Something Is Missing

I read a lot of blogs (more than I'd like to admit, actually), several of which discuss themes of gender and sexuality. I would like to highlight two of them in particular as symptomatic of the same problems faced by many people who are in support of traditional marriage.

Recently, the Art of Manliness (a laudable website that suggests that what it means to be a man is to be honest, loyal, thoughtful, courageous, brave, caring, etc, and helps men to practice these virtues) reviewed a NY Times blog post about gender in adolescents (particularly, in boys). The Times post began with the story of a little boy who actually shot himself because a bully suggested he should (said bully, along with other classmates, had been telling this boy he was gay just because he did well in school). It then mused that despite the fact that gender has become much more flexible in this day and age than it once was, the reactions of little boys today are very similar to what they might have been 50 years ago: if a boy doesn't meet others' standard of rugged manliness, he is ostracized and his manliness called into question.

The authors of AOM (Art of Manliness) connected this with the growing movement in our generation (20-somethings) to return to what he called "gender roots" - that is, our innate gender identity as felt deeply within us, before the pansexual prodding of today's society.

Another blog, For the Love of Men, looks at gender roles from a complementary female perspective. In the recent post linked above, she begins:

THE VAST MAJORITY of responses I get about this blog are very positive. There is no doubt in my mind that men and women have had enough of being told how they should act and think around each other. Our intuitive wisdom about our sexual natures is too strong to be quashed anymore.

She speaks with strong language about the innate sexual desires written on our hearts and in our bodies, in part because she'd been taught for so many years to ignore them and do as society told her to (something I'm sure many readers of this blog can relate to).

There is much truth in the views expressed on both blogs. I firmly believe that today's boys and girls need to know that it's okay to be men and women, rather than some androgynous, politically correct in-between thing. But both blogs, like the previously-mentioned book Captivating that, well, failed to captivate me, are missing something crucial: a bridge to unusual experiences of gender and sexuality.

There are things innate to being a man. I do not possess these things. Rather, I possess things innate to my womanness. Yet I feel supremely comfortable doing many manly things, and less than comfortable doing many womanly things. There are plenty of aspects of womanhood with which I simply do not identify. So if womanhood means following my instincts and feelings as a woman, what does that mean when I don't feel womanly?

That paragraph is not very clear, but I don't know how to phrase it any better, and I think its very confusion underscores my point: Whether you believe homosexual tendencies are innate or inbred, nature or nurture, genetic or psychological, the fact remains that there are plenty of men who don't identify with typical manliness and women who don't identify with stereotypical womanliness. Whether they're meant to be that way or something went wrong and such feelings are a by-product thereof, these men and women don't feel things the way they "should." The rules that apply to heteronormative men and women cannot be applied in the same way.

And it is from this stark contrast, this great confusion, that the gender continuum we have today arises. Neither way is an effective solution. I don't know what is a good solution, and I'll continue poking my little head around until I find something that is, but in the meantime all I can do is point out the holes in others' arguments and hope that eventually I'll find enough little pieces to put together something of my own.