Becoming a (straight) man

Deconstructing heterosexuality and masculinity

Being straight is an oxymoron to an extent. This identity is a process of incessant becoming. Even if it comprises – paradoxically – a significant amount of staleness, conservativism, resistance towards change (in a form of obsession with traditions, inability to mature, worship of loyalty, sticking with the archetypes or rather caricatures of what is male). The best way to observe it is to look at the boys clubs, where it all starts and unfortunately often even ends.

The puppy play is a preparation for the adult routines – no difference with humans. That’s why girls are intentionally conditioned to take care of the dolls, imitating childcare, focusing on beauty, playing kitchen – preparing to be serviceable housewives. Fathers like to see their boys playing war, playing car races, climbing trees – developing courage, physical skills, resistance to pain – as future soldiers, breadwinners, providers. Regardless if there is any use of desensitizing, cockiness, wolfpacking - in the postmodern world – that often rather suffers of these prehistoric relics. The practical use of certain "skills" is quite overshadowed by their consequence – overdeveloped ego, stubbornness, untamed self-idolation – so the fathers want their sons to be their own idealized selves, or at least copies.

Since the prenatal age, through the specific process of growing up, towards the persistent social image, a woman is (finished, ready, as is), while the man must become. The process that happens in the womb is mirrored within the culture. Even if they both – the girl and the boy – start as the same being, a scared and love-needing child. The demand to become a warrior, not to cry, to suppress emotions, to be the resolver, achiever, the one that his family or even community relies on, to win and to protect – is too much of an overload for one fragile soul. The "useful" or "practical" deformation that is manufactured this way becomes emblematic for a man – he does not even realize the damage, he finds it correct, he takes pride in the resulting iron-man product. Describing all the induced neurosis, the impenetrable detachment armor, the compulsory and compulsive performance – would fill the books. Those existing ones are rather filled with technical advise and mostly expectations. One of the coping strategies for male is to organize in the groups, where they tease and police each-other to perform well in this absurd role. Not to forget that hunting on a prey is easier in packs.

The chance of successful hunt increases with the proper preparation (training), coordination (the roles and the hierarchy) and cooperation (team play). Therefore, the complex rules are devised, the collective keeps an eye on each member through peer pressure of expectations. The culture of constant proving of (masculine) aptitude is born. The hunt fails with the weakest element in the chain – and so the inept ones are ridiculed and banished, not seldom murdered. In this sense, the tree-house club roles and rules reflect this ancient wolfpack meme. The transition from childhood to boyhood – the instinctive realization of one’s distinctiveness – results in an exclusive space. The girls and those boys who don’t feel "like us" are not welcome. This correlates with the animal territoriality of the past as much as the nationalism, patriotism or even the way-too-serious sports-club identities of the adult-to-be.

The boys are encouraged but also spontaneously happen to obsess with toy cars, construct houses and machines, invent their tools and weapons, chase the guys from the other street, play war. They wish to be adult more than any adult does. All this game is infused with incredible fluffy boasting. The raw verbal contest (who’s anything is bigger, who’s father is stronger, who’s experience is more cool) slowly transform into "adult" competitive "nature". In some cultures, the boasting is laughed at from a distance, not to hurt the boy’s feelings (though those are supposed to be suppressed right? - so the vain pride and artificial male honor are renamed as "feelings"), in other cultures this display of boyish brass audacity is observed with pleasure and relief. It is a sign and precursor of (equally fluffy and through-and-through invented) male self-confidence. Imitating the larger-than-real super-heroes is iconic boys play, but to some extent it is preserved way into the adult life. It just transforms from a big-eyed dream into an ominous expectation.

The instinctive display of the vital strength evolved into taking pleasure in executing power. For some it is constructing castles, for others the destruction of the same. Boys love their toys, as much as their prehistoric forefathers depended on their tools. I have the fastest car, I have the biggest gun, I have the most expensive computer game. The type of toys changes with times, the obsession remains. This trait persists into the adulthood. It is said that men prefer things and fighting to humans and conversation. The first part is the reason why their "male magazines" are filled with items of status – cars, watches, neck-chains, smartphones – the tools that seem to escape or avoid or resolve the problems of the world. The infatuation with objects is symptomatic to the consumerist economy and the idolization of continuous technical progress. The eternally bored boys must be entertained.

The mature mind would see (its own, the other’s) maturity in achieving insight, perspective, knowledge, peace of mind, balance. In some sense taming of the self. The childish mind imagines the adulthood as breaking of the constraints set by the adults and one’s own unfinished body. The real toys, the great endeavors, the unlimited possibilities. In other words the enlarging of the self. In the first case the maturity is achieved and recognized – in the latter the adulthood is proven and confirmed. The equanimity versus the anxious wannabe. It is sad fact of this world that the latter prevails. The boys conserve their infantile traits and grow up (but do not mature), become men and raise their sons to the same boyish expectations and evaluation system. Boys raise boys. Boys invent maleness. Boys canonize their boastful, proud, uncompromising characteristics. This world is an implementation of The Mosquito Coast.

Proving oneself as an adept hunter, apt warrior or a man in charge of his household – transformed into a vast variety of rites of passage. From vision quests, through circumcisions and subincisions, fighting in tournaments – into the modern college sports, skill competitions or bungee-jumping. The pattern remains: to obtain an approval for one’s worth through a physical act. To withstand the pain. To resist the fear. To be like one’s father. It is quite tragicomic to observe the boy being violently robbed of his foreskin (with no information on pros and cons (also [2]), with no choice as a future sovereign being, with no respect to his body integrity), his organ’s delicate sensitivity to pleasure reduced to a numb penetrating weapon, and told: "now you are a man". Is it a generational revenge of parents on their children? Or just boys creating men to their infantile image of what it means?

Argumenting with the biological predisposition or the hunter-gatherer heritage has a catch. The most unemotional and hardened men that this world has known were genocidal monsters. Extremely efficient and matter-of-factually in their projects. The most practical approach to achieve great inhumane project seems to rear the child soldiers. They have the highest ambitions and the least inhibitions. They are unfinished human beings that lack compassion. They are boys allowed to play with real toys, get the real purpose of their games, get the approval from the real adults. Their bodies will grow, but they will never become mature, not even adult, not ever human beings. It’s the (over the) borderline case, reductio ad absurdum, clearly illustrating what is the essence of "boys raising boys".

On a strictly biological basis, at least in selected species, predator male’s role is to hunt, kill, scare off the free riders and scavengers, bring the food home, get oneself fed (reward!), use his female (reward!), conceive children (meee!). Cooperation in packs increases the chances to obtain a share of meal – and thus serves the self-interest. The aggressive territoriality preserves sufficient resources for oneself and his family. Feeding the mate and offspring ensures survival of one’s own genes – and as such is again nothing else than self-interest. Conquests expand ones resource pool and condition prevailing of one’s clan on behalf of the others. Even worse, quite many animal species and humans in their early history engaged in a habitual infanticide – killing of the rivals’ genetic traces. All this is wrapped in progressively thicker decorations of honor, robes, banners, tournaments, victories, stories, books, holiness.

On a subconscious level, this has survived in father’s treatment of his children. The boy preference over girls, the first-born ranking over the rest, distinct treatment of own versus adopted. Securing the kid through protection, feeding and spoiling them materially makes sense if the offspring behaves like his father’s extension and especially continuation. Male ego cannot cope with the most just feature of this world: the fact that each alpha will die, at last. They expect their next iteration to fulfill leftovers of their father’s dreams, to preserve their father’s ways and completed theory of everything. Otherwise, the whole continuation of genetic pool would have no meaning… In modern times, one of the hardest fatherly acts is allowing their children to become individuals, personalities, unique beings.

The family is just another form of hierarchy, where ranks derive from the age – in dubious belief that this corresponds to the experience and wisdom. Young man in his process of becoming navigates between the intrinsic male respect for the wolfpack order and a self-centered need to rebel. Proving one’s worth to the elders, showing off his exceptionality, scaring them off, eventually humbling of those perceived higher in status. In sense of genetics, this useful process ensures that the offspring will not be just a mere copy of his predecessors, but an improvement – v2.0.

Competing for food, for territory, for females, for attention, for preference, for love, for inheritance – has become iconic for men. This trait is not only natural, it is expected, supported and culturally omnipresent – so it become hard to tell how much of it is actually "natural" and how much induced. Competition within the family relations, competition with the kids from the area, competition in grades at school, competition for recognition in sports, competition in romantic affairs, competition with work colleagues, competition of the teams, competition of the corporations, competition of the nation for supremacy. Competition is considered good for the economy (incentive, innovation, progress), the economy is designed as a competition, the competition is the only interaction that the straight man understands. It feel beyond understanding, it’s somewhere in his blood and in every detail of the society that he has built to his image. Competition is how men interact, play and sometimes … it looks like a form of sex, male-to-male version.

Is the competition the point in itself? The only idea of what to do with the world that they have inherited to play with, that bored boys have? The cliché says that the victory is the motivation… but what is victory? End of competition? End of play? Medal? Cup? Appreciation? Glory? Being better than the rest, being above the rest, dominating? Being celebrated? Being admired, adored, desired? Is it a foreplay to mating? These questions are rarely asked – all of it is just done, as many generations before did it, as everyone around does it.

What to do with the trophy? Whether it is a piece of gold, basic food, artificially honored status, title, or a girl –all those induce praise and envy, which is flattering, but anxiety-inducing as well. The trophy must be locked and guarded – so that it does not run away or someone else does not take it. Sometimes the trophy must be ritually won again, every year. This simple schematic dynamic is copied from a case to a case – and so often human beings (most often female partners) find themselves in possession, as the objects, locked in glass showcases. With an ambiguous dilemma, if they are the pleasure of their men, or is it the fleeting victory (looming discontent) or envy of the other men. Straight sexuality is ironically quite often more focused on the other men – whether it is envy or approval – than the female objects.

As much as maleness is artificial, so even the purpose of life must be invented. Find an hard-to-achieve object, battle, prove your worth (as much as animals need to show that they are strong and worth to mate with), win it, … have it. Possess her. Lock it/her in the glass showcase, castle, house. Dress it/her well, adorn it/her. Proudly display it/her to other men, anxiously protect it/her. Kill the thieves, kill itself/herself if it/her shows the free will and wants to run away. Because the trophy running away means that you are incapable of guarding it (disapproval of the boys club), you are not good enough for it (loss of worth in the boys club), you are a loser (bottom rank in the hierarchy of the boys club). Of course it does not hurt your suppressed (!) feelings, it just offends you, insults you, undermines your self-confidence inflated from air, it challenges the ego, the pride, the self-image of being the best, winning, admirable man. Me, my awesome strength, my aura, my genetic pool – being spat on – in front of the other boys! Her relationship to him is actually her relationship to the rest of the pack.

The showcase, the cave, the home – becomes a prison. It almost feels like a weird revenge – bored men chained to the household, guzzling the beer, staring at the screen enviously at the other men competing in colorful dresses. No more battling for the females. No more victories, no more medals, no more pride. The war is not needed anymore. The disillusionment. How to keep the castrated version of the ancient maleness alive? Perhaps in the transformed forms – fighting with the office crowd for better salary, bringing more money, food and toys home, competing with the neighbors (better car, mower, decorative lights, house, TV set), allegiance to the political party, local football team, or the other artificial concepts like national identity, tradition, or even religion (as a denomination, not faith!). Occasionally, if the local sports team/politics/economy suck (and the woman refuses to suck), the real war may appear as a more thrilling game and more feasible path to winning – for the victory junkies.

Whether through the physical competition, winning female partners, keeping his imaginary male honor – the malehood is a life-long struggle of proving oneself in front of his ultimate "sexual" mates: i.e. the guys in the wolfpack. The worth is an opposite to the unworthiness, the winner to the loser, the approval to the rejection. The existence of the dark anti-pole attributes a value to the worshiped concept. The banished, the outcasts, the counterexamples of maleness are vital for the vague and vain conceptualization of the self-esteem withing the pack. There’s no cheaper path to imaginary maleness than a steady supply of differently abled, physically weak, nerds, those with different skin, hair, eyes, language, origins … and the ever-present queers. Homophobia is intrinsic to the absurdity and artificiality of the mis-designed masculinity.

As any gay man would readily comment: Is it a sign of strength and bravery and self-composure to spend one’s life anxiously reaching for the approval of his peer group, fitting within the norms, performing the correct image of masculinity, afraid of being associated with the weak ones or being labeled gay, doing what is expected of him to do, wearing male clothes, walking manly, talking manly, eating manly, stripping manly, washing his ass manly? Is it a sign of weakness and cowardice to come to terms with ones minority identity, coming out to ones unsupportive family, standing to the various bullies throughout schools, slurs, attacks, hate, walking hand-in-hand in the street with his partner of choice, wearing drag – or daring to be oneself, different, unique – in the world that just can’t cope with it, does not accept and appreciate it?

Perhaps all this is enough to make a successful mammoth-hunter. Is it sufficient to create a complex, developed state-of-art human being, carrying the trace of knowledge that all the generations before him learned the hard way? Is it enough to make a man? There are surely many ways to conceptualize the maleness, the malehood, the masculinity. Some of them outdated, some just self-affirming, some clearly self-idolizing, self-spoiling or utterly derailed. We may need to watch who commissioned the most recent model of the soldier. The tough (i.e. not too smart to think a lot about things, rather doing what he is told to do, what he likes to do, what he is good at) brave (i.e. with diminished self-preservation instinct and generally not overburdened by the consequences of his actions) guy always standing to his opinion (i.e. unable to reflect, reevaluate, learn), unshakeably loyal to his homeland (i.e. following a blindly narrow interest of his own tribe, not the wealth of the whole, not the equal worth of all the beings) may be a preferred choice of the autocrat, tyrant, Big Brother.