Posts Tagged ‘masculinity’

At the bank, a woman walked past me.  Correction, a man walked past me, wait, no I think it was a woman.  On closer inspection, I’m no longer sure. It was one of those moments, when my brain was scrambling to process the input it was receiving.  The visual input was so confusing, that my brain and I could not decipher it.

This individual was dressed in rugged jeans and a tunic-length sweater, coiffed with a modernized Mohawk, grown long and swooping over one side of a shaved head, providing one of those come hither curls which seductively obscures one eye.  The body was lithe and feminine, the face whiskered, his or her fine leather handbag? man purse? was the epitome of good taste rendered from top-grain leather.

I wasn’t sure if I was seeing a woman who was embracing manhood, or a man who had turned his back on it.  He or she seemed to be hovering in the nether-land between the gender they were born and the one they preferred.  Gender stuff isn’t always so confusing, but even among those who have settled comfortably into a traditional role, it sometimes is.  For most of my life, the roles of the sexes have been evolving..  The movement to expand opportunities for women, has caused the roles of both genders to become more elastic.    Women are now able to compete with men in most every field, and men are no longer diminished by choosing careers once held only by women.

Only a few decades ago, home was the “proper” place for women and difficult situations had to wait until father came home.  Back then jobs that were dangerous, outdoors or dirty were mostly considered to be “men’s work” and self-respecting chauvinists would sooner change jobs than work for a woman.

Feminism was about redefining women, but in the process, it also served to redefine the role of males.  As women become more used to calling the shots in the workplace, they wanted more control at home.  The traditional roles of men and women were becoming more alike. In an effort to equalize apples and oranges, apples were required to develop thicker skins and more fiber, while experiments were conducted to see if oranges could be turned into applesauce.

That’s my take, but in fact, there are currently some who wish to eliminate gender classification completely.  They suggest gender is too limiting, because we all possess a combination of male and female traits, with some leaning more heavily one way or the other.  That makes sense, after there are all kinds of  women and men.   According to this reasoning, we all fall somewhere on a broad continuum between male and female.  I’d probably be classified as a female with male traits–or what we used to we used to call “tomboy” because somewhere between girls who live to crochet tea cozies and female bounty hunters are plenty of feminine women who aren’t intimidated by auto-mechanics or power tools.

Another popular notion that it is our society, not our biology which causes us to be masculinized or feminized.  I read recently of two families who have refused to disclose their child’s gender, so that the children could be  self-defining.  Another group says more gender classifications are needed because male and female are too limiting.  Ironically, these labels make no allowances for the transgendered, because it is assumed they will choose one of the two existing labels.

In the ongoing war between the sexes, it’s impossible to know who is winning.  Sun Tzu’s art of war suggests we must know our enemy, but is the enemy still the enemy when they begin switching sides?  The next edition of de blog will be devoted to the current condition of the endangered American male.  Stay tuned.