How Do I Reconcile My Masculinity With The Toxicity of Men?
March 16, 2019 3:17 PM Subscribe
How can I work out the (still barely legible) person I want to be without inappropriately centering myself and masculinity, when everyone around me is reliving trauma at the hands of men? “For trans men who pass, like me, the visceral discomfort of that privilege can feel like a crossroads. Would I accept the dominant narrative about what being a man means, or give up what little “status” I have in this paradigm to challenge it? I don’t posit that question lightly. Patriarchy teaches us all that staying quiet about what we see men do is the key to survival. But what if… it’s not?”
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble
I remember this guy. He's the boxer...
posted by jim in austin at 4:07 PM on March 16, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 4:07 PM on March 16, 2019 [6 favorites]
"But the truth is, “it’s ultimately not possible to separate masculinity from the culture in which it swims. And this means that privilege follows masculinity no matter who's donning it...."
That's a strange 'truth'. There are multiple non-toxic masculine personas in cultures I've experienced. (As for privilege, that's just confusing the issue.) That 'truth' is inessential
A man is a human being before he's a man. All decent, likeable people have common traits. Anyone has the option of refusing to originate violence ( while self-defense is respected). Kindness, caring, a sense of humor, perseverance, these are common, venerated human traits. Be the finest human being you can first.
posted by Twang at 4:46 PM on March 16, 2019 [10 favorites]
That's a strange 'truth'. There are multiple non-toxic masculine personas in cultures I've experienced. (As for privilege, that's just confusing the issue.) That 'truth' is inessential
A man is a human being before he's a man. All decent, likeable people have common traits. Anyone has the option of refusing to originate violence ( while self-defense is respected). Kindness, caring, a sense of humor, perseverance, these are common, venerated human traits. Be the finest human being you can first.
posted by Twang at 4:46 PM on March 16, 2019 [10 favorites]
This is so good. Thanks.
posted by limeonaire at 4:46 PM on March 16, 2019
posted by limeonaire at 4:46 PM on March 16, 2019
There are multiple non-toxic masculine personas in cultures I've experienced.
I don't understand, Twang. I don't think the author is saying that privilege is the same as toxicity, although he writes about them as though they are related. I don't think you're saying that either, given your parenthetical. But your objection to his statement about privilege following masculinity seems to be that not all masculinity is toxic, which does treat them the same. What am I not getting?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:54 PM on March 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
I don't understand, Twang. I don't think the author is saying that privilege is the same as toxicity, although he writes about them as though they are related. I don't think you're saying that either, given your parenthetical. But your objection to his statement about privilege following masculinity seems to be that not all masculinity is toxic, which does treat them the same. What am I not getting?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:54 PM on March 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
"The way I found myself limiting the ways I showed emotion, pushing myself to "be strong," to not ask for help, even when I really needed it."
ah ... the core of the problem (or at least a good part of the core).
posted by twidget at 5:04 PM on March 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
ah ... the core of the problem (or at least a good part of the core).
posted by twidget at 5:04 PM on March 16, 2019 [1 favorite]
There's something that always rubs me the wrong way about Thomas Page McBee's writings about transness that I've never been able to put my finger on. It's not like I disagree with anything specific, it just feels like his experience is really not mine. (It may well be as simple as his path through life leads him to use "trans man" as a self-descriptor and I eschew it in favor of "transmasculine" for reasons I don't fully understand.)
I have thoughts on this subject, but I'm having trouble articulating them.
I do want to note that the letter quoted in the link text exists in a broader context of presumptions around gender and medical transition choices that is probably not apparent to cis people.
posted by hoyland at 5:14 PM on March 16, 2019 [10 favorites]
I have thoughts on this subject, but I'm having trouble articulating them.
I do want to note that the letter quoted in the link text exists in a broader context of presumptions around gender and medical transition choices that is probably not apparent to cis people.
posted by hoyland at 5:14 PM on March 16, 2019 [10 favorites]
This is a key question for trans men early in transition, one that has the potential to transform your relationship to masculinity. Experience of social privilege is cited often by trans men, Bridges says, as “the recognition that comes with presumptions about authority, a capacity for violence, and sometimes respect and other forms of social advantage.” He points out, powerfully, that trans women experience a much different early awareness of social transition. “Having someone catcall you on the street might qualify,” he says. “Many trans men's early experiences with social recognition are associated with power and privilege, while many trans women's experiences with social recognition are associated with disempowerment.”
Let that sink in for a moment, whatever your gender.
This passage irritated me because it reads as universalizing his experience. He comes uncomfortably close to announcing that transmasculine n00bs' relationships to masculinity really should be transformed by him and his extremely 101-level introduction to the notion that patriarchy is a thing, because those guys definitely haven't heard this before and will need a moment to wrap their meathead brains around it.
In my experience, the average person beginning to saunter vaguely towards manhood has been aware of and uncomfortable with the ways women and girls are disempowered for a couple decades and is disproportionately likely to have post-secondary education in feminist or queer thought. Maybe I only have this expectation because I'm a nerd who largely talks to other nerds, but I feel like more dudes benefit from hearing "beanplate your relationship to masculinity a bit less, do things more. There's no number of credit-hours or other prerequisites for seeing a therapist or shopping for pants, go already."
posted by bagel at 6:01 PM on March 16, 2019 [15 favorites]
Let that sink in for a moment, whatever your gender.
This passage irritated me because it reads as universalizing his experience. He comes uncomfortably close to announcing that transmasculine n00bs' relationships to masculinity really should be transformed by him and his extremely 101-level introduction to the notion that patriarchy is a thing, because those guys definitely haven't heard this before and will need a moment to wrap their meathead brains around it.
In my experience, the average person beginning to saunter vaguely towards manhood has been aware of and uncomfortable with the ways women and girls are disempowered for a couple decades and is disproportionately likely to have post-secondary education in feminist or queer thought. Maybe I only have this expectation because I'm a nerd who largely talks to other nerds, but I feel like more dudes benefit from hearing "beanplate your relationship to masculinity a bit less, do things more. There's no number of credit-hours or other prerequisites for seeing a therapist or shopping for pants, go already."
posted by bagel at 6:01 PM on March 16, 2019 [15 favorites]
I found this article and the boxer link really interesting. Thanks.
posted by salvia at 9:12 PM on March 16, 2019
posted by salvia at 9:12 PM on March 16, 2019
"Patriarchy is a thing" might be 101 level these days, at least I hope so, but navigating an identity journey that takes one personally across its streams is really not 101 by any means. And what that means to any one individual is going to vary incredibly widely depending on our own backgrounds and our relationship to patriarchal bullshit.
Mainly I'm saying, I'd really like to keep my plate of beans!
posted by quacks like a duck at 3:28 AM on March 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
Mainly I'm saying, I'd really like to keep my plate of beans!
posted by quacks like a duck at 3:28 AM on March 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
"The way I found myself limiting the ways I showed emotion, pushing myself to "be strong," to not ask for help, even when I really needed it."
ah ... the core of the problem (or at least a good part of the core).
posted by twidget at 5:04 PM on March 16
Hmm... I have experienced this as a strong facet of womanhood. To me a woman - and a functional human being - is someone who realises they're in this alone, and no matter how much they may love other people or want to be loved that's a fools game, you have to work until you break, mend yourself and get up, keep working and do it all over again. Asking for or expecting help is for people who play the dependence and entitlement game - and at least half of those are male, and the most blatant of them are men with privilege. Women are the ones who ask, "What do we need?" rather than "What do I need?" - but this is a generalization.
In my experience it is first those with the most power who ask for help, and automatically get it too, because other people see it as their right and don't even think to refuse, and then those who are desperate, and the desperate don't get the help because they can't pull off the power routine. People in between are the ones who do the work and the heavy lifting, unacknowledged. It they help the desperate at all they do it according to their own selection, usually with conditions and judgment.
I think cooperation is seen as submission, and as a guy with increasing power you cooperate less and less until you become oblivious to everything else except your own goals.
To me the evil side of masculinity is the jockey with other males for power, competition that doesn't check if there is any downside to that competition, so they have their power battles in arenas where other people get devastated by the result, or they leave a swathe of destruction behind them as they take what they need to compete destroying the resource base they share with others. But this is not a solely masculine activity. It's more like saying 'men are stronger than women'. Men are typically the ones who fall into that type of behaviour and do it worst, and women are typically the ones who just wake up and start working, and fall asleep when they can't work anymore.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:02 AM on March 17, 2019 [12 favorites]
ah ... the core of the problem (or at least a good part of the core).
posted by twidget at 5:04 PM on March 16
Hmm... I have experienced this as a strong facet of womanhood. To me a woman - and a functional human being - is someone who realises they're in this alone, and no matter how much they may love other people or want to be loved that's a fools game, you have to work until you break, mend yourself and get up, keep working and do it all over again. Asking for or expecting help is for people who play the dependence and entitlement game - and at least half of those are male, and the most blatant of them are men with privilege. Women are the ones who ask, "What do we need?" rather than "What do I need?" - but this is a generalization.
In my experience it is first those with the most power who ask for help, and automatically get it too, because other people see it as their right and don't even think to refuse, and then those who are desperate, and the desperate don't get the help because they can't pull off the power routine. People in between are the ones who do the work and the heavy lifting, unacknowledged. It they help the desperate at all they do it according to their own selection, usually with conditions and judgment.
I think cooperation is seen as submission, and as a guy with increasing power you cooperate less and less until you become oblivious to everything else except your own goals.
To me the evil side of masculinity is the jockey with other males for power, competition that doesn't check if there is any downside to that competition, so they have their power battles in arenas where other people get devastated by the result, or they leave a swathe of destruction behind them as they take what they need to compete destroying the resource base they share with others. But this is not a solely masculine activity. It's more like saying 'men are stronger than women'. Men are typically the ones who fall into that type of behaviour and do it worst, and women are typically the ones who just wake up and start working, and fall asleep when they can't work anymore.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:02 AM on March 17, 2019 [12 favorites]
"But the truth is, “it’s ultimately not possible to separate masculinity from the culture in which it swims. And this means that privilege follows masculinity no matter who's donning it...."
I think what is being said here is that the privilege which masculinity affords in a society is impossible to escape and is alluring and leads one to want to perform masculinity in obvious ways in order to have the privileges on offer.
I think the mention in the article of the gay bears is an interesting look at this. As it was, the gay bears started out as gay men who were more stereotypically masculine in presentation sort of rebelling against the overwhelmingly feminized or genderqueer or even "twink obsessed" gay culture of the late 1980s/early 1990s.
The bear movement was actually a nearly conscious movement to try to redefine masculinity away from the toxic and toward a larger understanding of what performing as masculine means as opposed to being immersed in it. Anyone who was coming in contact with the bear movement as it was getting started was someone who had already gone through the journey of self-realization that coming out as gay involved 30 years ago. It was not an easy journey and for most it involved achieving insight into gender and privilege and a willingness to step outside of the dominant culture. But then a second stepping outside, saying "I'm not going to be gay in the way you expect", was a whole other internal process.
If you read the letters section of early issues of Bear Magazine, you'll find person after person writing in saying what a relief it was for them to finally find a group which allowed them to feel free to practice masculine presentation while also being free to be a gay man. A lot of these guys were blue collar types, having to conform to toxic behavior during their daily lives, and finding a space where they could let all that drop meant a lot.
I'm not communicating this well. I just think it's an interesting thing to bring up, the gay bears.
They've evolved away from those early days a lot, and I don't find them appealing anymore for a lot of reasons. But early on, they were mostly sensitive gay men who felt more comfortable in the trappings of masculinity but who wanted to find other sensitive gay men like them to connect with. They felt lost in mainstream gay culture, and they finally found each other. It was pretty beautiful.
posted by hippybear at 7:26 AM on March 17, 2019 [13 favorites]
I think what is being said here is that the privilege which masculinity affords in a society is impossible to escape and is alluring and leads one to want to perform masculinity in obvious ways in order to have the privileges on offer.
I think the mention in the article of the gay bears is an interesting look at this. As it was, the gay bears started out as gay men who were more stereotypically masculine in presentation sort of rebelling against the overwhelmingly feminized or genderqueer or even "twink obsessed" gay culture of the late 1980s/early 1990s.
The bear movement was actually a nearly conscious movement to try to redefine masculinity away from the toxic and toward a larger understanding of what performing as masculine means as opposed to being immersed in it. Anyone who was coming in contact with the bear movement as it was getting started was someone who had already gone through the journey of self-realization that coming out as gay involved 30 years ago. It was not an easy journey and for most it involved achieving insight into gender and privilege and a willingness to step outside of the dominant culture. But then a second stepping outside, saying "I'm not going to be gay in the way you expect", was a whole other internal process.
If you read the letters section of early issues of Bear Magazine, you'll find person after person writing in saying what a relief it was for them to finally find a group which allowed them to feel free to practice masculine presentation while also being free to be a gay man. A lot of these guys were blue collar types, having to conform to toxic behavior during their daily lives, and finding a space where they could let all that drop meant a lot.
I'm not communicating this well. I just think it's an interesting thing to bring up, the gay bears.
They've evolved away from those early days a lot, and I don't find them appealing anymore for a lot of reasons. But early on, they were mostly sensitive gay men who felt more comfortable in the trappings of masculinity but who wanted to find other sensitive gay men like them to connect with. They felt lost in mainstream gay culture, and they finally found each other. It was pretty beautiful.
posted by hippybear at 7:26 AM on March 17, 2019 [13 favorites]
[I finally got the article to mostly load, but getting to the end was a chore because of some kind of "how far is he scrolling down the page" tracker (I assume) not feeding back quickly and I had a spinning beachball on the webpage for up to 5 minutes at a time before the scrolling down actually happened. Websites like that need to stop doing it.]
posted by hippybear at 7:28 AM on March 17, 2019
posted by hippybear at 7:28 AM on March 17, 2019
Yeah, the comment about "whoa did it occur to you that trans women's experiences are actually different from trans dudes'?" made me wonder, maybe unfairly, if he belongs to the category of trans men who don't associate socially with trans women, which is extremely a thing, for lots of complex social and historical reasons. That's a category of trans guys that I'm pretty wary of, based on my experiences with them.
posted by ITheCosmos at 7:41 AM on March 17, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by ITheCosmos at 7:41 AM on March 17, 2019 [7 favorites]
I don't have anything intelligent to add here but I found the posted article super interesting and the (to me) surprisingly critical response to the article even more interesting.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 1:54 PM on March 17, 2019
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 1:54 PM on March 17, 2019
Hmm... I have experienced this as a strong facet of womanhood. To me a woman - and a functional human being - is someone who realises they're in this alone, and no matter how much they may love other people or want to be loved that's a fools game, you have to work until you break, mend yourself and get up, keep working and do it all over again.
The is the second time in as many weeks where I've been in a conversation where someone has brought this up in response to "men have to always be tough". I think when people talk about "men can't ask for help", or "men have to be tough" it's in the context of the last paragraph of the quoted comment--doing so would be a loss of status, a wrong move in this power game--but, like Jane the Brown says, they'll actually get help and often think they're automatically deserving of help. But when we say it, we're also helping perpetuate the thing where women are expected to hold the fucking ship together (whatever the ship is) without anyone asking or acknowledging it.
"Being a woman means sometimes you just have to lump it" is a lesson I'm curious about. It was noticeably unhelpful for me, but I didn't grow up to be a woman. But I also got a lot of "make the hard choice, even if it sucks" messaging, which was not (meant to be) gendered, that is also mixed up in this.
posted by hoyland at 2:03 PM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
The is the second time in as many weeks where I've been in a conversation where someone has brought this up in response to "men have to always be tough". I think when people talk about "men can't ask for help", or "men have to be tough" it's in the context of the last paragraph of the quoted comment--doing so would be a loss of status, a wrong move in this power game--but, like Jane the Brown says, they'll actually get help and often think they're automatically deserving of help. But when we say it, we're also helping perpetuate the thing where women are expected to hold the fucking ship together (whatever the ship is) without anyone asking or acknowledging it.
"Being a woman means sometimes you just have to lump it" is a lesson I'm curious about. It was noticeably unhelpful for me, but I didn't grow up to be a woman. But I also got a lot of "make the hard choice, even if it sucks" messaging, which was not (meant to be) gendered, that is also mixed up in this.
posted by hoyland at 2:03 PM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
I do agree with the general criticism here, and I've always been put off by McBee's takes on transness, but regarding bagel's point:
In my experience, the average person beginning to saunter vaguely towards manhood has been aware of and uncomfortable with the ways women and girls are disempowered for a couple decades and is disproportionately likely to have post-secondary education in feminist or queer thought.
Working with trans youth now, I've been surprised by, and am now accustomed to, a lot of trans boys' lack of feminism and general wokeness*. In my head I've been attributing that to the fact that I'm meeting trans boys now who didn't come of age in lesbian circles, like I and most of my friends did. Many of them came out as trans before their sexual orientation was even a consideration. Some of them have been out and read as male and accepted by their community and family long enough that they've been on the receiving end of very little misogyny in their lives. Coming out younger is a wonderful thing that comes with a major cultural shift.
*1) this is not universal and 2) I'm working on them
posted by libraritarian at 2:42 PM on March 17, 2019 [15 favorites]
In my experience, the average person beginning to saunter vaguely towards manhood has been aware of and uncomfortable with the ways women and girls are disempowered for a couple decades and is disproportionately likely to have post-secondary education in feminist or queer thought.
Working with trans youth now, I've been surprised by, and am now accustomed to, a lot of trans boys' lack of feminism and general wokeness*. In my head I've been attributing that to the fact that I'm meeting trans boys now who didn't come of age in lesbian circles, like I and most of my friends did. Many of them came out as trans before their sexual orientation was even a consideration. Some of them have been out and read as male and accepted by their community and family long enough that they've been on the receiving end of very little misogyny in their lives. Coming out younger is a wonderful thing that comes with a major cultural shift.
*1) this is not universal and 2) I'm working on them
posted by libraritarian at 2:42 PM on March 17, 2019 [15 favorites]
In my head I've been attributing that to the fact that I'm meeting trans boys now who didn't come of age in lesbian circles, like I and most of my friends did.
It's not even lesbian circles specifically (I'm one of the oddball transmasculine people my age who never identified as a lesbian; I'm also not attracted to women), but rather, I think, that you can come of age as a straight trans boy/man now without coming of age as queer.
posted by hoyland at 3:39 PM on March 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's not even lesbian circles specifically (I'm one of the oddball transmasculine people my age who never identified as a lesbian; I'm also not attracted to women), but rather, I think, that you can come of age as a straight trans boy/man now without coming of age as queer.
posted by hoyland at 3:39 PM on March 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
For those having trouble with the article, here's a clean copy at archive.today
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:02 PM on March 17, 2019
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:02 PM on March 17, 2019
I am admittedly coming at this from a learner's (i.e., somewhat uninformed) perspective, so I've been listening to the critical comments here thoughtfully and don't mean to dispute them. But in general, I think narratives by trans people can be really valuable to everyone in deconstructing gender / seeing the water we all swim in more clearly. I'd be interested to read more about how he "found [him]self limiting the ways [he] showed emotion, pushing [him]self to 'be strong,' to not ask for help, even when [he] really needed it." As a cis female, I would've guessed some but not all of that. Given the critical response here, maybe there is better writing out there? Off to google...
posted by salvia at 12:41 AM on March 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by salvia at 12:41 AM on March 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'd be interested to read more about how he "found [him]self limiting the ways [he] showed emotion, pushing [him]self to 'be strong,' to not ask for help, even when [he] really needed it."
I've been thinking about this and was going to say that it just wasn't part of my experience at all, but, for me, that was being a teenager and figuring out I was trans at 18/19 put a stop to it (I shall boldly claim). I don't really know how to explain it, but I remember having this realisation.
posted by hoyland at 4:18 AM on March 18, 2019
I've been thinking about this and was going to say that it just wasn't part of my experience at all, but, for me, that was being a teenager and figuring out I was trans at 18/19 put a stop to it (I shall boldly claim). I don't really know how to explain it, but I remember having this realisation.
posted by hoyland at 4:18 AM on March 18, 2019
Related food for thought: twitter thread on the patriarchy and transmasculinity (disclaimer: I admit to paying little attention to trans twitter.).
posted by hoyland at 4:23 PM on March 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 4:23 PM on March 19, 2019 [2 favorites]
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posted by hippybear at 3:27 PM on March 16, 2019