Masculinity and
masculinities are a complex topic weaving cultural expectations and
perceived modes of behavior by those who have male bodies with
questions of presentation and gender norms versus those in human and
societal behavior and what better way to approach the study of
masculinity than by discussing King Dork by
Frank Portman in the framework of multiple masculinities, because a
single, culturally codified descriptor of masculinity isn't working
out so well for Tom Henderson, who's a Holden Caulfield-esque
anti-hero from the '80s in this bildungsroman that inexplicably tries
to date itself to 2000 in the end for reasons that might have to do
with publishability, but ignore that, it's from the '80s, back when a
kid could wear a trench coat, carry around Soldier of
Fortune, and talk about guns all
the time and nobody would bat an eyelash. Tom echoes Holden's whines
about the power structure and phoniness, with the caveat that Tom
also whines about Holden because in his world, Catcher in
the Rye is perpetually assigned
by sensitive English teacher whom Catcher
inspired to be teachers of high school English. Tom, thankfully,
doesn't talk too much like Holden or the whole book would be a
tedious imitation of a stunning original, and King Dork
is also more plot-heavy than Catcher,
by which I mean that it has a plot, because Tom finds his dead dad's
copy of Catcher in a
box, and it's marked up with code, and he's also in a band, solving
the mystery of his dad's death, receiving inexplicable blow jobs, and
being physically attacked by bullies on a weekly basis. When I was
at high school, people didn't fellate other people at random, or
maybe they did and I didn't know about it; either male/author fantasy
takes over the book, or where being in a band WORKS. On the other
point, about frequently sustaining sustained physical attacks, I must
refer to our next book, Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and
Sexuality in High School by C.J.
Pascoe. This is one of the ones Curt was getting rid of it and one
of the tiny number of books Curt owns that aren't about Britain,
British country houses, architecture, British architecture, other
country houses, other regional architecture, art, jewelry,
biographies of British royals, biographies of British commoners,
books by Curt's sister, books by my mom, and books on historic retail
emporiums, the impetus of which is Curt's professional need to
respond to Mr. Selfridge on
PBS. Curt tried to put Dude, You're a Fag
in the laundry room but I snagged it and I'm glad I did. Written in
2007, the only positive about more modern masculinity in high school
is that sustained physical attacks are no longer common. Kids are
more likely to throw things, or punch once; popular kids can't drag
the gender non-normative or otherwise lower ranking into the bathroom
and kick the shit out of them anymore. Progress! Excepting that,
presentations of masculinity in high school are deeply alarming and
tightly controlled. "Dude, you're a fag," and similar
comments are repeated endlessly in Ms. Pascoe's impressive year of
field research at a California high school. Masculinity is strictly
policed by all participants in these social rituals as a set of
sexualized dominant behaviors that must be maintained. Every misstep
or especially gender deviation is "gay" or "you're a
fag." Boys wrestle girls 'til they shriek, harass everyone and
Ms. Pascoe, and engage in highly ritualized sexual banter. Ms.
Pascoe records one conversation where a boy asks her if she's ever
had her "walls ripped," an act these boys often boast of
which is also physically impossible. Ms. Pascoe deflects the
question and asks the boy how it makes him feel when he's done that,
to which he becomes somewhat remorseful for something he can't
possibly have done. Boys encourage each other to regard the feminine
with comic aberrance. The positioning of male dominance and
heteronormativity are reinforced by the teachers and administration
through casual statements and ritualized public events like the Mr.
Cougar Competition and homecoming. Ms. Pascoe takes time to discuss
the out lesbian who was elected homecoming queen based on popularity
and force of personality, as well as the "basketball girls"
a loud group of hip-hop identified ninth graders who avoid the
traditionally feminine appearance and second-tier status of most of
the girls in this school by sheer energy and apathy, by which I mean
that all they do is run around yell. Ms. Pascoe also gives time to
the more self-aware gender-aware girls in the Gay-Straight Alliance,
whose overt political stance, in contrast to the homecoming winner
and the basketball girls, earns them censure by the administration
for stepping outside of gender norms.
Of
course, young men who are presented with a single idiom of highly
sexualized masculinity grow up, and hopefully learn that man cannot
live on a single idiom of highly sexualized masculinity alone.
StrengthsBasedLeadership by
Tom Rathman subverts the notion of a single leadership model in a
thoroughly limp-wristed yet effective way. Basically, the point of
SBL is that you are
not Abraham Lincoln. Nor are you Sun Tzu, Geronimo, Lee Iacoca, or
any other great man of history/business about whom you have read a
book encouraging you to emulate. You are you, and you should not try
to be Abraham Lincoln, but you should acknowledge your own strengths
and build a team of others with a diversity of strengths, which is
what Abraham Lincoln did, but you're still not Abraham Lincoln.
That's the main point, but how to fill the other two hundred pages?
Actually, the salient point of the Strengths franchise
is not the book but the internet personality quiz at the end of the
book. The book itself is just padding. Nicole wouldn't let me buy
one of my other textbooks because she said it was too dumb to own and
she tried to prevent me from purchasing SBL,but
I explained that I needed to deflower the book of its unique internet
quiz access code and must therefore own it. The test itself is meh.
It presents you with paired statements like, "I like to give
thoughtful gifts./ I buy everyone soap and gift cards," and you
choose which statement reflects you and how strongly you agree with
each statement. But then you have statements like, "I am
thrifty./ I am generous." Whaaat? I'm obnoxiously thrifty but
I give people my damn blood. Those are not contradictory. "I
love my family./ I like to learn new things." Eh? "I am
outgoing./ I eat puppies." Help. My strengths are Input,
Intuition, Adaptability, Strategic, and, and Learner. The first
thing you'll notice about my strengths is that only some of them are
adjectives, which reflects SBL's
reading level. The explanation for my strength of Intuition defined
"assuage" and "glean" for me. Those aren't big
words. I hope I'm not too smart to earn an MBA because I would like
to earn more than these low assuages I earn in the retail sector.
What? The paragraphs in SBL had
gaps between them. Books for first graders don't leave gaps between
the paragraphs. But it does make SBL look
proper book length, when the reading bit is a paltry 100 pages that's
mostly the biographies of four questionable executives who were
willing to talk to the authors. Secondly, my strengths mean I'm
bookish. That's the personality quiz equivalent of telling me that I
have brown hair. The best part of the book are the paragraphs
explaining how to leverage your strengths and that I am a palm tree;
basically, people will come to me for information because I gather
it. So, strengths found, expectations of a single masculinity
destroyed, we continue on our journey to that ultimate beacon of
healthy masculinity, His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh; His
Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes. This is another Discworld book, from
later in the series than where I think I am, although it directly
precedes Monstrous Regiment.
Pratchett is fantastic, a bit over 400 pages but no senseless
riffing, just a lot of long, thoughtful, persuasive passages about
the nature of justice. And it works. Samuel Vimes is catapulted
back in time thirty years from the anniversary of the Glorious
Revolution of the 25th of May in a major temporal shattering, along
with a serial killer. Picked up after curfew, Vimes is jailed for
the night and convinces the Night Watch commander that he is John
Keel, the newly arrived policeman from Pseudopolis who taught young
Sam Vimes character and is now dead because of the serial killer.
Young Sam is what Sir Samuel doesn't remember of a wet behind the
ears little twerp who joined up for the pay and the meals and he
idolizes John Keel. Vimes must play Keel's part through the days of
spring when Ankh-Morpork rises up to throw off the shackles of a mad
patrician and a secret police that's now hired the serial killer.
The important thing, though, is that honor and justice make better
men of us all.
Next
up: Girl books.
