GIFTS OF THE NIGHT Swim into the testes: Lean into Go down There's a world of wildfire Eyes open wide Les Tate |
On stage too, men are often good at projecting themselves, making people laugh, but less good at speaking straight from the heart. When men do begin to let down the barriers, whether it's in a bar at closing time or a piece of writing about childhood by Dylan Thomas, the result can be maudlin, almost a parody of itself.
Some of my experiences of the men's movement have been similar. Highly theoretical and abstract books about masculinity, then discussion groups where men seem unable to articulate their deepest feelings.
I don't want to labour this point - it's tiresome just to criticise men, and quite unproductive unless it leads somewhere. And I don't believe it is helpful, or honest, for men to go in constant awe of feminist criticisms. Putting anyone (or their theories) on a pedestal implies a degree of unacknowledged antagonism.
But first, I think it's interesting to look at the ways male writers have 'covered up'. I'm thinking of literature, but some of the points could just as well apply to men writing letters, acting in films or speaking in public meetings.
There's a male style that is 'grand', suffering' and often quite self-pitying. It's sometimes put forward as alternative and oppositional. This sort of guy aims to tell painful truths, sometimes in a raw or bombastic fashion. His stance is a kind of macho rebelliousness that often ends up becoming highly conformist. I'm thinking of The Naked and the Dead, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ted Hughes' poetry as well as Johnny Rotten, Bruce Springsteen etc. Unacknowledged gayness is often at the root of this sort of self-expression. Where it is revealing is in its self-parody, blowing up the absurdities of macho so large that it almost topples over into bathos.
Another popular male style in 20th century writing has been the 'universal man': grand, ironic and detached. We're still living under the shadow of some of them - Pound, Eliot and Leavis, with their impersonal attempts to synthesise the whole of Western Culture. They were obviously great writers, but their impartiality seems an unhelpful evasion in the 80s. In fact their followers offer a thinner and thinner vision of masculinity - for instance Larkin retreating into a narrow world of desiccated 'normality' and despair. The key to this pose, is that absence of visible feeling or weakness creates a certain kind of awe and authority. It shows itself nowadays in the cool and godlike universal man portrayed in adverts who has expensive tastes and is hollow within.
There is another version of masculinity in writing that is more hopeful. Writers like James Baldwin and D H Lawrence are highly sensuous and alive to physical experience. Both can show real sensitivity, then switch back into aggressive egotism. As a model, Lawrence is obviously much worse. He was unable to come to terms with 'the woman within' - I mean his own effeminacy, not something that stems from women. And I'm not thinking of Lawrence's suppressed bisexuality, because being gay is only identified with being 'feminine' as long as it means being suppressed and withdrawn by a patriarchal culture. Gay and straight men are just as 'outward' or 'inward' as each other when they're on an equal footing. What I'm thinking of in Lawrence is a sensitivity and empathy to be found in heterosexuals like Keats. In fact Lawrence became a typical 'anxious macho' in that he rejected his own 'weakness', sentimentality, passivity, and projected them onto women and other men.
Ginsberg and Genet are more honest. They draw the whole world down into themselves and speak quite frankly about the unacceptable: in Ginsberg's case the sentimental underbelly in himself, in Genet the dominance/alternating with submission/syndrome, which is deeply rooted in many men. Both stand macho on its head.
| we ought to be expressing... our inner weaknesses,... our hidden passivity. |
But of course, a mirror reversal easily converts back into its original - and both these writers can be self-indulgent or brutal. But it seems to me that they do point forward to a new attitude, more honest, more personal.
THERE ARE AS MANY SEXES AS PEOPLE My sex Les Tate |
It seems to me, as a man, that we ought to be turning ourselves inside out, to be expressing our inner weaknesses, our inadequacies, our hidden passivity. When we can show our 'shames', not ostentatiously but naturally, we will be much more whole. We need to 'come out' and be prepared to offer our feelings, even if they're not 'right on' - though not to wallow in them (as pornography does) and assume that things can never change. The main reason, it seems to me, that men offer halting accounts of these areas is lack of practice. Because we rarely exercise our inwardness it comes out as childish, dependent, sentimental, even cringing, and we are ashamed of ourselves. But living is about sustaining damage and acknowledging it, in order to turn it into growth.
I also believe that writing should not try to gloss over or wilfully inflate personal experience. In a word, it should not be misleading. So, for instance, all the male writing on sex tends to be very penile, dominant, penetrative, (or occasionally the reverse as a kind of homage to macho). But my experience, and I suspect many other men's, is that roles and physical practices can be very fluid in bed. That's not to separate sexuality from my life, or to turn one into the other, but just to begin in one area to strip away macho mystique.
Perhaps a couple of poems to show what I mean. I'd like to think that they show my vulnerabilities, my effeminacy. I believe the more we exercise our hidden underbelly, the more confident we can become as nurturers, carers and men.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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