gender expression

Performing masculinity and grief: A death of my own

R. Horton3 Comments

When I was fifteen years old, my 25-year-old uncle died in a fire

While some older adults had feared for his well being for some time, his death was sudden, unexpected, and extremely traumatic for me. In times of grief, we all experience mixed emotions, but I was overwhelmed by feelings of confusion and isolation.

In the days following his death, my time was spent among both close and distant relatives in the home of my grandparents. When people interacted with me at all, it was generally to tell me to give comfort to someone else (“Go hug your grandfather.” “Hold your grandmother’s hand.”). I did my best, and I got through it. I had been to funerals before, but this was the first time I was so close to the deceased and so aware of the judgments of the people attending the funeral and receptions at the home later. Someone, usually a woman, didn’t cry enough or dared to wear pants to a funeral. Someone else, usually a man, fell to pieces and couldn’t keep it together. Certain friends should not have dared to show their faces, and others had no excuse for not coming. Or so it was stated by the chorus of judgment and scorn.

I tried my best to assimilate funeral normativity, but it really didn’t make sense to me. Years later, I cried at my grandfather’s funeral. This seemed a reasonable to me, and I didn’t predict being judged for it. After the funeral, one of my relatives asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was a writer. She said, “I knew you must be some kind of sensitive artist or something.” So much for the freedom to openly grieve for a close relative at his funeral. Do women face this kind of judgment?

But men who do not express emotions openly aren’t free from judgment or consequences, either. Kenneth Doka, an expert of grief counseling, said in an interview, ‘We do a strange thing with grieving styles. I always say we disenfranchise instrumental grievers early in the process. “What’s wrong with this person? Why isn’t he crying?”’ The man who manages his grief by working through it with projects, helping others, and so on is ignored. The man who emotes openly is criticized. Doka points out that more emotive grievers are penalized later (Why isn’t she over it yet?).

My uncle’s funeral may be when I first developed my revulsion at smug hypocrisy and self-righteous pity. I can remember one aunt declaring, loudly, “Well, if his death had anything to do with drugs, I just don’t want to know about it. That is not what is important now.” And this may also be when I first became aware of paradox. If she believed what she said, she would not have said it, and if she said it, she obviously didn’t believe it. (And a lifelong love of philosophy is born.) Anyway, I also developed my own sense of righteous indignation toward people who couldn’t offer condolences without poking people with daggers in the process.

In my first experience with traumatic grief, the people I would normally turn to for emotional support were all overwhelmed emotionally and intellectually. I don’t blame or resent anyone for it, but I was alone with my grief and my first experiences with this kind of loss. Shortly thereafter, an acquaintance was killed in a motorcycle accident, and I just never took the continued existence of anyone for granted again. I also accepted grieving as a solitary activity.

The next traumatic loss I experienced was described in an earlier post. My niece and nephew drowned on Mother’s Day (May 10) in 1992. The single most striking feature of this grief experience for me is the memory of many friends, coworkers, and family members coming to me to express their condolences and sincere concern for the suffering and recovery of my ex-wife. People lamented that it must be extremely hard on my wife, and I was admonished to take good care of her, as her suffering must be immense. I tried to do those things, of course, as I tried to manage my own emotions and continue to care for my children (I was an at-home dad at the time) and maintain a functioning household.

During this time, I had thoughts that terrified me and flooded me with shame. I began daydreaming, almost longing, for the death of someone who would be important to no one but me. A death that would bring me the kind of comfort and concern that had been reserved for my ex-wife during what was certainly the most challenging and traumatic event of my life to that point. I was horrified to think that I could wish anyone dead. Of course, no one in the world is important only to me. Everyone I love is loved by others as well. Further, I wouldn’t trade any of my loved ones for “good grieving.” (I will add that one friend in particular stood by me and cared for me throughout.)

The true fantasy, of course, was that someone would step in to help me through my current grief, not that I wanted anyone to die. Still, these thoughts became pervasive and persistent enough to plague me with guilt and interfere even more with my recovery. What I really wanted was to receive the same support I was expected to give. I don’t really want to be the only person in the world being cared for; I just want a reciprocal arrangement. I don’t know whether every man feels the same way, but I know I’m not the only one.

Why is it that being a man is to be sentenced to a life bereft of emotional support? When women say they want to meet a sensitive man, they generally mean they want to meet a man who attends to their emotional needs, not a man who openly expresses his own emotional needs let alone a man openly expresses his emotional frailty.

I dream of a world where grief is not gendered and where masculinity is not marked by solitary sorrow.

Why I hate Steak and BJ Day

R. Horton12 Comments

On March 14, I learned of a new holiday known as Steak and BJ Day. Known as a humorous response to Valentine’s Day, the idea behind Steak and BJ Day is that women get all the attention on Valentine’s Day (men spend about twice as much as women) and there should be day for men to get what they enjoy, which is, obvious to the creators and celebrants of this day, steaks and blow jobs. It’s just a joke. It’s all in fun. If you don’t like it, don’t participate.

Many women seem to feel this is a fair way to compensate men for being so generous on Valentine’s Day, apparently having no qualms describing their romantic relationships as blatant prostitution. (“After all the trouble he went to for Valentine’s Day, I owe him something. Teehee.”) If people want to live their lives exchanging gifts for sexual favors and cooking services, I have no problem with it, so long as everyone knows what is going on and feels comfortable commodifying relationships. I have a different problem with this holiday.

Steak and BJ Day is based on a crude masculine stereotype that is inoffensive to men who live for their next steak and treat of oral sexual gratification. All men are supposed to want this. Any man who doesn’t love and know how to prepare steak, in fact, should turn in his man card, according to this web site.  Again, it is just a joke. If you don’t love steak, you are just a girl. Hilarious. I mean, who would want to be a girl? It isn’t meant to offend anyone. Any man who objects to this stereotype is himself at risk of being told he is too sensitive or not a “real man” or a “typical man.” People who are less kind will tell him he is a sissy, wimp, girl, or any number of nastier anti-gay slurs.

So, men who don’t want these things should turn in their man cards (see this site for an uproariously funny rendition of this ). “Turn in your man card” is the functional equivalent of “you throw like a girl.” As much as people insist this is all just a joke, the consequences of masculine stereotypes are severe. Children who fail to express their gender in expected ways are more likely to be bullied and abused and suffer from depression and PTSD (see a study on the risk here). You may have heard what happened to a boy who liked My Little Pony. Further, anti-gay attacks are typically in reaction not to sexual activity but to perceived non-conformity to gender stereotypes (a 1982 study by Joseph Harry found that “effeminate” men are twice as likely to be victims of gay bashing than gender conforming men), which means gay-bashing victims include many heterosexuals or children with no obvious sexual orientation or identity at all.

This bias against unmanly men is nothing new. Through an essay by Elizabeth V. Spelman, I found a passage in Plato‘s Republic describing what kinds of men would be inappropriate for a decent society:

We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation—still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor.

People sometimes want to credit Plato with an early form of feminism, because he felt women should be trained in the mode of men. Like many today, he felt it was quite admirable for women to strive to “achieve” masculine traits. Men being the highest form of human perfection, Plato thought it made sense for women to strive for the masculine ideal. The man who would follow the lead of women, however, would be lowering himself below his station and be pathetic at best. His view persists as we encourage girls in sports, mathematics, and leadership, but forbid boys from nurturing, crying, creativity, and careers related to care and empathy. It seems odd to me that eating meat is considered particularly masculine, but vegetarian men are portrayed as being the least manly of all. The hatred and devaluation of “feminine” men is an extension of the oppression of women. Feminist philosopher Jean Grimshaw points out that the conception of a feminine ideal depends on “the sort of polarization between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which has itself been so closely related to the subordination of women.”

The hatred of “effeminate” men is an extension of the devaluing of the feminine, but it leads to violence and oppression of both men and women. In order to be free, we must assign equal value to all human activities and emotional dispositions. Leadership and assertiveness have their value, but we will not last long in a society devoid of nurturing, care, and concern. Another feminist philosopher, Genevieve Lloyd, puts it this way:

If the full range of human activities–both the nurturing tasks traditionally associated with the private domain and the activities which have hitherto occupied public space–were freely available to all, the exploration of sexual difference would be less fraught with the dangers of perpetuating norms and stereotypes that mutilated men and women alike.

I added the emphasis on the word “mutilated,” because I am grateful to her for using such strong language to describe accurately what sexist stereotypes have done to us. I often hear women struggle to describe how sexism hurts men. Some say it discourages men from working hard or from caring for others, but they miss the fact that sexism destroys men from the inside out. Very few men escape childhood without having their masculinity questioned and challenged. And too many men have responded violently to a woman who has taunted them with, “If you were a real man, you’d . . . !” The constant demand that a boy or man prove his resilience, indifference to pain and fear, and lack of compassion rends men from their humanity. Those who resist are often trampled under foot and left with depression, addiction, anxiety, and self-loathing. Too often, it ends in self-destruction through addiction, isolation, or suicide.

You may be thinking I take things a little too seriously. No one would kill himself over Steak and BJ Day. I agree, but I am asking you to consider the good of masculine stereotypes, and I tell you they serve no purpose and provide no benefit. The cumulative effect of such stereotypes is to prevent men from being whole and to destroy those who are uninterested or unable to fulfill the social expectations such stereotypes are designed to enforce.

For the love of humanity, please free us all.

See also: Why I Hate Valentine’s Day