On refusing to be a man.

I remember going on a trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park when I was 11 years old with my father and my brother. There was a lot of hiking, and passing down of information from father to sons. After an intense climb my brother and I were hanging near the edge of a cliff when he suddenly lifted me up by my ankles, and dangled me over the edge. Looking down at the ravine below, I saw my life flashing before my eyes; the drop was at least 100 feet down. My dad, laughing, pulled out the camera to document this moment. He would later put this in a family photo album. The following Christmas when my sister came home for break from school, we were looking at the photos. She laughed at the picture of my brother and I in the North Dakota Badlands, “Male bonding!” she said.

Male bonding is always something I have had difficulty with. For as long as I can remember, I have gotten along better with women than men. Perhaps because of this stronger identification with women, I have come to find that identities such as “guy”, “boy”, and “male” resonate with me, but I have never felt comfortable with the identify of “man”. My gender identity embodies masculinity, while it is conflicted with the privileges associated with manliness. In situations where –mostly straight- men are the majority, I have often felt uncomfortable because I feel there is a competition. Playful or not, I have repeatedly seen this power struggle play out.

“Man” is not natural or inherent. It is political and infused with power; one is not born a “man”, one BECOMES a “man” –this is a reference to Simone de Beauvoir. If “man” were naturally occurring and not a social construction, then it would not be necessary to bestow upon someone as a rite of passage. “Man” would be a category we become with age, not an identity that the greater society oversees and declares real or not real, depending on who and how “man” is embodied.

“Man” is not a stable category. In this way, “man” is not much different from other categorical identities, in that there is no one-way to be a “man”. “Man”, historically, has shifted to meet the needs of the society. The idea of “man” is perhaps universal, however, the traits we associate with maleness are not.

As I stated two paragraphs ago, “man” is a political identity that exists for the accumulation of power. Many males contend with each other for the identity of “man”. The title of “man” is not permanent, and once given to a person, it can be stripped away. Men compete with each other for their right to the title, and attempt to present their manliness as undeniable. The parameters of what “man” is not, are defined by what is seen to be the ‘other’ to man. This does not, however, make clear what “man” is as the traits associated with “man” do not belong to “man”. If a person’s actions exist too far out of the blurred boundaries of “man”, they will be symbolically emasculated. This renders the person as less than man, which is the “other” to man.

Guy, male, and boy are not titles I have to prove. In part, this is because of my own cisgendered privilege. To clarify: my perceived gender, and my gender identity are not in direct conflict. I almost never have to clarify my identity as male, as this identity of maleness is assumed. My identity with guy, male, and boy as opposed to “man”, is simultaneously an attempt to divest myself of male privilege, and an avoidance of the repetitive need to prove my worth as a “man”. I do not care to remake “man”. I want to destroy it.

Coming Out Again: I Will Feel no Shame in my Desire

I came out as a gay male fairly early, having been 15 years old when I came out to my friends, and 17 years old when I came out to my family. I came out again at 24 as queer, having discovered that the identity of gay was reductive, defining me solely by who I slept with. Queer resonated with me in a way that gay couldn’t. For clarity, I came out as queer because gay male “culture” doesn’t make room for me under its all-encompassing rainbow banner. My identity as queer allows me a means of combining a fluctuating gender identity, punk rock, and an attraction to simularily sexed bodies.
Coming out is a constant process. By simply opening my closet door, I am not ensuring that it will always stay open. I will have to constantly revisit this closet, whether that is for clarification of my identity to someone who doesn’t know or understand. Also, I will come out in various contexts. Sometimes I will be “out” for all to see, while at other times I will intentionally revisit the closet for safety –as was the case when I was walking down the street with a lover and three hetero hyper-machismo males were threatening us. I am learning to befriend the closet, to know it better. That is, to know not only the ways in which my life will always be lived in a world that has a closet, but also to know what other parts of my identity are closeted, and how to unleash them.
I want to come out of the closet to further elaborate what bodies I desire. I believe that the desiring of certain bodies is constructed. To be clear, I am not sold on the idea of gender or sexuality as being so malleable and fluid, as to be changed at will. I do not believe that we exist prior to a gendered subjectivity, nor do I believe that our sexuality is something that we have complete control over. However, I do believe that how we articulate our sexuality, and sometimes who we express ourselves with sexually, to be shaped in large part by societal norms, values, and expectations. I would like to come out as a chubby chaser and a bear hunter.
I love fur, and additional padding. I am not simply looking for a good heart inside this furry, chubby body to demonstrate that I am not shallow, that it is what is on the inside and not the outside that counts. What I mean to suggest is that I am attracted to the body, the mind, and the heart. In my book all body types matter –I’m referencing Judith Butler here.
I love the energy in bear bars, though, to be honest I am a little turned off by the hyper-masculine machismo that one often will find at Eagle bars across the country. I am very much so attracted to the bodies and the queered masculinities in these spaces. This is to draw a line of differentiation between machismo and masculinity. Machismo as domineering, existing in such a fashion as to exclude femmes of all persuasions –femmes of all body types, sexes and genders. Masculinity, in stark contrast, has nothing to prove. It is gentle, kind, and welcoming in a way that allows room for many gender expressions to exist. It allows masculinity and femininity to belong to no one and to belong to everyone. It is a masculinity that nurtures. It is masculinity we can envision as needing to be saved from the patriarchy.
This second coming out is necessary to me because being seeped in a culture that is body-negative, one learns not only that fat and fur are undesirable to have as your attributes, but that fat and/or hairy bodies should be undesirable sexually too. Chub chasers and bear hunters become perverse fetishists in this context as they are non-normative in their desire, and the people they are attracted to are viewed as occupying the bodies they do out of laziness, bad decisions, or spite. To elaborate, I mean to say that if you are fat and/or furry it could be interpreted as lazy because you are not “maintaining” yourself to a societal standard of what a “healthy” body looks like. By bad decisions I mean that your personal health is negatively affected because of your diet, and the feelings of disgust toward your body by body-negative persons, is then somehow deserved because you had the option of being “healthy” and “attractive” and tragically chose to be neither. And last, by “spite” I mean to suggest that queer fat guys and bears exist as a means of resistance, not only to the predominant heteronormative culture which finds queer love disgusting, but also by the homonormative mainstream gay community that revels in the stereotypes of gay men as fashionable, and fit –fuck you queer eye for the straight guy.
My sexuality has largely been constructed by the acceptance of my peers. And a second coming out as a chub chaser and a bear hunter is a means of feeling no shame in my desire inside the bedroom, or outside. I am not writing this for a pat on the back for having an attraction to the desexualized, and by wanting to love the fetishized. My purpose is simply to articulate that it has been a process to resolve the conflicts of who I desire and who I am told to desire.