The Western politics of Sexual identity

Sexuality is naturally fluid for most most men, only for a small minority is it fixed and concretized.

The concept of sexual orientation forces men to choose a sexual identity which involves sacrificing an important part of themselves, to fit into one of the boxes provided by the society. It takes away their natural freedom to have a fluid sexuality.

Each box, but especially, the main box meant for 'normal' men has built-in mechanisms, and what guys consider 'support systems' to help men kill that part of themselves which doesn't fit into that box (We're talking about the 'heterosexual box').

The society has prescribed only three boxes into which men can mould their sexualities during their formative years. And the concept of sexual orientation enforces that men must choose between one of the boxes. The three boxes are:

'heterosexual', 'homosexual' and 'bisexual'

However, 'homosexual' and 'bisexual' are combined together into a common box alongwith the transgendered.

So, there are practically two boxes:

'straight' and 'queer'

Now, the Straight box is marked heterosexual, but alongwith the package is tied masculinity, however it is not mentioned in the label. So when guys want to choose masculinity, they can only choose the 'heterosexual' box, and develop their sexuality along heterosexual lines, by suppressing their sexual need for men. The society uses this choice of the 'heterosexual box' as proof that the majority desire the 'heterosexual box' (without mentioning the 'masculinity' aspect, which is truly the deciding factor).

The 'gay' or 'homosexual'/ 'bisexual' or 'queer' box is labelled 'man to man sexuality', however, the package is ties with feminine gender/ transgender and passive sex. Now, when masculine males refuse the 'gay' box, or choose the 'heterosexual' box it is seen as a sign that they don't need men sexually, when in reality they are rejecting the box for its feminine gender (which is not even acknowleged on the label, but widely propagated by the society to discourage men from choosing it.).

At the sametime, most of the males that do choose the 'gay' or 'homosexual' box are males who are primarily third gender or feminine males who happen to like men. Now, these males confuse their preference of the feminine gender with their sexual need for men, influenced by social propaganda and so when they're choosing the 'gay' identity, the major determinant of their choice is their feminine gender, and not a sexual need for men per se, since most masculine males who also feel that attraction do sacrifice it because it is not available in a box with manhood.

This is how the Western politics of male Gender and Sexuality, enforced through the oppressive concept of Sexual Orientation works to make the majority heterosexual and the minority homosexual.

The third gender in twentieth-century America

George Chauncey's brilliant and often persuasive study of male homosexual relations in early twentieth-century New York was published two years ago on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riot that inaugurated the recent gay liberation movement. The world that he describes was the product of a major shift in western sexual behavior that had begun two hundred years before, around 1700. And his book is in dialogue with the scholars who over the past twenty-five years have tried to analyze that shift. The nature of the problem to be discussed can be indicated by asking whether homosexuality and heterosexuality are biological categories that divide the world into a majority and a minority that can be found in all times and places. To such a question most western people today would reply yes. And while they would probably wonder why a minority should be homosexual, they would simply accept without question that most people are heterosexual. Since the 1970s, however, the work of some historians and sociologists has radically challenged these presumptions. Mary McIntosh in a classic article in 1968 began the discussion by proposing that homosexuality in modern society was a deviant role into which some men were socialized beginning around 1700. Nine years later in 1977 Jeffrey Weeks and myself, under McIntosh's influence but independently of each other, rephrased McIntosh's proposal. Weeks maintained that the modern homosexual role emerged in the late nineteenth century when the concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality were invented.(1)..... click here to read more.

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Who is a Real Man

Masculinity and Femininity are real natural, biological things... they're not just a matter of social roles... although, its true that by defining them in their own artificial terms, the society has muddled the concept of manhood.

Thus masculinity (that makes real men) is biological and so is the third gender (queer/feminine/transgendered males).

Natural Masculinity is something the seed of which men are born with. However, this seed needs to be developed into manhood, which is where the role of the society comes in. The society can either provide the required environment for this seed to grow to its full potential or deprive it of this environment, making men into lesser males.

Natural masculinity needs men's spaces and male bonds to develop into full manhood. It is when one's masculinity is given place in the men's spaces and combines together with the masulinity of other men, the resultant masculinity generated is multiplied several folds and each member can partake in this immense power generated. This enhanced masculinity when acknowledged by the men's spaces is called "Manhood". This is Natural Manhood. Some of the characteristics of natural manhood are, courage, bravery, honor, etc.

But, the society has politicized Manhood for thousands of years now, progressively, in order to control man's behavior, especially his sexual behavior, originally, in order to bind him into endless reproduction and rearing of children. This was done by making granting of 'manhood' dependent upon the man fulfilling certain criteria fixed by the society -- which came to be known as "male roles". This 'artificial' manhood created by the society is known as 'social manhood' (as against the manhood that is naturally generated). If the man failed to fulfill these roles he was denied manhood, and either became a lesser male or was banished into the queer (i.e. third gender) zone.

However, social manhood has mostly been based on traits and acts that force men to go against the requirements of their natural masculinity, i.e. they are contrary to natural manhood. So, in effect, men are then queered in order to gain artificially generated social power and 'manhood'. Reproduction and serving the female sexually is an artificially fixed role of Social manhood.

The Westernized roles of social manhood are far removed from man's nature and act as extreme pressures and stresses on men, that make a mockery of the entire manhood thing. And this, when the society does not need to make men into reproduction machines anymore, with a population boom and advancement in medicines. This is an oppression of men, but these very social roles of men prevent men from raising a voice against it, ironically by threatening to make him a lesser man socially, when his natural manhood demands that he speaks up.

Thus you can see, that in this set up, the Naturally real man, becomes socially a lesser man, and the naturally lesser man becomes real men.

If we really want to go for the real thing, we need to show a lot of courage, organize and fight the society to change the anti-man rules of manhood and take the control of men's spaces and the power to define manhood away from the anti-man forces, into our own hands. It's a woman dominated society that has succeeded in breaking men from men, and uniting again is the only thing that can liberate us.

Excerpts from the book: Queering India: Same-sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society

By Ruth Vanita

Published by Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415929504, 9780415929509
252 pages

In these three films Mohanlal portrays a single unattached man, without a wife or even a girlfriend. At the outset he is located outside normative heterosexual bonding. He is initially defined by a male bond, a close friendship with another man who either desires or is desired by him. All three films subsequently explore the taming of this man within the heterosexual matrix.

Dr. Sunny, the psychiatrist in Manichitrathazhu, makes his initial appearance in the film as the best friend of Nakulan, whose wife Ganga requires psychiatric help. Verghese, the protagonist in Thacholi Verghese Chekavar, is also defined in terms of his close friendship with Shyam, his young male protege. Jagan the protagonist in Aram Thampuran, is introduced as the best friend and muscleman of Nandakumar, a wealthy businessman. Dr. Sunny is an eccentric globe-trotter who, in the episode that introduces him, provides a detailed description of his journeys in the episode that introduces him, provides a detailed description of his journeys during the previous few months, which include brief stays in several all-male spaces. He recounts his travels from the United States to Bangalore and then to Sabarimalai in Kerala, focus of an all-male pilgrimage, and mentions having stayed wiht various male friends. Verghese is a martial arts expert who is frequently seen in the all-male space of a traditional gym, the Kalari. Besides, he is indifferent to his mother's constant appeal to get married. jagan, a muscleman hired by business magnates, is a loner without a family who constantly inhabits sites frequented by the city mafia that are marked as masculine. The introductory episode presents him sharing a drink with a male rickshaw puller on the roadside. In a subsequent telephone conversation with his patron Nandakumar, he describes his activities during the previous few days, all of which are connected with male friends.

Apart from being confined to "masculine" locations and male bonds, these men are also presented as indifferent or even hostile to women. Verghese violently rejects the advances of an attractive young girl. Annie, who relentlessly pursues him through the first half of the film. Later, when he kidnaps the heroine, Maya, mistaking her for Shyam's truant girlfriend, he repeatedly makes it clear that he has absolutely no personal interest in her. it is his emotional commitment to Shyam that persuades him to be rude and violent to Maya. Dr. Sunny's initial reaction to the women he meets in Nakulan's house is marked by humorous sarcasm. He playfully harasses most of the women there till he embarks on the serious mission of curin. g Ganga, Nakulan's wife, of her mental illness. Jagan is not enthusiasti when his patron Nandakumar offers him a "few expensive blankets" (slang for expensive female sex workers) in return for his services. After relocating to the village, jagan initially reacts with sarcasm to the heroine Unnimaya's confident defiance. Later when his female friend, a city girl named Nayantara, proposes to him, Jagan rejects her without hesitation.

It is also interesting to examine the contradictions between visual and oral narratives in the film. jagan describes Nayantara as a good friend but the sequences in which they appear together present him as stiff and uneasy in her company. While Nayantara's words and body language clearly denore her warmth toward jagan, his response is cold and remote -- preoccupied as he is with several other issues that constitute the main concern of the narrative. yet Jagan is the only character among these three who shows any heterosexual inclinations. A subsequent song sequence in the film suggests an earlier heterosexual affair he had -- perhaps a brief relationship with a northern Indian girl that ended tragically.

The weariness or hostility that these men exhibit toward women directly contrasts with the warmth, affection, and commitment they show toward women directly contrasts with the warmth, affection, and commitment they show toward male friends. The Mohanlal character in all the films discussed here is either desiring or desired by a male friend. Verghese, the martial arts expert, is clearly depicted as desiring his young male disciple and friend, Shyam, and the entire film is about his struggle to win him back after a brief estrangement. When Annie's desperate attempts to seduce Verhese fail, she taunts Verghese by telling him that when she last met Shyam he looked "so cute and sexy". Instead of being worried about the possible alienation of Annie's affections, Verghese's anxieties about Shyam are heightened, since Shyam has been avoiding him for the past few days.

Dr. Sunny and Jagan do not express such overt desire for their male friends. Yet these friendships are the most important commitments in their lives. Though he is a busy psychiatrist, Dr. Sunny puts off all other engagements to be with his friend in his hour of need. Jagan's commitment to business magnate Nandakumar is similar; he violently assaults and almost kills a rival businessman for his friend's sake and later refuses to accept the monetary reward offered by Nandakumar.

Negotiating the Physical

Male bonding has been a prominent trope in mainstream cinema all over the world ever since the film industry was established. Patterns of male bonding and structures of same-sex friendships have changed overtime. Commercial concerns make it mandatory for mainstream cinema to engage in dialectic with changing attitudes and realignments of desire in hegemonic social discourses. Thus, the solidarity of two white males that appeared in early Hollywood Westerns is replaced in more recent films by an interracial friendship between white and black men. The function of the female vis-a-vis male bonding has also been changing. Conventionally, it was the destiny of one of the two men to die so as to faciliate his friend's union with the woman. But in some recent films it is the woman who dies while the male buddies survive the final catastrophe (for example, in The Deep Blue Sea, 1999). In this context I am interested in the evolving structure of male bonds in Malyalam cinema, particularly its negotations with the physical.

Most striking in these male solidarities is the recognition and definition of the male body's organic existence as both desiring and desired. For example, jagan's stiff response to Nayantara stands in contrast to his response to similar overtures from Nandakumar. In an earlier scene we see a jubilant Nandakumar celebrating the achievement of a sought-after business deal that Jagan had earned for him. Nandakumar expresses his joy by repeatedly uttering phrases like "ever since I got you," and "since you became mine," while holding jagan by his shoulders and caressing his hair. He also offers him a few curious rewards; prominent among these is a joint trip to Europe. Throughout the scene, Jagan is more composed than Nandakumar, yet warm and willing. The scene ends with Nandakumar declaring that they are going to forget everything that night and "sleep together." Thus, Jagan is more desired by than desiring Nandakumar.

Hegemonic Masculinity

"Mr. Jones" by Amy Winehouse

...nobody stands in between me and my man / it's me and Mr. Jones / what kind of fuckery is this?...

So following reading Betty Friedan's genius, I read another article by Michael Messner called "Sexuality and Sexual Identity".

I liked it. I learned a little bit about the dynamic of male bonding and male relationships and how they strongly influence how a man relates to a woman.

I will admit something right now. I'm a man hater. Yes. Me. I love and I cannot stand them. Yes. I am damaged. But I don't care. And neither do they. Which is why I hate them. The only man I love unconditionally is my Dad. I do not have Daddy issues. My Dad is an incredibly intelligent and charismatic man who was and is very involved in my siblings' and my life. He always told me I was smart, funny, beautiful and all the other things I haughtily advertise about myself. He started it. He told me I could change the world and I believe him

So Daddy is not the issue. Men have just been disappointing. Yes. Because I am damaged.

But I started to feel bad for men a little bit after reading this article. Being a man, socially, can be terrifying and limits the expression of the whole person that every person is. Women still have it harder. I'll tell you why later but read my jawn about the article. My empathy does not shine through very well, but trust me, I see that it is hard to be a guy:

The male version of the problem with no name has been erroneously categorized as having no name. The problem is actually called hegemonic masculinity, a function of patriarchy. Hegemonic masculinity requires a man to demonstrate certain characteristics and behaviors that will socially qualify him as a "masculine man". Failure to do so subjects a man to being called such things as a "fag" or a "sissy" or a "girl", qualifying the aforementioned concepts as negative epithets that are contra-masculine.

The other phenomenon of hegemonic masculinity involves the manner in which men bond. The second article, "Sexuality and Sexual Identity" by Michael Messner, addresses the detrimental affect male bonding and competition has on the intimacy between men and women and the self-image problems it causes for men.

As specifically discussed in the article, sports are an important social tool in portraying masculinity and being accepted as a "man". The aggression, physical prowess, discipline, etc. that organized sports requires and produces identifies athletes as the uber-man. His masculinity is not questioned but he is under more pressure to exert his masculinity. He must be well versed in the language of "getting women" and sexually potent and experienced (or promiscuous even).

The "locker room" culture is a breeding ground for the expectations about sexual behavior and interactions with the opposite sex. Messner poignantly points out that men bond under the condition of "[separating] intimacy from sex (homosocial)" and define their "relationships with women as sexual but not intimate (heterosexual)". This distinction does much to damage potential intimate relationships between men and women. Simultaneously, homosexuality is strictly banned. Homophobia serves as a motivator to more actively demonstrate one's "maleness" by objectifying and hypersexualizing relationships with women.

POSTED BY KARMA, INC. AT 2:09 PM

LABELS: ANSWERS, MR. JONES