On Manhood

In the corner of the blogosphere where I generally hang out, there has been a lot of talk lately about what it means to be a real man. I think it's great that people are willing to ask this question, but my concern is that my friends who have been saying the most about it are women. For fear of being only a bandwagon blogger, I have decided to submit some of my half-formed thoughts to the conversation.

The question of what it means to be a real man is one that has hung over me for a number of years now. The first time I remember thinking deeply about this was my freshman year of high school, though I'm sure it had entered into my thoughts in some capacity before this. For a number of years in high school, I would eat lunch in the cafeteria with some friends, then go and sit in the hall by myself to study for Bible Quizzing. Eventually other people would trickle out as well and the hall filled up. One of these times, there was a group of jocks sitting opposite me. I'm not generally one to support stereotypes, but a couple of these guys embodied all that is cliche of the adolescent jock. Somehow the topic of masturbation came up. I mentioned that I had never masturbated, and I was met with blank stares. A fellow with a quick wit took it upon himself to inform me: "90 percent of men masturbate, and the other ten percent are liars."

This guy was an idiot. Deep down, I probably knew it back then, and I certainly figured it out in the following years. That doesn't mean that his words didn't affect me. I may not have gone out and masturbated that night or anything so shallow as that, but for the first time in my life, I questioned my masculinity.

It wasn't until a few years later that I found out some of these same guys used to ask one of my best friends if I was gay. This was an incredibly unsettling revelation. It is worth mentioning that this was a very conservative community where "gay" was always used in a pejorative sense. What is more, this was at a time in my life before I emerged from my own sheltered, innocent conservativism (not that I am a flaming liberal now--I've always been more inclined to be a moderate) and references to homosexuality gave me a reflexive feeling of discomfort.

What was most upsetting about this was that it completely knocked the legs out from beneath the past I thought I knew. I had been pretty secure in my masculinity, not really questioning it much, but I found myself looking back into my memories for what it could have been that gave them the notion that I was gay. Was it because I never had a girlfriend while I was in high school? Was it because I wasn't on an athletic team? Was it because of my theatre involvement or other "artsy" pursuits? Was it because of my reticence? What was it in me that was deficient? What gave them the impression that I was less of a man?

I suppose the fact that I thought being gay meant being less of a man says something about my own outlook on homosexuals back then, but I know that is how they would have meant it. Clearly, this bothered me. I would not be telling this story if it didn't. It wasn't something I thought about constantly; instead it loomed in the back of my mind, nagging and haunting me while I wasn't even aware of it.

Had it not been for my faith in Christ, I really don't know how deeply this would have affected me. As it was, my naivete and untested notions of masculinity were challenged, and I had to fall back on the promises of Scripture. I am a child of God, loved and created uniquely by him. I love him. He was faithful to me in that time, and I have become more confident since then.

It wasn't until after my freshman year of high school that I found the answer to this contentious question: what is a real man? I was working for Bethel's summer team, which consisted of working as counsellors at a lot of different camps. One of these camps had separate guy/girl sessions to talk about fun issues like sexuality. It was during one of these sessions that a camp leader gave the definition I have come to claim for myself: a real man has a penis.

It was a revelation. It was the utterance of the idea that had been forming in my mind ever since I became aware that I failed to measure up to some standard of masculinity. Manhood isn't some list of ill-defined qualities. It means being a man, having an Y chromosome, having a penis. It may seem a rather crass and oversimplified definition, especially compared to the lengths my eloquent friend Barbara went to in attempting to define "a real man."

Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize, or if they realize it, don't mention: there is tremendous societal pressure on men. A great deal has been said in the last century and longer about the pressure on women to conform to the feminine ideal in the various forms that it has taken. However, owing to the fact that men have almost universally been the oppressors for all of history, there has been much less discussion regarding the constrictions inherent in the masculine ideal.

This pressure comes from both men and women. Men are expected to be strong, to love sports, to be logical, to have a good body (women are not the only ones with image issues or eating disorders), to be a family man, to be virile, to have deep voice and beards, to be mechanically inclined, to never cry, and let's not forget: to be attracted to women. There are even some senses in which men are expected to be jerks, to be insensitive, to be stupid, to be crude, to be unfaithful, and to be in a constant state of lusting and acting on lusts. I hate this pressure. What do those things have to be with being a man? They are all social constructs--categories we created to order our world whether anyone fit into them or not. Now, I'm not clear on what biological differences are actually present in the brain chemistry and hormones of males and females, but the only distinct feature I really see in being a man is having a penis. Can't that be enough? Why do I have to fit into society's mould?

My friend Barbara stumbled upon a list of traits that men should posses according to the website askmen.com. I must be honest and say that this list really bothered me, somewhat due to reasons already mentioned. Some of them are just ridiculous like: "A real man does not look like a woman." Says who? What's so bad about being androgynous? That's just basic genetics. I got a gene that allows me to grow a full ruddy beard, but one of my housemates got a gene that leaves almost his entire face free from stubbly growth. Which of us is more of a man? The foreman of the wood shop I work at has a ponytail halfway down his back. Apparently, this means he is not manly, even though he is a professional carpenter and plays in a rock band--two very stereotypically masculine things. And I dare anyone to tell a male swimmer who shaves his legs that he is not a real man. Swimmers are among the most physically fit athletes you will meet, and I would hate to have one upset with me.

That is the most ridiculous point of the list. The issue I take with the list as a whole is that most of the traits mentioned are qualities of a good human. Strength, focus, valuing family, avoiding gossip, keeping their word, being a role model, keeping your house in order, and defending yourself: these are some of the characteristics ascribed to a real man, but if you ask me, these are all gender non-specific traits. They are just as valuable in women as they are in men. Shouldn't we all strive to achieve such attributes? (The list also mentioned that a real man "makes his own fortune", but I did not include that here because I think that pursuing a fortune is frivolous and acquiring it on your own is both unlikely and unnecessarily stressful.

What both Barbara and our mutual friend Alysha delved into the last item on the above list: defending themselves and those around them, and with this they also drifted into discussing how men should take on challenges and lead. I thought Alysha had some beautiful things to say about defense, particularly her distinction of "when a man defends a woman he offers her his strength." She states it all very well, and you should read it. What bothered me is that I believe that women are just as capable of defending each other and men as well. Perhaps in a pre-industrial culture when men's natural advantage in physical strength was more important, men were much more likely to protect women, but that is not always the case anymore. Even then, if you take Alysha's definition of "offering strength," there are many different kinds of strength and I believe that women and men are equally likely to have them all. I don't know that you can say that the role of the defender is an inherently male role.

Furthermore, while I agree with the notion that more men need to accept challenges, to rise up and lead, I think it needs to be stressed that this fact is no more exclusively about males than defending yourself and others was. All my life I have heard doctrine spouting the idea that men are superior, that they are to be the leaders in politics, in the church, and in the home, and women must merely follow. Frankly, I don't think that is true. It is not like the God I know to create second-class humans. I believe that men and women were equal before the fall, and a God of redemption desires to restore us to that perfection and all that it entails. But I digress. What I am trying to say is that women are leaders too, and in addition to this, not all men are leaders. Neither are all women leaders. There must be some people to follow all of the leaders in the world. Certainly, everyone needs to be willing to face the challenges in their life--that is how we grow and change and learn--but that does not mean we are all leaders.

My sophomore year of college, I had the privilege to act in a scene for my friend Carrie, who was taking a course in Directing II at the time (strange to think that I am now currently enrolled in that class). The assignment was to direct a mimed piece set to music. In Carrie's scene, I portrayed God revealing his creation to two angels, culminating in the creation of humans who were endowed with the ability to create for themselves. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had as an actor and the audience responded to it very well. After the scenes were finished, my then room-mate complimented my scene and told me that he thought I did a good job of portraying a masculine appreciation of beauty. I accepted the compliment, but the more I thought about it, the more upset I became about the way he chose to phrase it. It was almost as if he soiled something that had been precious to me. I was suddenly forced to ask myself why appreciating beauty had to be something that was masculine or feminine. Was it rare among men to appreciate beauty, and that was why he was complimenting me? Was there something different about me since I could appreciate beauty?

Those who know me well know my tendency to overanalyze things, and this is probably a situation where I did just that. Not too long ago, I was talking with my friend Carl about questions of gender, and I told him that story. He asked me why my room-mate's statement bothered me since, after all, I am a male, and everything I do is therefore masculine in a sense. His question challenged me a lot. I think that I had felt imprisoned and alienated by gender, like I was a white lab rat with a malignant tumor. I just wanted to be me without having to worry about how masculine or feminine I might be. If I am comfortable and secure in who I am, isn't that enough? Carl's simple question was good for me. Since then, I have come to the understanding of gender as something that is unavoidable. There are some obvious biological differences between men and women and probably some subtler ones as well, and the way in which a culture responds to these differences, no matter what that looks like, will be gender. But I still fight against men and women being limited by it.

And I still hold the definition that a real man has a penis. That is all it takes. I refuse to conform to someone else's notion of what a "real man" is. Instead, I am going to put my energy into being a real person--in the sense that God is the only thing that is real ("What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal"), so I will try to be like God. I don't care whether or not I look like a woman or whether I make my own fortune. The traits I aspire to are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.