.  It's an allowing of capitalism to replace community that is destroying society; you don't need a 65yr old trans man who transitioned in his 30s to talk to you about what kind of man you want to be, and how to become that man - you just need this cool trans pride flag top surgery hoodie!  You don't need to hear from a 70yr old trans woman who transitioned in her 20s about her experience of ageing into and through womanhood without ever having known girlhood, and whilst dealing with society's expectations that she would, in fact, embody a progression of male archetypes - you just need that cool trans-anarcho-feminist t-shirt, because down with capitalism, one payment at a time, am I right?!

Masculinity is a process, not a one and done.