I’m increasingly interested in feminism and cultural definitions of masculinity, and how prevailing ideas of masculinity (in American society in particular) serve to impoverish the experience of so many men. I didn’t have any good male role models growing up, and I have been realizing this and thinking about it for the past year or so. But what I’ve realized is that it shouldn’t matter. The whole idea that I’m somehow missing something as a “man” because I didn’t have certain types of role models growing up to teach one or more of the common ways of being male in society – that idea is impoverished. I am who I am and there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

It’s true that, being who I was with mainly female role models, I thus was a bit different from the cultural norm, and my experience was one on the margins. And one can say, “oh if only I’d had male role models, I’d have been different and had a more normal childhood, and fit more easily into standard adult behavior patterns.”

Or one can say, I could have just been accepted for who I was, growing up, and interact with people as a human being as an adult.

What’s most important is not gender attachment, but attaining good human traits, rather than “masculine traits,” from role models. And our culture is broken in the ways it directs young girls to pay more attention to female role models, and young boys to male role models. If anything about me was impoverished in my youth, it was not being enculturated to see female role models as valid models to pay attention to in how to be a good, happy human being.

But I digress. The point is, I’m thinking about these things, and masculinity, and feminism, and contemplating anthropological study, and came across this post on men in the feminist movement.

I find I can relate to it not just as an apprehensive growing supporter of feminist issues, but as a supporter of race issues, colinial/imperialism issues, and pretty much anything I care about. I embody just about all the privileges I can think of that I would prefer to see demolished. Within movements composed of “others,” I am an other.

Which then strikes me as also the peculiar domain of anthropologists, which may be one of the appeals of the discipline for me. Traditionally, anthropologists set out to study some “other,” a group or marginalized set within their society. However, upon entering this “other” group, the anthropologist assumes the role of “other” within that group, relative to it.

I don’t have much else to say about this, it’s just an observation, and a recognition that I may be putting myself in this position more and more – and also that perhaps I seem to have purposely avoided it a lot in my life previously as part of my shyness and introverted personality. Learning to be “other,” manage it, feel ok about it… this is a useful skill for me to practice.