“Hegemonic masculinity” or F you
Listening to Jonot Diaz speak with Krista Tippett on the September 14, 2017 podcast of On Being entitled “Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon” left me feeling bathed in the beauty of his precise and challenging use of the English language. His words also carry a depth of meaning which forces me to accept a level of intimacy which I both crave and, at times fear. I encourage the reader to google this podcast or download the On Being app and listen to it on your phone. (Jonot Diaz is the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Ridge and Nancy Allen Professor of writing at MIT. His books include Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and This is How You Love Her.)
Professor Diaz begins this conversation by saying, “I’m a child of blackness. Blackness was not meant to survive, and we have survived. And we’ve given this world more genius than we have ever received.” This is his history and, thus, to appreciate all he says one has to accept his truth. Those who need to convince themselves and others that racism and slavery is history will need a strong shield of denial when listening to this man speak.
When he speaks of hope he has to speak of history and when he speaks of history of the black man he has to speak of love and when he speaks of love he has to speak of one’s relationship with one’s body.
He says, “But in the New World, for those of us of African descent, we were living centuries ahead in our bodies. We were philosophizing centuries ahead of how bodies exist within, through, and alongside the numinous. And I have to tell you that, for people like us, for people who come out of the African Diaspora in the New Work, simply to fall in love, when you have historically been denied love, the right to just connect to the body which you have chosen and that has chosen you, means that an act of love is not only revolutionary, it’s not only transcendent, but it is the deific. It is Godlike. It is a taste of the omnipotent.”
Later he goes on to say, ‘…the subject of masculinity and certain kinds of ways that masculinity enshrines and, in some ways, super-valorizes the ideal of the invulnerable male subject. I mean that a big part of what we would call hegemonic masculinity –that one is not vulnerable, that one is not penetrated, that one has a narrative where intimacy is not necessary. And when you look at the stricture, when you look at the rules of traditional masculinity, it’s all about creating an inhuman: someone who is all surfaces.”
I have, over the years, given a lot of thought to the relationship between sexism, racism and how we learn to be male and female in our culture. I have also given a lot of thought to the use of language and how that use is designed to ensure that we continue to dissociate from our bodies and, thus, from the essence of who we are. One of the phrases which has often intrigued me is one which most of us have often heard and, perhaps even used both as a verbal blow and as a taunting thrust or parrying move. This phase is “fuck you” which I will henceforth abbreviate as FU. In my youthful innocence, I wondered why someone would use a phase which describe a part of love making to insult someone This made no sense to me. After all, love making, in my mind was a beautiful intimate event to which I looked forward.
I was very young by the time I had begun to internalize the rules for masculinity which essentially could be summarized in the sentence “Be as unlike women as possible.” Thus, do not be vulnerable. Do not cry or otherwise indicate, except with anger, that you care about anything or anyone. Be physically strong and emotionally absent. Always be prepared to prove you are stronger and more resilient than other males. Never allow yourself to be dominated by or even concerned about what a woman wants or needs. In other words, “Do not be pussy whipped.” Of course, many of my female’s peers were learning to be as unlike males as possible. They were learning to accept that they were the “weaker” sex who need a man to provide and project her. There were also leaning that they were not as intellectually bright or if they were to be sure to not allow males to know it. After all, one’s main job was to find a husband and then be a good little wife.
The public myth also included the lie that when making love one should really be focused on having sex in the missionary position – with a person of the opposite sex of course. Real men did not like anal stimulation and did not allow the woman on top. Men were to marry virgins but not be virgins.
Obviously, all these rules precluded a healthy heterosexual or homosexual relationship. On those rare occasions when need and situations forced real men to have sex with each other, one did not allow another man to insert his penis into a mouth or anus. Thus, one could FU without having one’s masculinity called into question. Males could also have sex – fuck – with women without having to be intimate.
The rules of masculinity precluded intimacy. Women have often complained about this. Often it was assumed, even by social scientists, that any difference was because of innate differences between males and females. Males and females are just programed differently. There is some very limited truth to this statement. We are essentially more alike than different.
Wise teachers have always posited the theory that healing or spiritual growth required that one “know thyself” – that one have an intimate relationship with oneself which then allowed for the possibility of having an intimate relationship with others. Black people in order to heal had to begin to reclaim their bodies. All men had to attempt to do this without becoming vulnerable. Black men who internalized some of the same rules for being masculine have been systematically emasculated – discriminated against and oppressed in obvious and not so obvious ways and thus unable to fulfill even the white man’s idea of what it meant to be the man of the house. Cut off from themselves they were cut off from the women in their lives. Black women were also cut off from themselves as they spent endless hours attempting to straighten their hair or otherwise take on the persona of their white counterpart while taking charge of families.
FU is a symbol and a symptom of emasculating ourselves and dehumanizing our partners. It is also a symbol and symptom of using sex to get close without having to get close. This can be equally true for heterosexual and homosexuals.
If we are to teach our children – male and female – how to have hope, we must teach them that it is safe to love – ourselves and others. In order to love we have to be vulnerable. In order to be vulnerable we have to make peace with our bodies – with our tears, our joy, our laughter, our pain, our embrace and, yes, our ability to love and make love with our partner/spouse. Only then can we become a ‘we’ who can have the power to create a more just world. I strongly suspect that a piece of the opioid epidemic is the fear of being vulnerable. All treatment programs for addiction recognize that our strength paradoxically lies in being vulnerable with ourselves and with others.
Written September 15, 2017
Listening to Jonot Diaz speak with Krista Tippett on the September 14, 2017 podcast of On Being entitled “Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon” left me feeling bathed in the beauty of his precise and challenging use of the English language. His words also carry a depth of meaning which forces me to accept a level of intimacy which I both crave and, at times fear. I encourage the reader to google this podcast or download the On Being app and listen to it on your phone. (Jonot Diaz is the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Ridge and Nancy Allen Professor of writing at MIT. His books include Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and This is How You Love Her.)
Professor Diaz begins this conversation by saying, “I’m a child of blackness. Blackness was not meant to survive, and we have survived. And we’ve given this world more genius than we have ever received.” This is his history and, thus, to appreciate all he says one has to accept his truth. Those who need to convince themselves and others that racism and slavery is history will need a strong shield of denial when listening to this man speak.
When he speaks of hope he has to speak of history and when he speaks of history of the black man he has to speak of love and when he speaks of love he has to speak of one’s relationship with one’s body.
He says, “But in the New World, for those of us of African descent, we were living centuries ahead in our bodies. We were philosophizing centuries ahead of how bodies exist within, through, and alongside the numinous. And I have to tell you that, for people like us, for people who come out of the African Diaspora in the New Work, simply to fall in love, when you have historically been denied love, the right to just connect to the body which you have chosen and that has chosen you, means that an act of love is not only revolutionary, it’s not only transcendent, but it is the deific. It is Godlike. It is a taste of the omnipotent.”
Later he goes on to say, ‘…the subject of masculinity and certain kinds of ways that masculinity enshrines and, in some ways, super-valorizes the ideal of the invulnerable male subject. I mean that a big part of what we would call hegemonic masculinity –that one is not vulnerable, that one is not penetrated, that one has a narrative where intimacy is not necessary. And when you look at the stricture, when you look at the rules of traditional masculinity, it’s all about creating an inhuman: someone who is all surfaces.”
I have, over the years, given a lot of thought to the relationship between sexism, racism and how we learn to be male and female in our culture. I have also given a lot of thought to the use of language and how that use is designed to ensure that we continue to dissociate from our bodies and, thus, from the essence of who we are. One of the phrases which has often intrigued me is one which most of us have often heard and, perhaps even used both as a verbal blow and as a taunting thrust or parrying move. This phase is “fuck you” which I will henceforth abbreviate as FU. In my youthful innocence, I wondered why someone would use a phase which describe a part of love making to insult someone This made no sense to me. After all, love making, in my mind was a beautiful intimate event to which I looked forward.
I was very young by the time I had begun to internalize the rules for masculinity which essentially could be summarized in the sentence “Be as unlike women as possible.” Thus, do not be vulnerable. Do not cry or otherwise indicate, except with anger, that you care about anything or anyone. Be physically strong and emotionally absent. Always be prepared to prove you are stronger and more resilient than other males. Never allow yourself to be dominated by or even concerned about what a woman wants or needs. In other words, “Do not be pussy whipped.” Of course, many of my female’s peers were learning to be as unlike males as possible. They were learning to accept that they were the “weaker” sex who need a man to provide and project her. There were also leaning that they were not as intellectually bright or if they were to be sure to not allow males to know it. After all, one’s main job was to find a husband and then be a good little wife.
The public myth also included the lie that when making love one should really be focused on having sex in the missionary position – with a person of the opposite sex of course. Real men did not like anal stimulation and did not allow the woman on top. Men were to marry virgins but not be virgins.
Obviously, all these rules precluded a healthy heterosexual or homosexual relationship. On those rare occasions when need and situations forced real men to have sex with each other, one did not allow another man to insert his penis into a mouth or anus. Thus, one could FU without having one’s masculinity called into question. Males could also have sex – fuck – with women without having to be intimate.
The rules of masculinity precluded intimacy. Women have often complained about this. Often it was assumed, even by social scientists, that any difference was because of innate differences between males and females. Males and females are just programed differently. There is some very limited truth to this statement. We are essentially more alike than different.
Wise teachers have always posited the theory that healing or spiritual growth required that one “know thyself” – that one have an intimate relationship with oneself which then allowed for the possibility of having an intimate relationship with others. Black people in order to heal had to begin to reclaim their bodies. All men had to attempt to do this without becoming vulnerable. Black men who internalized some of the same rules for being masculine have been systematically emasculated – discriminated against and oppressed in obvious and not so obvious ways and thus unable to fulfill even the white man’s idea of what it meant to be the man of the house. Cut off from themselves they were cut off from the women in their lives. Black women were also cut off from themselves as they spent endless hours attempting to straighten their hair or otherwise take on the persona of their white counterpart while taking charge of families.
FU is a symbol and a symptom of emasculating ourselves and dehumanizing our partners. It is also a symbol and symptom of using sex to get close without having to get close. This can be equally true for heterosexual and homosexuals.
If we are to teach our children – male and female – how to have hope, we must teach them that it is safe to love – ourselves and others. In order to love we have to be vulnerable. In order to be vulnerable we have to make peace with our bodies – with our tears, our joy, our laughter, our pain, our embrace and, yes, our ability to love and make love with our partner/spouse. Only then can we become a ‘we’ who can have the power to create a more just world. I strongly suspect that a piece of the opioid epidemic is the fear of being vulnerable. All treatment programs for addiction recognize that our strength paradoxically lies in being vulnerable with ourselves and with others.
Written September 15, 2017
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