A long coming rant on society's masculinity....Please read this.

Well, I've been wanting to write this rant for a long time, and have already written about it a lot in papers, forum wall postings (for those Wheaton people who know what that is), and in journals that will probably remain forever unread on my computer. But I was recently reminded of it again. What am I ranting about? Well I think our western English speaking culture (I can't really speak for other cultures) is experiencing an outright offensive on masculinity and manhood (and on femininity and womanhood for that matter), and I hate the effect it's having on us.

I was reminded about it the other day when I was sitting with two women and they were saying how the boyfriend of one of them is such a "woman." I asked what made him a woman? They said, "well first, he eats chocolate." So chocolate now is another thing that makes a man less manly. It wasn't necessarily this comment that I get worked up about, but more the general culture that's behind it. Somehow over the past 100 years our society has been increasingly narrowing down the definition of what masculinity can be. It seems that the image of masculinity that our society allows now as truly masculine only really includes a reckless, aggressive, maybe violent, physically intimidating, character, such as a rugby international, or a soldier. It almost seems that anything less than this warrants a questioning of maleness or even sexuality.

I think at all times in all places there have been societal conceptions of things that are masculine and things that are feminine but I believe it is at our time that these conceptions have become surprisingly narrow and to think of the tolerant and accepting society values that we seem to be trying for, it looks as if we are going the opposite direction that we supposedly intend to be going. Michel Foucault who wrote about many things, one of them being sexuality, wrote that society may seem like it's becoming more accepting of various sexual behaviours and tendencies but infact it is becoming more controlling of them. I'd agree with this. Instead of our society becoming more open in terms of gender and sexuality we are becoming more closed by having to place people in simple categories, that they don't naturally fit into.

Let's take an easy and obvious example of this, homosexuals. Back in the 80's the media would portray homosexuals in a sort of Village people look, dressing in leather and dog collars (sort of the image in Police Academy 4- just on T.V. yesterday) we tolerated the presence of homosexuals back then as long as they stayed to our societies rules, they had to stay in their dark underground bars, wear this special uniform and only come out at night. Nowadays things have changed, but only ever so slightly. Now we put certain constraints on homosexuals which if they stay within, we will tolerate them, but if they deviate, our acceptance will ware extremely thin. These today are things like language, the words they use and the way they speak (a generally higher voice), interests (they should be interested in things like fashion and pop-culture rather than football and car engines). The fact is if we see homosexual men that don't fit these cultural expectations, we get a little uneasy. Just think of how many sports professionals that you can think of who are openly homosexual? Let's look at rappers, how many of them are openly gay? Now let's look at the other side of the spectrum, when we see men Flight Attendants or nurses what is the first expectation about their sexuality? When we see male interior designers or fashion commentators, isn't it the same assumption? We have culturally approved roles and categories that if people venture out of them it challenges our comfortable social construction.

Okay, so now you're probably thinking, "what does this talk of society and homosexuality have to do with an offensive on masculinity?" I'll get to that shortly. As a society we've given away too much from masculinity. We've made masculinity about certain activities, physical attributes, personality, and forgot that basically masculinity really depends only on one thing, maleness. If your a man and like art, your no less of a man for it. If you're a man and find that you're pretty good at the old American Football, that doesn't make you any more of a man. You're automatically masculine because you're male. The same goes with women, if you're a woman, and love fixing cars, that makes you no less of a woman, and if your a woman who is obsessed with makeup that by no means makes you more feminine. You're feminine because you're a woman, that's it. Why do we limit ourselves so much, and really miss out on so much of what it is to be human.

So where's the connection with homosexuality? I was watching an interview on Conan O'Brien the other night with one of those television interior designers who is homosexual. He had just written a children's book about a child who is homosexual. He said that even though he had written the book about homosexuality, it was a book for all people who were different. What he left out though, is that is was a book that required it's protagonist to be different in a very particular way. Some people believe that you can know if you are homosexual even when they're children (even before they've reached a sexually aware age). Many times people say they've always felt different, that they weren't interested in the same things as "normal" young boys are interested in. I've heard this a thousand times on T.V. and from friends of mine. The fact is though, that there is no absolute standard of "normal male" that they feel different from, but only from what the particular society in that particular time portrayed as normal. If a male child wants to play with a baby doll rather than a toy tank, why should we question that child's masculinity? Are we not just forcing that child into our preconceived classifications that have no real basis?

I've just arrived back from Cambodia, where men are very touchy with one another, and no question of masculinity is ever raised. You're friend will grasp you on the inner thigh if he is sitting beside you, just like an affirmation of friendship, something that in our closed culture, only really has one meaning. It's a society where you're best male friend might sit there and play with your hair, it's a tender behaviour and doesn't fit anywhere into our categories.

I was reading a book by John Eldridge one time called "Wild at Heart" talking about A man's Christian walk, I seriously threw the book across the room because I was so sickened by it's scarily narrow view of masculinity. It stated somewhere in the first few pages that little boys love to run around outside and get dirty, and that you'd never see a little boy care about having a clean room or being neat and tidy. It wasn't so much that I was personally offended by what Eldridge was saying (if you know me, you'll know I never really was all that neat and tidy) but I do know kids currently who are like that, and people who have told me they used to be like that. What Eldridge is doing (I'm sure unintentionally) is alienating boys and men who don't fit his mold of masculinity. These classifications are meaningless and usually just harmful. In alienating young men from believing that they're masculine they are turned to huge insecurities and other relational problems.

I've only scratched the iceberg on my feelings toward this issue. I'd really welcome your comments. If you think you agree but don't know how you could help change this huge societal trend, just pause and think the next time you say something like "men always" or "that's a woman thing". Once we realize how socially molded we are we can start remolding society.