Teaching boys what it really means to be a man

Benson Saulo (hat) and friend Hunter Johnson. He started a new educational session that reframed what it means to be masculine. Teaching agains violence and macho/ego identities. Pic Simon Schluter 22 May 2015.

An interesting article about teaching teenagers to be better men.  What really disturbed me was the terrifying data about how many young men die via suicide.

Benson Saulo recalls the day his best friend wound up behind bars.

Drunk on a night out in Sydney's CBD, his friend got into a fight with a bouncer. Before long, the towering former rugby player broke the bouncer's neck, rendering him disabled for life.

"I asked him why he did it when he got out, and he said he felt he had no choice. All his life he was never able to back away, he never learnt how to step back and assess a situation," Mr Saulo said.

Many of Mr Saulo's friends from home, a rough part of Tamworth in New South Wales, endured what he described as a damaging cycle. They learnt early their value was measured by toughness. Starved of basic tools to put emotions into words, they resorted to rugby, violence and women, to find expression.

Mr Saulo said a mission to lower the rates of male suicide - the biggest killer of men under 25 - and to end domestic violence, was driving their initiative.

• Men are three and a half times more likely to kill themselves than women.
• Suicide accounts for one fifth of all male deaths between 15 and 34.  And that excludes many single-driver car accidents which experts suspect are hidden suicides
• Some other top five causes of deaths among 15-24 year olds: land transport accidents (i.e., macho driving, hidden suicides) and assault (too macho to back off).

Our hyper-masculine maleness is extraordinarily dangerous and damaging. But we homos always knew that, right?

Backpacker beauty

A real man

You know, my whole life has been defined by being gay-shaded, by the judgements and hatred of others. As a small boy, a young teen, a young man, a middle-aged man, and now, I have called been "queer", "a homo", " a moffie", "camp", "queeny", "effeminate", "girly", "perverted", "unnatural".  I have been despised and beaten up.  I have been ignored and excluded.  When I came out to straight friends, I suddenly and mysteriously got the cold shoulder.  How bizarre!  All the other things they liked about me weren't enough to tip the scales when they discovered I was gay.  I became persona non grata.  An untermensch.  A nothing.

I have never been good enough for the straights,  Judged always.  Never mind about the rest of me: whether I was kind or not; generous or not; honest; decent; loving; intelligent or stupid; well-read or ignorant.  None of those things mattered.  Only my gayness mattered.  Only that I wasn't "a real man", I wasn't "manly".  Let's judge people by just one of their characteristics, shall we?  Because all the other things don't count, right?  I am what I am.  I was fucking born this way, OK?

I have come to realise that my allergies, my joint aches and pains, my overeating and overdrinking, my depressions, even how much money I have now -- these have all been heavily influenced and driven by others' rancid and judgemental perceptions of me.  I am so fucking BORED with it.  Jesus tap-dancing Christ, why can't I just be me, without all this fucking baggage? My illness, my body, my mind, my soul. Driven to the state I am now in, with dodgy health, depression, poor finances.  By these pieces of dogshit.  By judgemental, obscurantist, narrow-minded, hate-filled bigots.  "Hate the sin not the sinner."  Yeah, right.  "Judge not lest ye be judged."  Oh, but we do it with love.  So that's all right, then.

And their fellow travellers.  As in a racially stratified society, where the less black consider themselves better than the ebony, and the whites look down on all, so bisexual men and straight-acting men, and the macho pretend-straights and those able to "pass" look down on people like me.  They're not "swish".  They're real men. Isn't that nice?  And when they despise us, it's only natural and to be expected.   Of course it is.  Because the "natural order" is that real men and real women are the only worthwhile humans beings around, and even though they take it up the bum, they act straight.  So it's OK.  They're not really gay, are they?  

I know I'm angry.  And bitter.  And resentful.  Tough.  The only healthy way to react to subtle and overt negative cues and discrimination from society and their unquestioned values which make me worthless and a nothing, is to fight back; to expose the ChrisTaliban and their loathsome lies; to call out gay friends who are uncomfortable with queeny men and manly women; to remind people that it's the whole person which matters.  And to tell myself every day:  I'm worthwhile; I'm lovable; I'm good; I'm a real person.  Even if I shall never be a real man.  

Majorca Flats -- 249

“G'day, mate. Thank you for ...”

“... no worries, mate.”

Obviously a real man, thought Luigi. No wasted chatter.

“What's your address, mate?” he asked, matching tone and diction. “I'll come and pick Cody up.”

The other man gave his address while Luigi looked around Keith's sitting-room for paper and a pencil. “Hang on a tick! Just looking for a pencil … Right, what was it again? And what's your name mate? Michael? Good, Michael. I'm Luigi. Mate, thanks again for helping Cody.”

At the other end of the line, Michael clearly had several questions he wanted to ask but couldn't work out how.

“We'll talk when I get there, Michael. See you in 45 minutes.”

When Michael asked whether he wanted to talk to Cody again, Luigi shook his head, forgetting that Michael couldn't see that. So Michael asked again.

“Yes,” said Luigi.

“Lou?” Cody was tentative. Luigi could hear the strain in his voice, and he felt his heart wrench. Once he'd loved this man more than anyone he'd ever loved, in all his life. And that someone'd proved to be … flawed. Did he still love him? Yes, blast his eyes, he did.

“Coad … I'll see you in three quarters of an hour. Take care …” and then, hesitating, instead of “love”, he ended with “mate”.

“Yeah,” Cody replied, his voice full of doubt and hurt.

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Episodes 1 to 220 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Majorca Flats -- 125

“After he'd left, I realised I was wrong. And I was too fucking proud to go back to him and say I'd changed my mind. All I could think was that my parents and friends had been right. He was a chav, he didn't know about money, he was a thief and a liar and a hypocrite. Shit! I, with all that money, I sat in judgement on him, when it was my friends and my family which had helped drive him to what he did.” Jason put his head in his hands and again there was a long silence.

“What happened?” asked Keith at last.

“He killed himself the day after, after the police came to charge him. “

Jason finished what was left in his glass and put it back on the table, gently, in complete contrast to the harsh bitterness and self-disgust in his speech. “I found him in his flat, shot, blood and brains sprayed over the wall. He left a note for me. He didn’t blame me, that's the worst. He blamed only himself. He said … he said that he loved me. That I should ...” Jason faltered, “Oh God! … that I should find someone else. That … that ...” But Jason was quite unable to continue he was sobbing so hard.

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Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 500           

Deep Secrets

It's a staple of all the conversations we have, gay men and straight women, that straight men are emotional pygmies, that they don't want intimate friendships, that they can't express their feelings, that they don't love other men.

It's worse than that, actually.  They do, when they're young.  It's only as they grow up that they deliberately step away from intimacy into emotional indifference.  This newly released book , Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, makes the the point that intense intimacy among boys in early and middle adolescence is very common, but it is replaced by competition, mistrust and loneliness as they grow into men.

As the publisher's puff says:

“Boys are emotionally illiterate and don’t want intimate friendships.” In this empirically grounded challenge to our stereotypes about boys and men, Niobe Way reveals the intense intimacy among teenage boys especially during early and middle adolescence. Boys not only share their deepest secrets and feelings with their closest male friends, they claim that without them they would go “wacko.” Yet as boys become men, they become distrustful, lose these friendships, and feel isolated and alone.

Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted throughout adolescence with black, Latino, white, and Asian American boys, Deep Secrets reveals the ways in which we have been telling ourselves a false story about boys, friendships, and human nature. Boys’ descriptions of their male friendships sound more like “something out of Love Story than Lord of the Flies.” Yet in late adolescence, boys feel they have to “man up” by becoming stoic and independent. Vulnerable emotions and intimate friendships are for girls and gay men. “No homo” becomes their mantra.

These findings are alarming, given what we know about links between friendships and health, and even longevity. Rather than a “boy crisis,” Way argues that boys are experiencing a “crisis of connection” because they live in a culture where human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither. Way argues that the solution lies with exposing the inaccuracies of our gender stereotypes and fostering these critical relationships and fundamental human skills.

At sixteen, my best friend and I loved each other completely.  It had nothing whatever to do with sex and everything with intense friendship.  It was entirely innocent.  It never struck me that perhaps we grew apart because we were both "manning up" -- though we were an unusual pair, neither of us sporty, both of us fascinated by ideas.  I always thought that the reason we grew apart was because he found girlfriends and I, well, I didn't, not really, not like him.  After all, it is the expected path of our society that the intense friendships of 12 or 14 or 16 are replaced with the intense emotion of marriage.  You are expected to love your best friend less than you love your wife.  Because loving another man  -- even non-sexually -- is simply not kosher.  It's something you might indulge when you're sixteen, but real men end up loving their woman more than their man.  That's the way it is.

I never had a problem being intimate with my friends.  But the men I tried to befriend did.  They were uncomfortable with intimacy, even when they didn't know my sexuality.  They found it hard to talk about their fears and weaknesses, their loneliness, their need for love and empathy.  I'm told by blokes who have navigated the rapids of male friendship more successfully than I have that sportsmen (o happy breed!) can bond, and ultimately can talk about those things which are dear to their heart.  For me this is an alien world.

Men are afraid to be intimate, to show their pain, to discuss their lives because, as the blurb above says, "human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither".  

In this context there is no more sinister phrase than "you have to man up" or "making a man of you."  The users of these baggage-loaded horrors have someone like John Wayne in mind, taciturn, noble, violent, suffering in silence, a loner who doesn't even connect to his women.   Real men are strong, of course they are.  And noble.  And brave.   But they're also empathetic, caring, compassionate, loving, supportive, generous, and friendly.  Straight or gay.  And our culture takes sensitive teenage boys and turns them into lonely, unconnected automata.  As my elder son says:  so much of the sex obsession men have is really about trying to connect in the only way they know.   And that is desperately sad.

Majorca Flats -- 43

Jason had been different, though. Maybe it was the English public-school thing, all those straight boys confined to single-sex dormitories. They ended up experimenting with each other and . . . . Holy fuck, what did he know? Only that Jason had been kind and gentle. And he had been – there was no doubt about that! – turned on. Luigi smiled a little. He was far from taking his attractiveness for granted. He knew that many men saw him as beautiful, but his own uncertainties and insecurities made him aware also that he wasn't a real man like the men he so lusted after, like the men he longed to love and to have love him. He might be beautiful outside but inside he felt disgusting: a failure, a traitor to the race of male-kind, a marginal nothing. He knew – of course he knew – that this was just his own internalised homophobia speaking, but it didn't help. Deep down he was convinced not only that he was ugly – and no mirror could persuade him otherwise – and, worse, unlovable.

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Kilts are Sinful

So saith this bloke.

Wreath-laying on a windy Anzac Day

This drongo has obviously never worn a kilt.  Or met Scotsmen.  Soft?  Pull the other one, it's got bells on.  Kilts are very hairy, made of a thick and oily wool so that men can stride through wet heather without getting the bottom half of their clothes wet.  (Socks can be dried in front of the fire).  Traditionally worn without underpants, they also rub in uncomfortable places.  Believe me, they are not 'soft'. 

Let's set that aside for a moment.  What if men had worn 'kilts' and women trousers in Biblical times?  Would the great and good of the Bible have instructed us that this was the natural order:  obviously men wore kilts and obviously women wore trousers?  It has always been so , and so obviously the Lord wanted it that way, and if you deviate from His word, Holy Macaroons, you are so going to hell.  Hell, if I go to Hell, you may depend on it: it will not be because of my attire.

Doubly Sinful

And why is a robe not a skirt?  What am I missing?  And is it OK for women to wear underpants, since they are pants not a skirt?  The Abbé de Somewhere-or-Other thought not, when  women's bloomers were first introduced.  He thought them immoral and a vile perversion.  So it always is:  the way we do things now (or in some mythical past) is the best way.

Roman and Greek men wore "skirts".  But then we all know that they were effete and immoral, unlike those manly Teutons and Celts, whose men wore trousers but also (like the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Indians, and everybody except the Jews -- oh, but wait, there was Jonathan and King David) slept with men.  An Irish wife could divorce her husband if he spent too much time with his (male) lover. The Teutonic tribal chiefs drove their chariots into battle with their young man beside them.

It's ningies like this who make religion look ludicrous.  Does anybody intelligent for one minute think that the Being who made the Universe cares about whether your nether garment has a dividing piece of cloth in it or not?  Somewhere between 100 and 200 billion stars in our own galaxy.  Billion.  Repeat after me:  our star is one of around 150 BILLION stars in this galaxy alone*. And as far as the Hubble telescope can see, for billions of light years in all directions, there are countless, literally countless, galaxies.  Each with billions of stars.  In the Amazon basin, there are, we are told, ten thousand species of beetle.  Why do these literal Christianists think God is so small?  He is Grand, Awesome, All-Powerful, Terrible, if He is anything at all.  He is Everywhere and in Everything, out in every direction, across limitless space.  He doesn't give a flying rat's clacker about kilts.  He's too busy contemplating the ineffable beauty of His creation.

Real men wear kilts.  With nothing on underneath.


[*Correction and update:  My tally of stars in our galaxy was from memory.  In fact there are at least 200 billion stars, and there may be as many as 400 billion.  Our close galactic neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, has one trillion stars.  And you can be sure, on every star system in both galaxies, God is having conniptions about men who wear skirts]

Flamers

A little while ago I read a remarkable blog post, from a blog which shall remain nameless. In it, the blogger described how he'd been approached by a effeminate (but very muscular) guy. This guy suffered from a -- shock! horror! -- lisp. Repelled, our intrepid blogger assaulted the "queen" and then vomited. There followed a diatribe against feminine guys.

A psychiatrist or psychologist would surely find the whole episode remarkably revealing. To me, it indicates a very strong internalised homophobia. Ah, many will reply, but what if you don't find effeminate men sexy? Well, what of it? If it had been a straight guy responding to a gay one in this way, the conclusions would have been obvious. It would have been seen as a gay hate crime. And let me make it quite clear: I'm not saying that you have to have it off with someone you find unappealing just to be politically correct. Some blokes prefer busty brunettes, others brunets with muscly pecs. Each to his own. But to hit the other guy and then vomit? C'mon! Whatever happened to Sorry, I have a headache?

So why do I call it a kind of (internalised) homophobia? Because what is going on here is a comparable to what happens in race-obsessed societies. In apartheid South Africa, the "whites" were the most desired, the "blacks" the least. The "coloureds" (mixed-race South Africans, who ironically spoke Afrikaans*, the language of the dominant "white" minority) were considered superior to the "blacks" but inferior to the "whites", and the "whiter" your skin was the higher your social standing. Manufacturers of (dangerous and ineffective) skin-whitening pastes and hair-straightening liquids did a roaring trade. Self-hatred brought on by the perverted values of society.

But how is this relevant to the spectrum of gays from queens through to clones? The most acceptable gays (to gays and straights) are those who can "pass". They're "masculine" and "straight-acting". When last did you see an ad in the hook-up section of the personals columns for a "gay-acting" partner?

It's not for nothing that one of the biggest story themes on Nifty is about straight guys turning gay. There are all sorts of reasons why this trope is so powerful to us, and I'll talk about them in a later post, but one of them clearly is that a despised and discriminated-against sexual alternative is embraced by the "real man" (gays, by definition, cannot be "real men"). A straight man turning gay validates us. And the machoer, the straighter, the more masculine the other man is before he turns to the dark side, the better. Hell's teeth, even in my own writing, I use these archetypal stories. In Footy, a straight man falls for his gay best friend.

The least acceptable gays are the "femmes", the "queens", the "gay-acting", the "flamers". When straight society talks disdainfully about "homos", this is mostly what they mean. Effeminate men are despised by most straights and gays. And it's worth asking why. 'Just because' is not an answer. Consider how many gays wish that drag queens would keep away from the gay parades. "They perpetuate stereotypes" is the politest comment I've heard. Why is it more acceptable for a woman to do "manly things" than for a man to do feminine things? Why is it OK for women to wear pants but not for men to wear dresses? Why is being a macho sportsman (even if from time to time you have a mutual blow job with your teammates) acceptable but being a male ballet dancer not?

Think of all the gay icons. Gays are turned on by construction workers and tradies, marines (but not, curiously to the same extent by other kinds of soldiers), cowboys, firefighters, bikies and the leather-clad, policemen, and of course, sportsmen. One can understand the attraction in each case, especially for sportsmen, who must be fit, healthy and muscular just to follow their calling. But so much of the attraction is for a kind of off-hand, totally self-confident, unthinking maleness. Men who don't gel their hair, who don't wear designer label undies, who sprawl in a masculine way in front of the TV to watch the game, who emerge filthy from under a car they've just fixed (competence is a very male virtue), who don't wear deodorant or aftershave. Real men. The kind of men we want to be. So, since we are homos not straights, we indulge in the equivalent of skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners. Even the term "clone" is horribly revealing.

The irony is that I myself am not immune to the attraction of these archetypes. And that I had to spend a lot of time and thought to getting over my own internalised homophobia which made me despise myself because I wasn't real man enough, and made me deeply uncomfortable with flamers. But the first step to coming to terms with this is to recognise it for what it is.

I'm sure I'll get heaps of emails and comments, saying stuff like "but that's just what I like/dislike, it's not homophobia." Fair enough. But the question is: why do we have these likes and dislikes? Our personal values don't happen in a vacuum. They are affected, coloured, driven by societal values. We must understand, because if we end up disliking ourselves because we don't conform to some outdated sexist stereotype than we will just get hurt. Effeminate gay men are us, too. Flamers have feelings. Until they/we are whole-heartedly accepted, gay liberation will not be complete.

[This is the third of a linked series of posts. The previous two are Darl and Homophobia and Behaviour Modification. These articles I wrote for Wilde Oats also consider some of the issues I touch on here: The End of Gay and Gay, Then and Now.]

The Village People, making fun of the stereotypes.

*the first book written in Afrikaans was written in Arabic script to convert the "Malay" (Indonesian) Muslim slaves in Cape Town in the early 19th century. Ironic that their creole of Dutch became the language of the apartheid regime. Now there's self-hatred for you! And apartheid is pronounced apart+hate. Easy to remember.

Fathercraft

One of the dysfunctional things our version of male culture does is to make it seem that fathers must be ogres. "Just wait till your father gets home!" -- and the child dreads the homecoming of his dad, and the dad dreads the punishing he's pushed into.

Yet my experience of fathers -- mine, and being a dad myself -- is quite different. I know how much my father loved me and my sisters, and how much he loved his grandchildren. I love my children so much it's impossible to describe. And I loved them from day one, in fact, in the case of my daughter, from when I heard her heartbeat through the stethoscope long before she was born. Tenderness and insensate love and affection are what I think of when I think of fatherhood. It's ironic -- is it not? -- that we use the verb "mother" in a quite different sense to the verb "father". Fathering a child means you just pressed the button. Mothering it means so much more. And that's all wrong. "Fatherly" gets it right, though, so all is not lost.

Sam de Brito's latest blog post is about the myth of the stern, unloving, harsh Victorian and Edwardian father. Some of the comments are interesting, about how many fathers in the mid-twentieth century were harsh and brutal. It seems clear that the dictates of the culture of maleness have made it hard for many men to be tender towards their children. It's seen as a sign of weakness, a flaw. Real men do not have warm, tender feelings. Not even towards their children. But what a horrible space to live in, if you are the father or the child!

I remember when I came back from a year's stay in England to visit my parents and I hugged my dad. I'd realised now that I was a father what a good father he'd been, and how much I loved him. And he was totally embarrassed: an old-school man, he'd been brought up that it was unseemly to show your emotions. I never hugged him again, and I wonder now whether he wished I did.

(The photo comes from here)

Gareth Thomas

It's interesting how varied tastes are. Just as well, really, or we'd never find partners, would we?


I'm not unappreciative of beautiful young men, yet sometimes, it's the sheer raw sexiness of a real man which attracts me more.


Some ppl would say that Gareth Thomas is not a real man, because he has recently come out as gay. This is the classic confusion between 'gender dysphoria' and sexuality, one even gay-shaded blokes frequently continue to make -- always assuming that there is in fact such a beast as a 'real man'. It takes courage to come out, especially in macho contact sports like rugby, footy or soccer, and most players choose not to do it.

Coming out isn't just about yourself, and the sense of relief honesty brings, but also about others. For every celebrity sportsman who comes out, some poor bloke somewhere is going to feel better about being gay, about being an outsider and perhaps even about being a bit femme.

Courage is for me one of the defining characteristics of being a real man. And Gareth Thomas has it in spades. One flatulent inflated British journalist opined that Thomas had done rugby a disservice by being afraid to come out. Only a straight would say that. What utter tosh.

Anybody who's at all gay-shaded would know how fricking hard it is to reveal something so private about yourself, without knowing how your friends or the public will respond. People you love may turn against you, or cool, or become embarrassed ("Oh my God, he's gay! Will he want to kiss me? Will he caress my bum?"). That journalist -- he shall remain nameless -- is an idiot.



Anyway, I wanted to celebrate real men. And I've included photos of Gareth Thomas, a real man if ever there was one. Sexy and brave. And he has lovely eyes.

Oh, and Mr Thomas, if you ever read this, I hope you're not offended. I'm proud of you. Well done. You've done us all a favour. Thank you.

Heterosexism

It's something I've always known instinctively: straight men aren't afraid of gay or bi men for the reasons we think they are. Straight men, like gay men, care much more about how other men see them than about how women do. They act macho not to impress women, but to impress men.

To quote Jammie Price, from "NAVIGATING DIFFERENCES: Friendships between Gay and Straight Men",

[Since] "being a man is" highly valued in a patriarchal context, signifying gender with other men becomes one way for men to compete for power privileges and resources. Men come to value self and other men for their ability to be a "man". In any given situation, men assess their masculinity in relation to other men and strategize actions based on those perceptions. Through this process they gain a sense of self-worth and relative standing. Hence, many men see interactions with other men as "character contests", stages on which to assert their masculinity. Those who assert their masculinity the best receive the highest regard, and accordingly, the most power and privilege among the men in the interaction.

The culturally ideal or "hegemonic" way that men signify being men in the United States today is to (1) display an ability to control, compete, and produce relative to other men, particularly at work; (2) subordinate women and reject effeminacy; and (3) express heterosexual desire. Being physically fit and of moderate size also help men to signify masculinity. The better or more a man demonstrates some or all of the above characteristics, the more masculine he seems to himself and others, [while] failure to demonstrate some or all of the above characteristics becomes the ground for men to devalue another man. (Numerous references omitted)

In her fascinating book, the author shows that for very many straight men, a friendship with a gay man is much deeper than their friendships with other straight men, because they are not competing. They can trust their gay friend with things they would never tell their straight friend. For many of the gay men, though, their friendship with the straight man is less valuable than their friendship with other gay men, because for us it is hard to trust straight men. We have suffered at their hands too often.

The book helped me understand why one straight friend regards me as his best friend, while I do not feel the same way about him. He is drawn to me precisely because I am not a real man. And I am not drawn to him because he is.