On Being A Man
I once attended an odd little theatrical poetry-reading affair - the brainchild of an advanced English class - in which one of the performers, a tall, bearded youth, ascended the stage to nobly declaim a piece about Being A Man. In sweeping, over-the-top, glib hack-poetic phrases, he expounded the many virtues of Masculinity... until, with a cat-that-ate-the-canary-grin, he delivered the ending line (“For society has given me permission/ To have hairy pits!”) while proudly baring a well-furred underarm to the audience, then madly dashed offstage to thunderous applause.
It was terrific.
(As a side note: I’d really like to find that poem, so if anyone can identify it, please pass it on!)
That memory floats by as I ponder what it will be like to really own the word man.
You see, I don’t really consider myself a man - not yet. Male, certainly, yes, but not a man. And that has nothing to do with my body, appearance, or abilities... with anything I have or don’t have. It’s just that that word carries, for me, more and deeper connotations. So if someone were to actually ask me my gender (say, one of the kids I sometimes work with, since most adults would balk at asking such a straightforward question), I’d feel perfectly comfortable saying, “I’m a guy,” or “male,” or even “boy” - but not “man.”
(Yeah, I know, I’ve used the standard term “transman” in the title of this blog - but that’s more for clarity than for preference. If you friend me on Facebook - which you are welcome to do - you will find that my gender reads as “trans male.”)
For me, “man” and “woman” are both words that imply something beyond gender and/or sex. What they also carry is a sense of personal maturity and ownership of one’s life-path... of having slowly but surely grown into yourself and your identity.
And I have yet to do that.
When I was trying to live in the world of my assigned gender, I never once called myself a woman, and I had a tendency to cringe if someone else called me that. “Girl,” if necessary, okay. “Chick” if I was in a joking mood (precisely because it fit me so badly). “Female” was my term of choice when the need arose, and I much preferred the adjective to any possible noun. But of all the possible nouns, gah, please NOT woman! ("Lady" might have been even worse, but my personality was not such that many people attempted it. :::grin:::)
(I did eventually get used to hearing it, since one particular friend of mine has a penchant for accosting me with a shout of “Woman!” Since this friend and I have shared many a good laugh together, I finally told him that he - and only he - has special permission to continue to call me that... because, what the hell, it’ll only get funnier as time goes on and my transition progresses!)
I certainly never had any real interest in owning the term “woman.” It never felt even remotely right, and if I’d stayed in the closet, I’d have been a “girl” until the day I died. There was a sort of semi-acknowledged protest in not using the term: this was simply not the sense of being that I wished to grow into - or even felt that I could honestly grow into. (Of course, I could fake it, to a certain extent, and indeed, had spent much of my life learning to... but that’s a different story.)
There are so many under-the-radar aspects to these words that it’s worth looking at them more closely. For one thing, “girl” (and “boy” too, for that matter) carries a sense of virginhood with it - not necessarily in the literal, sexual sense, but in the sense of being a person not yet fully initiated into the complexities of the adult world. There is a... well, not exactly an un-formed-ness... but perhaps a still-forming-ness... to the categories of girl and boy. A hint that the person referred to is still in a phase of life marked by ongoing processes of self-discovery and self-creation, of finding or making her/his place.
That’s certainly a pretty good description of where I stand right now.
“Girl” also carries a sense of physical (again, not necessarily sexual) immaturity - a happy memory of the largely undifferentiated body of childhood. I felt pretty much fine about my body up until puberty hit; flat-chested, straight-waisted, it could easily have been a boy’s, at least above the belt. (And, protected child that I was, I literally didn’t know, until I was already a teenager, that boys and girls were physically different under their pants - which is probably one reason why that particular aspect of body-disjunction doesn’t bother me nearly as much as certain other aspects do. Which is lucky for me, since female-to-male medical interventions in that area are none too highly developed, full of compromises, and not to be rushed into!)
But this adulthood thing...
Looking at the sort of limbo that I currently reside in - for instance, I’ve had many jobs but never settled into a career - well, part of me can’t help wondering whether I might have been actively resisting making those kinds of defining choices that are one of the marks of adulthood. I don’t think so... but I will admit that I mostly haven’t been actively pursuing them, either.
For most young people, the thought of being able to see oneself as an adult seems to be an important motivation, but for me it was a highly conflicted idea. (I didn’t even want to learn to drive - have you ever HEARD of a teenager who didn’t want to drive?)
While there were certainly multiple factors involved in that, the whole gender thing has definitely been one of them. I didn’t like what I was supposed to be becoming, and didn’t see how I could possibly become it. The model didn’t fit. It wasn’t me.
Now I’ve got the opportunity - in fact, the necessity - to go back and start again. Not quite from scratch, of course, but definitely from an earlier place. But how, exactly, does one do that?
It’s a hackneyed phrase that boys need men (and girls, women) to teach them how to be men (and women). I disagree with its use of this idea to push the concept of the “sacredness” of the one-man-one-wife nuclear family; I firmly believe (and the evidence shows) that many different kinds of families can be healthy and functional. Yet at the same time, I think there is some truth in the idea that we instinctively look for - and yes, even need - role models that we can identify closely with... and gender is a part of that.
Growing up fatherless, I was close to my grandfather, and always tried to get closer to my uncle. For me, there was simply a gravitational pull around them.
For the record: I consider myself profoundly lucky to be surrounded by open-minded, creative, caring, and deep-thinking UU men at this juncture. And serious appreciation goes to those of you who reach out to offer advice, answers, and the wisdom of your experience. Just by being who you are, you guys help me to find my way.
Of course, we humans also take in stories and images and ideas from all kinds of random places. I remember, in my young adulthood, being terribly, terribly drawn to Robert Bly’s “Iron John,” a classic book for and about men (and even officially subtitled as such). I knew it wasn’t supposed to be for or about ME, that in fact I wasn’t allowed (as emphasized by the author) to own any part of the mythos that it was exploring... but I felt such deep resonances in it, it was very hard not to do so. It may sound silly, but I think I wrestled with my internal sense of gender over that book probably more than over any other single experience in my life. I wish I’d had the cojones - or perhaps just the understanding and knowledge, and the supportive community - that I have now, back then, to own what I was feeling. Ah, but I was trying very hard to be a good little girl, and I put the book aside, along with all that it was trying so very hard to say to me.
What other stuff lurks in the back of my brain, telling me (potentially) how to be a man?
Well, literary and television images, for starters. What a rich and complex field! From Peter High King of Narnia to David “Lucky” Starr of the Council of Science. From Captain Pierce of the 4077th to Captain Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The A-Team and the Odd Couple. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly (yeah, even as a kid I loved swing music and old movies).
Then, too, there’s always Kipling, whose jungle tales I devoured as a kid and who, despite his unfortunate Imperialist bent, still ranks among my very favorite wordsmiths and storytellers. He certainly had some pretty clear views on the subject of manhood, and a strong hand at describing them. “If you can fill the unforgiving minute/ With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run/ You’ll own the earth and everything that’s in it - / And what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
Somehow, I’ve got to sort through all of this as a thinking adult... while going through a second puberty. Damn it, this really IS teenhood all over again - it comes with HOMEWORK!!! “Discuss, in 50 words or less: What are the realities of malehood, and what are the stereotypes? Are there parts of it that you will be unable to own, or will choose not to? How do you move into a new personal space and still remain the same person?”
I don’t know yet. It’s sort of an earn-while-you-learn proposition.
Expectations, assumptions, images, concepts and experiences both inside and outside the box... it’s going to take a while before I know what I can really claim as mine - what feels real for me out of this whole new universe of being.
But hey, one important thing I know. If society would like to give me permission to have hairy pits, I’m down with that. Totally.
It was terrific.
(As a side note: I’d really like to find that poem, so if anyone can identify it, please pass it on!)
That memory floats by as I ponder what it will be like to really own the word man.
You see, I don’t really consider myself a man - not yet. Male, certainly, yes, but not a man. And that has nothing to do with my body, appearance, or abilities... with anything I have or don’t have. It’s just that that word carries, for me, more and deeper connotations. So if someone were to actually ask me my gender (say, one of the kids I sometimes work with, since most adults would balk at asking such a straightforward question), I’d feel perfectly comfortable saying, “I’m a guy,” or “male,” or even “boy” - but not “man.”
(Yeah, I know, I’ve used the standard term “transman” in the title of this blog - but that’s more for clarity than for preference. If you friend me on Facebook - which you are welcome to do - you will find that my gender reads as “trans male.”)
For me, “man” and “woman” are both words that imply something beyond gender and/or sex. What they also carry is a sense of personal maturity and ownership of one’s life-path... of having slowly but surely grown into yourself and your identity.
And I have yet to do that.
When I was trying to live in the world of my assigned gender, I never once called myself a woman, and I had a tendency to cringe if someone else called me that. “Girl,” if necessary, okay. “Chick” if I was in a joking mood (precisely because it fit me so badly). “Female” was my term of choice when the need arose, and I much preferred the adjective to any possible noun. But of all the possible nouns, gah, please NOT woman! ("Lady" might have been even worse, but my personality was not such that many people attempted it. :::grin:::)
(I did eventually get used to hearing it, since one particular friend of mine has a penchant for accosting me with a shout of “Woman!” Since this friend and I have shared many a good laugh together, I finally told him that he - and only he - has special permission to continue to call me that... because, what the hell, it’ll only get funnier as time goes on and my transition progresses!)
I certainly never had any real interest in owning the term “woman.” It never felt even remotely right, and if I’d stayed in the closet, I’d have been a “girl” until the day I died. There was a sort of semi-acknowledged protest in not using the term: this was simply not the sense of being that I wished to grow into - or even felt that I could honestly grow into. (Of course, I could fake it, to a certain extent, and indeed, had spent much of my life learning to... but that’s a different story.)
There are so many under-the-radar aspects to these words that it’s worth looking at them more closely. For one thing, “girl” (and “boy” too, for that matter) carries a sense of virginhood with it - not necessarily in the literal, sexual sense, but in the sense of being a person not yet fully initiated into the complexities of the adult world. There is a... well, not exactly an un-formed-ness... but perhaps a still-forming-ness... to the categories of girl and boy. A hint that the person referred to is still in a phase of life marked by ongoing processes of self-discovery and self-creation, of finding or making her/his place.
That’s certainly a pretty good description of where I stand right now.
“Girl” also carries a sense of physical (again, not necessarily sexual) immaturity - a happy memory of the largely undifferentiated body of childhood. I felt pretty much fine about my body up until puberty hit; flat-chested, straight-waisted, it could easily have been a boy’s, at least above the belt. (And, protected child that I was, I literally didn’t know, until I was already a teenager, that boys and girls were physically different under their pants - which is probably one reason why that particular aspect of body-disjunction doesn’t bother me nearly as much as certain other aspects do. Which is lucky for me, since female-to-male medical interventions in that area are none too highly developed, full of compromises, and not to be rushed into!)
But this adulthood thing...
Looking at the sort of limbo that I currently reside in - for instance, I’ve had many jobs but never settled into a career - well, part of me can’t help wondering whether I might have been actively resisting making those kinds of defining choices that are one of the marks of adulthood. I don’t think so... but I will admit that I mostly haven’t been actively pursuing them, either.
For most young people, the thought of being able to see oneself as an adult seems to be an important motivation, but for me it was a highly conflicted idea. (I didn’t even want to learn to drive - have you ever HEARD of a teenager who didn’t want to drive?)
While there were certainly multiple factors involved in that, the whole gender thing has definitely been one of them. I didn’t like what I was supposed to be becoming, and didn’t see how I could possibly become it. The model didn’t fit. It wasn’t me.
Now I’ve got the opportunity - in fact, the necessity - to go back and start again. Not quite from scratch, of course, but definitely from an earlier place. But how, exactly, does one do that?
It’s a hackneyed phrase that boys need men (and girls, women) to teach them how to be men (and women). I disagree with its use of this idea to push the concept of the “sacredness” of the one-man-one-wife nuclear family; I firmly believe (and the evidence shows) that many different kinds of families can be healthy and functional. Yet at the same time, I think there is some truth in the idea that we instinctively look for - and yes, even need - role models that we can identify closely with... and gender is a part of that.
Growing up fatherless, I was close to my grandfather, and always tried to get closer to my uncle. For me, there was simply a gravitational pull around them.
For the record: I consider myself profoundly lucky to be surrounded by open-minded, creative, caring, and deep-thinking UU men at this juncture. And serious appreciation goes to those of you who reach out to offer advice, answers, and the wisdom of your experience. Just by being who you are, you guys help me to find my way.
Of course, we humans also take in stories and images and ideas from all kinds of random places. I remember, in my young adulthood, being terribly, terribly drawn to Robert Bly’s “Iron John,” a classic book for and about men (and even officially subtitled as such). I knew it wasn’t supposed to be for or about ME, that in fact I wasn’t allowed (as emphasized by the author) to own any part of the mythos that it was exploring... but I felt such deep resonances in it, it was very hard not to do so. It may sound silly, but I think I wrestled with my internal sense of gender over that book probably more than over any other single experience in my life. I wish I’d had the cojones - or perhaps just the understanding and knowledge, and the supportive community - that I have now, back then, to own what I was feeling. Ah, but I was trying very hard to be a good little girl, and I put the book aside, along with all that it was trying so very hard to say to me.
What other stuff lurks in the back of my brain, telling me (potentially) how to be a man?
Well, literary and television images, for starters. What a rich and complex field! From Peter High King of Narnia to David “Lucky” Starr of the Council of Science. From Captain Pierce of the 4077th to Captain Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The A-Team and the Odd Couple. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly (yeah, even as a kid I loved swing music and old movies).
Then, too, there’s always Kipling, whose jungle tales I devoured as a kid and who, despite his unfortunate Imperialist bent, still ranks among my very favorite wordsmiths and storytellers. He certainly had some pretty clear views on the subject of manhood, and a strong hand at describing them. “If you can fill the unforgiving minute/ With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run/ You’ll own the earth and everything that’s in it - / And what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
Somehow, I’ve got to sort through all of this as a thinking adult... while going through a second puberty. Damn it, this really IS teenhood all over again - it comes with HOMEWORK!!! “Discuss, in 50 words or less: What are the realities of malehood, and what are the stereotypes? Are there parts of it that you will be unable to own, or will choose not to? How do you move into a new personal space and still remain the same person?”
I don’t know yet. It’s sort of an earn-while-you-learn proposition.
Expectations, assumptions, images, concepts and experiences both inside and outside the box... it’s going to take a while before I know what I can really claim as mine - what feels real for me out of this whole new universe of being.
But hey, one important thing I know. If society would like to give me permission to have hairy pits, I’m down with that. Totally.
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