I carry a pocketknife with me everywhere , and always have. That’s not something a lot of men do anymore, but to me a pocketknife is simply an essential creative repair tool. I use this one, equipped with a small blade, can opener, couple screwdrivers and an awl, many times a day. So naturally when I found out SOG had made a new multitool I wanted to check it out.
Until I saw this ad, that is.
Don’t get me wrong; I love cleverly designed tools, and by cracky, I have the skillz to use them. But I am absolutely done with this ‘masculinity as anger and violence’ model. Its only value is as proof of the hard-won realization that gender is a social construct.
Let that soak in: how we understand being a man is a performance, a set of social expectations. And it’s mostly for the benefit of other men who might be watching. Men constantly insult other men by calling them women. This is so pervasive it is used in advertising; you can get your ‘Man Card’ reissued by owning a particular kind of assault rifle. And, apparently, if you carry this well-designed SOG tool.
The term for this performance is “Toxic Masculinity” and it means you have been raised with a very narrow range of permitted emotions. Or for that matter interests and careers.
This works out fine for men who are comfortable in the mold, but not everyone wants to get their whole lifetime supply of oxygen through a tiny opening in their emotional range.
Men are allowed to be ‘tough’ but not tender (which is funny, because NASA tests, not to mention history itself, demonstrated long ago that women are just as tough as men). Men are not allowed to cry but they can shout in anger. Manly sports must be violent, and children who decline to participate are shamed. No amount of personal damage is too high a price to pay for this cultural essential.
I was, in fact, a pretty effeminate boy, but that aspect of my personality was relentlessly punished. Today, decades later, I am stuck there, with wounds so habitually defended I have no idea how to uncover them or treat them.
Look around for a few days. Listen to other people talk, especially to children. Look at advertising. Look for the gentle boy on the playground and see how he’s treated. And spare a moment to appreciate people who break the rigid gender roles into which their assignment at birth had encased them. Think of them as pioneers, opening up a world where we could all breathe a little more easily.
NOTES:
- Discuss this post on Facebook and Twitter
- My ‘standard kit’ consists of eyeglasses, pen, index cards, watch, keys, minimalist wallet, Swiss Army knife, magnifying glass, and phone.
- You’re darn right there are constricting counterparts in the social construct of being a woman. Start with women in STEM fields and politics. It’s a big topic.
- The ad appeared in the July 2017 Wired magazine.
- Terms for inadequately ‘masculine’ men: ‘pussy’, ‘mangina’, ‘little girl’, ‘girly-man’, ‘cuck’, and various constructs of lacking ‘balls’. And nearly infinite variations of all those.
- Feminism and gender expression are too big to fit in one rant about a stupid ad. I’m creating a new category on my blog to write about it some more.
- Just to be clear, pioneering is often dangerous. Non gender-conforming people are often discriminated against, shunned, assaulted and even killed.
- You can find many articles claiming that gender is strictly or mostly biological, but sex and gender aren’t the same thing.
georgewiman 