We Could Be Heroes – Transgression and the “other”
Growing up I often felt quite “othered” as a boy, especially in the context of mainstream schooling where I was frequently bullied by other boys for being “different”. Wearing handed down or home-made clothes, eating vegetarian packed lunches made from barely digestible home-baked bread didn’t help, but neither did being slight of build, having refined features and long or longish fine and very blond hair. I loved physical, earthy, outdoor play, but I also enjoyed arts and crafts, reading, writing and dreaming. Where I found friendship, it was with the few other boys at each school that were also more thoughtful and reflective, and although in someways it was less acceptable in middle years, during pre-school and from secondary school onward, I enjoyed many platonic female friendships too.
It is hard to know though how much of my experienced “otherness” as a boy was innate to me and encouraged and influenced by growing up with sisters, and the progressive, egalitarian approach of my mother – when my elder sister was enrolled in extra-curricular ballet lessons, I was enrolled too, as was the case with yoga, elocution, and horse riding lessons (my mother seemed to have powerful bourgeois urges that belied her humble working-class beginnings and determinedly alternative approach to other aspects of life).
Where, as I have said before, I had a conscious aversion to the worst aspects of male power as expressed in violence, I also grew up believing that there was no conflict between my being a boy but also enjoying such things as sewing and dancing (as well as making dirt jumps for my BMX, or climbing trees to make rope swings). So, my sense of inherent tension within masculinity as a fragile construct has been present for me as long as I can remember. Even now, I can viscerally sense in those that bullied me their own fear of difference, of perhaps needing to diminish the challenge I represented to their own sense of self as boys and masculine, even if it was less than entirely conscious on their parts.
Similarly, it is the case when I consider our discourse around masculinity. Having been born in the in mid-seventies, I’m sorry to say that I was of the generation where it was normal to hear the term “gay” (as in homosexual) being used in a derogatory way to describe male behaviour that didn’t conform to macho, hegemonic norms of masculinity. Likewise, it was called out as equally deviant if male behaviour too closely resembled that which was associated with girls or women: other than “gay” or “poofter” etc. the worst (usually, but not exclusively, male-on-male) insults were those that implied femininity such as “like a girl”, “girlie”, and “sissy” etc.
Although thankfully the derogatory use of the term “gay” that I have described has been effectively policed out of our public (anglophone) vocabulary, we cannot say the same for the diminutive use of the feminine as an insult to call into question the masculinity of the subject. I am thinking especially of the word “pussy” still commonly used to describe someone exhibiting less than macho behaviour. Of course, that word “pussy” is used in other contexts, but leaving that aside, as a signifier for the “feminine” it is equivalent to the phrases “grow some balls” and “man-up” in the context of being often physically strong, brave, courageous, and stoic. This current popular language indicates how despite any progress, we still not only equate more readily masculinity (than femininity) with physical strength, courage, and violence, but also that we tend to define masculinity by its departure and distance from femininity: i.e. The most masculine man is that which is least like a woman.
Considering what I have recounted about my early years, it is perhaps surprising to hear that as a teenager I often thought about joining the army. In my conscious mind, what appealed was the adventure, the structure and the discipline – the latter of which had been missing from my childhood. Now, in retrospect I can also see how I was maybe also seeking a definitive resolution to my internally problematised masculinity. Ultimately however, as a rebellious adolescent favouring the arts subjects, I concluded I would not do well toeing the line or being expected to betray my then perhaps naïve political beliefs so didn’t apply.
Only in my early twenties, and when living independently and working in retail management did I decide to make an appointment with the Army Recruitment Office in Reading where I was based at the time. The conclusion of my discussion with them was that I should consider applying for positions in intelligence or communications rather than infantry. In retrospect I probably made the wrong choice by opting instead to work for a bank in the mortgage lending department, believing this might result in less internal conflict. Now, I am not so sure. Throughout my years having to work in commerce to survive, I’ve struggled to find meaning. This lack of purpose was only really offset during the period I was a “wage slave” in order to support my wife and children, and even then, I felt deeply and viscerally the time with my daughters that I was sacrificing. Perhaps working for a cause (however violent) greater than making my employers richer would have provided my life with more meaning – I shall never know.
But returning to review the public discourse around gender and the idea that the antithesis of masculinity is the homosexual and the feminine, it is perhaps no surprise that we can see this clearly illustrated by the characterisation of action heroes in contemporary popular culture which are overwhelmingly heterosexual, male and macho. Although in film and television we might have seen the rise of the female action-lead or hero, these have often been women that also seem contingent on the male gaze and embody emphasised femininity as well as some macho traits.
Indeed, examples that vary from the norm remain so rare that it is easier to list some of the exceptions that, as it were, prove the rule: In terms of more progressive female leads, we can think of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Ridley Scott’s Alien, Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) in James Cameron’s film The Terminator or on television, Vicky McClure as bomb disposal expert in ITV’s Trigger Point, and perfectly cynical Oxford based private investigator Zoe Boehm (played superbly by Emma Thompson) in Apple TV’s Down Cemetery Road . For transgressive males we could look to Keith Charles (Matthew St.Patrick), the gay policeman in HBO’s hit series Six Feet Under from the early 2000’s, Michael K Williams’ brilliant portrayal of the gay gangster Omar Little in The Wire, another HBO hit of that era, Ron Kray played by Tom Hardy (who also played Reggie Kray) in the 2015 film Legend depicting the notorious London gangsters, or for a more recent example, the fictional , movie action-hero Tommy Wheeler (Austin Nicholls) from another US drama, Ray Donovan. Here Wheeler’s character embodies the tension between being the heterosexual, macho action-hero on screen and for the public, while in fact being gay, but feeling unable to be so publicly.
Beyond the media and entertainment, there is of course also a long history macho or traditionally masculine men that have felt they have had to live as closeted homosexuals because of it being a crime and/or, even after such retrograde laws were abolished, because they were for example in the military. In highlighting these transgressive masculinities and female expression of “masculine” traits I am hoping to underline how the construction of maleness and masculinity as being the antithesis of being either a woman or a homosexual male, are both false dichotomies and that “masculine“ traits are not mutually exclusive to heterosexual men. Similarly, in her seminal feminist text The Second Sex, existential philosopher Simone De Beauvoir described how patriarchal social structures artificially “other” women as a variation from the exalted and presumed primary or default human position of being male. Perhaps the best-known quote of her thinking on gender is drawn from this text: “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”.
Ironically, if like myself one perceives gender to be a biopsychosocial phenomenon where biology plays an influencing but not entirely determinative role (though I believe human biological sex is fundamentally binary), then the artificiality of woman as the “other” in relation to man is made more ludicrous by the fact of the female XX chromosome being the default genetic human code as, of course, it is the male XY chromosome which is the deviation! (need to edit and add ref/citation for greater accuracy and clarity).