Chapter 1 – You Don’t Have to Be “This or That”

Dear Masculinity and Your Followers,

I get that it seems like the whole world is after you. Toxic masculinity. Incel. Maga. Manosphere. Male Loneliness Epidemic. Alpha Male. High Valued Male. When I became a faculty member and colleagues and students learned of my research on masculinity I was invited into many spaces to discuss “what is/was wrong with men” and how to fix them. In these conversations, over a decade ago, I saw a trend in these discourses. Everyone wanted men to change. For good reason. These were people who were acutely aware and invested in issues of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, interpersonal partner violence, stalking and the list goes on. Men were at the forefront of many social problems that were causing all kinds of people harm and harm to themselves. As people asked me to explain what masculinity was and is through my anthropological and Black Feminist trainings I had to reiterate the same mantra over and over again. You are offering them no other option. You keep telling them they are bad/broken/damaged/hurt/scared (all true) and need to change but what were boys/men/teens given as an option they were to change into? They were simply told to stop being men and in their minds “male” (most folks conflate gender and sex). So what we have seen heightened in the last ten plus years is push back. But as I reflect I think about what I have shared in classrooms, professional spaces, research contexts that has proven to be the most effectual in both helping people understand the difficulty in reworking masculinity and the effort it would take - it was to share my own journey in masculinity. So this is a statement to those boys/men/teens who think there is only one path or one way of being that is based around domination/physical strength/competition/testosterone. There is/are other ways to be.

I grew up in both a patriarchy and matriarchy. Meaning that the Caribbean household I was a part of as an immigrant kid in Canada was not so much run by my mother but the managing of life and decisions were handled by women. Specifically in my household, my mom and my sister. Indirectly it was my father’s mother and my mother’s grandmother and aunt who during my youth all lived in Trinidad. They held a reverence and respect as the keepers of the family. Well into my father’s 80’s he still talked with complete reverence for his mother’s strength, perseverance, ingenuity, and creativity in keeping their family together during the toughest of times. But I was also growing up in Canada in my formative years, going to Catholic school. High school was a private all-boys school taught by priests. I played sports. I was captain of the football and track team in high school. I did and said so much of the stereotypical teen and pre-teen boyish things. All of which would get me canceled today. I have admitted all of this to my students over the years so this is not a new confession. The F-word (the one that used to describe a bundle of sticks) came out of my mouth as effortlessly as a breath. I was never checked by anyone nor did I ever challenge any of my peers to stop using it. Gay was never used to describe happiness. All of this was reinforced by religious teachings that supported anti-gay and anti-queer ideologies. It was so ingrained in me that when I went on a college campus tour in Canada with friends and happened to be standing on the lawn in front of the building that housed the student organization that supported LGBTQ students I leapt back onto the sidewalk while exclaiming “EWWWW!!!” when the student tour guide indicated what building was behind me. Definitely cancelable behavior. While there was an awkward silence no one did or said anything.

One and a half years later everything changed. I was now a first-year university student in the US. It was spring break and some of us had not travelled for the break. It was this break I first lost a Black male peer to gun violence. It was also the first time (as far as I knew) that I met a gay man. My resident advisor. A bunch of us were hanging out in his room not really doing anything other than talking, laughing and joking around. Someone in the group made a comment about our RA that was confusing to me. I turned to one of my floor mates and asked “What did he mean by that?” “Oh he’s gay”. The confused look on my face prompted my floormate to repeat his statement. He could read the “Does not compute!” look on my face and said it a third time. All I could reply was “Oh” very sheepishly. I was so staggered by this that I got up and walked out and walked back to my room that was on the other side of the building. My roommate had gone home for the break so I had the room to myself. I sat on my bed alone with the door closed and repeated to myself half out loud “He’s gay? He’s gay. He’s gay? He's gay.” Going back and forth between a question and a statement. My brain couldn’t process much else. I finally landed on “He’s gay.” A statement. A kind of acceptance. Like “oh the chair is blue”. Now what? I then began to reflect on my time so far in college. This RA had been someone I admired. Someone everyone on my floor admired. He was kind. Funny. Generous. Never once was he ever too busy to listen, help, or advise. I have spent most of my adult life connected to higher education and have heard so many horrible and disappointing stories from students and parents about ineffectual, lazy, unconcerned RA’s so my RA continues to stand out as exemplary in a long legacy of mediocrity. I looked up to this guy. He was talented. He was in the most prestigious singing group on campus. I couldn’t hold a note if it was stapled to my forehead. He was obviously intelligent because he was at an Ivy League school. But here I was confronted with all of this positivity and now this new nugget of information. What was I supposed to do? Everything I had been taught by my family, teachers, and spiritual leaders was that he was someone to be feared/avoided/shunned/hated/disgusted by. He was the antithesis of what it was to be a man. A real man. I’m not sure how long I sat there pondering in my room alone. But everything about him says he’s a really good person. Then I realized I had a decision to make. I could go on accepting that everything I was taught about gay people was true. Or everything I was taught was all wrong. For whatever reason. Logic. Reason. Intuition. Humanness. Clarity. I came to the conclusion that everyone was wrong. My parents. My teachers. My friends. My priests (oh did I mention I was an altar boy too!). They were all wrong. Now if they were wrong then I had to get up and go back down the hall and rejoin the group. And that is exactly what I did. No one said anything to me. I made no declaration of what I had just experienced and processed. I just sat back down on the bed in the room and joined in as if I had not left. Even though on the inside I was still in turmoil. “If he’s gay who else is?” I want you to keep in mind that for 5 years (high school in Canada used to go up to Grade 13 back in the olden times) I attended an all-boy high school. Almost all male teachers and staff. I, as far as I knew, had never met a gay person before. All those F-words slewn about. Were any of my former classmates gay? Friends? How did the gay kids/teachers/staff/coaches feel with all of the anti-queer and homophobic language freely expressed throughout the day. Every day. All day. All year long.  I then thought about my leap of homophobia off the “queer” lawn and how wrong I was. But I had made a decision. A decision that I would make my assessment of people based on their ability/choice to be kind and caring humans.

This was the beginning of me refashioning masculinity for myself and the people who would be a part of my life forever. I no longer had to think of gayness as a threat to being a man. I would eventually meet gay men who were better at sports than me. Who were smarter than me. Who were kinder. I also met gay men who were as annoying and bothersome as my non gay male friends. I learned to not have to feel threatened if a man said I was attractive or asked if I was gay. I didn’t have to react in a “macho” way to prove to everyone around me that I was straight. I could be a man that women liked and did not have to fear.  I could one day become a husband and a father that I felt proud to be. That my father and brother were proud of. Though very different than both of them (that will be another post). I had no idea in that moment that I decided everyone was wrong that it was a moment of transformation for me as a man. It allowed me to have men in my life that I would love and respect. Who I could show my love and respect openly towards without worrying if someone thought I was gay. It freed me from the burden of thinking I had to buy into toxic masculinity and the harm it causes. This was no smooth and easy transformation. There were lots of challenges and backward slides over the course of my life as I got older, experienced more, and saw more.  The point is perfection is not the goal here. But every time I defaulted to that old self I had a reality that I could draw upon that said “Hey, they were wrong and it’s ok. It will be fine.”

So to those of you out there that only hear that “old self” voice don’t be afraid to tell it that they are wrong. You can exist without it. It makes you feel and think you are nothing without it/them. Fight it. You are strong enough to not need it. Unburden yourself. There are different ways to be. A way that doesn’t cause harm to yourself and others. A way to be that is still being a man. A man that other men, who have also abandoned that voice, will admire and appreciate. We will never ask you to be something you don’t have to be.