Immigrant Crossing: Intersecting Race and Gender

Next week, I am releasing a novel about an immigrant who is accused of murder. The book is a thrilling and creative exploration of what it means to be an American, and who gets to make that decision. We glorify the immigrants who crossed the country in covered wagons, and the immigrants who first landed at Plymouth Rock, while militarizing the southern border and deifying new immigrants as gangs of thugs. The reasons for these seemingly complicated conflicting feelings are rooted in the same old triumvirate of dickishness; subjectification, the warrior/thug complex, and the consolation prize.

OH MY GOD! THE HORDES!

In 2011, I wrote about how Tom Tancredo and his masculinity clones were attempting to highlight the MS-13 gang as an example of how immigrants from Latin America were thugs. We pick a group with whom we identify, and label outside groups as thugs. This is the Warrior/Thug Complex. With immigration, it's easy. Immigrants come from other cultures,

Yeah! A wall. It worked so great for the Chinese!

they often speak other languages, and usually speak it with a funny accent (like those darn Canadians). Best yet for deciding who is not a proper warrior, immigrants from lower latitudes are usually brownish. It's like a storm trooper's uniform except they can't take it off.

In a society that suffers remarkably little violent crime, masculinity will not survive unless males can be convinced that they are at risk of imminent violence at any moment. Thugs must be identified in order to allow men to be warriors, otherwise advocates of irrational violence just seem like tinfoil hats (thanks to Eric Schultz for that phrase). Immigration provides masculinity in the new world and increasingly in Europe with hordes of thugs needed to make men believe they must continue to glorify violence or suffer the consequences.

ESL- English as a Second cLass Marker

Americans of a certain educational class get goose pimples every time they spot errors in how people use English. We cite old wives' tales as grammar rules, and try to pretend that language is static. This is ridiculous considering just how rapidly language evolves, and is ever-evolving. Just consider that the word selfie is now in every major American dictionary.

Sorry to those looking for solid rules. Language doesn't fit into neat categories,
and when it does it is still evolving and changing.
1- Ever heard of sarcasm? e.g. "I could care less by completely ignoring you."
2- Except in a plural acronym e.g. M.D.'s.
3- Just because 'literally' is the antonym of 'figuratively' does not mean it cannot be used figuratively. If that were true, it would be bad grammar to write the word 'large' in a small or medium-sized font.
8- Except when 'effect' is a transitive verb.
10- Just because it's nonstandard, doesn't mean it's not a word.
Addendum i- Prepositions are fine to end sentences with. Please stop spreading this old wives' tale. To quote Churchill, "This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Addendum ii- I find it ironic when people claim there is only one narrow definition of  'irony.'
Conclusion- Grammar is a nefarious tool to discover those who don't belong.
Feel free to use proper grammar, but don't think less of those who don't!

The reality is that grammar is now what it has always been, a way of telling the unwashed masses from the educated elite. When a grammar sheriff of Nottingham tells Robin Hood that he should not end a sentence with a preposition, he is reflecting the belief of extreme elitists from the 17th Century who designed a grammar which reflected Latin in order to better determine which of their peers had been to a proper Latin college (i.e.- not Shakespeare).

Today, we mostly use grammar and "proper English" to determine who has been middle class or above for long enough to be considered properly American, and therefore a properly subjectified man (or privileged woman). Better yet, by pointing out "errors" in grammar, we can objectify others instead of considering the substance of their ideas, arguments, and legitimate claims at liberation. By focusing on how an Asian immigrant speaks funny, or on how black men don't speak "white," we can lump these people into groups less deserving of the consolation prize.

Overseers Over Seeing

And our consolation prize is the same as it was in the antebellum south. We are White (Straight) Men. This fact may alienate us from our children, other men, even our wives and lovers, but at least we are at the top of the heap, the head of the pack. Even within the group of white men, we may not be the CEO in charge of Georgia Pacific Paper Company (The Koch Brothers), or even a small-business owner. But at least we are not brownish. Seeing the welfare state erode before us, knowing that starvation and ostracism awaits us if we fail to succeed as proper men, we are rightfully terrified that we could fail even if we are hard working and relatively competent. Most men don't realize that it's just a Cracker Jack prize. We have little individual control over our economic situations, even if we are white, but we have a little more than those brownish guys do.

Give us your sick, tired, and poor
so that we can laugh at them as
we point out how they are not real men.

Immigration is the great story of the new world. If America is exceptional, it is not exceptional like a souffle. It is exceptional like a potager, a mix of all the vegetables in the garden in one tremendous stew. It seems like blindness that leads so many Americans to fight each wave of immigration, or complete disregard for history. I assure you it is not. The reason that Sheriff Joe is elected to office repeatedly in Arizona isn't that people don't know how important immigration is to our success, but because immigration provides too great a foil for American masculinity. Hating immigrants is one of the costs of masculinity.

On its own, masculinity is a great weight on men. We would not carry that burden unless there were carrots and sticks. Xenophobia provides both. It is another part of masculinity that we must dismantle before we can be free.

Competitive? or Just a Dick?

Competition

Penguin Toss is available for your
mobile device. Just don't be a dick.

I am competitive. If a board game has the slightest bit of skill involved, I spend the entire game focused on trying to win. I take the rules out of the box, try to exploit every loophole, and figure out how to come in first. When I'm riding my bicycle to work, being passed sends me into a huff of concentration to try to catch the passer, who fends me off with the exuberance of Lance Doping Armstrong. Once, I spent several hours playing an arcade game where a polar bear (North Pole) used a large fish to bat a penguin (Southern Hemisphere) until I beat the distance record. That's right, a polar-bear-hitting-a-penguin-with-a-fish distance record mattered enough to me to waste many hours, and many more dollars. Obviously, this is not healthy, but it is very masculine. All three of the dickheads of masculinity are shoved into this kind of competitiveness.

It's Not So Much About Winning, but Yes It Is

First off, I wanted to subjectify myself as the person who was in control of the polar bear fish batting penguin game. If I won, I won. It's pretty straight forward, but it also defeated the point of playing games, which was to hang out with other people at Dave and Busters, while having fun. I immediately thought of the other people around me batting their penguins as competition, in other words, thugs to be defeated. But the most important part of playing games and sports as a dick/masculine man, was that I got a consolation prize when I won. I may still have been beholden to extremely wealthy patriarchs for my basic food, housing, and healthcare needs, as they continued to fight any effort to clean up the environment while selling me stuff that I didn't need and made me less happy... But by golly, my polar bear sure hit that penguin a long way with that fish. If I just kept focusing on riding faster, winning more, and getting more of these consolation prizes, then I could forget about the true harm being perpetrated on the world by the patriarchal corporatocracy.

Competition is Fun for Everyone! Being a Dick is Fun Just for You.

I think most people have had healthy competition at some point. I used to love riding single track with my future partner. As we competed, we grew closer until eventually we decided to raise children together. When

These U.S. Sailors are playing kickball
with local kids.

competition is done correctly, it is fun, and it brings people closer together. But if you find that you need time before talking to other competitors after the game, maybe you should sign up for a nightlight boccie ball league, or a hard drinking kickball team. I hate to break it to you, but you may not be a liberated competitive person. You may just be a dick.

U.S. Marine Diaper Derby

At some point I realized that, amazingly, most of the women in my life were content to play a little, have fun, then stop. While playing ultimate Frisbee or soccer, some women may have been rubbish, but when it came to being happy and free, they had me soundly beat. So, I started answering Man Up, with Man Back, Dude. Man Back. Or, when the double entendre was appropriate, Man Down.

The prime example of manning back is racing a toddler. When you footrace a toddler, you win when you think it's good for the toddler, and you lose when you think it's good for the toddler. Here, you are playing the game for the human interaction. You aren't playing for the love of the game, because who the fuck cares if you love a stupid game? You are playing for the love of a person, and that's what counts.

"Stop Teaching Your Girls..." Entertainment Addiction

In Bronies -2, I Had Few Conversations About This Quote

" Stop teaching your girls about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and The Hunger Games in an effort to liberate them. "

Children don't recognize The Hunger Games
as social commentary, because of the
plethora of glorified battle sequences.

It is okay to read the Hunger Games. If your children tell you they want to see the Hunger Games, don't dismiss the idea out-of-hand. The franchise can be considered a critique of American militarism. The stories identify the line between physicality and violence, and deliberately cross that line. If violence is physicality with the intent of hurting another person, then clearly we in America have some forms of entertainment that are violent, and to the extent that we do, can we justify those entertainment forms? Did our constant justification of entertainment violence enable us to justify violent action in Iraq in March of 2003? Does our paranoia that leads to NSA spying, TSA craziness, and black lists arise from our constant playing out of destructive and violent narratives in popular culture? These are legitimate questions raised by The Hunger Games.

by Franc1NE, this image is represen
tative of the cosplay surrounding
The Hunger Games.

However, if viewers were truly interested in The Hunger Games as a social critique, the popularity of nonviolent protest against violence and militarism would have increased after the first film was released. Sadly, the only thing that has increased as a result of The Hunger Games, other than the bottom lines of multinational corporations, has been registration in archery classes to practice wielding violence (or at best provide a nonviolent outlet for violent urges with roots in the franchise). The Hunger Games is a franchise dedicated to entertainment violence weakly justified on the back of a critique of entertainment violence. If your child isn't able to grasp this irony, then they aren't ready to understand the Hunger Games as anything more than propaganda for the military industrial complex.

A Debate with a Welfare Libertarian (Mainstream Democrat from Gen X)

Gen X: I'm not going to censor my child's entertainment.

Me: It's not censorship. Censorship is when you remove something that you deem to be bad for society. Simply being conscious about the material that you procure for your child isn't censorship. It's citizenship.

Gen X: I don't decide for my child what he should read, watch, or listen to.

Me: If you don't, then multinational corporations will, and they've spent trillions of dollars over decades figuring out how to get your child to do exactly what they want him to do.

Gen X: Art is too important for me to foist my opinions on my child.

Me: When you procure The Hunger Games, or bondage child pornography for your child, you are indoctrinating them with your opinion of what is art by making an affirmative gesture to support it.

Gen X: Oh, calm down. It's just some fluffy entertainment. It's not bondage child pornography. It's The Hunger Games, a book written for children.

Me: But I'm arguing that justifying violence in our society is what leads to things like domestic abuse, rape, many assaults and murders, as well as inexcusable military actions and racist policing policies. The Hunger Games is an exercise in justifying violence, so it could be a root cause of these problems.

Gen X: So, you're saying I shouldn't let my child see The Hunger Games.

Me: No. I'm saying if your child isn't able to grasp the irony of violent entertainment as critique of violent entertainment, they aren't ready to understand the Hunger Games as anything more than propaganda for the military industrial complex.

Gen X: I'm not going to censor my children's entertainment.

Eye roll provided by Buster Keaton.

Addicted to Entertainment

Why is this so frustrating that I turn into Buster Keaton even thinking about it? Gen X never debates on the merits of the argument because they are too busy fighting the hypothetical. I am inclined to say that is because they know I'm right, but that would be unfair. They can't know that I'm right because they can't even get to the point where they are considering the idea that militaristic media contributes to social problems. The noteworthy thing is that their response is so remarkably similar to the response of addicts when they are confronted with facts that disrupt their addictions. It's kinda like the hysterical Portlandia sketch below.

Circular Arguments: Their arguments revolve around themselves and almost always start out where they began.

Unrecognized Contradictions: They argue that films are important pieces of art, but the very notion that films or sports they like may be making society worse leads them to spasms of "Calm down, it's just entertainment." Which is it? The same way that an addict can hold two contradictory reasons in their heads for why they take drugs (I am overworked and bored), Gen X has no problem arguing that The Hunger Games is an important social critique and a fluffy action film.

Denial: The whole point is to get social critics to stop criticizing the entertainment that Gen X enjoys. Sometimes, the braver welfare libertarian will debate the merits of media culture for a few sentences, but inevitably they revert back to the circular logic, contradictions, and tactics designed to shut the argument down. Several Gen Xers have admitted that they were not willing to come along with me on my critique, because they didn't want me to spoil the fun, which is hysterical because I find it more fun to critique the media than to passively experience it.

It's not just a river, it's De-Nile. Get it?

A friend introduced me to the idea that people are so resistant to these critiques because they are addicted to entertainment.  So, I read several versions of the mass entertainment addiction theory, which seems to have originated in Christian theology, but is now being adopted by social psychologists.

I haven't done enough reading yet, nor thought about it enough to conclude for certain that society is addicted to entertainment. However, with the availability of corporate commercialism at our fingertips 90% of the time on our computer/phones, and hundreds of cable channels beamed into our home at any given moment, it seems like the seeds of an opium-war-style societal addiction have been laid. If that is truly the case, it is more important than ever to be conscious about the entertainment that we provide for our children. And no, that is not censorship.

Nerd Culture and Bronies- 2

What is a Brony?

Ummm... How does one make
a pony in a racist caricature?
Ask the MLP zebra and she may
answer in fake gibberish Swahili.

Bronies are young men who are fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP). Their female counterparts are called pegasisters. It is important to understand that there are several My Little Pony series, but most bronies and pegasisters are fans of Friendship is Magic only. It is also important to note that the show is not very good. The scenarios are unoriginal, the show is mildly racist (think African incantations in pseudo-Swahili), and the lessons learned are taught in exactly the wrong order for young children.

Studies show that children don't learn good behavior when T.V. characters do something wrong and then learn the error of their ways thereafter. In fact, in a study of children who watched Arthur the Aardvark and then played with one another, children were far more likely to engage in the modeled bad behavior from the beginning of the show than the corrected good behavior from the end.

MLP at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
The photographer, Bart Evans, called
MLP "strangely compelling."

Please note that my own 3-year-old is a huge fan (which explains my begrudging knowledge of MLP Geography including Ponyville, Manehatten, and Canterlot). But my real reason for writing about bronies is the intense reactions they inspire. People find bronies ridiculous, creepy, and/or weird, and deride them as though they were stalkers. Whenever a person feels strongly about something so innocuous as which television show someone else enjoys watching, there's clearly something going on.

WAR ON PINK

Many people say they dislike MLP because it is too "pink" (btw- pink is my favorite color because it is imaginary). Pink is not the problem. Pink being used to push powerlessness and objectification on girls who are expected to have particular body-types... that's the problem. Pink used to shame girls into being princesses instead of queens... that's the problem. Pink as a cue for "girls should do this," and it's corollary, "Boys should not do it..." that's the problem.

Pony cosplay just looks
healthier and more fun.
Photo by Mooshu.

MLP is pink, but it avoids, and even fights many of the problems associated with pinkness. The MLP kingdom is run by women; princesses that really serve as queens. The heroes are all young female ponies, and they're not promoting any particular body type because they're HORSES, and horses don't exactly conform to modern American beauty standards.

Too often, well-meaning parents try to compensate for gender normalizing by introducing violence to girls, which is supposed to help them be more boyish. It doesn't work. Violence is emotionally handicapped and cowardly. When you teach your girls about violent problem-solving, you are teaching them to approach violence from a place of callous madness. Stop teaching your girls about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and The Hunger Games in an effort to liberate them. Good parents hope that their children will never assault another person, so why would we encourage them to pretend to do exactly that? You're not liberating girls, just making them into sociopaths like way too many men.

More importantly, boys are not innately violent. Please stop teaching your girls that we are. We all understand that a superhero is one who is capable of wielding violence. Superheroes are often affiliated with the military or paramilitary, but nonviolent resistance superheroes are relegated to obscurity with the classification "alternative." Alternative to programming girls and boys to reward violent behavior in potential friends, role models, and lovers. Let's try teaching children that being a boy means being healthy, happy, and powerful. I am boy. Watch me genuinely love.

In the worlds of comic books, this drawing from Badger is
standard fare. Photo from Mr. Digressius' blog.

But the ponies in MLP don't use violence to solve their problems, so they are not taken seriously by a society that is so militaristic that people are comfortable showing war movies to 3-year-olds. Stop fighting a war on pink. Start fighting against America's militarism (including superhero worship), which is the true culprit keeping women (and men) oppressed.

MLP TEACHES E.Q.

While young children cannot, bronies and pegasisters are in the perfect position to learn from MLP, and they do. There are dozens of iterations of the Brony Code created by fans. As one prepubescent voice says over his YouTube sketch about the Brony Code, "Laughter is a pride feeling, so you can laugh with a brony, but not at him." Bronies and pegasisters are consciously developing their own code of ethics based on the "elements of harmony." These elements are the most powerful weapon in MLP. Think about that. Instead of guns, webs, swords, lasers, bombs, or fists, bronies have harmony which is made of honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity, loyalty, and friendship.

Hasbro selling some crap.
Photo by Mooshu.

How often do teenagers and young men spend time thinking and expounding on the difference between generosity and sacrifice? Thinking about these things is exactly what leads to higher E.Q. Creating these codes and attempting to live according to them prepares children and young adults to be good people.

While it is true that Hasbro just wants to sell ponies, I am okay with that. Doug and Melissa just wants to sell toys that teach children how to build, add, and read. By acting out the scenarios in the television show, bronies are learning the lessons of MLP, and they are lessons that boys don't often get. MLP is a part of the nerd lexicon that does not have superheroes defined by a capacity for wielding violence. It teaches a forward-thinking ethic based on nonviolence.

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO PISSED OFF?

Calm down. They're just kids.
Photo of Brony Meetup by Smitty.

Bronies and Pegasisters are so damn scary, raising their E.Q.s, solving problems through non-violence, and enjoying a *GASP* television show created for girls. Calm down everypony. Hold your... well, horses.

There are two main reasons why people react so strongly to the brony phenomenon. The first is simple, and this is the reason that some poor brony in North Carolina had his car vandalized and was subject to homophobic slurs when his neighbors found out he liked MLP. If MLP is not masculine, but there are males who like MLP, then masculinity is not concomitant with having a penis. Too many men, terrified of losing their place in the hierarchy of violence, and therefore an object of violent subjectification, strike out with anger and fear at being struck themselves. It is the same reason that men inside the hierarchy of violence lash out against gay men and transgendered women.

The other reason is more complex. Many feminists have failed to recognize that some parts of the traditionally feminine schema are as valuable as, or more valuable than some things that women were and are unfairly denied. Children love prettiness because it's pretty, not because they're girls. Working in the realm prettiness makes artists great, chefs desirable, and politicians legend. But more than that, the ability to solve problems as a group, in harmony with people who may be rivals, with courtesy and gentleness is the foundation of democracy. In real life, kindness, laughter, and generosity are far more effective than the tool belts of superheroes even if the former are associated with girly plastic ponies.

Viva My Little Pony! Long live bronies and pegasisters!

Nerd Culture and Bronies- 1

Nerd Oppressors

I'm certainly not the first to point out that sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book culture has elements of patriarchy. Just last week, MovieBob Chipman authored a post called "On Geek Privilege" that is worth a read for anyone who has ever enjoyed an episode of Babylon 5. A touching and personal comic about the sexism in Cosplay can be found here by a woman named Paige whose work can be seen at thumbsart.

But with my analysis of masculinity, it becomes clear that all three dickheads of male oppression are on view in parts of nerd culture.

Warriors and Thugs; or DC and Marvel?

Boys will (wield violence) be
boys. Photo by Juppo Kelin.

The warrior/thug dichotomy drives most comic book stories, with so-called superheroes who almost always resort to violence to solve problems. None of these heroes ever seem to realize that violence only ever leads to more violence, so they are always shocked when some thug from their past comes back looking for revenge. If it weren't so terrifyingly realistic, it could almost be excused as naive. But most of the stories just turn out being horrific recreations of the excuses we Americans give ourselves every time we march off to battle in another country populated by people of color.

My Mint Condition is Better than Your Mint Condition
The second dickhead of male oppression, subjectification is a form of privilege. MovieBob gets at this point in the blog mentioned above. But by understanding subjectification, we start to understand how this privilege works. In order to become friends with a nerd, it helps to know about The Weeping Angels, Seven of Nine, and Merlot's. If some of that last sentence didn't make sense, you're not a real nerd (poser). When you take into account that most of the attendees of nerd conventions are young white men, it starts to seem like nerd culture has become a useful marker for privilege, just like the neighborhood where one lives, or one's knowledge of sports. Given how media conglomerates swoon over the comic, fantasy and sci-fi hoards, combined with the fact that silicon valley is having billionaire children like they are on Hobby Lobby's birth control plan (rhythm method), it's clear that nerd culture is now a proxy for class.

Why are so many of the
women in cosplay photos
skinny?
Poitr Konieczny took this
one.

Patriarchy = Subjectification + Warrior/Thug
Hierarchy is such an important part of masculinity that when I say, "Mine is bigger than yours," people know what I'm talking about (if you don't, ask your parents). To be successful in the hierarchy means being the most subjectified. This concept is introduced on the playground. Boys prove their masculinity by wielding violence. We all learned that "sissies hit girls." But what is the corollary? It's not that it is unmasculine to use force, because it is masculine as hell to hit just about anything EXCEPT girls, meaning other boys mostly. So "man up" by not letting him "disrespect" us, "don't be a chicken," "fight back," "show him what you're made of," and the most popular line in fiction of almost any kind, "get 'im." The hierarchy of boys, like the hierarchy of so many men before us, is a hierarchy of violence. Boys are either ass kickers or their asses are kicked, and we all know what those terms mean.

That is to say that my place in the hierarchy is directly related to a very real likelihood of getting my ass kicked. To paraphrase Catherine McKinnnon, "to be able to assault, a position that is social not biological, defines what a man is." Rich men are able to use their private (and sometimes taxpayer funded) armies to assault whomever they wish, while poor men are inordinately the objects of police violence. Eventually, most men use proxies instead of violence, like video games, knowledge of Stan Lee plot lines, or yellow-snow contests (don't ask). These proxies are the class markers that we call privilege.

So, nerd culture has protected ourselves from a threat of violence, not by liberating ourselves from the despicably archaic equation of extremist masculinity, but by creating a new equation that is almost as despicable while playing on similarly archaic themes incorporating lots of violence.

Whoa, that got heady. With all these sticks being swung, we need a carrot to keep us going.

This photo by Poitr Konieczny illustrates the
consolation prize. Fun, isn't it? Until you see
the face of the girl just behind Cat Woman.

Let's Go To Comiccon and Check out the Costumes and their Wearers.
The consolation prize is easy to identify. This third pivot on the oppressor dickhead triad makes sure that men want to be men. Men alienate ourselves from our communities in order to protect ourselves from the hierarchy of violence, so community where we can find it is one heck of a consolation prize. The community available at Comiccon, combined with the availability of fictional and cosplay sex targets, and awesome toys and entertainment create a wonderful carrot to keep young white men from liberation.

But one group of nerdy cohorts are fighting back in rainbow colors, with unicorn horns, pegasus wings, and a desire to solve problems through emotional intelligence instead of violence. Next week will be in acknowledgement (defense) of Bronies. Dude, you'll want to read this one (and it won't be nearly so heavy, I promise).

Super Bowl Complex

Since 2007, I have written on the Super Bowl and the complex relationship between extremist masculinity and sports. This year, I was an undercover brother in the fraternity of war-painted football fans who careened drunkenly through a Disneyfied Times Square in search of a few moments in proximity of well-known sports' figures. Need proof? Here's a video of the friendly Super Bowl crowds near the Tiffany Trophy.

Yup. I went to New York City for the Super Bowl. In the extremist masculinity hierarchy, that ranks somewhere between pissing in the woods and growing a mustache at 13. In New York, I proved that I know the difference between warriors and thugs. The Broncos were the warriors riding the Charge of the Light Brigade at the evil Sea Hawks. Also, by going I gave myself authority, subjectifying myself through useless knowledge of bizarrely esoteric skills. But mostly, I got my consolation prize. I may spend my average day at the mercy of powerful (moneyed) interests, but "we" went to the Super Bowl. By joining in, I gave myself a stake in the dickish system that is extreme masculinity.

Well, maybe it's more complex than that.

The Super Bowl is not entirely as evil as it is often made out to be. Human trafficking and sex slavery does go up during the Super Bowl, but not any more so than at any other major event, sporting or otherwise. Also, domestic violence does not raise substantially when the home team loses. Counter intuitively, it seems that domestic violence upticks slightly when the home team wins. When we think about this fact, it makes sense. When we win, we are more confident in our masculinity, and that means we are more likely to forgive ourselves a little of that extreme masculinity aggression and violence. Hey, I just confirmed that I am an awesome dominant manly dude. What do you mean you don't agree? Didn't you see the Super Bowl?

Nevertheless, football itself, and even the masculinity parade that is the Super Bowl is not the problem. Sports and athleticism are important in daily life, and if anything American men are too lazy in their gigantic houses with their haze-inducing glorified minivans (i.e. S.U.V.'s and 4 door pickup trucks). If they only took sports more seriously maybe we would be able to put an end to America's terrifyingly high obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates. Yet, somehow sports feel excessively masculine.

Because they are masculine, often excessively.

Teddy Roosevelt said football would toughen us up, big words coming from the man who named the teddy bear. The New York Knicks are better known than the New York Liberty only because they are men. Men are more likely to be sports' viewers. People have been desperate to tie sports to masculinity for decades, but the women's movement refused to accept that sports were inherently male, and in doing so they showed that the relationship between sports and masculinity was as forced and false as the relationship between Rand Paul and reality.


Title IX is so successful because it takes sports out of traditional masculinity and makes them accessible to girls, and the women those girls become. Girls who join sports teams through Title IX are more successful on and off the field/court. They are healthier, better students, and less likely to suffer from emotional handicaps. Without a doubt, sports can be a positive influence on women as well as men. It is a part of the traditionally masculine platter that women picked up and said, "Yeah, we like that."

And that is exactly the point of men's liberation. Men too, should be able to pick up what they like from femininity and say, "Yeah, we like that." And as significantly, men should be able to put down those parts of masculinity that are dickish.

The trite thoughtless response to that goal is, "why can't men do that now?" If you've been reading this blog you probably already have some ideas, but the short answer is that most men don't even know that they want it. Just as many women in the fifties honestly told themselves that they didn't want to leave the home and join the work force, many men today honestly don't want to learn how to maintain a house, raise a child, or engage in meaningful healthy relationships. And the task of convincing men that using only what they want from masculinity will make them happy is harder than the task of convincing women because the consolation prize for men is so much better ($1.22 on every dollar that a woman earns, for example).


But the consolation prize is looking more hollow after the Great Recession. The successful job, the stability, and all of the toys were never more than a chimera, but now they are completely out of reach to a younger generation of men. We are looking at the two big platters of masculinity and femininity, and thinking, "I'd like a little bit of this, and some of that, and maybe a pinch or two from over here."

The Super Bowl, like most things including suburban living, S.U.V.'s and even the military, is a complex of the terrific alongside the terrible. Some things, like the community that I felt wandering Times Square with hundreds of thousands of other football fans, are great. Some things, like the suicide rates of pro football players after suffering head traumas, are tragic. Liberation isn't necessarily about doing things differently. Liberation is having the wisdom to know what parts of our lives make us happier, and the courage to dump the rest of the bull shit in the face of people who lack the aforementioned wisdom.

Magic Daddy Kisses: Epigenetics

Did you know that daddy kisses really are magic? My three-year-old is more right than anyone thought possible.

The epigenome is the stuff in which the genome sits. EpiDNA tags DNA, highlighting and activating certain parts of the genome, and shutting down other parts. Two studies involving rodents show how epiDNA works.

The first was about how multi-generational PTSD can be handed down through mice. A group of female mice were trained to fear a certain smell. The stress altered the epiDNA near the DNA linked to that particular scent. The effect was not only that the mice had a stress response to that smell, but they're ability to smell it was heightened. The off-spring had the same reaction as their mothers, even when they had never been introduced to that smell in the presence of their mothers. In other words, the memory of being scared of something can be passed down without actually telling your children to be afraid of that thing. I guess that explains why I hate caves...

The second study showed how PTSD can be treated through affectionate physical contact. In this study, rat pups were better able to handle stress when they were licked and cuddled in their youth. Once a mother had cuddled and licked her pup, that pup was more likely to cuddle her pup and so on, breaking the stress cycle completely. That is until they encountered the cuddle monster, and then they were all messed up forever.

In humans, this epigenetic impact has been shown to be more complicated than a simple transfer of stress, but the research has indicated that most serious stressors (think holocaust survivors) require about three generations to find their way out of the epigenetic stress bog. Not only do epigenetics cause PTSD-type reactions, epigenetic garbage increases the likelihood of many diseases, including cancer. But oxytocin is here to save the day again!

If you don't know much about oxytocin, just think about it as the child hormone. This is the hormone that is released every time you touch your child. It is the hormone that launches childbirth (pitocin is a synthetic version). It helps mom's make milk. It is present in copious amounts when adults get together to make children (or avoid making children but still enjoy themselves). Oxytocin is the gene of physical contact, and it has the side effect of cleaning off your epigenetic material. So, the research seems to imply that when we cuddle our children, we are not only helping them cope with stress now, but also helping them cope with stress in adulthood, and helping them prevent cancer. Talk about magic kisses.

Photo by Lies Thru a Lens

All of this is very cool, but why mention it on a blog devoted to liberation of men from extremist masculinity?

First of all, Dr. Elliot documents several studies in her book, "Pink Brain, Blue Brain," that show that babies who are identified as male receive less physical contact than babies whose sex is unknown or who are identified as girls (remember, that's why we didn't want to tell anyone the sex of our babies). That same book documents the fact that boys touch and are touched less throughout childhood, depriving them of the epigenetic benefits at the times in their lives when they need it most. It goes on into adulthood. I remember being single and not touching another human being except for the occasional handshake for months. Which is why, in my late 20's, I became a hugger. A bro-hugger.

Photo by Sage Ross of Ben Huh.

One of the first things I did to liberate myself was adopt and revel in the bro-hug. It's great because once you get them in a handshake, you can just pull them in and clean that epiDNA (I love cleaning my epigenome with another man ;). I don't know who invented the bro-hug, but it's hard to imagine anything that has been better for men's liberation. Thank you, bro-hug dude. We love you (imagine me bro-hugging the bro-hug inventor right now).

And on top of saving my kids from cancer, and helping me keep my emotional health, bro-hugging and daddy kisses help us break cycles of abuse.  According to multiple studies, most abusers come from abusive homes, and (in line with our epigenetic science) an abnormal number of abusers are raised in institutional settings where they are not often touched. But when children of abusers are given loving physical contact from adoptive parents, those children are far less likely to become abusers themselves. So, men who are raised with more touching are less likely to be abusers. When we think that somewhere around 90% of spouse abusers are men, it is obvious that feminism will never succeed until men can break the glass ceiling of cuddling (a task that sounds more dangerous than it is).

The Chicago Tribune posted an article mocking men's liberation as a bunch of whining from men who are making more money than women. But income inequality is not the only index of equality, it is just the overly simplistic way that Ward Cleaver would judge equality. In other words, it is the most masculine way of judging equality.

As for me, I quit my job three and a half years ago because part of gender equality is how many kisses my kids get from their parents, and how many I give to them.

More Liberated Than Ever

I am glad to be back to digging in to politics, race, class, and especially gender on right be done. The last job I took was all consuming, so all consuming that I quit. So I'm back. I'm trying to be a bit lighter, a bit sillier, and a bit less mean, but there's only so much a coot like me can do, so here goes.

I am buying new furniture.

In this case, the furniture that I am considering buying is AWESOME! It is unbelievably cool, elegant, and efficient. Essentially, I am buying Murphy Beds on steroids. But you don't have to trust me on this account. Check out the video of this furniture transitioning HERE.

This bed is called the Ito, like "If the glove don't fit..,"

And I know you aren't reading this because you are interested in the living section of People magazine, although you might be, but that's not why you're reading this. However, for the last 6 years, it has been the basic tenant of this blog that every action we have is always already laden with prejudice, and that extends to the furniture we buy.

So how is my furniture purchase laden with prejudice? Well, this is a purchase made necessary by choices driven by a liberation philosophy. On the opposite end of liberation philosophy is "Extreme Mascunility." A major tenant of extreme masculinity is that men must subjectify themselves, that is to say that they must be the subjects of their actions, instead of the objects. This is an obvious corollary to the objectifying that men do with women, notably in the famous meat grinder Hustler cover seen here.

She looks cold.

By the way, the image on the left was this year's December Playboy cover, as posted on Sharenator.

So much for keeping it light...

Like the boy scouts, the subjectified man must always "be prepared." If we are not prepared, we may find ourselves objectified, and we all know what objectification leads too, right ladies? (For reference, see Hustler's 1978 cover.)



Subjectified men are large and in charge. It is a sad fact of history that whenever too much masculinity gets comfortable, something gets conquered. In the latest installment of the ridiculous reality show that is Extreme Masculinity, American suburban men are conquering their landscapes with their McMansions. After all, our home is our castle, and we must rule all we can see.

Being prepared, and being large and in charge are as closely related as newly weds in Arkansas (that one was for you, Steph), and both play a substantial role in how men choose to live. In a society where capitalism is corrupted by commercialism, wherever there is a need, there is something to fill that need, and sometimes if there is no need, there is a marketing campaign that will create a need.

Picking up our dogs poop with a bag may be the time-tested way of dealing with that problem, but Martha Stewart will sell a pooper scooper (see left) that will do it for us faster, cleaner, and more wastefully. Renting a rug shampooer, or hiring someone to shampoo a rug would objectify us, so we buy a cut rate carpet shampooer to do it ourselves. Once a year or so, we need a truck, so we buy a truck and haul it around with us for the other 350 days. Our cars are awesome, our televisions are terrific, our tools can repair anything, our collections are complete, our technology is up-to-date, our carpets are shampooed, and our pooper is mother-fucking scoopered. Don't worry, we think to ourselves, we got this.

Metastasizing McMansion complex.

In order to keep all of this preparation in our homes, we need a garage for our truck(s), a basement to store our carpet cleaner, a shed for our tools, a room dedicated solely to our televisions, and so on and so forth. Thus was born the McMansion. A real man never has to make a choice. If we want something, we conquer it.

But we are all always already both subjects and objects in life. We are all reliant on our societies, our families, our friends, our coworkers, our communities, and yes our government, just as they are all reliant on us. Human beings are super-socializers by nature and necessity. And the line between subject and object is as imaginary as Obamacare death panels. The true path to liberation isn't encapsulating ourselves in fiefdoms made of ticky-tacky. Men must liberate ourselves. We must stop taking our lessons from "Preppers," and start reinvesting in our neighborhoods and our families.

With all of this in mind, I decided that liberation means living smaller, slower, and more socially. I decided that not "conquering" means living sustainably with a lifestyle that is more familiar in the rest of the globally developed nations, particularly in Europe and Japan. That means making choices and setting priorities. That means making do, which is the part of "being prepared" that I chose to keep from extreme masculinity.

It is sad that we are losing the philosophy of "making do" in all of this commercialized ecstasy. It is sad because study after study shows that people are happier when they do prioritize, and when they make do. Study after study shows that the house, the car, the job, and even Martha Stewart's Pooper Scooper can make us happy for up to a year, but usually more like six months, and it is simply not worth the debt,  the stress, the carbon footprint, the water demands, and the deep neurotic need to objectify the people in our lives. Because after the six months of happiness are over, the problems remain.

When I talk like that, people think I'm being a martyr. When I say I like living smaller, slower, and more socially, they think I mean that my conscience likes it. But when I look at the Ito above, I realize that modern engineering has made it possible to live comfortably and truly happily without all the toys, and without the McMansion. And when I see this beautiful desk that we will be putting in for one of the boys, I am glad that I am handing on that realization to the next generation. Because when we live small, we bump into one another. And when we bump into our loved ones, our neighbors, and our community, we are forced to think differently, and stretched to be happier, more liberated people.

Thanks for reading again after all this time.

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.)