Contemplation
Let the Men Weave
Untangling gender
I hear quite a bit about the need to redefine masculinity. It’s not completely clear to me who in particular expresses this necessity or whether it’s up to men or women to do the work. Part of me wants to say, we’ve done enough, let them figure it out. But other times I read a powerful passage dedicated to women and I wish more men learned from it.
In Frantumaglia, Elena Ferrante writes: It’s not our relationship with the masculine that is primary today but the much more complex relationship with the masculine feminine or the feminine masculine. It seems we could use new terms, more metaphors to create change that will work for all of us.
Natalia De Barbaro, author of Przędza. W poszukiwaniu wewnętrznej wolności (the title can be translated as Yarn. Finding Freedom Within) opens with two images of herself. The first one describes an archery lesson she takes, rather distracted, not focused enough, annoying the teacher who is all about drawing and aiming. There’s pressure involved and the type of attention that erases everything else around you but the target. All your energy goes into one shot. If you miss, you may try again, seeing less of the landscape still. Or you start drinking because nothing else matters.
De Barbaro then talks about the second thing she tries and instantly gets — weaving. The workshop is a metaphor of feminine energy that doesn’t form a straight line to the target. It welcomes a slower pace or a mistake here and there.
When weaving, we’re exposed to knots, we get curious to examine them, and learn to respect their complexity. Then we start talking about them. Ferrante continues —
It’s necessary to recount the tangle of existence, as it concerns both individual lives and the life of generations.
I can imagine a woman archer no problem. I see the poster for Hunger Games, competitive athletes, video games. Not so much a man weaving though. Try a Google search yourself. We know everything about the male symbol system; they, for the most part, know nothing about ours (…) What’s more, they are not even curious, indeed they recognize us only from within their system, Ferrante says.
It’s true women are quite successful at setting goals, meeting targets, and wearing suits. They may even make more money than men, as long as they don’t have kids. Then the weaving kicks in. You can easily imagine a stay-at-home mom. How about a stay-at-home dad?
Sure, they exist. So do male teachers. We’re just a little suspicious of them and they have to deal with it. Kids love them though. I live with one such man. He plays more than he aims, looking through the side window rather than straight ahead when driving.
For a long time, it was exhausting for me to carry the bow. Just as it was hard for him to watch me, while he was hanging out at home instead of hunting. We judged and blamed each other. It all made little sense.
Then something happened.
Maybe we got tired. Or we slowly embraced the frantumaglia, that jumble of fragments in the back of our minds stirring disquiet. We realized we couldn’t solve or shoot it. So we asked questions of ourselves and each other. We tried different things, a little bit of archery, a little bit of weaving. That knot was ours to probe, touch, and eventually recognize. It’s still there, challenging all of us to talk about it without hurting one another.
Until one day we bond over it.
