Hugo Schwyzer

I published this earlier today, and the HTML came out all screwy. I’m republishing it now…

It’s Monday morning, and I am a bit sleepy. My gal and I went with two of my good running buddies to the Hollywood Bowl last night for some excellent Brazilian music. We weren’t in bed until well after midnight, but even in my tired state this morning, I have those compulsively danceable rhythms in my head. (And yes, I did dance in the aisles of the Hollywood Bowl. Without shame).

Before I go any further, let me praise Lynn’s terrific Saturday post on Infertility and Ethics. Well worth the read and the visit; she’s included some great links.

Stentor inspired my post below on “why gender matters”, and he has a very thoughtful response over at his place. Most importantly, he identifies why so many men in our country are uncomfortable with what passes for male companionship in our society today:

It’s not that I didn’t want to be held responsible, it’s that I didn’t want to be held to what I saw as the typical male standard of responsibility. To put it in terms of crude stereotypes, the prospect of a mostly-male social circle raises the specter of being expected to leer at girls who meet a socially-defined beauty standard, being expected to demonstrate knowledge of and interest in professional sports, etc.

Stentor’s point matters. Indeed, when I was in high school and college, like many sensitive and non-athletic males (the running came later in my life), I disliked being in all-male situations intensely. I was uncomfortable around other men for the same reason that Stentor suggests — I found the vulgarity and the leering and the brashness to be distasteful. I also felt that (and I was usually right) that because I was uncomfortable with that behavior, I would be judged negatively by my male peers. It’s one of the reasons that I never considered “rushing” and joining the fraternity to which my grandfather and great-grandfathers had belonged at Cal. But I was smart enough, even then, to recognize that at least half of the contempt I had for my fellow males was rooted in my own intense fear of being exposed by them as not being a “real man”. I always, always, wanted the approval of my male peers, even when I pretended that I didn’t.

It is axiomatic that we carry the wounds of our childhood and our adolescence into our adult lives. I am 37 years old, but the names (”geek”, “faggot”, “queer”) I was called on the playground a quarter-century ago can come back vividly into my consciousness at the slightest provocation. I notice that most men who end up in academia were not “popular”, “athletic”, or deeply “masculine” when they were young. Most of us who end up doing gender work often come from a background of years and years of being teased for our physical gracelessness, our social ineptness, and, often, our lack of physical strength. (All of those qualities associated, in the mentality of the playground, with homosexuality). I, for one, was the consummate “nerd” throughout my adolescence. (One of the many reasons I turned to marathoning and ultra-running — initially — was to have something physically demanding at which to excel, to banish some of the demons of my pudgy, awkward, and sedentary adolescence — but that’s another post).

From the time I was a teen, I found that it was much easier to be friends with women than with men. My female friends didn’t expect me to be like the “other guys”; heck, I found to my wonder that some girls disliked the very qualities I loathed in most of my male peers. They liked me because I wasn’t like the other guys. (Actually, both I and my female friends came to find I was a hell of a lot MORE like the other guys than we had imagined!) I formed a series of intense friendships with many women throughout high school and college. Predictably, I got crushes on some of these women — and these remained unrequited. I noted, to my chagrin, that these young women tended to fall for the very men whose behavior they found to be so repugnant. (The old “bad boy/nice guy” syndrome, one with which virtually all of us are familiar!)

But as my teens became my twenties, and then my twenties my thirties, I found to my astonishment that there were many, many men who felt just as I had felt. I made friends with guys who seemed to me to be athletic and cool, and found that they too had felt alienated by the incredibly rigid standards of American adolescent masculinity. (Indeed, in planning for my high school reunion next year, I’ve talked to several guys whom I used to fear, envy, and dislike — and discovered, to my amazement, how decent and human some of them truly are. Who knew?) And as I began to make more and more male friends (something that eventually became a priority in my life), I found that more and more men out there were hungry for a different vision of masculinity. (I found this to be particularly true among endurance athletes — marathoners, triathletes, ultra-runners, and so forth, but again, that’s another post.)

The bottom line is that in order to connect with other men, men often have to “banish the demons” of childhood and adolescence. Very, very few men truly felt as if they “measured up” to the demanding standards of masculinity when they were young. The problem is, most adult men are unwilling to reach out to each other, wounded as we often still are by memories of long ago. Eventually, we may find friends of our own sex — but we tend to see them as exceptions to the rule. We may like other individual males, but we dislike men as a whole. As a result, it is easier to pretend that “gender is a social construct to be overcome”, rather than a “gift and a challenge into which to live.”

As I wrote on another occasion, I try to have three kinds of men in my life today: older men to show me “how it’s done”; men of my own age with whom I can empathize and share stories; younger men to whom I can offer whatever experience and wisdom I have picked up along the way. At times, I would rather not reach out to other men. Reaching out to women comes more easily to me, even now. But I know that if we are going to reclaim an authentic and brave and lovingly inclusive masculinity, men are going to have to take risks with each other. We’re going to have to make relationships with other men the highest priority after our obligations to our families. From experience, I know the rewards are marvelous on an individual level. But I am also convinced that on a societal level, the rewards can be even more profound.