To my beloved brother, if I had one
He uses the body to do harm when he is in his periods of sickness. He still is the same body even if he is better; has the same arms and lips that in those dangerous occasions reached for me and poured hatred at me. And he uses the same eyes. His body made it possible to have a go at my smaller body. Didn’t it? Was it only my smallness? He had not eaten or slept much so he was surely physically tired: his skinniness and paleness testified of hours and hours of lack of nutrition, lack of rest. When my father’s body was present there were frightening situations too, but they were not focused on me. He has a bigger, but older, body. A safe body, in a ‘keeping himself and others safe’ kind of way. My little brother had at the time a very small one, almost never targeted by his older brother’s sickly anger. My mother’s body had a similar fate as mine. However, she has also a big body. If it is not (only) size… shape?
"It isn’t only size that provokes anxieties about the body among teenage boys. There is the question of shape (Connell 1983 [1979]:20)".
I have a profound problem with men. There, I have outed myself. I have a problem with not always and constantly being in the critical mode, of always (expected to) being affirmative when it comes to men. Of being endlessly understanding, respectful and nice when my history and my body reminds me of injustices, restrictions, limitations, abuse, violence. In the academia I am not allowed to say these things, not allowed to even think them. Easy equations are simplistic we are taught in feminist courses. The reality is more complex, more nuanced, more dynamic and fluid. I want to stand up and scream: fuck all that! Let’s riot! Let’s hold men responsible for the things they DO! Part of me strongly believes in feminist revolutions, in separatist organizing and sisterhood. I do not, however, stand up and scream in anger. Instead, I sit nicely on my seminar-chair and nod my head understandingly while discussing yet another disembodied text on men – or masculinities as they now are fashionably termed.
Prescription by wise men: separation of mind and body helps. Your brother is not his sickness, the wise psychiatrist tells me. Yet my body feels reluctant, becomes tense and reserved in my well-brother’s presence. Separation between deed and person is a must must, the wise psychiatrist adds. Yet my body remembers past and present violations, recognizing my brother’s well-shame as well as my idiocy of not being able to do away with my stupid stupid anger. There is no body I am allowed to dispose it on. His body is a sick body is a socio-emotionally and hence a culturally protected body. My body is now a distanced body is a materially protected body.
So perhaps target the body of academic work instead? Perhaps men and masculinities – as subject, topic, discipline? Maybe my material anger fits there? I am not allowed to scream. Not literally. I can write my anger, hide it in diaries and let it be the best darn kept secret in the world. Anger should not materialize into kicking and screaming, into torn papers and nasty words, into tears and broken bones. Yet I think I out myself constantly. It must be obvious, must it not? You all looking at me strangely, becoming silent in the seminar (hysterical woman, mad woman). And I go to enormous effort of not disposing myself as the rabid radical feminist. All my energy placed into picking the key board even harder as I feel my temperature rising, my blood boiling. The academic playground becomes my place for anger management.
The wise psychiatrist does not help me/make me wiser. Or my brother. There is no ‘we are dealing with this together’-situation. ‘We are not dealing with this ever, period’. It is literally my body against his in those painful moments. His presence, my shrinking non-presence. His expanding spatiality, my diminishing.
"To be an adult male is distinctly to occupy space, to have a physical presence in the world (Connell 1983 [1979]:19)".
Why did his body catch this sickness? How come he used his body in the way he did to exercise hate? Why hate? Why my body?
"The significance of the body in the formation of masculinity has mainly been discussed, under Freud’s influence, as a question of the psychological and symbolic importance of the penis (Connell 1983 [1979]: 18) ".
"[P]enises are particularly tangible symbols of masculinity (Gerschick 2005:374)".
This is all very well, I think, when and after reading. I put the book or article aside, I might even be a little exaggerated afterwards. Such brilliance! Such amazing analyses! Surely this in itself is revolutionary! So I get a new role model, another bright scholar to put on my growing best of-list. And then… yeah, then what? All this seems separated somehow. From my anger, my initial and immediate experience. It is as if I cannot feel the connection. Or maybe just do not know how to. Or even want to. Suddenly everything feels a bit too enormous to take in. The change always talked about in the final paragraph, the preface or conscientiously put into the text here and there, exactly how should it come about?
Man, male, masculinity.[1] Woman, female, femininity. Concepts Garlick (2003) urges us to use interchangeably. An act of change in itself? And how does this fit into the rigorousity of scientific practice, ie defining in absurdum, and keeping the categories neat and discrete? And all these nice notions of fluidity and non-fixity, of transgressed boundaries and (conceptual) messiness? What if I need some order, some sort of ‘realness’ to cling onto, so I don’t lose track of my goal, my motif, myself?
I started on a paper were my purpose and aim was to disentangle the concepts ‘man’, ‘male’ and ‘masculinity’. I did well, I thought. Had things to say (I always do). Yet, I felt uneasy, untrue to myself. OMG! This crap that I’m producing on the academic assembly line transforms me into a person I’m not sure I want to be. It’s like with sick people who do not want to become well (if we for a moment imagine this as a choice), because they are comfortable and secure in the identity of an unwell. I’m not sure if I want to be cured from my anger. My biggest fear is a state of emotional vacuum, of not being moved, touched by anything, emotionally disabled. Yet, bell hooks once fabulously wrote that “[o]pposition is not enough. In that vacant space after one has resisted there is still the necessity to become – to make oneself anew” (hooks 1991: 3). I guess I need to do this, “become anew”, without forgetting the reasons for me being here, doing this. You guys will keep me on track, right?
[1]Funny thing: this fragmented sentence is not underlined with green in my word processing program. The next sentence is (woman, female, femininity). Explanation: “Fragment (consider revising)”. Irigaray has a point: woman is that which is not.
"It isn’t only size that provokes anxieties about the body among teenage boys. There is the question of shape (Connell 1983 [1979]:20)".
I have a profound problem with men. There, I have outed myself. I have a problem with not always and constantly being in the critical mode, of always (expected to) being affirmative when it comes to men. Of being endlessly understanding, respectful and nice when my history and my body reminds me of injustices, restrictions, limitations, abuse, violence. In the academia I am not allowed to say these things, not allowed to even think them. Easy equations are simplistic we are taught in feminist courses. The reality is more complex, more nuanced, more dynamic and fluid. I want to stand up and scream: fuck all that! Let’s riot! Let’s hold men responsible for the things they DO! Part of me strongly believes in feminist revolutions, in separatist organizing and sisterhood. I do not, however, stand up and scream in anger. Instead, I sit nicely on my seminar-chair and nod my head understandingly while discussing yet another disembodied text on men – or masculinities as they now are fashionably termed.
Prescription by wise men: separation of mind and body helps. Your brother is not his sickness, the wise psychiatrist tells me. Yet my body feels reluctant, becomes tense and reserved in my well-brother’s presence. Separation between deed and person is a must must, the wise psychiatrist adds. Yet my body remembers past and present violations, recognizing my brother’s well-shame as well as my idiocy of not being able to do away with my stupid stupid anger. There is no body I am allowed to dispose it on. His body is a sick body is a socio-emotionally and hence a culturally protected body. My body is now a distanced body is a materially protected body.
So perhaps target the body of academic work instead? Perhaps men and masculinities – as subject, topic, discipline? Maybe my material anger fits there? I am not allowed to scream. Not literally. I can write my anger, hide it in diaries and let it be the best darn kept secret in the world. Anger should not materialize into kicking and screaming, into torn papers and nasty words, into tears and broken bones. Yet I think I out myself constantly. It must be obvious, must it not? You all looking at me strangely, becoming silent in the seminar (hysterical woman, mad woman). And I go to enormous effort of not disposing myself as the rabid radical feminist. All my energy placed into picking the key board even harder as I feel my temperature rising, my blood boiling. The academic playground becomes my place for anger management.
The wise psychiatrist does not help me/make me wiser. Or my brother. There is no ‘we are dealing with this together’-situation. ‘We are not dealing with this ever, period’. It is literally my body against his in those painful moments. His presence, my shrinking non-presence. His expanding spatiality, my diminishing.
"To be an adult male is distinctly to occupy space, to have a physical presence in the world (Connell 1983 [1979]:19)".
Why did his body catch this sickness? How come he used his body in the way he did to exercise hate? Why hate? Why my body?
"The significance of the body in the formation of masculinity has mainly been discussed, under Freud’s influence, as a question of the psychological and symbolic importance of the penis (Connell 1983 [1979]: 18) ".
"[P]enises are particularly tangible symbols of masculinity (Gerschick 2005:374)".
This is all very well, I think, when and after reading. I put the book or article aside, I might even be a little exaggerated afterwards. Such brilliance! Such amazing analyses! Surely this in itself is revolutionary! So I get a new role model, another bright scholar to put on my growing best of-list. And then… yeah, then what? All this seems separated somehow. From my anger, my initial and immediate experience. It is as if I cannot feel the connection. Or maybe just do not know how to. Or even want to. Suddenly everything feels a bit too enormous to take in. The change always talked about in the final paragraph, the preface or conscientiously put into the text here and there, exactly how should it come about?
Man, male, masculinity.[1] Woman, female, femininity. Concepts Garlick (2003) urges us to use interchangeably. An act of change in itself? And how does this fit into the rigorousity of scientific practice, ie defining in absurdum, and keeping the categories neat and discrete? And all these nice notions of fluidity and non-fixity, of transgressed boundaries and (conceptual) messiness? What if I need some order, some sort of ‘realness’ to cling onto, so I don’t lose track of my goal, my motif, myself?
I started on a paper were my purpose and aim was to disentangle the concepts ‘man’, ‘male’ and ‘masculinity’. I did well, I thought. Had things to say (I always do). Yet, I felt uneasy, untrue to myself. OMG! This crap that I’m producing on the academic assembly line transforms me into a person I’m not sure I want to be. It’s like with sick people who do not want to become well (if we for a moment imagine this as a choice), because they are comfortable and secure in the identity of an unwell. I’m not sure if I want to be cured from my anger. My biggest fear is a state of emotional vacuum, of not being moved, touched by anything, emotionally disabled. Yet, bell hooks once fabulously wrote that “[o]pposition is not enough. In that vacant space after one has resisted there is still the necessity to become – to make oneself anew” (hooks 1991: 3). I guess I need to do this, “become anew”, without forgetting the reasons for me being here, doing this. You guys will keep me on track, right?
[1]Funny thing: this fragmented sentence is not underlined with green in my word processing program. The next sentence is (woman, female, femininity). Explanation: “Fragment (consider revising)”. Irigaray has a point: woman is that which is not.
posted by Anais at 6:05 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home