A Call to Menschen
Reject identities that must be purchased, and just be a f***ing person
What does it mean to say someone is a ‘real’ woman or a ‘real’ man? This debate has haunted us for generations untold, but it has had a notable surge throughout the media this summer. I, at least, have noticed one. Around the start of June, I realized I couldn’t even have a peek at the internet without someone throwing in their two cents on what it means to be a ‘real’ woman, what ‘real’ women look like, how they behave, what they think. I mean it was just everywhere: the media circus around Caitlyn Jenner, articles on parenting versus being child free, editorials over what counts as ‘real’ feminism, sexist comedy routines, magazine covers, advertisements, even the textbook for my German language class.
The sheer cacophony of voices weighing in on what it means to possess true womanhood or manhood would seem to suggest that a tremendous amount of anxiety exists around this subject; that our culture is experiencing a great fretting over what the criteria are. Which surprises me, in a way, because I thought we’d proved, many times over, that there aren’t any. We’ve seen people of every combination of gender, sex, and sexuality (not to mention race, class, nationality, etc), proving with great zeal, over and over and over again, that humans can do and be pretty much anything we set our hearts to, and can look and act and live in any way that we fit. All the old lies and stereotypes, such as the inherent flimsiness of women, or the natural emotional deadness of men, have been disproven in a thousand different ways, across continents and generations.
With so many of our old restrictive laws and traditions broken down, or at least crumbling in front of our eyes, it would seem like a time to heave a huge sigh of relief, and relish the freedom of living in an era without fierce rules over who gets to do and be what. It would seem like a grand time to just get on with living one’s identity in whatever damn way feels comfortable to the individual.
For many of us, this is exactly what we’re trying to do, and with great relish. We’ve seen gay marriage made legal in both Ireland and the US this summer, for fuck’s sake — progress that sounded almost impossible a decade ago has now come to pass (and, in the case of Ireland, by wildly popular vote). Indeed, we live in a time of unprecedented possibility, with the capacity to swap everything we know of art, science, and philosophy across the entire world in a matter of seconds, with only a few clicks. As far as I’m aware, there’s never been a better time to be who you want, love who you want, and wear and eat and learn and do whatever it is that feels valid and compelling for the persons involved.
Yet much of the major media, and our popular discourse (read: consumer culture) hasn’t really changed in a way that matches this, in a way that would make sense given the decades of blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into growing every manner of civil liberty. Rather, in the face of this blessed expanding of liberty, many individuals and media outlets instead seem hell-bent on trying to pull us back into mindsets as narrow and uninviting as the toilet cubicles whose crude markings they seem to filter the world by; i.e. skirts versus trousers.
Being a real woman, depending on where you look, what magazines/programs you catch, usually seems to either be about cleavage encircled in phenomenal amounts of cosmetics and accessories, or about one’s keenness to reproduce. Making your body enticing to others, or utilizing your body for the manufacturing of others. Nothing to do with you yourself, with your own achievements, your overall well-being, the state of your soul, your character. Just the availability of your tits and/or womb.
Being a real man, on the other hand, seems to usually be some combination of being simple, stubborn, and strong. Not seeming weak by, say, actually listening to the input of others, or experiencing complex thoughts or even basic emotions. Being big, and tough, and rigid. Being comfortable being a dick, really — so ultimately, again, a reduction to genitalia.
This is fucking ridiculous, and I for one am completely fed the fuck up with being antagonized over the state of my ‘womanhood’ every time I look at Facebook or stand in a checkout line. Even a lot of the well-meaning, supposedly feminist contributions to the collective conversation end up pissing me off. Like, for example, that long-running ‘real women have curves’ slogan. I get that the intention is to push back against the evil and deranged aesthetics that advertising has imposed upon us. But to say ‘real women’ have curves is to simultaneously say that you aren’t a ‘real’ woman without them. So what about the naturally thin, the small-chested, the flat-bottomed, the ill, the frail, the cancer survivors, the disabled? Not real women? You see, it’s still anchoring women’s existence in their external physicality, still playing on our endemic anxiety over beauty, and still using a language of exclusion. It doesn’t fix the problem.
With my womanhood so constantly, pointlessly called into question, I keep inadvertently hearing the querying title of Sojourner Truth’s speech, ‘Ain’t I A Woman?’, echo through my head. Which makes me wonder exactly how wholehearted of a progress we’ve actually made since she spoke in 1851, if we’re still allowing claims that womanhood looks like one thing, and that any women who don’t overtly fall into those tight parameters should be treated as though they are somehow of less value (and especially if we’re also still having to battle so hard for recognition that #BlackLivesMatter).
The real question is, why would we want to hang our identities so totally on definitions that reduce us solely to a few parts of our bodies? That anchor all of the genders and sexes backwards into two tiny, stifling boxes? That are so set on shutting out the vast array of experience, physicality, and personality inherent to our species? Because, surely, if it all really came down to orifices, there would be very little anxiety on the subject — it would, quite literally, nearly always be just an open or shut case. So it must be something else. Why, in a culture with a fetish for choices, would we look upon the outright denial and shaming of variety as a good thing?
Perhaps because many feel overwhelmed, feel battered about on the sea of possibilities, and long for parameters to navigate by. Maybe there is a wish to know where we are at, for some voice of authority to let us know whether or not we inhabit ourselves in a way that is good. I think it’s largely down to the fact that most of us do not feel loved, do not even truly love ourselves, and that it is this lack of love that compels so many of us to try doing whatever we think might garner even a little bit of praise. Fair enough — there’s no faulting these human desires. We can and should take stock of ourselves, ask if we’re growing into something to be proud of. But we should use a metric that actually tells us something worthwhile.
Luckily, I’ve got just the thing. There is an old classic, just hanging around and waiting for such an opportunity. Though I would certainly not advise it as a general rule, in this one instance I say we look to an old Jewish idea for guidance. I say we set aside these silly obsessions with the supremely superficial, unnecessarily divisive standards for the sexes, and instead: consider the mensch.
Now in German, ‘mensch’ just means person. Which is about as inclusive a category as you can get. Each and every one of us breathing, thinking human beings qualifies for personhood — the United Nations was created for the sole purpose of defending this fact. However, in Yiddish, being a mensch is something else altogether.
Let me start with an example. Back in May, 2009, when America’s auto industry was failing, and getting publicly bailed-out, Chrysler was going around letting all of their mom & pop dealerships know whether or not they were going to be shut down via a form letter, in the post. Further, if they were shut down, Chrysler wasn’t going to take any of the cars back. So not only would all of these people be out of business, but left with a pile of unwanted cars. The Daily Show did a report about it, in a segment they called, “Be a F@#ing Person”. Which pretty much just amounted to footage of the dealership owners reading their letters and crying, and Jon Stewart yelling, “Come on! Be a fucking person!” into the camera several times (his indignation being directed at Chrysler’s management). The point being made in the segment was that there were individual people running Chrysler, who were hiding behind the anonymity of their corporation’s façade, who were not taking personal responsibility for their actions. They weren’t treating people like people. They were being very un-mensch.
Because being a mensch means living with integrity. Integrity means trying to do the right thing, and taking responsibility for your actions. It means treating other people like they are actual people, like you are aware that they are autonomous individuals, just as you are. It means judging people by their character and conduct; not on the basis of what they look like, or what they are wearing, or how rich they seem, or who their connections might be. A real mensch treats others as they wish to be treated themselves. (That whole golden rule thing? Remember? That thing your kindergarten teacher taught to you? That thing that keeps getting repeated throughout pretty much every religion and philosophy around the world?)
This is, of course, completely in opposition to everything we are told in our consumerism-fueled media — that your identity hangs on your appearance, and what you are seen to consume, and how coolly you can express contempt for others (see every fashion magazine, ever). Many over-zealous Christians and Capitalists alike seem to get a real kick out of perpetuating the idea that we must all jostle for position, that in both the realms of souls and sales, some must fall for others to rise.
Proselytizing and profiteering mindsets are not conducive to being a mensch.
If we really think about it, and are really honest, I think most of us will admit that the versions of ‘womanhood’ and ‘manhood’ being held up in the media are silly. It seems glaringly obvious, to me at least, that they are just ploys to make all of us insecure, and piss away our money and time on useless, frivolous shit. I agree that some of it is pretty, and some of it fun, but pretty much none of it should be incorporate into our core identities, or even our peripheral sense of self.
I, for one, pledge to do my best to give no fucks about whether or not I am a ‘real’ woman. I will most definitely give no fucks as to whether or not any of you out there qualify as ‘real’ women or men. I will refuse to let my self-worth be dependent on anything that must be sourced from sweatshops, surgeons, and sadists. Instead, I will do my best each day to be as decent, sincere, and loving of a person as I can, and do the best work that I am capable of. I will try to be a real mensch. I know I will fail, often, but I will try.
So I can absolutely promise you that I will never remark, “Wow, there goes a real man” or “Now she is a real woman.” But I hope, sincerely, to often be given the opportunity to proclaim, “You, my friend, are one hell of a mensch.”
