On Being Male

My earliest memories of learning what it means to be male, involved stories of physical prowess over others. My first fistfight at the age of five, comprised of one single punch in the nose to my newly found neighbor, was honored by a wink of approval from each member of my family. Stories about the not-so-distant Second World War added to my understanding of brave, honorable, and male as inextricably linked to violence.

The 1st Floyd Patterson – Ingemar Johansson fight of 1959 left an impression of male that fit neatly into my other early constructs of male. My older brother, father, and I, together in a rare moment of family, hovered around the white plastic Zenith radio that brought the boxing arena into our kitchen. We leaned on the pink and grey boomerang patterned formica countertop as my father took charge of fine tuning the dial for the best reception, pushing the toaster and breadbox out of the way as if those metal objects distorted the radio waves – (things women aren’t supposed to understand.) My eight-year old boxing vernacular expanded that evening with the addition of: left jab, uppercut, right hook, and kidney punch. My sense of what my father honored as noble and attractive for men was reinforced with his roars of approval that followed every punishing blow from our man, Floyd.  A template of manhood began to emerge that was described as standing tall in the face of challenge and expressed as power over the other.

My environment further influenced my understanding of male. The narrow ethnicity of our neighborhood, the scarcity of money, and the tolerance for secrecy (made acceptable by a supposed value for privacy) all cooperated to form a sort of tribal mentality. This neighborhood construct honored blind loyalty to insiders – common in most small communities – or at least closed-minded communities. The role of male within this tribal construct was to protect the identity and stature of the tribe and reinforce the hierarchy of male over female. Relationship to outsiders aimed more towards victory or superiority rather than hospitality.

Five years after our little development of two parallel streets was built, each with 30 identical houses, a small parcel of adjacent land was sold by a farmer to a new developer, who built four custom homes, each one different from each other – and most importantly different from the original 60 houses. The families that bought these homes were never welcomed into the neighborhood. They remained outsiders. We hit those houses first on Mischief Night, and developed clans (our own suburban version of gangs) to play dirty tricks on the kids who lived in those houses. We would throw rotten apples into their yards trying to ding one of the mothers hanging laundry, knowing that it would get the kids chasing us through the small patch of woods that separated our back yards – and then we would deliberately lead them through the path where we’d just discovered a large hornet’s nest hanging from the tree branch, smack the nest on our way past and then delight in the screams of our pursuing clan. All this was regarded as healthy play – normal for boys – and in its own way honorable because it defended the integrity of the original tribal neighborhood.

Explicit in this vision of masculinity were values that honored independence and a version of freedom that denied others their freedom. It became clear that change was dangerous, established mores were fixed, and new ideas were to be engaged with suspicion if engaged at all. Manhood rested on a foundation of fear, violence, and resistance to introspection. Absent from this model of human was the Socrates axiom I would learn later, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” [1]

Although alternative models of male have begun to emerge in the late 20th and early 21st centuries of American culture, the model that formed my earliest notions of male have been common and long-standing, illustrations of which can be found today in the halls of our federal government to the back-alleys of America.   

I watched a television program for a few passing minutes recently that is designed for children.  The show brings its young audience to unusual places around the country and exposes them to the variety of “interesting” things and people. The episode I watched brought the viewing audience to a roadside stop in Texas where a man has assembled an enormous collection of decorated toilet seats. His collection is so vast that it is described as a toilet seat museum. This humiliating example of American culture draws thousands of visitors a year – people who actually add this roadside blight to their AAA triptychs. The curator of this collection has decorated thousands of toilet seats with all kinds of things including Native American artifacts, beer labels, bottle caps, magazine clippings, snake skins, images of the American flag, and virtually any Christian icon you can imagine.

As the curator was interviewed he walked through the aisles of decorated toilet seats and offered explanations as to the creative moment that inspired them. One of the little boys in his tour group – taken with one particular toilet seat interrupted the curator and asked, “Oooh what’s this one?” The artist replied, “Well that’s the dried head and feet of a chicken.” He went on to explain as if we were listening to a composer describing his motivation for a symphony, that this particular chicken was a hen but had a crown like a rooster, and so our artist proclaimed with a tone of how obvious his next remark would be, ”…and so I killed it.” Now I enjoy BBQ’d chicken as much as the next guy; I even dabbled in some chicken wings on my one visit to a Hooters restaurant in a moment of emotional pain and confusion – a state I have since tried to conjure again in order to justify a return visit! But the autopilot response of addressing the new, the curious, or the strange by killing it, strikes me as a useful example of what it means to be an American man.  It’s not that some of these same cultural peculiarities can’t be found in other parts of the world or in other primitive cultures; it’s just that America is my home and therefore the place that I think about more critically. One kills out of a sense of fear or threat. Do sexually ambiguous chickens threaten us?

Another reason for killing that I’ve encountered in my American experience is for sport. One of my seminary colleagues, when confronted about his passion for hunting by one of those “liberal, feminist, vegetarian-type, female seminarians,” responded with (albeit deliberately exaggerated), “Little lady, you couldn’t possibly understand the joy there is in taking a life.” Now one might question that response from someone claiming to stand in the non-violent tradition of Jesus, even if offered as a joke. But when it became clear that this man’s practice of hunting was – and is – an important piece of his lifestyle, room for legitimate criticism is created – if not for the man himself, certainly for the template of manhood that has cultivated this habit of killing for pleasure.

How did fear, cruelty, or behavior that is normally assigned to a sociopath become normative?  There are many answers I suppose, most of which can be traced back for centuries. They may include the abandonment of feminine deities for masculine ones as well as the increase of competition among tribes and people of neighboring geographies and the need for violence as a method of survival. But one reason among many that the standard of “male” is shaped by fear, violence, and an intransigent unwillingness to self-reflect can be found within my own religion of Christianity. Now it may seem a leap to move from toilet seats to religion – but in my experience they share some common territory! This is not meant to deny the value of religion nor the contributions people of faith continue to make to peace, feeding the hungry, caring for those in need, and for the ongoing valuable contributions religious scholars make to the study of what it means to be human. My comments are directed to those elements of Christian doctrine that fuel fear and violence.  And since my background and experience is that of being a Christian, I will keep my remarks limited to my understanding of Christianity. If there are any observations that apply elsewhere, I’ll leave it to those within those traditions to comment.

Within Christianity’s core there are values that encourage fear, violence, and resistance to introspection. And since Christianity’s core doctrines were developed within a male dominated system, these same values and doctrines may be characterized as contributing to images of masculinity. 

Fear
The worst interpretation of being Christian is expressed in the doctrine of salvation. Although “to be saved” can be understood in various nuanced ways and has been interpreted in many rich and helpful ways over the centuries, (such as being saved from our selfishness, addictions, anger or fears), the overriding interpretation is that of being saved from the fires of hell – or whatever punitive environment one might imagine for an afterlife. The largest clusters of American Christians generally ascribe this understanding to the doctrine of salvation as evidenced in the question that is often asked when meeting a Christian of this dominant school: “Are you saved,” which means, “have you claimed Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior,” (which buys you a ticket out of hell, presumably), and “when did you do that?,” as if we can control whatever cycles of life there may be by merely uttering a statement of commitment.  A commitment rooted in fear has no value except that of survival, and if self survival is the only worthwhile goal, then of course it makes sense to be self-centered and “victorious over others, even victorious over death,” as if death is a violent enemy rather than a natural element of life. If fear is our foundational motivation, no wonder we are willing to kill.

Violence
Being victorious over the “other” rather than being in harmonious relationship with the other, necessarily allows for, perhaps even encourages violence as a means of relationship. In American Christian terms this affirmation of violence is expressed in many ways. Recently while driving along Sepulveda Blvd in Los Angeles, I passed a mainstream Christian church whose sign read, “Jesus is the ONLY way to heaven.” Little wonder, well intending Christians have beaten or even killed non-Christians with hopes of winning souls for Jesus. If Christianity is the only ”right” religion then adherents have little choice but to proselytize, which is but another expression of violence. As one friend of mine put it,   

Absolute certainty to the exclusion of all others creates a downward spiral. The first stage in this downward spiral is: proselytizing and conversion, i.e., ‘you cannot live among us unless you become like us;’ the second stage is isolation and expulsion, i.e., ‘you cannot live among us;’ and the final stage is annihilation and extermination, i.e., ‘you cannot live.’ [2]

Christian history of violence is too well established for us to deny this painful reality. The Biblical misinterpretations that allow claims of Christian superiority (and ultimately violence) deny the richness of God’s diverse Creation and the vast array of choices there are for humankind to experience beauty, joy, hope, and grace.  And these interpretations of Christianity that foster violence all contribute to this template of what it means to be human – particularly a male human.

The Christian voices of dissent that have named this disorder over the centuries have been silenced in many different ways. Hard to believe though it may be for modern people, this process of censure continues today. Within Roman Catholicism there are many Roman Catholic scholars whose publications are omitted from endorsed Catholic lists of approved scholarship, if their research and writing challenge the established male-oriented orthodoxy.  And in smaller circles most of us know the power of intimidation that can serve well the goal of censure. Witness the powerful campaign to impugn those who believed the invasion of Iraq was misguided. It is a mechanism that has been mastered by American Christians, and others.

Resistance to Introspection
At the heart of all religious traditions, as far as I know, is the discipline of prayer. Although the mechanics and experience of prayer vary from one tradition to the next, within the practice of prayer across all versions is the essential element of listening. Some have described this listening as Sacred Listening, because it aims for and in my view, reaches intercourse with the Sacred. In the stillness of prayer, the silence of prayer, and the repetition of familiar prayers entry into a scared space beyond our self-centeredness is possible. This engagement with the Divine allows us to experience that larger reality in which we exist. The mainstream of Christianity, however, has encouraged disciplines of prayer that are offered more for duty than for insight, or for insight that affirms the status of the person praying, or reaffirms the status quo of the doctrine, which is often referred to as “orthodoxy,” thereby admitting the intransigence of it! The message from the Institutional Church is: “We know the real truth and you only get glimpses of it, and those glimpses are subject to our approval.” Of course, the depth of this disorder varies wildly from one denomination to the next and even from one geographic expression of a denomination to another. But within the Christian church’s practice of claiming some measure of authority with respect to insight and “truth,” there is an equal and balancing relinquishment of sacred listening and self-reflection on the part of its members.

Of course one can’t blame religion alone for the societal endorsement of a template of masculinity that appears weak if given to practices of thoughtfulness and introspection. Films portraying rough and ready cowboys, mythologies of war heroes, and images of corporate executives who can make decisions in an instant all contribute to this disorder – all of which may to one degree or another find their justification in a Christian platform.

Ultimately we each have the responsibility for growing up, for coming face to face with the errors of our culture, families, religion, or youth, and making adjustments that move us AND humanity forward. For me I look to those men and women who have made the transition from product of culture to contributor and creator of culture. For it is not from the men who reside in fear that humankind finds its future. It is from poetry and poets; music and musicians; literature and writers; dancers and lovers; artists of all kinds who know something of the joy and possibilities of life, who have the capacity for ambiguity and nuance, who cherish mystery and wonder, and who know something of the mutual dance of life

[1] Socrates, when addressing the court in Athens after he had been found guilty of heresy and sedition, in 399 B.C.E.

[2] From an article written and never sent to local newspapers by The Rev. Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, in response to a group of Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists proselytizing Jews on their way to Sabbath services in Norfolk, Virginia in 2002. When interviewed by the Virginia Pilot and asked why he decided to start a new church in that particular neighborhood of the city where several churches and synagogues already existed, the pastor of this church replied, “so that we can save all the homosexuals and Jews who live in this part of town.” While this community raised money to build their own church they were given worship space in the gymnasium of the local public high school, Maury High School in Norfolk.