I’m still so young that my feet don’t touch the floor.
I’m maybe six, maybe seven. I’m with my dad in his Dodge Caravan, a car that seemed to break down at least once a month. He’d proudly tell anyone it had thirteen recalls. Despite that, he continued to drive it right until the transmission literally fell out. It was, like many things, something I’d question him about. I did that a lot-ask my dad anything and everything. Most of the time, he’d tell me the truth. Dad loved kids, but he also didn’t believe in lying to them except for certain things. Like Santa and the Easter Bunny. But sometimes he’d pause. He’d take a drag from his cigarette, and deflect with a joke. He’d say “I’ll tell you when you’re a man,” or some variation.
Today though, today I really wanted to know. I just had to, because it seemed so incredibly weird to me at the time. Such a strange thing to be upset over.
“Dad, why though? Why are you upset mom makes more money than you?”
The question rose from the fact Pops had to ask mom for money to pay some bill. His own pay day hadn’t came yet. The bill wasn’t even late or anything. But it was the fact he had to borrow the money at all-from all people, my mother-that didn’t settle with him. He had this sour look on his face the whole drive to pay it. Right now, he took another drag. He gave a sigh, and turned up the radio. Hank Williams was talking about a tear in his beer as dad exhaled.
When he was angry or upset and smoking, I’d always think he’d look like a dragon. Or maybe a really old, really tired wizard.
“It’s a man thing, boy. You’ll understand when you’re a man,”
“You sure, pops? ‘Cause it just seems-”
We came to a stop light, and I shut up. I don’t know why I did that. It’s one of those weird childhood quirks you lose over time. Dad glanced both ways and sighed and he stubbed his cigarette out. He lifted his hand, and cranked the radio down.
“Son, it’s like this. A man is suppose to provide, alright? And doing this, it feels like I’m not being a man, okay?”
“Pops, you are though. Me and sis don’t want for nothin’. I even got goats! I don’t know any other kids with goats in their backyard!”
I meant it, too. Having those goats in my yard made me feel like the coolest kid in my tiny rural community. Dad snorted, and gave me one of his crooked smiles. It’s one I’ve mimicked for years.
“Yeah yeah. Boy?”
“Yes sir?”
“I love you very much. Ain’t nothin’ ever gonna change that either,”
I grinned real wide, and totally forgot anything we had been talking about. Being a man in that moment didn’t matter so much. Dad loved me, and that was enough. He turned the radio back on, and we sang along with Hank as we drove on.
That moment though, it stuck with me later. As I grew up, as I got older. As I started dating, and the dialogue around being a “man” and masculine changed. I was a “boy” until puberty hit, then I “wasn’t a kid anymore” but “still not a man”. Then I was a “son/youngun” depending on our company. When I started working my real-life job and paying my own bills, it was like an unspoken rite had been passed. Dad started calling he and I-or any blue collar type-the “last of the real men”.
But I still never got the answer to that question.
I didn’t get an answer when I beat my addictions-a struggle that mimicked my father’s own fight with alcohol. I didn’t get an answer when I met someone I’m likely going to marry, and Pops said “ya’ better get a ring”. I didn’t get the answer even when I laid him to rest, and my entire family came to tell me “I was the man of the house now” and to take care of my mom. As I’ve thought back over so many things with my dad since then-the good, and the bad-that question came back to the forefront of my mind.
Because here I am. With everyone telling me I’m a man now. And I still ain’t got a bit of this shit figured out. I know enough to know my experiences aren’t isolated though.
Today, I’d like to take a moment and talk about masculinity, being a “man”, and how so much of that has changed over the years.
Let us begin.
Walkin’ Tall and Sayin’ It With Your Chest
We’re the distilled essence of our parents and faceless media corporations.
I don’t mean that in a negative light, either. Even if you had horrible parents, even if media wholesale rejects your existence. We live either as a by-product or a reaction to our environs. Just existing after all that, it’s enough. You, as a response to the world that created you, are valid simply for having survived it. Regardless of if you live in a female, male or non-binary space. You. Are. Valid.
Personally speaking, the entirety of my experience in a masculine space is precisely that. I’m partly my father-a grumpy chain smoker with a heart. He was my first exposure to male culture, the imprint upon which the rest was filled. Being a “man/masculine” under the guidence of my father meant three things:
If you say you’re going to do a thing, you do it. Even at expense to yourself.
Your family is the most important thing in the world. And they’re not limited to blood.
Fight. Always fight against it all until you can’t.
Dad summized this as “Walking tall and speaking from your chest”. It meant keeping your spine straight and flat-out bellowing when you spoke. Your handshakes were firm, and you always maintained eye contact with people. This was mirrored by my primary influences at the time-Duke Nukem 3d, which we played endlessly together. Conservative media (dad listened to Limbaugh until “he got too crazy”), which firmly established gender binaries before the conversation went mainstream. Late night comedians, old school late-night shock jocks, and much more. For the bricks of “manhood” my dad laid down, the rest were filled in by media that firmly established “men are men”.
Except when they weren’t.
Those same media influences dad exposed me to, they gave conflicting messages of what “men” were supposed to be. Carl on Family Matters and Al Bundy served the same role technically speaking, but in radically different ways. Will Smith on Fresh Prince acted in that classical “male” sense-until scenes like this happened. Link in Majora’s Mask was a male hero, on an arguably “masculine” quest-but he didn’t look anything like John Wayne. As I got older and began to develop my own tastes in media, the divide between what a “man” was and the masculine experience only grew. And as it widened, realizations came.
Walking tall and speaking with your chest, it was a prop. A thing “men” in public used as a mask, a ruse. “Men” acted like “men” were expected to-until the quiet moments came. Until they were alone, or with people they trusted. Being the archetypical “man”, I found, was shelter from vulnerabilities we had no spaces to explore or even vocalize. “Men” and “man’s media” had crafted a shell-world in which we became the scarecrows of TS Elliot’s wasteland.
Our heads were filled with movie-reference straw we parroted at each other. Our dried voices when we leaned together were taught to be quiet, meaningless mockeries of what we were expected to be. Because of this, the male experience in my existence became a never-ending measuring contest. I had to be more male than my peers, or risk my mask slipping. I had to be the most manly of men, or my voice would fall quiet in the group.
I was lucky it was only that.
Because in realizing that, it made me look at my other primary male influences a lot harder. Both of my grandfathers served in the Korean War. If you have never heard about it (it’s literally called the “forgotten war”), please read about it here. Both men never, ever talked about it-save when alcohol had plied them. And both of them had a unanimous answer in why they went.
“It was what men did,” said one.
“If you didn’t, you weren’t a man,” said the other.
Those answers brought a realization with them that nearly cracked my mind. I was earning a degree in communications at the time. Comm theory is a science based around how symbology affects our mental associations and can literally shape our reality because of that. Words, how their used and your personal interpretation of them can radically alter just what route your life takes.
Being a “man” was a way of weaponizing gender identity. Not just in a literal sense-but in a psychological one as well. Failing to be a “man about it”, failing to walk tall and speak with your chest was a never-ending loop of self inflicted shame perpetuated by media cycles consumed in mass. The phrase in of itself is meaningless. It’s just letters. But just as masculine influences-our fathers and extended family-laid the bricks, “masculine” media kept filling in the gaps. It did so with a message of savage, violent silencing of our humanity.
After all. Men don’t cry, right?
The Shifting, Shaking World
Except when we do.
When I buried my dad-with everyone telling me I was a man at last-I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry when I saw his grave. I didn’t cry when those there told me what a “good man” he was. I didn’t cry for a month after, when I had to tell every single person he knew what happened.
I only cried once. When I was away from the maddening crowd, away from my mother. Away from the constant drone of tough guys in the video games, in the movies I was watching to dull the pain. Away from every masculine voice telling me to put on a tough face, to be a man about it.
I went for a drive one evening. I drove out to a favorite spot of ours. It was a place we’d ate no small amount of candy, burgers and more together. It was one of those quiet pocket spaces every man seems to have. A place to let the mask slip, to drop the act. A place where we can feel human, be human if only for a little while.
I turned on the radio, to the same station he and I had listened to for years. The same gruff host with his gruff smoker’s voice came on, and proclaimed he had a dedication for someone.
It was this song. One he had told me for years was about me and him.
I bawled my fucking eyes out the entire time. And when it was done, I turned the radio off. I put my mask back on, and went back into the shell-world. I had to. I had to be “strong” and “be a man” for everyone again. Even if it hurt. Even if I didn’t want to. The worst part was, I slipped into it so naturally I didn’t even notice.
Men didn’t cry. And I was a man now, right? And if nobody sees it, if nobody saw me be vulnerable, it was okay. My dad’s-and probably his dad’s-hammered in teachings had came to fruition. Except that fruit, it had grown so damned odd and strange along the way. Try as I might to have mimicked them, I had my own ideas now. My own experiences of what being masculine really meant.
I’d started seeing the cracks in the shell-world, and badly needed the daylight beyond to heal.
And it was directly because of something utterly beyond their control, or even the raw power of the weaponized “ideal” masculinity.
The world. The entire dialogue of being a man, of being masculine had changed in their lifetimes. There were hints of it when I was a boy, but today’s media and dialogue? It doesn’t have the same fears of vulnerability it used to. Because of that, neither did the consumers. That word, that inherently meaningless phrase that had done so much damage changed because of it.
Honestly, I thought it was just me at first. I thought I was imagining things, that surely I couldn’t be weak right now. Men weren’t expected to do that. So I asked around instead-and got some pretty damn great responses.
“…masculinity is seeing injustice and fighting for something more. My dad got broken and accepted a world in which that is fine and ok for everyone. I won’t follow that.”
-Adam
“I believe masculinity is a expression and inner feeling. You might not know it until you get a word for it but once you do, everything makes sense. The feeling part is knowing you are masculine no matter what you do and the expression part is how much you like to show that feeling to others through clothing, actions and interests. I believe masculinity gets toxic when someone is insecure with themselves because of our culture’s rules on how expression MUST match the feeling.
I find it hard to talk about masculinity without femininity in some ways because when I first came out as trans, I started to get dysphoric about a lot of feminine things about me, but over time I started to accept that while succulent gardening, nail polish and jewelry is more feminine expression, it doesn’t change that my feeling is very masculine.”
-Zach
“I’ve been pondering on this question for a few hours. Masculinity. It’s something I’ve never thought deeply of before, but I suppose it means to look masculine. Though if we’re to talk about “masculine” actions and activities, no such thing. Labeling activities as for gals or guys is dumb. And of course, masculinity is bad when it makes you hide your emotions, and act like a dick.”
-Noah
“Honestly I don’t really care much for the concept of masculinity. I don’t feel like it’s right to define someone’s actions or appearance as distinctly masculine or not because I think it takes away from both. I also think masculinity is something of an indirect insult. Like, if you’re a man and you hear someone say that another guy is super masculine, it might make you feel like less of a man because you’re not like that other guy. You know what I mean?”
-Gabe
“Regarding your masculinity article , my take on the topic is,
Tldr I realized over time that most “masculine” things we’re taught to associate as such are bullshit. What a man should/shouldnt do, how they should behave.
I was never really like other guys growing up despite being in football and being the ideal player. I was inherently alot more “delicate”i guess, which didnt mean anything regarding being “weak” in any way.
Eventually a year ago I realized I’m trans and took care of the things that comes with that but, who I am at the core hasn’t really changed. So while people look at me know and assume idk that I’m some sort of sissy or whatever (I hide my transition for work so I look like a jojo character) they always end up realizing they dont actually understand anything.
Whenever I think about masculinity nowadays well, for the last few years, I just think of ” assuredness” more than anything, not any of the other stuff floating around, like in the “brosphere” “
-Rhys
I would like to thank everyone who said something personally for their thoughts, and allowing me to share them. Because in doing so, we’ve aided in breaking the old cardinal sins of what masculinity used to be. We opened our hearts and minds to one another in a way that was virtually forbidden by masculinity at one point. By speaking so openly, we entrusted each other with those fabled moments of vulnerability.
Thank you. I love you all so much for that, you’ve no idea.
These quotes are but small examples of the larger, ongoing dialogue about masculinity in the current era. It would be naive to assume that this was ever possible without the internet. It has served an ironic dual purpose within the conversation as well-by allowing masculine people to adopt identities (more masks) inside a meta-shell-world…and be themselves. It’s a place where we’ve none of the constraints of physical society, where we’re only as vulnerable as our worst posts.
Which is why now, more than ever before, it’s so incredibly important to fight against the weaponizing of gender identity.
Frog Boys
They’re impossible to miss. Chances are more than likely you’ve ran into one yourself. Hell, I would be genuinely surprised if one of them didn’t respond to this very post.
Everyone calls them something different. Channers, chuds-pick your favorite. I won’t stop you. But I want you to keep the word you choose at the forefront of your mind. Trust me, it’s important. Think of the image of this person in your head, and hold on to it.
In very general terms, they probably fall right into the “traditional” concepts of masculinity. As is the norm with masculine communication patterns, they likely attempt to control the conversation. Their use of masculine aligned pop-media (and defense of it as something sacred) is probably frequent. Their ideas on gender binaries probably mimic the last generations. If you dig below the surface, you’ll likely see further sectionalized division over major things (race, religion, income bracket) and minor (favorite games and more). And-if you pay really close attention-you can probably see the tipping point in why they fervently defend these ideas. Maybe it was a friend, maybe it was a meme. Maybe it was some slight they exhaggerated in their mind. Some something, somewhere pushed them into this line of thinking. With the protection of the internet’s meta-identity and inherent allowance of a “true-face mask”, these styles of thinking only increase. Echo chambers abound-and this isn’t the early 2000s or the 90s anymore. They’re in the open, they’re marching, they’re proud. The “internets are leaking”, as people say.
Personally speaking, I’m saddened greatly when I see people like this. Call me naive if you want, but I believe not a single one of us is born an asshole. We’re very much molded into that, just as I was being molded into a conservative “Man’s Man” baptist at one point. How that molding happens in this case is identical to how it happens to the rest of us:
Those meaningless letters we give so much power.
Language, words and symbology control so much more of our lives than we’d like to think. A symbol tells us where we can and can’t piss. A name can mean recognition or dread depending on the speaker, on the context. In a shifting, shaking world where the very dialogue of identity is contextualized, people like Frog Boys have been baited by the same reassurances that could have saved them. By the same vulnerable pocket-space refuges of masculine society that told them it’s okay to bleed, to break, to cry. The only true difference therein was who controlled the conversation and their intent.
To what end, then, would we still make use of traditional notions of masculinity? Why weaponize “masculinity” even still, and for what purpose?
I’ll break this down by several points, with the concessions that I am but one person. I state the following with full understanding people aren’t going to agree with me, and even a few might get very, very angry. At least one person is going to tell me I’m “making it up”, “getting too political” or (insert hyperbolic statement here). What I present is merely my own observations as a masculine person, supported with evidence when and where possible.
It’s A Man’s World: Dying for Capitalism
Going back to my grandfathers for a moment, I often think about what little they told us about the wars they fought. Especially since, within my real life occupation, I’ve met dozens of men who fought in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and others. With the older generation, war was something men simply did. Maybe you were drafted, or maybe you felt you were doing the right thing. Regardless of the reason, “dying with your boots on” grew to be some mystical badge of honor.
Until the moment they were deployed. Until they were in the jungle, with blood, death and bullets flying around them. One of my grandfather’s was in a conversation with someone when the man’s head literally exploded from machine gun fire. Another older friend of mine was in the bowels of a boat, fixing the engine as a fire fight broke out. When he came topside, everyone onboard was dead. Except for him.
These are just two small stories out of untold hundreds of thousands. That’s before we get to all the outcomes of war-PTSD, crippled bodies, unfathomable trauma. All of this death, and for what?
Because they were in a society that told them it’s what men did. Because far more often than not, these men I’m speaking of came from poverty. Because if you didn’t go to war, you were a coward, a cheat, and not a patriot.
That word right there, patriot-I feel it coincides with a very traditionalist view of masculinity in the west. Patriots “defend the home”, get stable consumerist families, and go to war. Failing to do all of that implies you’re a coward and a cuckold, something as unworthy of love as the other side. Patriotism and weaponized gender identity combined have created a meat grinder that sucks up the poor with guilt, with ostracism and shame. It turns a profit on their blood with the war economy. When it’s done, it sends them home broken or in a body bag.
A society in which we couple violence with identity is an oroboros. That’s precisely what we’ve done with the masculine identity for countless generations. Only now, the “war” isn’t limited to one front. It’s an individual one, one encased in the mind.
Boy’s Club: Preserving Status
So, gatekeeping sucks. We all know that. Gatekeeping prevents wider conversations from happening in whatever it is your particular group enjoys. Having broader opinions creates more information and meta data, which allows refinement. If you enjoy something? Share it with people.
Yet that’s not what happens within the broader scope of culture. As we’ve entrenched gender binary into our very way of thinking, it’s bled out into everything we touch. Think of the distinction between “action figures” and “dolls”. Gatekeeping becomes almost instinctual the moment you emerge into the waking world and are covered with a pink or blue blanket. It’s something that many adults-men in particular-are unaware they’re doing until it’s too late.
As is with dying for capitalism, so too do social bodies preserve the idea of masculinity. There was-until recently-a vested commercial and social interest in crafting the “ideal man” in western culture. Be it “Gruff Murder Dad” ala God of War, or John McClane, these images are held sacred in western masculinity as a peak to be achieved. As such, any threat to the idea of these completely fictional characters is seen as assault on masculinity-and by proxy, the individual.
And to what ends?
The “masculine western ideal”, regardless of if it wears a cowboy hat or combat armor, is a soft step towards indoctrination in the aforementioned meatgrinder of violence. Gatekeeping in masculine culture is therefore one of the most brilliant uses of propaganda and weaponized gender concepts, as it actively encourages a reactionary approach. If someone strikes you, metaphorically or physically? You strike back like John Wayne, or Kratos, or Patrick Bateman. Swift, overwhelming and cruel. After all.
You’re a man’s man, right?
Except sometimes it’s not just keeping certain people (minorities, women and LGBT people) from your hobby. Sometimes it’s Charlottesville, and you’re there being a Proud Boy (™). Sometimes it’s twitter, and you’re doxxing a cosplayer because they just didn’t say the right things.
Gatekeeping teaches mob compliance over nuanced discussion in order to create a culture pre-disposed to justifying violence. We gatekeep with the masculine ideal to make imperialism okay. We gatekeep to make our identities and lives disposable.
It can’t, and shouldn’t, be that way.
The Path of the Heart, and Open Hand
My depression nearly took me twice.
It was something that, along with my substance abuse, I was afraid to talk about almost my entire life. Because it’s a “weakness”, a “shame”. It’s something that “men” don’t do. It’s “the cowards way out”. You don’t die by your own hand in masculine society. You go out with your boots on-right?
Except hearing all that, it just made it so much worse. It made me ashamed of my depression-an illness caused by a lifetime of never quite feeling like I fit anywhere. Being ashamed of that lead to me being ashamed of my entire identity-as a queer, as a human being, as a “man”. I’m not the only one.
Just check the suicide rate for men.
For all those reasons, I shouldn’t be here typing this right now. None of you would know me, know my name. I’d be a footnote on a family tree. A silent tragedy that nobody talked about. That changed because friends of mine were willing to talk. Guys who hit all the check boxes of masculinity. Proud and gruff men, as tattooed and scarred by their experiences as I was my own. These men broke convention, and let their own masks slip. They did something that flew in the face of all we had been told our entire lives.
They let me be as vulnerable as they. They revealed that despite being the ideal in stance, posture and attitude-they were so much more than that. They adhered to their humanity first, and their masculinity second.
All because one of their own was suffering. Because one of us was hurting, they changed the dialogue surrounding masculinity and saved me. They did this without compromise, without a second thought. They did so bravely.
They did so with love.
Men do in fact cry. Men can be afraid. Men bleed and suffer, but it doesn’t have to be in silence. In doing so lies madness and slow, agonizing death. And death is so very, very long that way.
We, as members in a masculine society, have been told our entire lives not to show weakness. To be strong by force, but not by understanding. We’ve risen on our pride only to fall on our arrogance. We’re told by being brutes we’re the most capable in the room, only to be used as pawns by machinations so beyond the pale of human decency. We did so by being thrust into a world in which our individual voices were stifled until we suffocated.
But things are starting to change. Masculine culture, thanks to the internet and others, are providing avenues in which we can finally speak in confidence. By speaking, we can change the very nature of masculinity, and our inherent understanding of it. By opening our minds and ears, by hearing the voices of our fellows, we can create a society in which masculinity can be so much more than a pawn, a prop, a crutch, a mask.
We can be more than men.
We can have brotherhood.
It can’t be accomplished alone. It can’t be done in a vacuum, or by being careless to the concerns of the world. It can’t be done by a group of masculine people-but by all in the culture. By standing tall, and speaking not just with our chest-but our hearts.
If you’re sick of being used, if you’re sick of being ashamed and hurting, if you’re just damned fucking tired of being denied your humanity in order to uphold some unspoken “man code”?
Then I encourage you to extend your open hand. Take the hand of your peers, and squeeze. Embrace them not as some limited thing, but as a brother, a friend, a fellow. Talk with them in more than parroted phrases and means. Listen just as much to their yells as their whispers. Don’t tolerate the pitiful mewling of those intent on self destruction. Teach them a better way, a kinder way to be a man.
I would like to close with this: A friend of mine put it best when he said “we’re no more bound by what we’re told than we allow ourselves to be”.
We’ve all the freedom, right now, to radically change who and what we are. That freedom has always been with us, and it always will be. No one-no instilled propaganda, no shunning, no shame-can ever take that from us. Every shackle we feel, every thing we fear, it’s only an illusion. Just vapor, something to be swatted away with a deft hand and a joke.
I’ve never known a man that didn’t have plenty of both.