32 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
# Nonbinary Masculinity
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I've often been told that I've a masculine brain.
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I'm not completely sold on the idea that brains can be masculine, or that if they could be, that mine is, but I am willing to entertain it for a moment.
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I think this is because of tendency to be analytical, and/or my affinity for traditionally "masculine" interests, such as maths, science or engineering.
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This is a fair observation - I do like those things!
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However, I don't feel terribly like a man.
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I'm comfortable with the body I inhabit, but as time has gone by the label of 'man' has seemed to fit less and less well.
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It's not that a definitely _am_ something else, at least there's nothing I've found yet that seems to fit better, but just a lack of fitting with whatever it is that a man is.
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As I've spent time experiencing the subject, I've come more and more to the position that the piece which isn't fitting isn't so much myself, as it is the concept of a 'man' in the first place.
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## The Male Caricature
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Our media is not designed to show real people, but fictions.
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In our entertainment - our sitcoms, dramas and cartoons - we don't show real people, but archetypical characters we need to communicate the story.
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This is also true of non-fiction: our news, our reality TV, our documentaries also summarise, just that this time the stories have actually happened.
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Archetpyes has been around since we started telling stories, as there's no way to possibly relate the complexity of a real human person in a story to an audience in any sane amount of time.
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Archetypes can be positive or negative, depending on the story.
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Mr Incredible's mountain of muscle places him squarely in the role of protector, the provider and the fighter - positive male archetypes.
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In the same story, Syndrome is has archetypically negatively male - he is vindictive, spiteful and jealous.
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We have an epidemic of isolation and an abundance of media to turn to to numb it.
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We also have an ever-increasing rate of single parents, who are themselves forced to work ever harder to provide for their children.
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These come together to encourage the increasing exposure to fictional examples of men, caricatures and archetypes, rather than to examples of men in real life.
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There is and always will be a place in our societies for stories - storytelling is our most human trait - but in my own Western culture I think our hyperactive media culture has replaced real men with these caricatures, to the detriment of all.
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When we say speak of a man today, I think it is more likely to conjure images of Captain America, of Rick Sanchez, or of Donald Trump, than it is to conjure images of one's father, friend or teacher.
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It is this idea of a man that I reject: an amalgamation of some set of masculine traits, rather than the father, brother or friend whom one personally knows.
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