masculinity, "female privilege" and the undiscovered feminine.

I think self-hatred often emerges in the formation process of the patriarchal character. If somebody has been teased at school for not being masculine enough, (or perhaps this takes place in some other character forming community, like a frat club — or whilst undergoing military service), then one is likely to have contempt for the elements of character that one must necessarily disown in order to become socially acceptable. One is also likely to resent women for seeming to have it easier — i.e. for not having to undergo precisely this sort of hazing.

Thus the wrongheaded notion of “female privilege” is born.

I confess that I am still unsure whether there is a kind of masculinity that might be differently formed than this. Part of my problem is the way in which the term, “masculinity”, is normalised through a cultural matrix — implying that it is learned and therefore somewhat arbitrary.

I wonder, all the same, whether there can be a kind of masculinity that it not founded upon a forcible (meaning socially driven) transcendence of “the feminine”. This other kind of masculinity would necessarily not be found in a hostile relation to something it deemed “femininity”, but might rather find in “the feminine” its complementary nature.  Exactly what “the feminine” might come to mean in this context I am not sure since it has so far come to mean almost the same thing as “that which males must transcend in order to become properly masculine.”

In the mean time, masculinity carries with it as part of its identity a certain quantity of self-hatred.

As a footnote: Mike, who was brought up by his mother (his father died in a road accident whilst he was still very young) has the qualities of self-acceptance that I would deem properly masculine in that second sense. He is very, very powerfully attractive, and yet without having to try to be.