jamestriesvulnerability-blog

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Homework, if you can call it that.

Before starting this assignment, I never would have dreamed I could get away with doing half of these things under the guise of homework. 

It’s almost half way through my personal change challenge so I thought it would be beneficial to note of some of my practices that have been helpful in challenging my gender stereotypes. 

Journalling

This has been one of my most important methods of reflection. Dedicating time to writing about certain parts of yourself instantly validates that which, until then, you were choosing to reject; lamentably, ignoring feels doesn’t make them go away. It’s also a great way for me to comprehend feelings before sharing them with other people in a way that we both learn from. 

Sharing thoughts and feelings

Whenever I have a thought trying to suppress another thought or feeling, I let that which I am trying to cling to go. These counter-acting anxieties are just years of ingrained ideas about what it is to be a man giving their own voice to my ideas, sadly for them, I’m not so attentive to what they have to say right now. 

Engaging my romantic

This used to be incredibly difficult for me, as romantic display is the height of emotional openness. Throughout the whole process you are thinking about that person and preparing to put your feelings on an open stage for them. 

Attending events outside my comfort zone

Ecofeminist exhibitions, theatre, singing, classical music, dance, and plenty of jazz (sometimes I forget this is a coursework assignment). That’s not to say any of these performance types are feminine, but these are art forms all of my role models would have firmly dismissed. 

Exploring my creative

Making things and stylising my personal space. Again, these are things I’ve always tagged as feminine and have steered from. Trying these things is not inherently about doing something I see as feminine in a counter-balancing way, and more in that I have removed a barrier (my gendered idea of what I should do) to things that I regard highly.

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Women are described in animal terms as pets, cows, sows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats, old hens, mother hens, pussycats, cats, cheetahs, bird-brains, and hare-brains…‘Mother Nature’ is raped, mastered, conquered, mined; her secrets are ‘penetrated,’ her ‘womb’ is to be put into the service of the ‘man of science.’ Virgin timber is felled, cut down; fertile soil is tilled, and land that lies ‘fallow’ is ‘barren,’ useless. The exploitation of nature and animals is justified by feminizing them; the exploitation of women is justified by naturalizing them.

Karen J. Warren Ecological Feminism (via agentmaya)

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Weak as I am.

My key theme for this weekend (there were elements of a holiday Monday and Tuesday too, please don’t tell Dai) has been vulnerability. Growing up, I have had an ongoing struggle with showing and accepting weakness – thanks, dad – which is a pretty pertinent issue for most men too, I think.

My immediate reaction to a vulnerability is to hide it, get over it, be stronger than it. But in rejecting an insecurity I hold, I am snubbing an aspect of myself and preventing reconciliation.

Being vulnerable involves shining the light on things we don’t perhaps want to see: feelings of powerlessness, or of rejection, or shame for feeling emotional.

Rejecting vulnerabilities

While in rejecting these issues, one will pursue the exact opposite. A man who feels like he cannot provide will do everything in his power to do so. He who fears powerless will attempt to control his external environment – people or actual. A man fearing rejection would preclude it by cutting himself off from others. A man rejecting caring and compassion would, in turn, reject empathy around him.

Healing and moving on

The greatest remedy to my insecurities has been to open up and own them. That’s partly why I’m posting this blog online. Almost paradoxically, making open your weaknesses to others is very empowering. Sharing washes away feelings of shame and guilt–to tell someone is to reach the point of not giving a fuck.

How it plays out on the big stage

If you accept that men are chronically unable to accept their weaknesses, I think it is easy to see why we act the way we do towards the environment.

Holding the majority of power positions, these chronic issues regarding masculinity play out as a collective power struggle between institutions of men who disdain anything which is weak and use what they can for their own advantage.

The environment is weak, it is other and external. As men, it is a means to provision and power, something we have separated ourselves from, as we have our emotions.

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Masculinity and sustainability, (and all the other abstract nouns).

This change challenge constitutes part of a module on sustainability that I’m taking at university.

You might be wondering, what does something as personal and individual as masculinity have to do with sustainability? I think there are two pertinent connections.

Firstly, let’s look at the purpose of my challenge: to recognise, question, and then hopefully shed, some long-held and limiting ideologies. Hopefully the link is clear. I’m creating a process here for dealing with contentious (and when left unchecked, malignant) topics that are shaped by deeply ingrained value systems; be that sustainability, or masculinity, or something else.

Secondly, and perhaps a more direct tie, much of what I will be exploring about unhealthy masculinity feeds into issues of sustainability. As a generalisation, men suffer from an emotional disconnect, and I believe that separation then prompts a disconnect from our surroundings. Look at the field of economics - dominated by men and founded in a completely abstract world where things (read: nature) have only the value that we (read: a creation of nature) ascribe.

Similarly, insecurity leads to dominion over others, be that people or the external environment. I think there is no more explanation necessary for the nuclear arms race, or most wars for that matter.

To bring it all home, as I ponder over my own issues with masculinity, I’ll be reflecting on how these same issues fit into the problem areas of sustainable development more generally. Wish me luck!

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A New Kind of Masculinity: my personal change challenge

So here goes, the beginnings of my change challenge.

Over the next two months (to begin with), I will be delving into different aspects of what it means to be a man personally and the influences of those beliefs.

My main catalysts will be my personal journal, for ruminating over issues related to my preconceptions of masculinity, alongside an online course, titled ‘Masculinity: a new story’.

Fair warning, this may get personal. For those interested in the juicy details or seeing some of my influences, follow my tumblr to see my weekly reflections along with other resources I come across that hit home.