The most primal of ways that I identify with being a man, is that ever since I can remember, I have had a penis. This fact has always been calling my attention. It was been hard to miss it dangling there and hard to miss when it is doing other than dangling. I have a sense that this appendage has been a lightening rod for cultural messages since I was born. I was born before the invention of the sonogram, so my parents had to wait until my birthday to get past the wrapping that was concealing my manhood. From the very start it was their primary compass needle to guide them as to how to navigate their territory with a male son invading it.
Having a penis is my first identifier. My other four are my thoughts and actions in the roles of Procreator, Protector, Provider, and Protester. Describing some of my identifications with these roles is but foreplay for the orgasmic climax as to how I, as a strictly heterosexual penised person, don’t identify with being a man at all.
While I am tempted to go right for the orgasm, I won’t. As a man, I have learned how to appreciate the foreplay as much as its conclusion.
I recall vividly the times that my actions of procreation lead to offspring, being as they were surrounded by ardent birth control measures.
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As a man I love all things procreation. I love every aspect of the act itself, from anticipation to love bonding afterglow. I recall vividly the times that my actions of procreation lead to offspring, being as they were surrounded by ardent birth control measures. Those two times were defined by lack of impulse control and a, “what the hell let’s roll the dice” attitude. It might make for a better story if these two times were proceeded by a rational assessment that I had the financial means and parenting skill maturity to focus exclusively on the triumph of loving creation. I would be bull shitting if I wrote that this was the case, but to tell the truth this is what it felt like – loving creation, loving being a man.
When my wife became pregnant with, gave birth to and breast feed our first son, I never felt more like a man, because of what I could not do. When I felt that movement in my wife’s swollen belly, I wondered what that must feel like from the inside. When I saw that life emerging from her life, I wondered how that might move me. As I first saw my wife giving my son sustenance that passed from her body to his, my son’s mouth was was in suck mode, mine was wide open. In some ways it sucked that I would never be able to feel life growing in my body, thrust into the world and feed from my flesh. I had my jealous moments of thinking that somehow I had let in a thief into my home who was cutting me in line for the sweet tastes of my wife’s breasts and the sweeter tastes of her attention. In those thankfully brief moments my male jealousy stupidly defined me.
Today I cherish those defining moments, when I was enveloped in the glow of being able to bear witness to the awe of the essence of the feminine. I have never felt more manly. That glow created by the reality of being a man, was no lessor than any glow of imaginings as to what it would feel like to be the woman in the co-procreation of life.
I came of age where work was no longer almost exclusively for men, doing what a man has to do. Looking back, I now identify more strongly then ever with that man who often sacrificed what was good for him for the good of his family.
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Procreation was the easiest to identify with. Providing and Protecting were quite often a royal pain in my hairy male ass. My Father had a big problem with my Mother working at all. I never had any problem in this area with my wife. Some men feel “less than” if their female partner brings home more bacon than they do. I never had the opportunity to do that research, but I know in my heart of hearts that I would have fully embraced being in that position. As I worked many more hours and much harder than I would have freely chosen to do, I quite often felt deep resentment. I came of age where work was no longer almost exclusively for men, doing what a man has to do. Looking back, I now identify more strongly then ever with that man who often sacrificed what was good for him for the good of his family. I had no sense that such sacrifice was best done by men, only that I came to love my fate of standing proudly in line with my Father, and his Father and his Father’s Father back to “Ug,” the caveman, who for want of being born with more muscle mass felt it right to shoulder more of the provider weight.
Protector is a tough role sometimes too. I am at my best when I am protecting my sons and their mother from my opinions as to how to run their lives better than they do. My Zeus like wisdom banished to the halls of Mt. Olympus celebrates the best of my masculinity. At the same time I identify with never ceasing to be open to opportunities to be more supportive of my wife and our sons. Doing so makes me feel like a man.
I known I would have been perfectly happy to have had the opportunity to parent girls instead of two boys. I liked the way it worked out though. Having boys allowed me and allows me to reparent my male self as they grow and develop and are parented by me.
I would be happy to be a grandparent to a boy or to an “its okay for girls to play with toy trucks girl.” There are not enough words in the history of language to describe the attributes of my granddaughter that I have fallen in love with. Her “girly girl”, girliness, is but a small fraction of her, “no words to adequate describe it” wonder. Her girliness reminds me of my two son’s boyish maleness growing up. I continue to celebrate my perceptions of the mix of the feminine and the masculine in all three. I will, for as long as I live, stand on guard for any harm that might come there way that I could do something about that they want help with.
I’ll keep my reflections on my identification as a Protestor brief. I want to give a rebel yell shout out to Andrea Dworkin and her partner John Stoltenberg, may they both rest in peace. When Ms. Dworkin opined that all sexual intercourse in a culture where women do not share equal power with men was rape, I simply could not identify. When later, through more education, I did, I woke up to a profound ugliness about the culture we men live in, that I had previously had not wanted to acknowledge. I initially had no interest in reading Stoltenberg’s book, Refusing to be a Man. When I did, I became a consciences , if not always self aware, objector to many aspects of traditional male enculturation.
I feel more manly still when I can embrace my sexist brothers knowing that they are not fundamentally identified by their ignorance, but by their manhood
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I feel like a good man when I am conversing with The Good Men Project. I feel robust in my maleness, when I identify with Pro-feminist prospectives in a general sense. I can visit the sacred male ground from where the feminine can be observed and supported. I feel more manly still when I can embrace my sexist brothers knowing that they are not fundamentally identified by their ignorance, but by their manhood. I strive to love them as I endeavor to protest their views. I feel so much prouder to be a men since I have joined in with the conversations about masculinity, that haven’t been had to the degree that that are being had, until the dawn of social media and the dawn of the Good Men Project.
Which brings me to orgasm. (I don’t mean thinking about good conversation on the new masculinity compassion brings me to orgasm. I just didn’t want to make this article any longer with a better segway into its conclusion). I don’t identify with any form of masculinity because I don’t believe that the Universe is divisible into parts. I stand with Ralph Waldo Emerson and countless others, who perceive the non-dualistic nature of all things. The Universe is one and one with us. The Universe is an infinite constant, ever changing, eternal, perfectly beautiful, orgasmic flow. As humans we need to arbitrarily divide the Universe into parts and assign symbols to these parts, in order to have conversations. These symbols tell of the dramas of striving for social justice and the creation and preservation of beauty that define the property of the Universe that is Us.
If I were given that latitude of six things male I identify with, I could convert this spiritual talk into an identification with the fictional character, Don Quixote in the musical play, Man of La Mancha.
As a man I long to dream impossible dreams of marching into hell for heavenly causes. I want to leave this world much better than I found it, by reaching for the unreachable stars, while knowing that to be a man is ultimately, but a form of drama.
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