YOUNG PUP

Little Elk: Masculinity [rant 2 of 2]

littleelk:

I know that I rant on here a lot about masculinity, and I’m sure it’s perceived in different ways by different people. I might get flack for sounding angry sometimes. But the truth is that I am angry, and I feel like I have the right to be angry. Don’t tell me not to be angry, especially if you haven’t had the same experiences as I have. I’ve been assaulted, raped, and abused as the result of being perceived as female almost exclusively by people with masculine identities. It didn’t necessarily matter if I identified as female, but I was targeted out of femaleness regardless. I don’t know about you, but something about this gives me a sense of unease about the ideas of masculinity perpetuated in our society.

Note that it’s not that I hate men. It’s not that I hate masculinity. It’s not that at all. (Honestly I hate when off the bat someone assumes I’m super man-hating when I bring up stuff like this, or when I say I don’t identify as male. It’s sort of like people accusing FtMs of hating women and femaleness because they transitioned.) What I have a problem with is what a lot of mainstream media tells people masculinity should be. It’s masculinity that’s taught as being synonymous with emotionless, violent, overbearing, misogynistic, and oppressive, with these traits not only viewed as positive but desirable. I have a problem with the unfortunate trend of a majority of men-folk perpetuating, upholding, and giving into it. I have a problem with the fact that I feel like this is what is most prevalently portrayed as masculinity, especially in cisgendered, heteronormative society (and people wishing to be perceived as such), which is what makes up a greater percentage of the population.

So, yes. Let’s just say that I have a problem with it. Being oppressed is just a bonus, and my senses of perception are just heightened to it all around me so I guess I’m more aware of it.

I was talking to a very insightful friend about this kind of stuff over the summer [I am talking about you, Paul DeRuvo], and about how yeah, we are very active in educating in queer and LGBTQ spaces. But who is teaching cisgendered hetero men about acceptance? About what masculinity really is and not the oppressive bullshit they’re taught to uphold and embody? About defining it for themselves? About redefining what masculinity actually means. It really got my mind turning over the fact that we really need to be targeting this population more, because this is where the oppression ravages.

So I want to just make this very clear. IT IS OK TO IDENTIFY AS MALE. IT IS OK TO IDENTIFY AS MASCULINE! It’s ok to BE masculine! IT IS OK TO BE THESE THINGS, ESPECIALLY IF THAT’S HOW YOU IDENTIFY. I am not here to build hierarchy of identities and to tell you which ones are good and bad and cool. Male is how a lot of my friends identify! One of the things that actually really started hurting my feelings is when my friends told me things like ‘well I’m just boring and binary and you’re like super genderqueer and political and I feel like I’m not radical enough because I just want to transition/am a man/am not queer.’ No. NO NO NO. You CAN be political and fight for rights and all that sort of stuff if that’s what you want to do, and your gender identity has nothing to do with that. Being exclusively male also does not prevent you from being a feminist or an activist, FYI. And likewise, being non binary, genderqueer or other gendered doesn’t inherently make a person more interesting or political [though I feel like people may push those ideals on us and expect it of us], and trust me, we’re probably not doing it to be cool or trendy.

My identity personally does happen to be very firmly rooted in politics and my own personal experiences, so just take note of that.

So PLEASE do not police my identity.

Please do not tell me that I’m actually FtM, male-identified, etc but the abuse in my past causes a resentment barrier between me and my male identity.

Please don’t tell me it’s sad that those things had to happen and I can’t transition now. I don’t know how I would feel if all those things hadn’t happened but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking ‘what if’ about them either. My experiences have shaped me as a person just like everyone else’s

Please don’t tell me I HAVE to identify as male

P.S. identities can change

Please understand that if you identify as male, that is wonderful and good, and also understand that I do not and that is also wonderful and good. It’s not your job to figure out what’s wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me. I have some issues with how masculinity is presented on a grand scale, so let’s work together to educate people about how it really is.

If your problem is the fact that I have a problem with masculinity, then revolutionize masculinity. Then I really won’t have a problem.

*I tried to post a response to this earlier but my phone deleted it. So let’s try again.*

Sometimes I wonder how I would conceive of my own masculine identity if I had never met Paul. I’m absolutely certain it would not be the same. Would I feel as much freedom in expression, in defining what maleness means for myself and how I inhabit those terms? Art and Paul have had a definite strong impact on my self-perception in that sense.

Paul and I grew up with a core group of friends who primarily identified as hetersexual cisgendered males. I’ve seen a clear change taking place in some of these friends over the past few years. A shift towards a less oppressive masculinity that is not concerned with maintaining its own superiority. A masculinity that does not devalue the feminine or the female, and is open to incorporations of those expressions within itself. And I wonder how much of this change can be attributed to open conversations with folks like Paul who are willing and eager to talk about privilege and feminism and masculinity with cis-males who possess that privilege and are the inheritors of this oppressive masculinity they might not otherwise have reason to question. I should ask them. I wonder what sparked those changes. They’re changes that I love, and have made me infinitely more appreciative of the presence of those people in my life.

I don’t think I’ll ever questioning what a male identity means to me, and how I inhabit that identity. It is not a thing that is static - it will change as I change and it will change as the world’s perception of me changes. How can I expect being male to mean the same thing one day to the next? I’ll never stop looking for ways to inhabit my own identity in a way that embraces feminism and is non-oppressive, and to do that requires listening very carefully to my friends who are directly affected by these things.

I talk about masculinity a lot and I talk about it with a lot of people with friends and strangers and people I meet on the bus, and occasionally online, but what is so funny is that I feel like I spend that whole time quoting other people. Art, I know I have brought you up before in conversation, Ellis half of what I ever say are things you have brought to my attention. I feel like anything and everything that has gone into forming my perception has come to me through the instances when I have felt something in me resonate with what another person has said or done.

Art, it has been through that fact that you have been willing to share your struggles and changes understandings of your self that I have seen that something or everything must be wrong since there is just not enough room in the categories that have been presented to us to fit the people I love. And I have had those resonant moments hearing you talk about your awareness that you do not identify as male, and all the multitudes of problems which are tied up with masculinity for you in our society.

For me the seed of it lies in the fact that I have always loved men (in many barely definable ways in which the identity is embodied) and in loving them have seen so much pain and so many beautiful things buried away under the horrendous and base things that seem to be expected of them. But some how through the clarity of my desire, I also knew that what I was would never be what was expected of “Men” and what separated me from connecting with those objects of my desires, was the very same set of expectations. I could not be the heteronormative male because of, among every thing else, my desire to be with them. So I was less a part of this category because I desired those who were a part of it, but I was not an acceptable object of attraction because I was still too much a part of the category to be openly desired by those within it….

Or at least until Ellis (in his willingness to love me) blazed an escape path. Or as perhaps it is through loving each other we found one together? Through his patience, perspective, calling me out, and helping me understand what forms of oppression I was still perpetuating I guess I came to feel that rather than being forced out of my masculinity by refusing to perpetuate its oppressive aspects I could actively change it. But to change it in a way that would not continue to oppress people for not fitting it its definition must be so incredibly broad that the only thing left to categorize it by would be the entirely voluntary choice to identify with it.

If male was only tautologically defined as “those who identify as male” it would be difficult to force people to conform to it. And then all the violent and oppressive acts which people perform to prove their masculinity—by our own fucked up cultural standards— could begin to be cut, torn, untangled, uprooted, and discarded from it.

In my eyes the act of self identifying, whether simple or extraordinarily challenging, whether decided once or over and over and over again, whether accepted easily or fought for tooth and nail for the rest of ones life, it is one of the most important things we can do to this end.

So to Art and everyone else Thank you.

I don’t know where else I would find the strength to be who I need myself to be, if it was not for being allowed to bear witness to the every day fights of all the people out there winning, in small bloody bits and pieces, the right to claim their identity for themselves. So again thank you,

I Love You And Stay Strong.

6 months ago 42 notes

YOUNG PUP

19. Boston. Printmaking Student.

Little Elk: Masculinity [rant 2 of 2]