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| original photo by C. Kellam Scott |
I'm not usually much of a movie guy but sometimes I like to settle in for an hour and a half of story, just like anyone. A couple days ago I watched The Cohen brother's True Grit. I enjoy a good western and am a fan of the Cohens. I was very struck by the lead female character, the protagonist. I found her mind and presence inspirational, a good honest person set out to do what she thinks is right. Classic western. It was at the end, spoiler alert, when we see her fully grown into adulthood and she mentions that she never had time to fool around with men, in such a casual way. It was offhand, not aggressive, almost a missive. I felt represented on the screen at that moment.
I had never openly felt myself mirrored on a television or movie screen before in my life. Until that is, I saw the movie (A)sexual at the end of last year. That moment changed my life forever and watching this strong female character walk off into the sunset I recognized that I had felt that before in my life. I've always sought female role models in equal proportion to male role models. Its been a source of strength in my life but also a private embarrassment. Though its not an embarrassment anymore. Straight male society often shames anyone perceived as being week. I'm quite athletic but emotional weakness is somehow worse. I needed to do whatever I could to hide myself from the world because the only friends I could maintain were straight men. In my closeted fears I found it difficult at times to be around anyone who might want me sexually and I've often worried that I projected that. I've often felt very lost in the world, I guess it wasn't just everyone else, I had trouble with straight guys too. I've had friends of all kinds but only the straight guys seem to hang around. I can get male role models by hanging out in male culture and doing things with men. Direct contact, and once in a while I do get a woman I can learn from. I work in a trade that involves allot of tools and maths and carpentry and such. I've had three mentors, two men and a woman, who have shown me the trade and thought me their secret tricks. I go to them for approval. But I go to bands, riot girrrrl punk, fictional characters and of course famous artists and writers for my female role models, for the most part. In my guise as a "straight" man I felt excluded from the female world altogether. Sometimes I'd be talking to a female friend and she'd start telling me deeply personal problems and asking boyfriend advice. No few times, whomever it was, would stop herself and look at me confused and ask. "Why am I telling you this?" To which I'd always say "I don't know" and shrug, I didn't know why she shouldn't tell me such things. Some of them would change the subject. The ones who became semi-role models for me were the ones who kept talking. I'm not shy, if I can hear guy talk, why not girl talk?
I've always felt that I have a very strong feminine side, and I've always valued its influence on me. Even when I tried to deny it. I'm a very emotional person, sensitive as they say. I cry as easily as I laugh and laughter is like breathing to me. Out in the world I'm constantly trying to choke back a tear because something has moved me or guffawing at something else. I've aimed at acting more macho in the past because I felt I needed to hide my feminine side. But it never really worked, one of my exes used to complain that I sat like a girl when I sat on the floor.
And I am in no way suggesting that women cry easily or are emotional people. I am that way. It just served to make me feel less masculine. The other reason I bring this up is the role women do play in helping me deal with that. It is precisely because of this stereotype of women though that I look to them. For guidance on how to be strong when you feel vulnerable. Sometimes too, a woman will listen a little more closely when I've shared some trouble. My female friends seem to understand how to console a person better than my guy friends.
I kept thinking, ruminating. The way that I look for information is fairly casual. I've always assumed that the info I need will come to me when I need it. I trust life that way in general, and the system hasn't let me down yet. But, anyway, I came across Morgan Spurlock's Mansome tonight. He can be funny at times and when I saw that Jason Bateman and Will Arnet were involved I knew I'd get a laugh. I liked it in general, it was good for a laugh. The first interesting bit for me came during the beard segment. There was a profile of a professional beard grower (I know, ridiculous) where the competitions were being discussed by a psychiatrist. He pointed out that the whole point of these beard shows is for the participants to gain the approval of other men. The beardsmen himself mentioned body builders. I thought of beauty pageants. They are about the approval of your own gender, or at least, people with the same sexual interests. They summed the movie up by positing that all of a man's appearance is about sexual attraction. I began to get that same intense feeling of exclusion. Their assumptions made me uneasy and my heart began to beat more rapidly. Its the same feeling I get when someone is treating me like a sexual object or I'm in a sexually charged situation, like strip club talk. Or when there is a rape scene or sex scene in a movie or TV show. Whenever the sexual world is showing its dominance. That excluded feeling is, I think what drove me into the closet. What drove me to try to be like every one else. Everyone needs approval of a sort. Even if they don't need other people's they need their own, we're not happy unless we feel valid as humans. People who put themselves on display need a certain kind of approval. Some of us just need to know that we are strong enough and good enough, that we are deserving of a happy life on our own terms. And I guess that even though I'm loathe to admit it I do sometimes need the approval of the society that I live in.
That's what watching these two films expanded in me, a greater recognition of my own terms. A clearer insight into the parameters of my emotional landscape. Since coming out to myself, allot of negativity has been receding from my life, my self confidence has been gaining. Experiences like I had at the end of Mansome would have left me feeling background paranoia and depression for days when I was searching. Now I feel like I have a place to put those feelings, I have an understanding of them and can make sense of them. Having this kind of emotional clarity my whole life would have been nice, but I think I got it just when I needed it most.
One of my biggest fears about coming out as asexual was that I would be stripped of all standing in the eyes of the world around me. Before I had a word to say, with which to describe how I feel to others, but also just for me, all I had was dread. I couldn't figure out what anything meant. To handle that I did what I've always done, and turned to television. I watched allot, from short documentaries on rock climbing, to Tedtalks on vulnerability. But, I went back to my old standbys as well, I began to listen to L7 and Seven Year Bitch songs and get my 1990's tough girl agro on. I was watching Are You Being Served? and Beavis and Buthead. Grasping at straws.
There is allot to be said for being perceived as less than, or worrying that you are seen that way. It can worm away at your self confidence until there is barely anything you recognize as you anymore. Turn to self loathing and self annihilation, the shy guy that no one sees. I am not a hider, well not anymore at least. I tried hiding, I tried choking back the tears. And I learned that there is nothing worse for me that ignorance of my own emotions. No, the other option is surely the better one, to take anything that feels like a place that a more dominant person could exploit, and exploit it first. Polly Styrene of the X-Ray Specks once asked "Do we gotta be exploited by somebody?" She answered with an emphatic no and now that no resounds in my head. She also more famously suggested " Some people thing little girls should be seen and not heard. Well I think… Oh bondage! Up yours!"
The bondage of sexism is something I will never fully understand because I am not female. But again, I feel like there is allot for me to learn from what women have been through. At times, being un-interested in sex can be intensely alienating. I can't help but feel dominated over. Sex is always talked about in universals, the "we" never let me in. Even spell checking this document, the dictionary does not include the word "asexuals". In Word, as in the world, we don't exist. I was always beyond, but once I found out that not only are there other people out there who feel the same as me about sex, but that there is a whole online community where those people share their life's stories. I was beside myself. Getting to know other asexual people was great because for the first time in my life the gender line was erased. I didn't have to worry about leading people on by accident any more. But even greater was the emotional equality shared back and forth across the so called gender line. Lives in different bodies being felt in the same ways.
My whole life, in trying to figure out who I am. I've used the world's words to describe my personality. The things others said about me. I was shy, a good boy, very liberal, open minded, anti-social, a big softy (soft-hearted),a nice guy, a wallflower, pushover, social-phobic, anxious, doormat, uptight, high-strung, too mellow, inexperienced, childish, childlike, immature, an old soul, pure, chaste, control freak, religious, anti-establishment, picky, sex repulsed, gay, quiet, psychotic, lonely, repressed, prudish, too girlie and a loner. The thing is I'm none of those things alone. A couple of them fit, but they are vagaries, like fortune cookies, designed as blanket statements. Those words are used by the sexual world to define its own members who's actions may be similar to mine. Surface similarities. It was this surface that I tried to fit over my skin when I was in the closet, trying to be the straight man described above. I'm actually a bit of an extrovert. I'm bold, frank and honest. I'm a risk taker. And well, I enjoy helping others. I'm not trying to get anything from anyone, I'm not in competition. Expectations create divisions and boxes. The sexual world's expectations are like much of its structures, it create pecking orders. I don't think asexuals fit in to that system. That's what is so important about increasing visibility. I don't want to hear negative or saddened connotations about "life long bachelors" or "maiden aunts". Other people's words assume that the asexual is defective. The worst part is that those words are put onto the asexual, they are oppressive dictums.
Last but not least, I watched a short documentary called Gendernauts, about the tired limits of the so called, two genders. It was a personal accounting of lives that go beyond what society has said is all there is. It was about people who had the courage to listen to who they are and live that way as fully as they could. A panoply of transgender people, some of whom I knew of from their work as artists, but many other new faces as well. In sharing their stories they reminded me of back in my teens, when the confusion in my life was at its most tumultuous. When I knew that I didn't like boys or girls sexually, I tried to be a boy/girl. The best I could imagine for myself, was a body without genitalia, no testes no penis. Perhaps just a nub to pee standing up out of. I wanted no part of the whole game. As brave as the stories that were being told to me on that particular television, I reached the same conclusion I had as a teen, that surgery of that kind is not for me.
But that last film did grant me perspective, a last insight that society does not always know what is right. We're only human and we can't know everything, but little by little we know more and more. Knowing that I am different from as much as 99% of the human population is daunting at times, but it is also a comfort.
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