Masculinity

This is a response to Scoot's post, Was Everyone Just a Bit Gayer Then?", at CabanaBoyScoot -- go read it first.

This post is somewhat tangential to Scoot's, but I think it's not, really. This whole discussion is really tied up with the American conception of masculinity. It's more than a little ironic, to start, that in traditional American families (which still make up the majority in terms of attitudes), women taught boys to be men because successful fathers, by that standard, were never around -- they were off at work, supporting the family. Tied to this is the phenomenon characteristic of American society of "real male dominance." An offshoot of the European model of "mythical male dominance," in which men were the titular authorities but women had strong and definite influence, in America men really were the authority, largely, I think, as a result of our history as a frontier nation.

Consequently, we wind up with the singular American idea of "masculinity": a real man is emotionally self-contained, competent, authoritative, undemonstrative, and thoroughly heterosexual -- for this last, until the past couple of generations, there was no real alternative for masculine men.

Scoot notes in his update the context of locker rooms, group showers, and sex-segregated swimming and gym classes (which I remember well). There is one thing that he doesn't mention, which is, I think, the telling detail: you didn't look at other men's bodies. Ever. Yes, there was a certain comfort level there, men and boys being nude in a group (as well as a lot of surreptitious glances) but I think the key factor in the changing attitude, as witnessed by the facilities in modern gyms, has much more to do with concepts of personal privacy than any rise in the degree of discomfort due to the increased visibility (and acceptance) of gay men. Cruising is still a no-no (at least in "straight" gyms), and even noticing each other is a social faux pas of a fairly high order, but it's one well established in tradition. If you looked, back then, you were a "homo," and while most of us didn't have a clear idea of what that meant, even in high school, we knew enough to know you didn't want to be one.

I think one only has to spend some time at a nude beach to see that the comfort level is still there for many people, but the same behavioral requirements apply. It is, of course, a different story at gay beaches. (Although for anyone raised traditionally, allowing one's self to look at other men, particularly eye contact and particularly if they are nude, is still a problem.)

There is also the traditional proscription against public nudity, which, in the fluid way that these things are interpreted on a day-to-day basis, came to mean nudity outside of same-sex environments. America, like any other nation, goes through periods of openness and repression -- a gay pride parade in the 1980s, for example, was a lot worse, from the conservative Christian point of view, than a gay pride parade now, and this is a group that one might expect to be much more relaxed about things like nudity.

As regards Deux's putative reaction about the feminization of education, I'm not so sure: masculinity in this country, particularly, is a mess, going back to that traditional standard of the remote, uninflected male. My own feeling is that it's built on false premises which are finally showing cracks in the foundation. (See the bit above about "real male dominance.") "Maculinity" was the kind of edifice that could stand as long as it was unquestioned. As soon as anyone says "wait a minute," the whole thing starts to come down, and we have no internal models to take its place.

It's become a defensive sort of structure. Call it an incomplete social transition: pre-Stonewall, just to pick a not-so-arbitrary cutoff point, traditional masculinity allowed for friendships between men, which, while not overtly as rich as those that feminists now demand, contained a great deal of subtext on mutual emotional involvement and support. (Traditional men, after all, were not overt creatures.) Younger men could get away with more overt behavior and demonstrations of affection because they were, after all, young -- beta males, at best, and so less was expected of them in terms of adopting the authority of the mature male. Now, of course, expressions of affection are open to gross misinterpretation and there is the fact that, while many people are, publicly at least, willing to accept gays, there is still a great deal of fear among men of being thought gay because there is still a perception that gay men are not "real men," no matter our adoption of the traditional stereotype. (Another irony: I've discovered that the less I concern myself with my own masculinity, the more masculine I am perceived to be.)

Another factor: men and intimacy. It's still a problem for most men, and "social nudity" places a strain on our ability to deal with it because of the gay thing. Men are perfectly capable of being intimate without a sexual overtone, but -- and here I will certainly grant a putative point to a putative response by Deux -- the feminist interpretation of intimacy has taken over, so that if you're not intimate in the way that feminism demands, you're not intimate. (Yes, in certain areas men and women do inhabit different universes and simply cannot comprehend each other. Let it rest.)

Scoot asks: "Have contemporary straight men become so obsessed with the thought that they might be perceived as gay by the mere glance at another man that society has changed this abruptly and this puritanically?" No. First off, society hasn't changed that much. The emphasis is slightly different, but the elements are pretty much the same. As I noted above, ideas of personal privacy coupled with an incomplete transition to the acceptance of gay men is tied in with the insistence that intimacy between men must contain a sexual component (two thoughts on this: on the one hand, it's a capitulation to the idea that nudity is by definition sexual -- thanks tons, Sigmund, for the death of innocence -- and secondly, so what? We're grown-ups here, we can deal with it -- except, of course, that we're not, yet.). Our culture is increasingly sexualized (another incomplete transition, since we still can't deal with it all that comfortably), and the lack of foundation for a new definition of masculinity in the context of another period of increasing repression (which seems to be a losing battle, at this point -- in earlier periods, the forces of virtue didn't have to deal with mass advertising techniques), I think are all contributing factors to what Scoot perceives as obsession.

We're an obsessive society. Just look around you. I don't think, however, that we've forgotten how to be men. We're just casting around for a new definition.