Born in a Human Body

I started blogging in 2003, and the guy who inspired me to launch out (blogger of the long defunct Primate Brow Flash) used to say, 
"Blog regularly, and if you can't think of anything to write, link to a New York Times article."

(Before Blogger had icons, I used to know the html to create a live link.)

I don't know how often I've done that, linked to a NYT article.--Rarely. 
But that old advice comes to mind this morning--not because I don't have anything to say (also rare), but because I'm sharing an article  posted on FB. (Posted by guy I used to babysit forty-five years ago, when he was a little boy!)

Here's the link to the article:
"My Cousin Was My Hero. Until the Day He Tried to Kill Me."
--By Wil S. Hylton [a man] It's about "toxic masculinity".

This article reminds me of my father, who worked hard to smother his violence, usually, but not always successfully. Silence and withdrawal was his main tool.
I felt his silence as punishment, and it surely was. 
Reading this now, two years after my father's death, it occurs to me he was also using silence, a kind of emotional violence, to protect us from his capacity for physical violence... 

Mostly it worked. 
His own father had beaten his wife (my grandmother) and my father and his siblings, sometimes badly–-with a 2x4 board, once. 

My father was much more restrained, only "spanking" us with his belt, and not often. I can see now how frustrated, trapped, and rageful he felt in a marriage where, among other things, he carried all the financial responsibility.

That doesn't matter to a kid. I was afraid of him––and I avoided him.
I think the tragic, pathetic result is that now that he's dead, I never miss him.

The author of the article writes:

"My father aspired to a model of masculine reserve that he saw in cowboy movies. I mean this literally:
With our first VCR came mandatory screenings of “Stagecoach,” “High Noon” and “The Searchers,” each one followed by an impromptu disquisition on the virtue of restrained power.
With time, I came to understand this as a reaction to the volcanic forces in himself. I lived in fear of his temper.

“Masculinity is a religion. It is a compendium of saints: the vaunted patriarch, the taciturn cowboy, the errant knight, reluctant hero, gentle giant and omniscient father. Like Scripture, each contains a story of implicit values. Fraternity, dominance, adamance, certitude — these are the commandments of male identity.
Maybe in societies deep through history, those qualities helped organize a world of chaos, but the antediluvian constructs of masculinity are easily weaponized in modern life."

And, Further...

The ideas of "masculinity" and "feminity" are cultural, of course; 
but having a human body isn't just "an idea"--it's biological.
This article isn't about that angle.

When I was a teenager, feminists used to say, "Biology isn't destiny."
I know what they (we) were getting at, trying to loosen up social strictures--- but it's the cultural reading and rules on biology that are fluid, not physical biology itself. 

To take the most basic example, biology dictates that we're going to die.
That's destiny.

It's biological factors that require that if you want to go all the way in transitioning/reassigning your body's  gender [I'm not sure the current terms for this]–-especially if you want other people in your society to read you as a certain gender––
you inject naturally occurring biological chemicals into that body.

Because it works.
A transguy told me that once he was on "T", people started asking him how to fix their car, and they started listening to him, a diminutive man, in meetings... "I didn't realize as a woman, but I'd never had anyone stop talking and listen when I spoke up."

Social constructs, maybe, but he said he also couldn't believe the physical drive T gave him--especially sexual. "Now I realize that testosterone-driven sex drive is a problem," he said. "Now I feel sorry for men!"

It's great that people are playing with gender, and gender roles. (Even if sometimes the politics get pretty bonkers.)
But the baseline biological questions of being a human in a body remain:
How can humans (of any gender) use the drive for power? What to do with rage and impotence? 
People like Trump make hay out of that.

This article does touch on the power of testosterone, but it doesn't suggest alternatives. How to direct churning hormones?
 That's fine––that's not what the article about. It's a good picture of what NOT to do... and I'm grateful for the insight into my father.

It's not an easy question, what to do instead of the wrong thing? After all, author himself hasn't figured it out--wearing a sarong for two years didn't prove to be an answer.

Silence is power. As the AIDS activist slogan of the 80s said, Silence is also death.

It's a HUGE question we all share: How to be alive in these bodies???