Be a Man: On Gender, Masculinities and Avoiding the Default
Lots of stuff lately has me thinking about gender. And not just gender theory stuff: In particular, my own gender identity. Just like recognizing that being 'white' in this society is a position of priviledge to such a degree that awareness of 'whiteness' must be cultivated--as it isn't something white people are aware of--recognizing that the priviledge of being male is an ongoing (forever?) process. Sometimes it seems like my blind spots (everybody's blindspots?) are infinite.

Therapy Digs Deeper
Little Professor had a post the other day which details some of her thoughts on how our brains work as regards identity formation. One part of her post has stayed with me. She says:

"My kind correspondent Gus in KC has already read my ramblings about the existential nature of trauma and change: namely, that once immediate needs are met (relief of significant pain, physical security, etc.), major human adaptation is fundamentally a question of identity. If this thing happens to me, who am I? Who have I become? Who was I before?"

Riffing on this idea, I got to thinking about how my therapy sessions have gone since I started. I only go every other week, so I haven't been much, but the flavor of the time I spend with my therapist changed after the initial visit, and continues to do so. My first visit, given that I was so emotionally pent-up with sadness, was basically just a catharsis, a crying jag with a little bit of insight thrown in for good measure. It might be strtching things to say I was dealing with trauma, but it certainly felt traumatic relative to other things that I've experienced. (And I do count myself lucky for having some of the most traumatic events in my life be 'only' about rejection of romantic love and such.) To abuse Little Prof's theme, once my trauma was taken care of, we've moved on to talking about how I might adapt to the world in my own life.

So we're delving a bit deeper down. Some of that involves looking at my past, but a lot of it just involves being able to put into words some of my emotional states. For instance, I have some anger, sadness and guilt. My therapist is very big on the whole 'allowing oneself to feel' such negative emotions, and is quick to point out that I don't have to know the cause of any or all of them--but then is also quick to add that it's helpful to understand how, say, my anger at somebody/somthing relates to my sadness about other things; or how my anxiety relates to my anger. Etcetera.

Mama's Boy: Woman-Identified
And one place that I want to do a bunch of work--no suprise here--is gender. I want to better understand my relationships with women, and with other men. I want to better understand my relationship to femininity, and perhaps more important only because it has been less looked at by me, to masculinity.

My therapist had two great insights the last time we met, full of lots of potential threads of inquiry. First, she noted that some of my anger issues might have to do with being a man who was raised by a single mom. That is, I may have internalized some of the 'women-don't-raise-their-voices-or-get-angry' sort of stuff that women are inundated with. As such, I might have just about as much anger in my life as other men and women, but I may have more guilt about it than men who had fathers around. It's a pretty simple/obvious sort of thing, but I needed somebody else to point it out to me. Secondly, she noted that I seem to be dealing with 'stuff' around the ways in which I am "woman-identified" (her term, and one which got me thinking). And of course these two things are probably related to each other, too.

This is difficult ground for me to cover, emotionally. It touches on so many things central to my identity that it's difficult not getting worked up in various ways about it. for instance, I struggled with a bad temper for a good deal of my early adulthood. And, though I think I've managed to change myself significantly in that regard, it still flares up, however infrequently, resulting in a raised voice, slamming of doors, a lot of guilt and quite a bit of self-hatred. Even though I have 'come a long way', every single time that my temper has gotten away from me in the past 10 years or so (and I can really count them on two hands) causes me unmitigated guilt. And I think I ought to be mitigating that guilt a bit more--giving myself some credit for how far I've come, and--more importantly related to gender--understanding better how some of that guilt comes from being a feminist (-raised-by-a-woman) man living in a sexist/misogynist society. The guilt isn't completely misplaced, of course; going around slamming doors is generally to be avoided, and can be in certain contexts, abusive. But I think I need to start recognizing where I heap on blame and guilt because I see that sort of behavoir as so stereotypically masculine. My initial feelings regarding my own temper tantrums are usually: I should know better. And, I should. But the fact that I don't always already know better shouldn't perhaps cause as much strife for me as it does--when guilt gets in the way of improving oneself, then it's not as appropriate.

Avoiding the Default and Masculinity
Which brings me to the notion, expressed very well in a different context by my buddy fraggle_ra, of avoiding the defaults of society. One of the things I'm proud of in my life are the ways in which I've been able to avoid the allure of "being a man". To some extent, at least, I tend to/want to/do stay as aware as I can of my male priviledge; part of being aware of it and rejecting it (to whatever degree) is avoiding falling into some of the roles that society supports only because they are traditional (and, of course, because 'status-quo'='patriarchy'). Some of it's relatively minor: I feel comfortable crying (overly so, perhaps). I like hugging my friends, including the men. Some of it is not so minor: I reject marriage for myself in part because I think marriage as it stands plays to the patriarchy. I don't want monogamy in part because of similar reasons.

It's not an easy sort of thing to do, recognizing and rejecting male roles/priviledge, and I'm not great at it. To add even more complexity to the mix, there are problems with even focusing on what I, as a man have to go through and deal with; in some feminist circles, it is thought to not be a good focal point for anybody, ever; to some, focusing on the negatives outcomes that a sexist society has on men is merely a distraction from addressing the oppression that women go through.

I think I can be good at rooting out male priviledge, but I think the rest of my life will likely be in part an exercise in doing so. The thing is, I think I've downplayed how difficult it can be, and how much emotional energy it takes. I've started recognizing more and more the way men are socialized, and how much I haven't been able to avoid it. Traditional masculinities, inasmuch as they both pervade our society and also are misogynist, are worth recognizing and resisting; but I'm starting to better recognize the places where rejecting traditional masculinities has really negatively shaped my world. Part of this is just dealing with the general fallout from rejecting priviledge--it's to be expected when rejecting traditional masculinity that a man will lose something. In fact, it's sort of required. But I think I've just so much played down how hard it is on me, as well as how strong the pull of the traditional is--even for somebody who is trying all the time to avoid it--that I've dug myself into a little hole as regards ditching the default masculinities.

Creating vs. Avoiding
Part of what I'm getting at is my lack of ability to create a self that isn't just a rejection of what it could be. That is, I could be a white, middle-class male misogynist jerk...in a lot of ways, that's what I'm driven (by cultural norms, at the very least) to be. But rejecting this isn't enough. I have to create a self that has some positive goals--and I'm starting to think that part of that positive creative process will include redefining/recognizing masculinities that I can embrace.

Obviously this is entirely too complex for one post; even just introducing the problems takes way too much brain power for me, partly because of how emotional it can be. I'll be touching on this again and again, I imagine.

Filed under:Feminism, Masculinities and Therapy