December Days 02024 #9: Community: Not-Men
Dec. 9th, 2024 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]
For what it's worth, and usually, what it's worth tends to be other people having dismissive ideas about my experience and what I assert as my identity, I am not actually a man. I look like one, I sound like one, I work in a hyper-feminized profession like one, I wear pink like one, I try to contribute to house chores like one, I bake like one, I have a complete range of emotional expression like one…
Okay, yes, some of that has gone silly and doesn't fit the current conventional definition of manhood, and a significant portion more of it doesn't fit the corrosive and poisonous/venomous/toxic definition being pushed on men and boys by people who claim they are authoritative and must be listened to.
My relationship to manhood and masculinity is at least somewhat based on the conscientious objection to principles that seem widely held by those who claim to be the arbiters of manhood. If your definition of manhood approves of basically any action taken by the incoming administrator with regard to relationships between humans, then I don't want t be part of that group. (There will always be exceptions, of course. The Stopped Clock Rule still applies.) If your definition of manhood starts with the idea that relationships with other humans are more like dating sims with relationship values and certain actions you take can always manipulate those values in a desired way, or even the possibility that there is some always-working method you can apply to ensure you get whatever you want in life or relationships, then you're both a sucker and someone I don't want to share a membership in manhood with.
I don't like the expectations put on manhood externally, either, as there certainly seems to be a strain of thought that thinks of men as barely-intelligent brutes uninterested in anything other than Titties and Beer. It was a prominent sitcom dad trope, given Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, and others. Which was apparently itself a reaction to competent and patriarchal dads on television. In both cases, even though television exaggerates for comedy purposes, both the bumbler and the authoritarian have enough of a core to them that they no longer register as the comedy or subversion they are supposed to be.
Which can make for issues when there's a buffoon up front and competent evil angling to be part of his support structure, so they can accomplish their evil without taking heat or blame for it. Or, as we are finding out more and more from men whose religious beliefs claim to be "God and country" and are, in practice, "men über alles," the evil is not actually hidden, it's justified as "discipline" or as part of "what God ordained our roles to be," and that opposition to their patriarchal control is opposition to God Himself, which no Good God-fearing person should ever do, nor allow to happen.
Perhaps the worst part of manhood as currently defined is that it seems to be a pair of nebulous elements put together:
This combination together makes it difficult for anyone to establish shared characteristics of men, characteristics that are, if not fixed, at least very resistant to change, without also establishing and maintaining some power base that sees you and your pronouncements as authoritative. The people that want to define manhood are first trying to establish that they have the power to do so, and, unsurprisingly, power corrupts.
Between internal definitions that look to mold men into morally, ethically, and emotionally deficient people, and external definitions that assume that men already are morally, ethically, and emotionally deficient, you can see why being a man doesn't have much appeal to me, at least at the conscientious objector level. There's more to it than that. Despite being regularly teased that I was a girl, or that I behaved in girly ways, or the ease in which I would cry at upsets or injuries, or going into a heavily feminized profression, or that my presentation of my variable attention is much more like what someone would look for in a girl, or the part where I handled the cooking and baking segments of the virtual program, or any other number of actions I've taken over time that other men would rink my man card was in danger of revocation over, the idea of "being a girl/woman" doesn't have any spark to it. There no internal longing or other feel to it that suggests womanhood is a core truth of myself, one that requires me to go through an awful lot of heartache and dumb hoops so that I can express myself properly. (Your choice here of "Not A Girl" or "So, I clearly cannot chose the wine in front of me", whichever suits best to your reading.) At least according to the current power-holders, actually questioning and coming to a conclusion about what my gender is, or what I want it to be, is another one of those not-manly acts. Men, at least according to them, treat their gender as a constant of the universe, rather than as a social construction, and anyone who does gender exploration is too weak to be a man.
So if the two most common points on the gender spectrum are a no, that leaves me ith…the rest of the gender spectrum to work with. In much the same way that "woman" as a gender is no, "no gender" is also a no, and "all genders" sounds entirely too chaotic for me to manage. It's mostly trying to figure out a gender by ruling out other genders. (Yay, idiopathic gender!) There's a gender there, and it's not fluid or changing, but for the most part, it goes "Eh. Not really important, is it? There's plenty of other modes for relationships between people, why not use those instead?" And "Yes, sure, my upbringing, and the upbringing of a lot of other people have been very invested in classifying the world according to sex and gender, but that's not actually a requirement, is it? I have a whole lot of other roles that are more informative than 'gender' for you to use." So it's a pretty weak signal, whatever that signal is. It might be mostly manifesting as "human, but only because we haven't figured out how to make furries and scalies and custom-designed bodies that reflect our inner selves and that are sufficiently mutable that they will reflect our most accurate perception of ourselves at that moment."
Because of my outward presentation, though, I don't have to deal with "looking trans" or otherwise having my presentation taken as license or invitation to harassment, bullying, or other anti-social behavior from people who want to boost their egos and make supplication to be included (or remain in the company of the included) to those they see as authorities on the matter by punching down at someone they perceive as outside the group. It is interesting to see how, in the power-based lenses that get used when talking about people dynamics, that a fair number of people see "men" and "not-men" as the two possible spheres of existence. Which often then has them construct the "not-men" sphere as composed of "women" and "women-light" or make demands that if someone wants to be seen as not a man, or not a woman, they have to present androgynously so that they can't be easily and unconsciously sorted into either the man bucket or the woman bucket. As if what they had been raised with was simply too ingrained to remove or break apart without some external sign to scramble their signal. Even though, as we noted in the sport entry yesterday, it doesn't take all that much looking to discover that the outward presentation of a person tells you jack shit about what their gender identity is. The reluctance to embrace the greater diversity of everything is also a reluctance to share power, or to give up the privilege of being able to define someone else and have it stick. And I have no desire to change my presentation. As has been said elsewhere and around the Internet, "I don't owe anyone androgyny."
Admittedly, the signs and signals that I put out into the world about what my gender identity is, and how I would like you to refer to me to others, are subtle. The button says, after all, that I am a Legendary Pokémon, rather than a non-binary entity. And the pronouns on my name badge are not as big as my name. so they might not be as noticeable. And who reads an e-mail signature, anyway, to find out someone's pronouns? Or their sticky post? Or their chat profile? Or the caption on their meeting picture that says what their pronouns are? No, it clear and obvious what my gender is by looking at me, and therefore there's no need to consult any other source of information about how to talk to me and about me, and certainly not any source of information that I might be providing and broadcasting regularly on this matter. (Yes, I am salty at this point that people who have worked with me for years still keep misgendering me. No, I don't correct them. I am choosing to spend my energy elsewhere, and I am not required to correct everyone everywhere at all times to keep my pronouns. They are not trademarks that require active defenses.)
There's no big finale here, other than, like, "Be excellent to each other, and when someone tells you who they are, believe them." (Both for people telling you their correct forms of address and gender identity, and people telling you that they intend to be hostile to anything that dares to exist outside their conception of reality without their permission.) If humans as a species could manage to make it to just that bar, we'd be sitting a lot better on so many of our social problems. Even with the high percentage of people who appear to be very invested in identifying themselves as threats and enemies and who work to put threats and enemies into positions of institutional and governmental power.
For what it's worth, and usually, what it's worth tends to be other people having dismissive ideas about my experience and what I assert as my identity, I am not actually a man. I look like one, I sound like one, I work in a hyper-feminized profession like one, I wear pink like one, I try to contribute to house chores like one, I bake like one, I have a complete range of emotional expression like one…
Okay, yes, some of that has gone silly and doesn't fit the current conventional definition of manhood, and a significant portion more of it doesn't fit the corrosive and poisonous/venomous/toxic definition being pushed on men and boys by people who claim they are authoritative and must be listened to.
My relationship to manhood and masculinity is at least somewhat based on the conscientious objection to principles that seem widely held by those who claim to be the arbiters of manhood. If your definition of manhood approves of basically any action taken by the incoming administrator with regard to relationships between humans, then I don't want t be part of that group. (There will always be exceptions, of course. The Stopped Clock Rule still applies.) If your definition of manhood starts with the idea that relationships with other humans are more like dating sims with relationship values and certain actions you take can always manipulate those values in a desired way, or even the possibility that there is some always-working method you can apply to ensure you get whatever you want in life or relationships, then you're both a sucker and someone I don't want to share a membership in manhood with.
I don't like the expectations put on manhood externally, either, as there certainly seems to be a strain of thought that thinks of men as barely-intelligent brutes uninterested in anything other than Titties and Beer. It was a prominent sitcom dad trope, given Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, and others. Which was apparently itself a reaction to competent and patriarchal dads on television. In both cases, even though television exaggerates for comedy purposes, both the bumbler and the authoritarian have enough of a core to them that they no longer register as the comedy or subversion they are supposed to be.
Which can make for issues when there's a buffoon up front and competent evil angling to be part of his support structure, so they can accomplish their evil without taking heat or blame for it. Or, as we are finding out more and more from men whose religious beliefs claim to be "God and country" and are, in practice, "men über alles," the evil is not actually hidden, it's justified as "discipline" or as part of "what God ordained our roles to be," and that opposition to their patriarchal control is opposition to God Himself, which no Good God-fearing person should ever do, nor allow to happen.
Perhaps the worst part of manhood as currently defined is that it seems to be a pair of nebulous elements put together:
- "Don't do anything that's womanly."
- "Only other men may judge whether you are a man or are acting womanly."
This combination together makes it difficult for anyone to establish shared characteristics of men, characteristics that are, if not fixed, at least very resistant to change, without also establishing and maintaining some power base that sees you and your pronouncements as authoritative. The people that want to define manhood are first trying to establish that they have the power to do so, and, unsurprisingly, power corrupts.
Between internal definitions that look to mold men into morally, ethically, and emotionally deficient people, and external definitions that assume that men already are morally, ethically, and emotionally deficient, you can see why being a man doesn't have much appeal to me, at least at the conscientious objector level. There's more to it than that. Despite being regularly teased that I was a girl, or that I behaved in girly ways, or the ease in which I would cry at upsets or injuries, or going into a heavily feminized profression, or that my presentation of my variable attention is much more like what someone would look for in a girl, or the part where I handled the cooking and baking segments of the virtual program, or any other number of actions I've taken over time that other men would rink my man card was in danger of revocation over, the idea of "being a girl/woman" doesn't have any spark to it. There no internal longing or other feel to it that suggests womanhood is a core truth of myself, one that requires me to go through an awful lot of heartache and dumb hoops so that I can express myself properly. (Your choice here of "Not A Girl" or "So, I clearly cannot chose the wine in front of me", whichever suits best to your reading.) At least according to the current power-holders, actually questioning and coming to a conclusion about what my gender is, or what I want it to be, is another one of those not-manly acts. Men, at least according to them, treat their gender as a constant of the universe, rather than as a social construction, and anyone who does gender exploration is too weak to be a man.
So if the two most common points on the gender spectrum are a no, that leaves me ith…the rest of the gender spectrum to work with. In much the same way that "woman" as a gender is no, "no gender" is also a no, and "all genders" sounds entirely too chaotic for me to manage. It's mostly trying to figure out a gender by ruling out other genders. (Yay, idiopathic gender!) There's a gender there, and it's not fluid or changing, but for the most part, it goes "Eh. Not really important, is it? There's plenty of other modes for relationships between people, why not use those instead?" And "Yes, sure, my upbringing, and the upbringing of a lot of other people have been very invested in classifying the world according to sex and gender, but that's not actually a requirement, is it? I have a whole lot of other roles that are more informative than 'gender' for you to use." So it's a pretty weak signal, whatever that signal is. It might be mostly manifesting as "human, but only because we haven't figured out how to make furries and scalies and custom-designed bodies that reflect our inner selves and that are sufficiently mutable that they will reflect our most accurate perception of ourselves at that moment."
Because of my outward presentation, though, I don't have to deal with "looking trans" or otherwise having my presentation taken as license or invitation to harassment, bullying, or other anti-social behavior from people who want to boost their egos and make supplication to be included (or remain in the company of the included) to those they see as authorities on the matter by punching down at someone they perceive as outside the group. It is interesting to see how, in the power-based lenses that get used when talking about people dynamics, that a fair number of people see "men" and "not-men" as the two possible spheres of existence. Which often then has them construct the "not-men" sphere as composed of "women" and "women-light" or make demands that if someone wants to be seen as not a man, or not a woman, they have to present androgynously so that they can't be easily and unconsciously sorted into either the man bucket or the woman bucket. As if what they had been raised with was simply too ingrained to remove or break apart without some external sign to scramble their signal. Even though, as we noted in the sport entry yesterday, it doesn't take all that much looking to discover that the outward presentation of a person tells you jack shit about what their gender identity is. The reluctance to embrace the greater diversity of everything is also a reluctance to share power, or to give up the privilege of being able to define someone else and have it stick. And I have no desire to change my presentation. As has been said elsewhere and around the Internet, "I don't owe anyone androgyny."
Admittedly, the signs and signals that I put out into the world about what my gender identity is, and how I would like you to refer to me to others, are subtle. The button says, after all, that I am a Legendary Pokémon, rather than a non-binary entity. And the pronouns on my name badge are not as big as my name. so they might not be as noticeable. And who reads an e-mail signature, anyway, to find out someone's pronouns? Or their sticky post? Or their chat profile? Or the caption on their meeting picture that says what their pronouns are? No, it clear and obvious what my gender is by looking at me, and therefore there's no need to consult any other source of information about how to talk to me and about me, and certainly not any source of information that I might be providing and broadcasting regularly on this matter. (Yes, I am salty at this point that people who have worked with me for years still keep misgendering me. No, I don't correct them. I am choosing to spend my energy elsewhere, and I am not required to correct everyone everywhere at all times to keep my pronouns. They are not trademarks that require active defenses.)
There's no big finale here, other than, like, "Be excellent to each other, and when someone tells you who they are, believe them." (Both for people telling you their correct forms of address and gender identity, and people telling you that they intend to be hostile to anything that dares to exist outside their conception of reality without their permission.) If humans as a species could manage to make it to just that bar, we'd be sitting a lot better on so many of our social problems. Even with the high percentage of people who appear to be very invested in identifying themselves as threats and enemies and who work to put threats and enemies into positions of institutional and governmental power.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 10:14 am (UTC)Like the thirty something woman that was me in the userpic, perhaps?
no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 03:08 pm (UTC)Thanks for taking the time to write it all out carefully.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 04:43 pm (UTC)In glad you find it useful.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-10 09:46 pm (UTC)