Sunday, August 22, 2010

Why I Prefer "He"

I have consciously wrestled with gender pronouns, and what my gender means to me for approximately 8 years now. Unconsciously, I've been wrestling with my gender since I was able to form memories and learn difference.

Upon coming "out" in 2003, after moving downtown from the repressive bible belt, conservative, straight, middle and working class suburb I grew up in, it took me a good year to finally express my masculinity to the degree I had been longing to my entire life.

As a child, from age 8 onwards, I had wrestled with the desire to cut my hair short and spikey, or shaved altogether. During summers, before and after school, I remember preferring army pants, boots, cowboy hats, baseball caps, boy's leather jackets, t's and jeans. My role models were WWF wrestlers, The Fonz, Knight Rider, The Dukes of Hazard, The Greatest American Hero, He-Man, The Road Warrior, and Conan.

I would fashion wrestling belts out of cardboard cutouts I would design to replica size, then fasten to existing belts in my wardrobe, to carry around on my shoulder, or wear on my waste as I watched my weekend episodes of men in tights, barely wrestling with each other. I would haul my body size pillow from my bedroom to use as my opponent, set him in the middle of the living room floor, and when it came time for Macho Man Randy Savage to take the top ropes with his signature flying elbow drop, I would set the kitchen chair on the edge of the dining room, rise steadily with my fingers pointing towards the sky, and launch down onto my opponent to pin him.

I obsessed about wrestling so much, I found my mother's 3lb purple plastic dumbells and started 'lifting' them in some fashion of a workout. I knew the guys on tv got their bulging biceps from lifting weights, and I was determined to have the same rippling build. Around this time, I had also discovered the Mr. Universe contest, with Arnold taking center stage. I was mesmerized. I knew I could have the same strength and size as those mammoth, awe-inducing statues on the television.

I also found my dad's tension stick - that weird metal coiled device with grips on either end that I saw Hulk Hogan flexing on every interview he did on talk shows. Although I couldn't budge the thing, I knew if I tried long enough I would eventually be able to do it. As I outgrew my mother's weights before I even picked them up, I begged my dad for a set of weights. I was roughly 10 years old, and we went to Zellers, and he purchased me two 10lb weights. When we got home, he took a spare wooden pole we had lying around, sawed off the end, and wedged the cement filled weights with a couple of nails deep into the wood so they wouldn't fall off. Over the next few years, I studied guys working out in movies and tv shows and mimicked their push ups, squats, shoulder press, bicep curls, and bench press. I got so strong I could do 12 chin ups on the playground monkey bars. More than any guys in my grade.

I also started challenging my male classmates to arm wrestling, winning 80% of the matches on a regular basis, and sending the boys into a flurry of "dyke" outcries. Every win would bring a smile to my lips no slurs could erase.

The very first time I went ahead and cut my hair short, I was horrified. My long silky locks which signified tomboy, were now replaced with true maleness. I was unrecognizable as a girl. I remember being on a rare family trip and waiting for our flight in the airport, sitting on a chair, when a little girl the same age as me, spotted me and saddled up to me. I didn't realize what was happening until she started flirting with me and told me I was cute. She wanted me to pretend to be her husband. I felt so sheepish because I knew she thought I was a boy, and it was the very first interaction I had passing. I had a secret to hide. We were both 8.

During the school year, I kept my hair long because I knew I had to fit in. In kindergarten, I remember watching the cutest boy and girl in the school chasing each other around the playground, and feeling this pang of sorrow that I did not fit into that equation. I didn't know where I fit in. But, I knew in order to have a less problematic existence, I needed to keep my hair long to balance out my boyishness, or I would travel from mildly threatening, to downright disgusting with the buzz of a clipper.

Aside from one last summer before grade 7 of short haired freedom, I kept my long locks until the year after I came out - at 23. When I did finally grasp the scissors and take a swath of my thick, wavy, shoulder length layered Jennifer Aniston cut in my hand to snip off my pony tail, I was relieved that my look didn't entirely change. I was still recognizable as me. But, it was only a step on the ladder to freedom. I took those scissors and started paring down the remaining 6 inches in chunks, so that I could work the clippers I had been waiting a decade for. When it came right down to it, I buzzed my scalp clean. I studied myself in the mirror. I discovered that I did not, in fact, look hideous. The shape of my head was not so different with millimeter hairs than, mane pulled back into pony tail. Only, the added openness of my face and the appearance of soft stubble shifted my presentation to squarely androgynous.

And, I liked it.

I felt embodied in a way I had longed for my entire life. Satisfied with my transition, over the course of the next several months I began weeding out my wardrobe. All girls clothing was eventually replaced by men's button up long sleeved shirts, and jeans. I was living within myself in a way that felt like home, and a long time coming.

This sensation was amazing, and lasted for about a year. I changed my hair style regularly and tried shaving different lengths and styles whenever it was time for a cut. Around this time, I started to get asked the question at work (a resource centre) "Are you a man, or a woman?" or "Are you trying to be a man" on a daily basis. Each time, I entertained the question with discomfort and a feeling of being stripped down. Why did it even matter? The questions, then graduated to several times per day. I felt like I could not move throughout the centre without being stopped at some point and having to defend my gender presentation for someone else's sense of ease and comfort. "You are a girl, right?" "Why are you trying to look like a man?"

Several years have passed since the early days of my "transition". I have wrestled with the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman, on a daily basis in a conscious way for the last 8 years. I have agonized over where I fit into this, and why it is that the state that I feel most comfortable and at home in my body, is so threatening to others when I move about the world. I have come to realize that my being is complex, and doesn't fall neatly into the gender binary.

One of the reasons I prefer "He" or neutral pronouns such as "They" is very simple. All my life I have fought with society and myself to comfortably express my masculinity. When people are discomfitted, they default to assigning you into the gender binary box. Because I challenge their notion of what it is to *be* in this world, I must be forced into the category of "lady," "girl," "Ms." Yet, I am none of these. I am me. My maleness/masculinity is not invisible - it is very clear. By asking folks to change the pronoun they use with me to masculine, I make them start over from scratch in their assumptions about me. I reclaim me, and I disrupt the process of them naming me. Of boxing me in.

I am very aware of who and what I am, and forcing people to use male pronouns with me also forces them to recognize, acknowledge and respect my masculinity. It complicates their understanding of me, and it complicates their understanding of what it means to be male or female. If I passed as male more than 50% of the time, I might take a different stance in order to disrupt the assumptions made about me, but I do not. Ninety percent of the time I am addressed in the feminine. I am not seen for whom I am, and my maleness is disregarded. I become erased.

Therefore, I choose "He."

Friday, August 20, 2010

Insecurity Inherent to Masculinity

So, I've been thinking a lot lately on how masculinity can be a precarious identity to hold.


Obviously there is no master masculine identity, but what comes to mind in analyzing the insecurity of masculinity is the way in which white, male, capitalist, patriarchal masculinity (WMPCC) views itself, how it holds power, why it favors misogyny, and how it perpetuates certain ways of being, functioning, expressing gender via dress and behaviour, and functioning within gender roles.


My argument is essentially this: a white, male, cissexual, patriarchal, capitalist/colonialist masculinist gender expression has been constructed by such males as all powerful, all knowing, and all deserving. Masculinity, in this context, is dependent not on qualities inherent within a WMPCC position, or personhood per se. It is entirely dependent for its own sense of identity on the power structures it upholds.


In this sense, what makes WMPCC subjects masculine depends on how dominance is achieved in terms of heterosexual relationships, work relationships/status, household hierarchy, status as provider, decision maker, disciplinarian/authority figure, person in charge, opposite gender qualities in relation to cissexual heterosexual femaleness, phallocentrism and the denial of masculinity in those assigned female at birth, degradation of queerness and trans identities, and self assigned status of seed provider. All of these locations by nature, are defined by what masculinity is NOT. Essentially, masculine men are NOT soft like women. Masculine men are not fags because gayness is constructed as weakness and associated with femaleness/feminity. To be gay is equated with penetration, and since cissexual straight white males have penises, they should be doing the penetration, the baby making, the fucking, the dominating.... anything less is to be servile and subscribe to the role of femaleness and feminity (as constructed by them).


Masculine white cissexual men are masculine because they are men. They are masculine because they are NOT women. They are masculine because they do NOT give birth. They are masculine because they are far removed from their xx chromosomal progenesis and do NOT have fear of annihilation via a return to the womb where they were created and protected until their difference formed.



Are you starting to see why masculinity is such an insecure expression to hold - even for WMPCC? Any physiological attribute, manner of expression, behaviour, way of dress which has been constructed as male and inherently masculine does not by virtue determine maleness/masculinity. Or maybe it does. And this is the problem.

Hair, presence or absence of reproductive organs, musculature, bone structure, weight, mass, chromosomes, voice... none of these characteristics singularly or in combination can distinguish cissexual men from other men (trans/masculine), and at times from women. On the other hand, one's social location and position, the various social roles one inhabits can reveal a lot more about how one fits or is excluded by a patriarchal masculinist power structure. When white cissexual hetero men (and women and others) react to other men, or masculine subjects with degradation and invalidation, they are acting to uphold the power structure which places their white maleness at the top. Their insecurity is a product of the precarious position of dominance which they uphold and which is confused with their maleness and masculinity.

In order to maintain the power structure which WMPCC benefit from, all non-WMPCC men (including men of colour, esp. black men) must be reminded they are less than men. They must be kept in check, subverted, made to think and feel they are not men. They must become convinced their maleness is less than, and that in order to achieve power in society they must emulate white hetero male masculinity - even if they will never have access to the power and privilege such a position bestows.

To the extent that maleness and masculinity are validated in subjects other than WMPCC, the prevailing power structure is being rerouted. It is being subverted. The foundation for 'maleness' is being reconstructed, and 'manhood' eroded. If I were a white hetero cissexual male with no inherent claim to masculinity besides power and privilege... the threat of annihilation via other masculine subjects would make me feel a little insecure too.