My book was featured by two book bloggers this week, both of whom drew attention to the purpose for which I wrote it in the first place --
"Society has gotten better at describing and acknowledging the many differences in people where sex, gender, and sexual preferences are concerned, but I realized that I didn’t have as good a handle on some of those possibilities. LGBT, I get, but if you’re in that Q+ that gets appended by some people, what does it mean? After reading GenderQueer, I feel like I’ve got a better handle on it."
— Big Al, at Big Al's Books & Pals
"Gender has gotten to be a pretty complicated subject. Personally, I was born female and I identify as female. I know or have met many other people for whom their gender does not match their biological sex. This may result in them deciding to alter their physical form to match their gender identity, as is the case with those who are trans. However, some may not feel out of place in their given body even though it doesn’t match their gender identity. That is the case for Allan D. Hunter, or as they go by in the book, Derek.
This is what is now referred to as “gender queer.” It’s the Q in LGBTQIA...
GenderQueer is very well written. It is not just any memoir that somebody threw together. This one took years of passion and it shows."
— Amanja, at Amanja Reads Too Much
Of the two of them, Big Al was stepping a bit outside his typical reading fare when he chose to read my book, whereas Amanja often reviews books with LGBTQIA themes. So it's reassuring that both reviewers got that sense of my narrated life as "Example A" of a phenomenon that still is not discussed anywhere near as clearly or as often as being transgender is.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Sunday, November 22, 2020
I Presented at Santa Fe Public Library
Last Thursday's author reading, lecture, and Q & A is now available on YouTube.
It was quite well-attended with forty people joining the Zoom session, and I had a good time.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
It was quite well-attended with forty people joining the Zoom session, and I had a good time.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
Monday, November 16, 2020
Author Event with Allan D. Hunter -- Santa Fe Public Library
https://santafelibrary.org/event/18334/
GENDERQUEER: A STORY FROM A DIFFERENT CLOSET
AUTHOR EVENT WITH ALLAN D. HUNTER
ONLINE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH, 2020, 6 P.M.
REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE:
https://tinyurl.com/DEREKISAGIRL
I will be reading from the book for about 20 minutes, then lecturing for another 20, completing the hour with a question-and-answers session.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
GENDERQUEER: A STORY FROM A DIFFERENT CLOSET
AUTHOR EVENT WITH ALLAN D. HUNTER
ONLINE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH, 2020, 6 P.M.
REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE:
https://tinyurl.com/DEREKISAGIRL
I will be reading from the book for about 20 minutes, then lecturing for another 20, completing the hour with a question-and-answers session.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
Monday, November 9, 2020
Sexual Dimorphism and Gender
Imagine walking down the hall and encountering this argument:
BOB: I don't know what you folks are going on about. Look, there are two sexes, male and female. If you're female, you're a woman. If you're male, you're a man.
KIM: You're wrong. Sex isn't binary. People aren't just male or female. There are intersex people. That proves that gender is a lot more complicated than what you just said. There are a lot of different genders, not just two!
If I were the one walking down the hall and hearing this, I would want to tell them that they're both wrong. First off, sex isn't gender. Sex is your physical morphology. Gender is identity and role, all that social stuff.
If you were a person who basically agreed with Bob, you most likely wouldn't be here reading my blog. So I'm not going to waste your time and mine developing the counterarguments to Bob that you've already heard and can make as well as I can.
But to Kim, I would want to say: "We don't need it to be true that there are more than two sexes in order for our nonbinary gender identities to be valid. You shouldn't even bring up physical biological sex in this argument. It just confuses the issue. I've got all the parts that caused my mom's obstetrician to mark down that I was a male baby. I'm not remotely intersex. My body fits the textbook description of male. I'm femme, though. I'm all gal. I was never into that boy stuff, I always knew I was one of the girls. Saying that the plurality of binary physical sexes is what makes nonconforming gender identities valid implies that our gender identity isn't legit otherwise".
I do get crossways with transgender activists and nonbinary activists over this physical-body stuff on occasion. They'll sometimes respond to what I said about having conventional textbook-description male parts and saying I'm a male girl or a male femme with a burst of defensive anger: "Excuse me but having a penis doesn't make you male. Biological sex IS A MYTH! You shouldn't go around saying that having your set of physical parts makes you male because then you're saying that if I have a penis that makes me male, and honey don't start that shit with me, I have never been male. I was mistakenly assigned male at birth!"
But no, biological sex is not a myth. The notion that biological sex defines gender, that is a myth. The notion that everyone is supposed to be either male or female, and that anyone who isn't is an embarrassment who needs to be corrected surgically as soon as possible, that is a myth. But it is indeed one's physical bits that defines one's sex. So we need to discuss sexual physiology, even though it's not determinant of a person's gender identity. Or maybe precisely because it is not determinant of a person's gender identity.
Despite the existence of real intersex people, we are a sexually dimorphic species. In general, like most complex animal life forms, we're either male or we're female. Our species is not a species that reproduces through the interaction of three, five, or thirty-seven different sexes doing a wide variety of reproductive behaviors. It's a species that reproduces though the interaction of two fundamental body designs, and intersex people who reproduce don't really modify that fact. Nobody alive today or at any time in recorded human history gestated in an organ that was not a uterus. Nobody ever got their chromosomes from gametes that were neither sperm nor ova. There isn't a sex that is neither male nor female that produces sex chromosomes that are Z or W instead of being X or Y and which encode the sexual possibility of developing into a specific body that isn't male or female. You could write a great science fiction tale about a species that was like that, but that's a fictional and imaginary idea of intersex, not a real one. And since real intersex people exist, we should pay real attention to them for a minute instead of just using them as a rhetorical argument about how human biological sex is nonbinary.
Some intersex people are CAH (i.e, they have Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia). These are people whose sex-encoding genes are just like those of most people whose bodies present as female, but where a variation in the adrenal gland's behavior causes them to have a lot of the type of hormones that make a person's body take on male attributes. This adrenal gland behavior is caused by their genes, but not the ones on their sex chromosomes, so the biological roulette of what sperm's codes went into the egg isn't causing this. At birth, CAH people's bodies may be designated male. More problematic, their bodies are often recognized as intersex and the doctors reach for their sharp scalpels and whack away the offending phallic clitoris. This -- and not the rhetorical flourish of discarding the entire notion that biological sex exists at all -- is probably the most significant political concern of real-life intersex activists. To get doctors to quit doing this. To let CAH babies make their own decisions about their own bodies when they are old enough to do so.
Other intersex people are CAIS (i.e., they have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome). These are people whose sex-encoding genes are just like those of most people whose bodies present as male, but other genes of theirs (not on their sex chromosomes but elsewhere in their genetic code) make their body unresponsive to the hormones that make the body take on male structures. So their bodies at the time of their birth will nearly always be designated female. Unlike the CAH people, they aren't at high risk for being carved up by surgeons when they're still infants, but at puberty they won't get periods; the fact that they have undescended testes (usually) instead of ovaries may be discovered, and even though they are old enough to voice an opinion, doctors sometimes pick up those sharp knives and cut out their testes without asking. Or the doctors may mislead the CAIS patient (and their parents, who typically have medical authority) about the risks and consequences. This is another of the intersex activists' political concerns, fully informed consent for CAIS intersex people.
CAH and CAIS intersex people can generally reproduce. But despite being intersex, the physical architecture and the chromosomal arrangement with which they participate is going to follow either a male textbook description or a female textbook description.
But what about intersex people who are neither XX nor XY at the genetic level?
The Turner pattern, where a person has a single X instead of two, also called XO configuration, creates a female-structured body with some modified shapes (shorter, broader chest, some differences in the face, and so on). They are often infertile. They don't tend to be designated anything other than female at the time of birth. A few do not have a uterus or ovaries. If they are able to reproduce, they do so with the structures and capabilities of female people, and their genetic contributions will work within the sexually dimorphic reproductive pattern like those of female people.
The Klinefelter pattern, where a person has an XXY configuration, creates a male-structured body with some mildly modified shapes. They are almost always designated male at birth. At puberty they may not develop secondary sex characteristics, or may develop them less strongly than other males.
There is an XYY pattern as well, the Jacobs pattern. They are almost always designated male at birth. There are some mild differences in body shape but it often goes undetected.
There are also mosaic situations, such as XO/XY where some of a person's cells have XO and others have XY. A person with this configuration may be born with a body that presents as typical female, typical male, or ambiguously intersex. Or even more rarely, there is XX/XY, the closest to the legend of hermaphrodite, wherein, depending on which cells in which part of the body have developed according to which structural patterns, may result in both ovaries AND testes developing. There is the theoretical possibility that a person could produce both viable sperm and viable ova and could therefore participate reproductively as a source of sperm and/or as the person providing the egg, but there's no case of this on record.
I haven't said anything about the political intersex considerations for people with these forms of intersex because I'm less familiar with them. Self-determination, certainly. The right to choose whether to receive supplemental hormones (or hormone blockers), the right to fully-informed consent not muddled by the outdated attitude that any variation needs to be hidden and "fixed", the attitude that difference is shameful and inferior and wrong.
The takeaway from intersex awareness is not that sexual dimorphism is an evil lie that supports the gender binary and the "anatomy is destiny" conservative belief systems, but that people who vary should have the right to make their own decisions about their own bodies, and should be regarded as normal variations, not sick pathologies.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
BOB: I don't know what you folks are going on about. Look, there are two sexes, male and female. If you're female, you're a woman. If you're male, you're a man.
KIM: You're wrong. Sex isn't binary. People aren't just male or female. There are intersex people. That proves that gender is a lot more complicated than what you just said. There are a lot of different genders, not just two!
If I were the one walking down the hall and hearing this, I would want to tell them that they're both wrong. First off, sex isn't gender. Sex is your physical morphology. Gender is identity and role, all that social stuff.
If you were a person who basically agreed with Bob, you most likely wouldn't be here reading my blog. So I'm not going to waste your time and mine developing the counterarguments to Bob that you've already heard and can make as well as I can.
But to Kim, I would want to say: "We don't need it to be true that there are more than two sexes in order for our nonbinary gender identities to be valid. You shouldn't even bring up physical biological sex in this argument. It just confuses the issue. I've got all the parts that caused my mom's obstetrician to mark down that I was a male baby. I'm not remotely intersex. My body fits the textbook description of male. I'm femme, though. I'm all gal. I was never into that boy stuff, I always knew I was one of the girls. Saying that the plurality of binary physical sexes is what makes nonconforming gender identities valid implies that our gender identity isn't legit otherwise".
I do get crossways with transgender activists and nonbinary activists over this physical-body stuff on occasion. They'll sometimes respond to what I said about having conventional textbook-description male parts and saying I'm a male girl or a male femme with a burst of defensive anger: "Excuse me but having a penis doesn't make you male. Biological sex IS A MYTH! You shouldn't go around saying that having your set of physical parts makes you male because then you're saying that if I have a penis that makes me male, and honey don't start that shit with me, I have never been male. I was mistakenly assigned male at birth!"
But no, biological sex is not a myth. The notion that biological sex defines gender, that is a myth. The notion that everyone is supposed to be either male or female, and that anyone who isn't is an embarrassment who needs to be corrected surgically as soon as possible, that is a myth. But it is indeed one's physical bits that defines one's sex. So we need to discuss sexual physiology, even though it's not determinant of a person's gender identity. Or maybe precisely because it is not determinant of a person's gender identity.
Despite the existence of real intersex people, we are a sexually dimorphic species. In general, like most complex animal life forms, we're either male or we're female. Our species is not a species that reproduces through the interaction of three, five, or thirty-seven different sexes doing a wide variety of reproductive behaviors. It's a species that reproduces though the interaction of two fundamental body designs, and intersex people who reproduce don't really modify that fact. Nobody alive today or at any time in recorded human history gestated in an organ that was not a uterus. Nobody ever got their chromosomes from gametes that were neither sperm nor ova. There isn't a sex that is neither male nor female that produces sex chromosomes that are Z or W instead of being X or Y and which encode the sexual possibility of developing into a specific body that isn't male or female. You could write a great science fiction tale about a species that was like that, but that's a fictional and imaginary idea of intersex, not a real one. And since real intersex people exist, we should pay real attention to them for a minute instead of just using them as a rhetorical argument about how human biological sex is nonbinary.
Some intersex people are CAH (i.e, they have Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia). These are people whose sex-encoding genes are just like those of most people whose bodies present as female, but where a variation in the adrenal gland's behavior causes them to have a lot of the type of hormones that make a person's body take on male attributes. This adrenal gland behavior is caused by their genes, but not the ones on their sex chromosomes, so the biological roulette of what sperm's codes went into the egg isn't causing this. At birth, CAH people's bodies may be designated male. More problematic, their bodies are often recognized as intersex and the doctors reach for their sharp scalpels and whack away the offending phallic clitoris. This -- and not the rhetorical flourish of discarding the entire notion that biological sex exists at all -- is probably the most significant political concern of real-life intersex activists. To get doctors to quit doing this. To let CAH babies make their own decisions about their own bodies when they are old enough to do so.
Other intersex people are CAIS (i.e., they have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome). These are people whose sex-encoding genes are just like those of most people whose bodies present as male, but other genes of theirs (not on their sex chromosomes but elsewhere in their genetic code) make their body unresponsive to the hormones that make the body take on male structures. So their bodies at the time of their birth will nearly always be designated female. Unlike the CAH people, they aren't at high risk for being carved up by surgeons when they're still infants, but at puberty they won't get periods; the fact that they have undescended testes (usually) instead of ovaries may be discovered, and even though they are old enough to voice an opinion, doctors sometimes pick up those sharp knives and cut out their testes without asking. Or the doctors may mislead the CAIS patient (and their parents, who typically have medical authority) about the risks and consequences. This is another of the intersex activists' political concerns, fully informed consent for CAIS intersex people.
CAH and CAIS intersex people can generally reproduce. But despite being intersex, the physical architecture and the chromosomal arrangement with which they participate is going to follow either a male textbook description or a female textbook description.
But what about intersex people who are neither XX nor XY at the genetic level?
The Turner pattern, where a person has a single X instead of two, also called XO configuration, creates a female-structured body with some modified shapes (shorter, broader chest, some differences in the face, and so on). They are often infertile. They don't tend to be designated anything other than female at the time of birth. A few do not have a uterus or ovaries. If they are able to reproduce, they do so with the structures and capabilities of female people, and their genetic contributions will work within the sexually dimorphic reproductive pattern like those of female people.
The Klinefelter pattern, where a person has an XXY configuration, creates a male-structured body with some mildly modified shapes. They are almost always designated male at birth. At puberty they may not develop secondary sex characteristics, or may develop them less strongly than other males.
There is an XYY pattern as well, the Jacobs pattern. They are almost always designated male at birth. There are some mild differences in body shape but it often goes undetected.
There are also mosaic situations, such as XO/XY where some of a person's cells have XO and others have XY. A person with this configuration may be born with a body that presents as typical female, typical male, or ambiguously intersex. Or even more rarely, there is XX/XY, the closest to the legend of hermaphrodite, wherein, depending on which cells in which part of the body have developed according to which structural patterns, may result in both ovaries AND testes developing. There is the theoretical possibility that a person could produce both viable sperm and viable ova and could therefore participate reproductively as a source of sperm and/or as the person providing the egg, but there's no case of this on record.
I haven't said anything about the political intersex considerations for people with these forms of intersex because I'm less familiar with them. Self-determination, certainly. The right to choose whether to receive supplemental hormones (or hormone blockers), the right to fully-informed consent not muddled by the outdated attitude that any variation needs to be hidden and "fixed", the attitude that difference is shameful and inferior and wrong.
The takeaway from intersex awareness is not that sexual dimorphism is an evil lie that supports the gender binary and the "anatomy is destiny" conservative belief systems, but that people who vary should have the right to make their own decisions about their own bodies, and should be regarded as normal variations, not sick pathologies.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
Sunday, November 1, 2020
The Personality as Political
Carol Hanisch said "the personal is political" and feminism embraced that. Radical feminism looked not only at the big structural elements of oppression and the institutionalized unfairnesses that were ensconced in laws and policies, but at individual personality characteristics and the behaviors that go with them. The value systems and priorities that come directly out of a person's way of being in the world, a person's most fundamental personality attributes. And they said that masculinity was a political problem, the political problem, that being a man at the local individual level meant supporting patriarchy inside of every interpersonal interaction.
There are, of course, readers who are wanting to fling their hands in the air and protest, "No, you mean toxic masculinity. Not all masculinity is toxic!"
And they're right. We need to avoid oversimplification. There are many butch women whose trajectory in life has been a "yeah, so?" response whenever accused of acting masculine, butch women who found identify and validation there. There are transgender men as well who embrace masculinity as the best mirror of who they legitimately are. There are cis men who accept the mantle of what's expected of them but spend their lives contemplating how to be a good man in the modern world. So yes, there are people aligned with masculinity who value courage and willingness to risk, and the willingness to not be defined by the pack even if it means being a socially cut-off isolated individual, and a cut-to-the-chase raw honesty.
But whether toxic masculinity is just the extreme "turn it up to 11" overdose of masculinity or if it is a specific emphasis on the most antagonistic elements, toxic masculinity exists.
We live in the interesting times of long-wave culture wars coming to a decisive turning point: these are the last gasps of patriarchal hegemony, with patriarchal value systems's claims to legitimacy pushed back against the social ropes. And at the moment, the patriarchy's values are personally embodied to the hilt in one Donald Trump. This election, like the one before it in 2016, is all about patriarchy versus its opponents, and it is raw and undisguised, and we've had four years of seeing that on display.
It is because patriarchy is on the ropes that the masks are off. It is because they are on the losing side of history that they have given up on the middle and along with it the pretentions to debonair chivalry, the gestures of "we will take care of you, we are compassionate in our authority and power".
The Specifics
• Belligerence — masculinity values fighting, being aggressive, the notion that you get your way with other people by intimidating them with the threat of attacking them, and backing that up with actual violence when need be. Our nation has tried to cast itself on the world stage as a "good citizen" country that doesn't invade and conquer, but we've barged into several countries with tanks bombs and soldiers, and have more secretively toppled the duly elected leaders of others, and so we've exhibited plenty of belligerence. Donald Trump's entire way of interacting with everyone, domestic and foreign, official politics or unofficial interpersonal interaction, is belligerent; he is the personification of the notion that you get things done by intimidating ohters
• Defensive Fragility I: making mistakes or ever being wrong -- masculinity values absolute certainty and decisiveness, the attitude that there is something weak and ineffectual about considering alternative possibilities or remaining aware of your own fallibility. Our nation has a long tradition of believing itself to be anointed by God, American exceptionalism, that our way of doing things is guaranteed to to correct. We've made legitimate overtures to the rest of the world to come together respectfully and work out our differences peacefully -- the US is most directly responsible for the existence of the UN -- but a lot of our nation's behavior has had a wide streak of "we are giving the rest of you the opportunity to follow our lead and do things just like us". And we don't take kindly to criticism. Donald Trump is the quintessential stereotype of a person who can't ever consider the possibility that he is, or was, wrong. He will never apologize and will stick to his guns no matter how often he's shot his own foot off with them.
• Defensive Fragility II: needing others or ever being dependent on others -- masculinity is all about "going your own way" and "attending to my needs myself", and if the non-toxic form of that is about stepping up and doing what needs doing instead of waiting for someone else to do so, the toxic form exhibits utter contempt for anyone who ever needs anyone else for anything. As a nation we've become increasingly toxic in our insistence that we don't need the blessing or agreement of any other nation or people, we're going to do whatever we want and the rest of the world can go fuck themselves. We had the sympathies and compassionate regard of the overwhelming majority of the world after the 9/11 World Trade attacks, but squandered it as casually as tossing a piece of trash into the waste bin, attacking Iraq with no provocation and no coherent explanation. Donald Trump is very vocal about not needing anybody and not caring if his actions do not need with their approval. The Republicans in Congress and in his own administration found that out, often to their dismay: he doesn't need them, or believes that he doesn't and behaves as if he doesn't.
• All Differences are Superior/Inferior -- masculinity has a tendency to see every distinction as one in which one possible kind is better than the other, that there's always a "right way to be" or a "right kind to buy" or "best form of it to use". This is an outgrowth of the belligerence and the tendency to see everything in terms of the potential for competition and conflict. Feminists highlight this as "othering" and show how this tendency spreads oppression by encouraging people to see folks different from them as inferior and then use that to justify taking advantage of them whenever the possibility exists. Our nation began with a lot of lofty lip service about equality, and as a nation we've valued equality in principle, but parallel to that has been the long history of ways in which we've treated categories of people as less worthy, less human, as subordinate or substandard, or pathological and evil and in need of being eliminated by whatever means necessary. Donald Trump has made a career of disparaging the different, and tailoring his appeal to those who view themselves as "normal" and who also resent anyone who isn't "like us" who dare to demand their rights as fully human beings.
• Coercion and Control -- masculinity, again as an outgrowth of the belligerent anticipaton of conflict, tends to value winning more than any other goal, to the point of losing track of what goal made winning in this or that case important in the first place. This also goes hand-in-hand with the defensive fragility about ever considering the possibility of having made a mistake. The US became the poster child for this kind of masculine manifestion in the Vietnam War, where there was less and less clarity on what we were there for or what our goals were, but where nevertheless our leaders pursued winning the war as the first and most important consideration. Donald Trump epitomizes the spirit of "winning isn't the best thing, it's the only thing", and it means there is nothing he considers off-limits if it facilitates him winning.
• Polarization -- masculinity tends to carry the attitude into any confrontational argument or dissent that "you're either with me or you're against me". This, too, is an attitude that carries over from imagining being in a fight. In direct physical conflict, nuances of perspective and opinion aren't relevant, it's all about whether you're someone else representing a risk that I should attack lest I be attacked or I can count on you to fight on my side. Our nation has often played the polarization game outside of wartime, doing its best to force nations to take sides and divide the world-map into US and THEM factions. It was our behavior all throughout the cold war. We've never been very open to a multifaceted way of viewing international economic or political configurations, preferring the either/or and pressuring everyone else into buying into that. Donald Trump is the polarizer-in-chief, doing more to divide us internally than anyone else who has ever occupied the office. There is to be no forgiveness, no consideration of understandable reasons why someone would do something we would not ourselves do, nor any willingness to think of alliances as complex and shifting things. Everything becomes "us versus them".
• Oversimplification -- masculinity, with a military focus on quick decision and operating in fear and opportunistic aggression, tends not to trust complex thought in general. This feeds the notion that everything is actually quite simple and that anyone who claims to see complexity is weak and indecisive and wrong by definition. As a nation we've shifted from a faith in science (although one that automatically rejected any critical questions of how the science was put to use) to a sort of pride in not thinking too much. We still have good universities and educated people, but culturally we value them less, and have shifted to a shorter attention span that doesn't easily get immersed in complex explanations. Donald Trump has made denseness a virtue and continually exhibits the utmost contempt for actual thinking, insisting that everything worth thinking about has immediate and obvious answers.
———————
You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
There are, of course, readers who are wanting to fling their hands in the air and protest, "No, you mean toxic masculinity. Not all masculinity is toxic!"
And they're right. We need to avoid oversimplification. There are many butch women whose trajectory in life has been a "yeah, so?" response whenever accused of acting masculine, butch women who found identify and validation there. There are transgender men as well who embrace masculinity as the best mirror of who they legitimately are. There are cis men who accept the mantle of what's expected of them but spend their lives contemplating how to be a good man in the modern world. So yes, there are people aligned with masculinity who value courage and willingness to risk, and the willingness to not be defined by the pack even if it means being a socially cut-off isolated individual, and a cut-to-the-chase raw honesty.
But whether toxic masculinity is just the extreme "turn it up to 11" overdose of masculinity or if it is a specific emphasis on the most antagonistic elements, toxic masculinity exists.
We live in the interesting times of long-wave culture wars coming to a decisive turning point: these are the last gasps of patriarchal hegemony, with patriarchal value systems's claims to legitimacy pushed back against the social ropes. And at the moment, the patriarchy's values are personally embodied to the hilt in one Donald Trump. This election, like the one before it in 2016, is all about patriarchy versus its opponents, and it is raw and undisguised, and we've had four years of seeing that on display.
It is because patriarchy is on the ropes that the masks are off. It is because they are on the losing side of history that they have given up on the middle and along with it the pretentions to debonair chivalry, the gestures of "we will take care of you, we are compassionate in our authority and power".
The Specifics
• Belligerence — masculinity values fighting, being aggressive, the notion that you get your way with other people by intimidating them with the threat of attacking them, and backing that up with actual violence when need be. Our nation has tried to cast itself on the world stage as a "good citizen" country that doesn't invade and conquer, but we've barged into several countries with tanks bombs and soldiers, and have more secretively toppled the duly elected leaders of others, and so we've exhibited plenty of belligerence. Donald Trump's entire way of interacting with everyone, domestic and foreign, official politics or unofficial interpersonal interaction, is belligerent; he is the personification of the notion that you get things done by intimidating ohters
• Defensive Fragility I: making mistakes or ever being wrong -- masculinity values absolute certainty and decisiveness, the attitude that there is something weak and ineffectual about considering alternative possibilities or remaining aware of your own fallibility. Our nation has a long tradition of believing itself to be anointed by God, American exceptionalism, that our way of doing things is guaranteed to to correct. We've made legitimate overtures to the rest of the world to come together respectfully and work out our differences peacefully -- the US is most directly responsible for the existence of the UN -- but a lot of our nation's behavior has had a wide streak of "we are giving the rest of you the opportunity to follow our lead and do things just like us". And we don't take kindly to criticism. Donald Trump is the quintessential stereotype of a person who can't ever consider the possibility that he is, or was, wrong. He will never apologize and will stick to his guns no matter how often he's shot his own foot off with them.
• Defensive Fragility II: needing others or ever being dependent on others -- masculinity is all about "going your own way" and "attending to my needs myself", and if the non-toxic form of that is about stepping up and doing what needs doing instead of waiting for someone else to do so, the toxic form exhibits utter contempt for anyone who ever needs anyone else for anything. As a nation we've become increasingly toxic in our insistence that we don't need the blessing or agreement of any other nation or people, we're going to do whatever we want and the rest of the world can go fuck themselves. We had the sympathies and compassionate regard of the overwhelming majority of the world after the 9/11 World Trade attacks, but squandered it as casually as tossing a piece of trash into the waste bin, attacking Iraq with no provocation and no coherent explanation. Donald Trump is very vocal about not needing anybody and not caring if his actions do not need with their approval. The Republicans in Congress and in his own administration found that out, often to their dismay: he doesn't need them, or believes that he doesn't and behaves as if he doesn't.
• All Differences are Superior/Inferior -- masculinity has a tendency to see every distinction as one in which one possible kind is better than the other, that there's always a "right way to be" or a "right kind to buy" or "best form of it to use". This is an outgrowth of the belligerence and the tendency to see everything in terms of the potential for competition and conflict. Feminists highlight this as "othering" and show how this tendency spreads oppression by encouraging people to see folks different from them as inferior and then use that to justify taking advantage of them whenever the possibility exists. Our nation began with a lot of lofty lip service about equality, and as a nation we've valued equality in principle, but parallel to that has been the long history of ways in which we've treated categories of people as less worthy, less human, as subordinate or substandard, or pathological and evil and in need of being eliminated by whatever means necessary. Donald Trump has made a career of disparaging the different, and tailoring his appeal to those who view themselves as "normal" and who also resent anyone who isn't "like us" who dare to demand their rights as fully human beings.
• Coercion and Control -- masculinity, again as an outgrowth of the belligerent anticipaton of conflict, tends to value winning more than any other goal, to the point of losing track of what goal made winning in this or that case important in the first place. This also goes hand-in-hand with the defensive fragility about ever considering the possibility of having made a mistake. The US became the poster child for this kind of masculine manifestion in the Vietnam War, where there was less and less clarity on what we were there for or what our goals were, but where nevertheless our leaders pursued winning the war as the first and most important consideration. Donald Trump epitomizes the spirit of "winning isn't the best thing, it's the only thing", and it means there is nothing he considers off-limits if it facilitates him winning.
• Polarization -- masculinity tends to carry the attitude into any confrontational argument or dissent that "you're either with me or you're against me". This, too, is an attitude that carries over from imagining being in a fight. In direct physical conflict, nuances of perspective and opinion aren't relevant, it's all about whether you're someone else representing a risk that I should attack lest I be attacked or I can count on you to fight on my side. Our nation has often played the polarization game outside of wartime, doing its best to force nations to take sides and divide the world-map into US and THEM factions. It was our behavior all throughout the cold war. We've never been very open to a multifaceted way of viewing international economic or political configurations, preferring the either/or and pressuring everyone else into buying into that. Donald Trump is the polarizer-in-chief, doing more to divide us internally than anyone else who has ever occupied the office. There is to be no forgiveness, no consideration of understandable reasons why someone would do something we would not ourselves do, nor any willingness to think of alliances as complex and shifting things. Everything becomes "us versus them".
• Oversimplification -- masculinity, with a military focus on quick decision and operating in fear and opportunistic aggression, tends not to trust complex thought in general. This feeds the notion that everything is actually quite simple and that anyone who claims to see complexity is weak and indecisive and wrong by definition. As a nation we've shifted from a faith in science (although one that automatically rejected any critical questions of how the science was put to use) to a sort of pride in not thinking too much. We still have good universities and educated people, but culturally we value them less, and have shifted to a shorter attention span that doesn't easily get immersed in complex explanations. Donald Trump has made denseness a virtue and continually exhibits the utmost contempt for actual thinking, insisting that everything worth thinking about has immediate and obvious answers.
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You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
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