my life as a white hetero male
Jul. 28th, 2005 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"Teach him to play Monopoly, not to sing in the rain." -Jethro Tull, "Thick as a Brick"
Though I yesterday characterized my voice as "that of queer-fat-trannie," I shouldn't neglect the aspect of me that still remembers what it is like to be a white hetero male.
I'm still white, of course, and it's arguable whether or not I was ever "really" male or hetero, but that's how I identified, and that's how society saw me. When I first began to examine critical and feminist thought 13 years ago, I was soon to be married, and the world was my oyster. I wanted to learn about oppression and social stratification, but I was hindered by the problem of how exactly to relate to the issue or to literature about it.
The assertion that I was privileged didn't gel with my experience. I never questioned exploitation or discrimination, but personally, I felt anything but 'privileged.' My life had been mapped out for me by my parents and by society; I was to excel in academic pursuits and then settle into a suitably bourgeois white-collar life with my wife and the kids we would have.
As a teen I was extraordinarily angsty because I had no way to articulate how constricting this life-plan felt. As I wrote a few months ago, "Have you ever pondered that what it means to be an adult, might mean to finally have your spirit broken?" A lot of you challenged that, but that was how it felt to me. Three years before I became a Women's Studies student, I had told my parents that I was transsexual and their reaction was harsh and unapproving. The tension was released (or I should say, went back inside me) when a year later I retracted, and I started dating women shortly thereafter.
I also felt that my emotional and creative expression was terribly stifled. The range of things you're allowed to express as a white hetero male, especially emotionally, can feel very constraining. Your expressions, your mode of dress, and so on, are critically examined all the time to make sure you "stay in line." I don't recall being explicitly told that "boys don't cry," but it was more than obvious that crying was forbidden. "Being a man" requires a lot of effort and other men are always examining you for signs of insufficient masculinity. I went from living with a family that expected me to be stoic, to a marriage with a wife who expected me to be stoic.
I often felt that the only emotion I was free to really express was anger, and when I was young, I had a LOT of it.
The mythopoeic men's movement fascinated me. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that lots of men felt just as constrained by their gender roles as I did. The "voice with the microphone" in this culture may be that of a white hetero male, but that doesn't mean it speaks their experience, but often offers instead only a constructed facade, the experience that they "should" feel. If white hetero men stop acting as the footsoldiers in the hegemony of domination, the elites in the upper echelons will lose their privilege, and we can't have that.
Now, my own experience might not actually be that of a white hetero male. I don't know the answer to that.
But in any case I felt that it was plainly obvious that the forces which constrained me were the same as those forces which constrained women and people of color, and it hurt when a few of the feminists I tried to say this to told me that discussion about how patriarchy hurts men is not appropriate in a feminist forum. (I didn't understand then what I do now, about how bringing up men's issues in feminist forums reflected male privilege.)
Now I see things from a different perspective. If I could speak to my younger self, I would counsel him to learn how to listen to other people's anger, because learning that enabled me to see the ways in which I was truly privileged and kept myself from seeing it. I would also counsel him to listen to perspectives without presuming an agenda.
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Date: 2005-07-28 02:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-07-28 04:38 pm (UTC)On the other hand, my father whined constantly about the persecution of the white male (he never specified hetero - it was understood) and worked his ASS off to conform. And had immense amounts of anger which would surface, sometimes explosively, as a result. He may be an invalid example being clinically psychopathic, but he seems to be getting worse with time - it may perhaps be a result of the system wearing him down.
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From:Not trying to be smart-alecky here
Date: 2005-07-28 05:03 pm (UTC)I think the point that a lot of people miss when they examine themselves and the changes that they have made is that they DID indeed change. "I" am no more like my 'rents than I am like Pat Robertson. I CHOSE not to be like any member of my family and have for the most part succeeded much to my betterment I do believe. The thing is that you are becoming you. THAT is a lot more than many others in this "sheepy" world can say.
Congratulations
LB
Re: Not trying to be smart-alecky here
From:Re: Not trying to be smart-alecky here
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Date: 2005-07-28 05:27 pm (UTC)I do think that the socialization and experiences of trans women pre-transition do differ from those of men and resemble those of other women although the degree of difference and similarity varies from person to person.
I know that growing up I was caught in a double bind, restricted inwardly by society's rules for female behavior which were ingrained in me from my earliest socialization, while also constrained from outside by society's rules for male behavior which were imposed and reinforced with violence. I got attacked a lot, both verbally and physically. I suspect that if the inner rules hadn't been so deeply seated in my psyche that I perhaps could have found some way to fit in and find acceptance among men at least until I got to a point where I couldn't deal with the difference between my body and my propriaceptive sense of my body any more.
The fact that I grew up poor compounded the problem because as a poor child I received many of the messages of oppression that are very similar to those which other girls recieve for being girls. I was othered, excluded, and rejected for being poor by some and othered, excluded, and rejected for my inability to live by male standards by others. In fact I saw no real difference between the messages that girls around me got from the ones I got except that their messages were seldom reinforced with public violence.
On the plus side, these experiences, combined with a body which was reasonably close to the female range pre-transition, made transition amazingly easy (except financially).
In transistion I didn't set out to "become a woman", but only to escape the restrictions that kept me from being myself. For years I tried to think of myself a genderqueer, but my socialization kept kicking in and pushing me toward feminine behaviors. I finally had to accept that if I was dealing with the same internalized oppressions as other women I knew and I was now dealing with the same external oppressions as other women I knew, and my life resembled that of other women I knew with differences no greater than are found between other groups of women, then I am a woman.
That acceptance of womanhood helped me find feminism and locate the tools that I can use to dismantle my own internal oppression as well as fight external oppressions.
So I think that my experience is at most only tangentially connected to that of white hetero males.
(continued)
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Date: 2005-07-28 06:34 pm (UTC)Thank you for writing this - I plan on spelunking through your pages a little bit.
I am currently in a situation with my partner of the last 4 years - who by far is the most open feminist man I have ever been with. As a radical feminist heterosexual female the search for a relationship with a man is so exhausting I am constantly questioning my decisions. I am currently at a place where I feel there are some very legitimate power over issues I am having with him. For the first time I feel like I can't bring something up to him because he will see it as an attack - when it is really both of us trapped in our boxes crashing into eachother.
Crap - I can't adequately explain myself right now. I just want to say again - thank you for this I look forward to getting to know you.
-Sarah
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From:just preserving my secret privacy ;p
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Date: 2005-07-28 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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