Torn between two masculinities
Man… sometimes I don’t know what that means anymore 🤷
No one ever really taught me how to be a man.
The only vague advice I got from my father about what it means to “be a man” — was lectures about how I should make sure to escort women when walking with them on the sidewalk. How I should open doors for them and offer them a seat.
“Be a gentleman.”
But I didn’t fully realize then how this attitude started to shape my thinking when I was young.
Now I can see that my model of masculinity as a kid was based on two men: Jesus Christ (because of my Christian background) and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.
What did both have in common?: self-sacrifice.
When I was a kid I didn’t really care what happened to me as long as I didn’t do wrong to anyone. I can’t remember if this was due to low self-esteem, childish carelessness or both.
But I can distinctly remember my mindset — as long as I suffered the burden of “doing the right thing”, I was a hero. I was fulfilling my duty as a man.
High school — my “feminist” phase
My latter years in high school coincided with losing my faith in Christianity. I started reading and watching atheist and philosophy content online. It eventually led me to Leftist YouTubers like PhilosophyTube, hbomberguy, and ContraPoints who changed my views surrounding sexuality especially around the LGBTQ+ movement.
All my personal problems were reframed as the result of unjust systems like neoliberal capitalism and heteronormative patriarchy.
I would constantly question my friends and teachers about what they believed and thought. Attempting to dismantle their arguments through the Socratic method, often ending in a critique of capitalism or patriarchy.
In other words, I was annoying.
But this was a time where I felt I had the most intellectual and academic freedom. Where nothing was sacred and everything was open to scrutiny.
However, an uncomfortable disconnect between Leftist online discourse and my everyday reality started to grow and linger in me:
- It’s embarrassing to look back on it now, but my approach to my peers of any gender was essentially “gender blind” which was problematic.
- For all my talk, I don’t think I ever really made a difference during my time in senior high school — I wasn’t really an activist.
- The women around me didn’t seem to care much for feminism. If they did it was only because they wanted to advance a very cisgender woman type of feminism that didn’t seem to care for inclusivity.
- Leftist content at the time never really gave me any practical advice on how to attract women. Most of it consisted in undermining my sexual desires.
University during Covid — my “red pill” phase
It was during the middle of my sophomore year in university that regular classes were disrupted by the nationwide lockdown due to the rising cases of coronavirus in the country (Philippines).
Not seeing my friends in-person, the boring online classes and the anxiety of possibly being infected — my mental health took a dive.
The only thing that helped me during this time was watching the YouTube videos of Hamza Ahmed. I learned about the basics of self-improvement and most importantly (for the first time) I actually got an explanation of what “masculinity” is without any negative connotations.
Watching Hamza finally got me to admit that I did have a sexual desire for women and that there was no shame in that. I just needed experience in approaching them the right way.
When Covid restrictions started to loosen, I started to apply what I learned from his videos: started going to the gym regularly, practicing approaching women on campus when I got the chance and doing mindfulness meditation every morning.
This short period of my life was the most happiest and focused I’ve ever been — many of the people in my life took notice of my positive change.
But as my time in university was coming to an end, I started to have problems with this “red pill” self-improvement mindset:
- The vision of masculinity I was getting was narrow. It all mostly focused on businessmen and making as much money as possible. Nothing wrong with that. But what about men who didn’t fit into this mold? Who focused on yoga, knitting, literature, painting, gardening or farming etc. Are they lesser men just because they didn’t want to be billionaires?
- I don’t buy the idea that everyone was happier back then when traditional gender roles were forced on women and men.
- I don’t understand the obsession with war that red pill guys have. I understand that conflict is a part of life and should be taken a challenge to improve — you learn this when you join a gym or combat sports. But in war there are no rules or honor between men. The necessary actions taken to protect life is honorable but the valorization of needless violence is not.
What now man? 🫤
It’s funny when I really think about it — I was never really a feminist or red pill.
I could’ve gone farther in either direction but the problem was I never really had an in-person community to get me to commit to either side. I mostly got all this online from people I have never met in real life.
On top of that, most of the people I was watching were either from the US or the UK. Their culture and politics had no bearing on my life in the Philippines.
But because of my exposure to these differing ideologies, I still feel their influence battling it out inside me.
I needed to decide my real priorities.
Recently, I’ve been reading David Deida’s ‘The Way of the Superior Man’ and bell hook’s ‘The Will to Change’ — I realized that as much as I agreed with bell hook’s feminist ideals, I didn’t receive any practical advice that would help me as a man now.
Her book consisting of critiques and admonitions — towards both men and women — call for a complete revolution against patriarchy. It’s a brilliant book in its wide ranging topics and analyses.
But it did not give me the tools or mindset that would’ve empowered me to dismantle patriarchal restrictions on men.
For example, a commonly repeated feminist notion that “men should be more emotionally vulnerable.”
I agree that they should have the space to feel emotions. But feeling emotions and processing emotions are two different things.
I remember often feeling sad and never holding back my tears, after a while I would stop but soon the sadness would return.
It was only through learning about journaling and meditation through self-improvement advice that I was able to process and make sense of why I felt the way I did which helped me greatly.
While in Deida’s book I was surprised to find a wealth of practical advice and a seemingly positive masculine mindset that appealed to me.
But here again I find myself disagreeing, this time with the notion of “sexual polarity”.
I don’t disagree with its premise that the opposite poles of sexuality create attraction, but with the presentation that it is a “spiritual essence”.
Why not just call it what it is?
Sexual polarity isn’t spirituality, it’s social psychology. It’s how our desires and dispositions are sorted out by society in order to make us gendered.
I have learned a lot from these two books, but if a young man (any man really) asked me what I would recommend to him — I’d give him Deida’s book to read first and then bell hook’s book to read after.
Because Deida’s book contains more practical and appealing advice that a young men can apply now. And it is just different enough from the usual “how to be a man” advice that it might be open to considering bell hook’s book.
I’m still learning and I’m not quite sure of this in-between path I’m taking right now but it will have to do.
