Domestic Violence is Gendered Violence

"If you are interested in working to end gender-based violence," the woman said to the room of students seeking their masters in criminal justice, "come see me."

Photo by Ben Pollard

Wow! I thought, I am interested in working to end gender-based violence. According to several studies available on the American Bar Association's webpage, the perpetrators of domestic violence and rape are overwhelmingly male. The teacher at the criminal justice school called these acts gender-based because she was looking at the gender of the victims. I am worried that 85-95% of the perpetrators are men.

Gender's Victimization

It isn't just that traditional gender has something to do with the victimization of women. Traditional masculinity causes the victimization of women. The old-school feminist movement of the 60's spoke a lot about the bribes, the carrots of masculinity, because women wanted a piece of that action. However, little has been said about the punishments, the sticks of masculinity.

This unattributed painting is a great metaphor for how a boy may manage to be feminine but not feminized; wield violence.

In an earlier blog, I described the cycle of masculanization, but I can summarize it here. A properly masculanized man must not be feminized. On the playground, when a boy refuses to fight back, he is girl-like, and he will often be subject to a beating, or at very least a tongue lashing/ostracizing. Masculanization is a relational activity. In order to be a "man/boy," all you have to do is point to something that is not you and say that's a "woman/girl." According to traditional masculinity, anything that is victimized is feminine, so if you victimize somebody, you are proving your masculinization. Too often, the thing feminized is another male who must then prove his masculinity. It is a desperate and impossible cycle that can only lead to more and more violence. This violence is often directed at our loved ones or even strangers in a movie theater.

That it is men who usually commit the mass stranger homicides at places like an Aurora movie theater, Virginia Tech, and Columbine is not simply a product of masculinity's influence on them. These are scared and violent people who are acting out on mental sickness. However, women are just as often unhealthy as men. Women should be committing crimes of violence just as often as men do, but they don't. It is the process of masculanization that brings unhealthy men to hurt others (even as it is the process of feminization that brings unhealthy women to hurt themselves in the cases of cutters and anorexia). So, it is indeed true that domestic violence, rape, and stalking are not just gender based, they are gender caused.

Ending the Cycle of Gender

When the professor at the school of criminal justice spoke about working to end gender based violence, she spoke about important and meaningful work. She was talking about stopping the perpetrators in their tracks by designing effective enforcement mechanisms that are sadly lacking. She was talking about making sure that women know there are places for them to turn so that they do not have to become one of the majority of women murdered by their intimate partner who had already left him. All of this is crucial work, but she was probably not talking about liberating men from masculanization so that gender caused crime will never happen again.

It may be too late for the perpetrators of gender caused crime. It may be that locking them up and restraining them is all that can be done. We cannot shame a masculanized man into feeling okay with being feminized. That only leads to more desperation in his need to masculanize himself by finding a victim. Similarly, punishing these men can't work. According to a study at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania 41% of domestic violence perpetrators reassault within 18 months of their first assault. We will never convince masculinzation to be okay with being feminized. Feminization is the thing that masculinzed men seek most to avoid. But for future generations, we can stop the gender cycle in its tracks.

In order to end gender-caused violence, we must truly value traditionally feminine skills. We must no longer denigrate housekeeping and childcare as something that liberated women seek to avoid. We must rather convince men that they are rewarding important and meaningful skills to be cultivated. In order to do that, the feminist movement needs to step up and start talking about liberating men. Because the appropriate response for a man who is recognized for being feminized is not, "who cares because women are equal," but "I appreciate you noticed because men are free."

Masculine Weenieism

Why Weenies Think They're Manly, and Why it Matters

Weenie- 1: frankfurter, 2: penis, 3: nerd.

Wurst Wigs by Tup Wanders

Weenies solve problems with bluster and violence. Weenies believe that dressing up like a super hero is what makes a super hero. The modern American "tough guy" is a weenie, and I mourn true toughness.

How can I mourn toughness? I am a critic of masculinity. My blog is dedicated to the notion that masculinity is a rouse that compels men to alienate themselves in lives of violence while doing terrible things to the people they care for.

But true toughness has nothing to do with masculinity. Traditional masculinity is obsessed with looking tough at the expense of actually being tough.

True Toughness is a Virtue

Men and women who float below the condescending notice of traditional historians have spent millennia being tough. Whenever a traditional history book mentions the brave troops who died on the battlefield, it neglects the farmers who worked doggedly to make the food to feed the troops. Blacksmiths slaved in the heat to make weapons and cooking pots. Women cared for children everyday despite the weather or their own health. They cooked. They gardened and raised chickens. Trench diggers dug the roads. Stone cutters made the buildings. Millions of people showed the prosaic toughness requisite for a society to persevere.

Navy SEAL Training.
Photo by U.S. Navy.

One of feminism's great successes was in allowing women to adopt toughness without being outcasts. It brought women out of their gilded cage and down to the ground where they could have greater impact on the world. Before the movement, women who adapted to circumstance were lambasted as masculine, butch, or simply bitches. But adapting to circumstance is what makes people powerful.

Walking the line between adapting and stubbornly refusing to adapt is what makes people moral and yet consistent; strong and yet kind. It is the definition of toughness, and our modern view of "toughness" is strikingly lacking in it.

S.U.V.'s= Weenie-mobiles

Dodge Ram. Photo by Rojo.

What could be more "tough" than buying a huge tank-like S.U.V? Some people buy them because they want to be up above traffic. Some men want them to haul around stuff. Some men want to be able to go up dirt roads in the countryside. Contractors and farmers have legitimate needs for trucks. If your truck is completely filled and completely emptied two times a week or more, I have no gripe with you owning a truck. 

But if your truck goes through the car wash two times a week or more, you are a weenie. If you get to a steep muddy dirt road, and you opt to stay inside your car instead of hungrily hiking it, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck everyday of the year so that you can haul your fifth wheel to go camping, instead of camping in a tent and making do, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck because it's good in the snow, you are a weenie.

Doing without is what toughness is all about. Consuming and wasting less because we know that persisting through difficulty makes us stronger and happier is what toughness is all about. S.U.V.'s  and useless pickup trucks are about waste, decadence and squishiness. But somehow they have become aligned with modern masculine toughness, along with myriad other images of our weenie-tastic masculine culture.

Racing Bicycles

Hipsters and spandex-wearing lawyers on their day off have both taken to riding bicycles meant for racing. These bikes may be light, but they are not meant to be ridden on the roads.

A fixed-gear carbon-fiber track bike. Great on the track.
Weenie gear on the street. Photo by Escuela Virtual de Deportes

Carbon fiber, while strong, is brittle and shatters without any indication that it has developed a flaw, which is why bike racers always have two backup bikes in the cars behind them. Cleats are ridiculous, uncomfortable, and offer no benefit unless you train in them 30 hours a week or more. 

Fixed gear bicycles offer powerful, lightweight, friction-free drive trains, but they are not meant to stop or swerve safely, nor account for tired legs, or steep hills. Racing bikes are not adaptable. They cannot haul around a grocery bag safely, much less a child or two. Owning one and riding it on the weekend is fun. But riding one to work because it is lighter while carrying a backpack or messenger bag that weighs fifteen pounds is silly.

How are fixie-riding hipsters, and spandex-wearing lawyers weenies? Because both of these bikes are about looking durable, and adaptable, when in fact both of the bikes are far less durable and adaptable then your run-of-the-mill huffy from Walmart. Wearing the gear is about looking like a racer, looking tough, not being tough. If your goal is to look tough, and you sacrifice true toughness to get that look, you are as weenie-fabulous as Mitt Romney (p.s. Mitt Romney is a weenie).

Masculinity Makes Weenies of Men

Worksman Bikes make bikes that
are actually tough

Today's masculinity, like so much else in modern life, is about buying power. Masculinity has become a runway show of phallic power tools, cushy interiors, and ad-space-covered sporting goods. For eighty years, advertisers have been telling us that our gender can be bought, and we gratefully believe them.

Unfortunately, masculinity cannot be bought, and the more we buy to make us feel masculine, the more we realize that we are deficient. Masculinity is a myth, a chimera. It is unattainable and deeply unsatisfying. Soldiers and sports-figures who come close to it find themselves in lives of alienation and violence. But even they spend their lives attempting to prove their masculinity, because it can be lost in the blink of an eye. It is an infinite and driving motivator, which is why it is so useful to advertisers (and morality police).

Rivendell is another company that makes actually tough bikes.

The only way out is to reject the notion that masculinity can be attained at all. The only way to feel comfortable about your own toughness is to be tough, not buy tough. Take the parts of masculinity that are valuable, like true toughness, reject the parts that are damaging, like violence and looking tough, and be your own person. Be your own man. Be tough. Be free.

Living Without Gender: A Conversation with a Trailblazer

Making Men Interview- 

Beau Laurence 7/5/2012 at the Gypsy Coffee House in Capitol Hill

Gypsy Coffee House

When I asked hir for an interview, Beau Laurence wanted to meet me beneath the fabric folds hanging from the ceiling at the Gypsy Coffee House. Beau is thin and freckled, with an Irish face and hair cropped in a pixie cut. Xi joked with a  straight face, and leaned forward in hir chair for most of our 90 minute interview, thinking and picking hir words with the intensity of a scholar.

Peeing in the Gender Woods

For Right Be Done, I was interested in hir thoughts about masculinity. Xi is making a conscious choice to adopt some of masculinity, keep some of femininity, and move to something new. If men are ever to be liberated, we must make the same kinds of choices as Beau. Because no conversation about masculinity can ignore our historical relationship to it, I started by asking about hir past. Surprisingly, Beau answered by talking about how we toilet.

Right Be Done (RBD): What is your earliest memory of what it means to be a man?

Beau Lawrence (BL): Probably the earliest difference that I remember is about how boys go to the bathroom. So, I have a brother who is two years older, and I grew up… I was born into, and until I was 10, we lived in a commune and I was the first female child. There were three boys. They were older than me. My brother and two other boys. So, I didn’t have other girls to hang out with when I was a little kid, I just had the boys.

Girls Peeing in Urinal by Paul Avril

So, we all played together. They climbed trees, so I did all of these activities and didn’t think anything of my body being different, or "I’m not supposed to do that," until it came to actually urinating and it was like, “Wait. I don’t have that. That doesn’t work for me.” I specifically remember asking my dad to teach me how to pee standing up so that I could be like the other boys. Because to me it wasn’t a boy/girl thing, it was a kid thing. Like, I couldn’t do what the other kids did. But I was the youngest one, so it’s like, you know in your kid brain, you don’t necessarily revert to gender as the reason you couldn’t do this. It’s, “I’m the youngest one and I haven’t learned yet and I want to be like the big kids and do this.”

RBD: What did your dad say?

BL: My dad was like, “Okay.” And I actually did learn. Then, I was at my grandmothers and I was like, “You wanna see?” And she was like, “you will never do that again.” That’s when I learned that it was definitely not a girl thing to do and that I was a girl. It was really her that sort of reinforced what a girl was NOT, more than, “This is what boys or men are like.”

In a society where “man” is neutral, it is normal for someone who was raised as a girl to learn only what man is not. Perhaps, the biggest problem with feminism has been that we have not discussed traditional masculinity from an objective point of view. However, Beau later told me about one person in hir life that did create from scratch a conscious definition of what it meant to be a man.  Television isn’t normally a place to break stereotypes, but xi cited one example of a man who strayed from convention.

The Radical Politics of Mork and Mindy 

BL: I hadn’t thought about T.V. shows until you asked this question. Lone Ranger.

RBD: Supermale. The Lone Ranger is definitely a super male.

BL: I remember being really offended. I was always really offended the way that he treated Tonto. I was really hyper-aware of… Wow this really is kind of awful, but straight white men were always pigs, and so whatever they did was definitely like, there are other ways to be because there are other males, and there are strong females, but these white males are awful.

Fair use for political comment,
from Mork and Mindy publicity.

BL (Cont): But, the first thing that popped into my head as an alternative male T.V. character was Mork from Mork and Mindy.

RBD: But wasn’t he an alien.

BL: He was an alien, but…

RBD: So, he wasn’t really a man.

BL: He was an alien impersonating what it was like to be a male getting coached by Mindy.

RBD: Strangers in a Strange Land sort of masculinity where he had this opportunity to point out how ridiculous masculinity was.

BL: And he could do really fun.., really childlike sorts of things and get corrected for doing gender wrong.

The writer’s of Mork and Mindy gave America a chance to question basic assumptions of masculinity, the same kind of assumptions that this blog is attempting to undermine. And here I thought I was being a radical when in fact Hollywood did it 40 years ago and in tight pants.

Condescending to be Helpful

Later, I asked about the best and the worst traits of masculinity.

RBD: So what is the worst trait that has traditionally been associated with the word masculinity?

BL: Certainly patriarchy. And condescension. But those really aren’t unique to masculinity.

RBD: What makes condescension in particular traditionally masculine?

BL: It’s so hard to separate the traditional concept of masculinity. It's so wrapped up in white northern European culture that it’s kind of like, “It’s all the same.” It may be more that whiteness, that religiousness, more than masculinity that [condescension] comes from. That manifest destiny, we know better, we’re chosen by god, sort of everything is our minion. Women and children and people of color are our property. That to me is the worst thing about traditional masculinity.

RBD: How about the best thing about traditional masculinity? The best trait?

BL: I struggle with this because the thing that I, throughout my life, have sort of really maybe wanted to emulate more than anything else is not necessarily a positive quality, but the self sacrificing is sort of…

RBD: I call it loyalty.

BL: But not just loyalty. Chivalry is a real awful thing that implies condescension and all of that negative, but the, “I’m going to take the burden on so that somebody else doesn’t have to,” is something that I’ve always really liked. I know that in a lot of ways it’s not healthy because it’s a lot of it ego, but I have always enjoyed being the kind of person that would give my seat to somebody else. Or carry something that was really heavy so that somebody didn’t have to. And it wasn’t that they’re not capable of doing it, but that I’m strong and capable, and I can help in this way. And I think that’s something I value about masculinity. That sort of willingness to, not help the old lady across the street, but sort of like, you need somebody to move heavy furniture, I can do that, and it doesn’t have to be somebody who has a penis that does it. But I think that there is that attitude of masculinity in that offer.

RBD: In a way it seems like two sides of the same coin. The thing that you dislike the worst (condescension) and the thing that you like the best about masculinity (helpfulness).

Petersburg- Caviar by Walter Smith

BL: And that’s what I really struggle with actually. And as I broaden my own awareness of who I can be, and it doesn’t have to be butch or femme. There’s been a lot of that sort of cafeteria masculinity, picking and choosing what you want to keep and what you want to reject, and it’s not just all bad. And the parts that I have traditionally thought of as good, have their origins in something that’s not necessarily positive.

The idea of cafeteria masculinity is close to the image of liberated men that I hold in my imagination. I originally conceived of writing an article about hors gendered folks for that very reason. We men who are seeking liberation are looking for role models ourselves. We are looking for people to pave the path to freedom. Those like Beau who have decided to take on the underpinnings of gender are acting as our Moses, leading us out of the constructs that have kept us in lives of solitude and violence. It is hard to imagine the threat under which they live as a result. The reaction to non-conforming gender is morbidly violent, and theirs is a unique courage born of a mix of desperation for acceptance and a rebellious character. Regardless of Beau’s reasons for trailblazing our liberation, we owe hir and those like hir a debt of gratitude.

Breaking Down Stereotypes 

At the end of our interview, we spent a long time just letting the conversation flow, and at one point I wondered if xi felt like society was becoming more free because of the breaking down of traditional gender norms in society at large.

BL: It is, but here’s the double-edged sword about all that. In the kinds of circles that I’ve traveled in, the radical political stuff. When there’s a meeting, people go around and introduce themselves and say what gender pronoun they prefer. It is sort of a thing for a lot of people to say, “It doesn’t matter.” And that’s really marginalizing and erasing for those of us who have to choose and are so aware of the choices that we make and that other people make. So when an obviously cis-gendered straight man says, “Oh, you can call me ‘she,’ I won’t be offended.”

Beau Laurence's profile pic from Facebook.

That’s really a place of privilege to be able to say that. "You do your gender so well that you won’t be offended if you are called 'she.'" For those of us who may not do gender very well, what other people perceive us as has a huge emotional impact, so that place of, “It doesn’t matter,” is like, “You’re not really taking seriously that it matters so much for some of us.”

RBD: That’s true, but being exposed to non-normative gender associations can break those stereotypes for cis-people.

BL: It absolutely can, and just like every other thing, this is sort of the natural way of progress. You have these very rigid boxes, and they start to get broken up, and then you have conventionally perceived or attitudinally conventional people who then start to co-opt the language. And that is something that is a natural progression, but it’s annoying.

(If you have a complicated relationship with masculinity, and would like to have your life broadcast on this blog, please contact me to set up your own Making Men Interview.)

Dancer in the Park

A grand jete. Photo by Franny Schertzer

Yesterday, I took my son to the zoo. We found a park in between the giraffes and the camels and started doing our game I call "Jetes." If you have any dance training at all, you'll recognize a jete as a leap. From ballet it has been adopted by almost every other form of dance because, hey, dancers love to leap. As we play jetes, my son and I leap around going as high in the air as we can and shouting, "jete, jete" at the top of our lungs, regardless of the company we are keeping.

It is an unusual game, but it is a game that has inspired a great deal of other children (and some teenagers) to replicate us. Dance is the purest embodiment of joy in the universe. There is no barrier, no limb or appendage, no part of your consciousness between yourself and an expression of energy and exuberance when you are allowing yourself to give way to dance. And watching my son reflecting my amateur park dancing, I felt pride that my son was so uninhibited and expressive. In liberating myself from masculanization, I discovered a fulfilling emotional life, and I have given my son the chance to free himself.

Another family was nearby, and our lyrical steps soon led us into their midst. A five-year-old boy in a soccer shirt and pair of shiny sport shorts approached me to ask, "What are you doing?"

Kensington Park by Jospephson.

I answered, "We're doing jetes. It's a dance move."

From behind his gender drag, he asked me, "Can I see it again?"

So I did a couple of straight jetes and a ballet move that I enjoy a great deal called a grand allegro. Of course, I am terrible at these. At 6'4" and 185 pounds, my allegros are more floppy fish than soaring swan. Pretty soon, a passel of kids was chasing me around the little enclosure of grass, surrounded by the braying of animals at the zoo, the humphing of camels, a caw from a peahen, an occasional spurt of laughter from a distant hyena, and we were all leaping for the sky with our arms held suborbital over our heads.

Five children and myself leaped about on the grass as their dads watched, with expressions on their faces like I was turning leading their children out of Ireland with a pan-pipe of homosexual deviancy. However, it was not long before one of the dads pulled himself out of his bewilderment and did what men so often do when they are uncomfortable. He turned to violence.

He pulled aside the boy in gender drag and introduced him to a karate chop, then encouraged the boy to practice on him. The dancers in the park were soon ninjas on the attack. Even my own son, seeing that all of the other boys had been transitioned to acts of violence on one another, started to practice making Bruce Lee sounds while his joyful facial expression crumpled into the closest approximation of hate and intimidation that his chubby cheeks could muster.

The dad who had turned away from the deviant behavior of dance to the socially acceptable simulated violence was scowling himself, which is apparently the appropriate facial expression for men at play. I redirected my son and the girl back to peaceful and joyful dance, but my heart wasn't in it. The little boys knew their place. They had been successfully trained to know that "dance" involved pink tutus and girly slippers. Their momentary confusion that dance was something fun and powerful was just a lapse in judgment, promptly cured by Dad's reminder that they should be pretending to hurt one another.

I was reminded of one of the most instructive gender-training moments of my childhood. My own first ballet class ended in crying as I realized that I was the only boy. My fear of what it meant to be feminized drove me to wander the hallways with tears streaming down my face. If I was doing something that was for girls, did that mean that my friends, who refused to play with girls, wouldn't play with me anymore? What about all the finery that I saw on the dance floor? The tutus and leotards that I didn't own only served to show me how foreign ballet was from the life for which I was being trained. 10 years later, I started taking ballet again, this time in the early stages of a teenage rebellion that would form my belief in the necessity of men's liberation.

Virtual image by Jie Loon.

Still, for a brief moment, on the plain between the giraffes and the camels at the Denver Zoo, I was able to imagine a world where small boys were not introduced to violence as a matter of course. In this world, it is acceptable and encouraged for boys to spend their afternoons learning about jetes and grand allegros. In the world to come, perhaps even my future grandson's generation, the default game of choice with a dad will not be pretend to beat each other up, but express yourself through clumsy, but powerful, leaps.

Sex After Feminism

But I Love Sex

Sex is awesome, or at least it should be. Sex should be a healthy meaningful interaction between human beings. It is only when sex is violent that it hurts people. So long as it is safe and nonviolent, it is harmless. No one makes a more convincing argument for this fact than Dan Savage and his "media empire" (insubstantial though it may be).

However, the problem with sex is the very thing that makes it so satisfying. Sex is a product of the limbic system, not the prefrontal lobes. Sex is reptilian. When you get rid of all the toys, human sex and crocodile sex is pretty much the same. This is a problem because feminism is a product of modern society. Modernity has enabled us  to make humanity better. Because of the U.N., we no longer live in a constant state of war. Because of the welfare state and an effective legal system, our resources are divided more equitably so that we no longer have to fear starving to death, or dying of a curable disease. Because of near-universal education, we are no longer ignorant of the state of things. We no longer have to live at yellow alert, because our society has created a semi-stability. We can move out of our animal state, stand up on two legs, look around and think about the world.

An aware educated person cannot help but notice prejudice. Facts that we had assumed for centuries, such as the myth that blacks and women were inferior, have been considered and found to be false. But some of that residue remains. Some of the fear remains. And when we go into "sex mode," and our higher brain shuts down, we stop using our smart filter.

But I cannot imagine a society without sex, even if our reptilian brain is particularly susceptible to our gender training. Even if our sexism is nature rather than nurture, that just means that it is something that we have to work harder to overcome. We have to find a way to approach sex in a healthier way.

So, here are some ways that people who want to see gender progress can approach sex without reinforcing gender roles.

1) Powerful Women and Men- When Hollywood and their clueless media moguls say a powerful woman, they almost always mean a woman who has power over a man. They don't mean a good and kind woman who just really likes to have sex with good and kind men. They don't mean a loving couple who wish to explore their sexuality. They don't mean two powerful politicians falling in love with one another. They generally mean a woman who, at some time or another, uses sex to get what she wants. That must end.

2) Redefine the Aesthetic- Every straight woman does not have to appeal to every straight man. Criticizing the body of our potential partners is a shameful product of masculinization. When someone admits a sexual attraction to a woman, the first response is to find fault, as men commonly do by focusing on body parts, and Kerry and Samantha now do over drinks when they "dish" on "Sex in the City." It needs to be stopped. Rather than speaking disparagingly about the bodies of women, we who are attracted to women need to do two things.

Picture by roseoftimothywoods

a)Admire their body without dehumanizing them- It is okay to admire the bodies of others, and should be encouraged, so long as it is done respectfully. An acquaintance once told me a story of coming home with a smile on her face.

In her neighborhood, it was common for men to catcall her from the windows of their cars and say things like, "Get in." When that happened, she was obviously disconcerted. Constructions workers' filthy language and dangerous sexual aggression is a reflection of the worst of masculinity. In these examples you can see the connection between the reptilian brain and sex. You can also recognize the structures of carrot and stick masculinizing. By antagonizing and threatening women, masculinizers are able to make the threat of feminization more terrifying. If being woman-like means getting harassed on the street, men will not want to be like women. It is simultaneously a way of keeping women "in their place." But, on this particular day a man had joyfully stopped my friend and said, "Excuse me."
She said that she replied with the customary suspicion, "Yes?"
"You have a nice ass."
With waiffish, girlish women being admired in most fashion magazines, this woman had thought of her backside as a liability. This simple and friendly acknowledgement of sexual attraction was not hostile or aggressive. It sought nothing in return. It was just a casual acknowledgement of sexual attraction, the same way that one would say, "You are very pretty."

Frank acknowledgement of sexual attraction, instead of sexual aggression, combined with emphasizing the positive, rather than the negative, could allow men to open up to more diverse sexual attractions, creating healthier partnership bonds, not driven by advertising or peer pressure, but by acceptance of all body types.

b)Be Discreet- The key to respectful acknowledgement of sexual attraction is to make sure that the person is not threatened by it. Too many women (1 in 4) have been the victims of sexual violence, as have too many men (1 in 5. This number indicates the dual purpose of sexual violence to feminize women and bring the threat of feminization to men). It is improper to casually remark on sexual attraction to strangers, even if done respectfully, because in a society where sexual violence is epidemic at 22.5% the man in the example above could not have been sure if my friend had previously been raped. In a better society, perhaps frank admission of sexual attraction to strangers could be normal, but not in this product of tens of thousands of years of sexism. While I believe it is important that we start to acknowledge sexual attraction, it is important that we do so respectfully and discreetly.

3)We also need to start talking about sex so that we can take it out of the exclusive realm of the reptilian brain. When we talk about sex, in the words of Dr. Phil, we "program our environments for success." The sex act is always going to be reptilian and wild. That is the joy of it. But if we acknowledged it in our daily lives, talked about it openly, and made deliberate choices about sex, then we could begin to understand an intercourse of equality. Would that be a beautiful thing? I believe so.

Why I Was Jealous of my Wife

For two years, I have spent most of my time as a stay-at-home dad. The experience has opened my eyes to ideas about gender that I have come to realize are quite rare. These intellectual notions are important, but I have been ignoring the personal challenges of changing places with my wife. Here is one issue that I'm only just coming to terms with.

Parenting (Well) is Hard Work

I was changing 80% of the diapers, feeding the baby all day long, cleaning up, and paying a lot of attention to the kid. This last is harder than it sounds. In the first couple of months, while there's still that new-baby smell, it's easy to just sit and stare at the baby, or read a book while the baby is sleeping, or simply poke at the baby and make silly noises hoping for a smile. But as the baby gets older, and becomes a toddler, xi needs you to be in a state of constant yellow alert.

Yellow alert is a concept that gun owners talk about often. When you're conceal and carrying, you are supposed to be at yellow alert every moment of your day. Some of the NRA-types talk about how there wouldn't be any crime if everyone were always at yellow alert. The only problem is... yellow alert is really boring.

When driving down a highway across Nebraska or Wyoming, I am supposed to be paying attention at all times, I should be watching my blind spot and looking as far ahead as I can see for trouble. But at some point, it is inevitable that I realize I've completely forgotten the last 15 miles. People are just too social to be at yellow alert all the time. But being a mothering dad of a toddler is like driving down that highway, only your a long haul trucker. You're putting in sixty to seventy hours a week watching your kid try to stack one block on top of another. "Look at that, sweety. You stacked the blocks," again. "What would you like to do now? Oh? Stack some more blocks?" Yay! "If you stack another block, that would be great and I am going to throw myself out the window." Oh, did I say that aloud. "Don't worry baby, it's a first floor window, so I'll probably be okay."

The thing about watching a toddler for seventy hours a week is that toddlers don't know how to do all of the neat things that we humans know how to do (like hold conversations). So, the job of a mothering dad is essentially to watch the toddler learn how to do things that I've known how to do since I was a toddler. Oh, I could help, but I also know the research, and if I help the toddler too much, xi will never learn how to do it xirself, and xi will never become a fully functioning and actualized adult. So, I put myself on yellow alert and sit down to watch the kid stack blocks... again.

On ne Nait pas Femme, On le Devait.

When my wife got home, inevitably my kid would glow and shout, "Mommio!" The kid would run to the door shouting in joy and proclaiming her arrival like a trumpeter at court. At first, the mothering dad is relieved. Finally, yellow alert can be turned off. I can read the newspaper (online of course), and catch up on my email. I can finish making dinner, and clean up all the stacks of blocks that have been created around the house and somehow remind me of Manhattan, only shorter, wooden, and proclaiming "Z" or "B" where the billboards should be. I can do the dishes, start the laundry, or vacuum the floors.

Two problems with this relief. The first is that it fades quickly when I realize that all the things that I want to do are just the things that will make me feel like an adult again. This kind of self-care is the most challenging part of being a professional mother. Without it, you are not as good a parent because you are taking out your neurotic needs on your children, yet being an adult is a full time job and being a parent is more than a full time job, and there are limited hours in the day.

The other problem is that I can't entirely turn off yellow alert. You see, my wife is a very good parent. She is probably better with young kids than I am. While I was out trying to mow lawns as a kid, because I was a boy, she was out finding gigs as a babysitter, because she was a girl. That's an oversimplification, and I did some babysitting as a child, but before my baby was born, I had never cared for a child younger than 18--months-old (see child's play blog from 2010). Nevertheless, my wife didn't know the kid as well as I did. And of course, that made me feel guilty.

While my wife was out working, I was bonding with our child, getting to know the little places that he liked to stack blocks, the things that he liked to pretend were blocks and stack, and the blocks that he liked to pretend were missiles. I got to know the cord that he almost strangled himself on several times during the day, and the kinds of bowel movements that he was having requiring rapid-fire diaper changing. I could tell you if his spit up was going to be white, blue, or green.

But these were the kinds of things that my wife always wanted to know about her kid. She was the one who wanted to be a stay-at-home. She is the one who played with baby dolls her entire childhood, babysat when she was ten-years-old, and envisioned what her future husband would look like coming in the door, giving her a kiss on the cheek, and then awaiting his scotch on the rocks aperitif. Even if her imagining has been shifted by gender studies' classes, she still had the urges, partially programed in by genetics (though the research shows that this is a lesser influence than social programing), and partially programed in by a life of being told, "this is what good women do."

Breastfeeding Makes me Jealous

But Not for the Reason You're Thinking (sicko)

I felt guilty that I was depriving my wife of her chance to be "mom," and at the same time, I felt shamed that I wasn't helping to earn money. When I had broken my gendered activities to play house with the girls (which I did more than most boys), I was the dad who came home to the kiss and the aperitif. Most of this blog has focused on what it meant that I was ashamed to do something that I and my wife both wanted to do (it is the same barely cloaked shame in the fantastically complex Mr. Mom song by the country singer Lonestar).

But I was so focused on the shame of not being the earner, I didn't realize until recently that I was being denied one of the rewards of being the mothering parent. Because my kid was getting most of his calories from breast milk, xi had become primarily attached to my wife. Despite everything that I was doing to be Mr. Mom, I was as much second parent as if I was the aloof business traveling megabucks earning working dad. From the moment my wife got home, I was practically ignored, though still watching the kid out of the corner of my eye for some pitfall that I was better acquainted with than my working wife. I focused on how guilty I felt that she didn't get more time with the kid, so I never dealt with my own feelings of jealousy that I was only getting half the rewards of being the stay-at-home parent.

It has only been in the last couple of months that my child has become less reliant on breast milk (yes, we are still breastfeeding at two, I am proud to say, as is recommended by the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and any other none-industry scientist that has ever studied it). When I got home from teaching a class on Monday, he was staying up and refusing to sleep until he got a kiss and cuddle from his "daddio." It is just a phase, but it is the phase that I expected and wanted long ago. My jealousy has been replaced by relief. I was convinced that my child's attachment to his mom, despite the fact that I was the stay-at-home, was a sign that I was an incompetent mother, and my greatest fear (the one expressed in this song my Justin Roberts) was that men were naturally incompetent mothers.

photo courtesy of SaglchMaSo.
SaglchMaSo is not associated with RightBeDone.

No matter how much I understood, mentally, that men, like women, are created, not born, this small proof that I was failing as a parent haunted me. Now that my child has shown attachment to me as well as my wife, I feel vindicated. I am a great mother. My child is the best behaved, most sensitive, and all-around greatest two-year-old I have ever met, and xi loves me. I may not have birthed our son, but I was made a mother none-the-less. Never in my life have I felt more free.