Sans Fig Leaf
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"It's a guy thing"
15 June, 2006
My senior year in high school I had to take a state history class. Most of the kids in the class had failed the subject in eighth grade, and had to pass it now or they wouldn't graduate. I had simply lived in a different state. Even though I had passed not one, but two different state history classes during my middle school years (Utah and Colorado, if you're curious), Washington state didn't care.
So there I was--honor student, nerd, and geek--taking a class with a bunch of kids who, for the most part, were the opposite of me in every way. A couple of them were guys who had, on more than one occasion, organized an ambush and beating of one of my nerd friends. It was hardly my favorite class.
We spent about a third of each class literally having the required text book read to us by the teacher, then the other two thirds working on the "home work." One day during this homework section, a group of the guys were arguing/complaining about how they had been unable to obtain a clutch guide shaft to line up the clutch of a car they were rebuilding to get the transmission back in place.
Without thinking, and without looking up from my Physics homework (I had been bringing stuff from other classes to work on during the down time), I explained how, if you just line up the end of the tranny with the opening in the clutch, and have a second guy step on the clutch pedal, you can slide it right in without bothering with the guide shaft.
One of the guys slapped me in the back of the head and asked, "When have you ever replaced a transmission, faggot?"
"Didn't need to replace the transmission," I answered. "But when the clutch plate and throw-out bearing broke on my car last year, we had to pull the transmission to replace them."
They didn't believe that I even knew what those things were, let alone that I'd actually successfully performed any car repairs. Because I had long since been classified by my schoolmates as a fag--and fags can't do manly things like car repair--which they proceeded to explain to me in the most vulgar terms imaginable.
Finally, one guy who always sat very quietly in the corner, hardly ever talking to anyone else, asked, "Hey, Breshears? You're related to Joe Philpott, right?"
I answered that Joe was my mom's youngest brother.
He turned to the others and told them I had grown up in a family of car mechanics and probably knew what I was talking about. I don't know if they actually believed him, because he wasn't exactly popular in their crowd either. But he had been winning junior bodybuilding contests for years, had signed up on the Marines early enlistment program, and generally was the most feared guy in the school, so they all shut up about it, at least for that day.
Throughout my teen years my self-image was not terribly masculine. Which isn't to say that my self-image was feminine, I just never felt as interested in "guy things" as my classmates. Guys were supposed to be interested in sports, cars, beer, girls, guns, and engaging in various adrenaline-pumping activities--always pushing the envelope and taking chances.
I was technically a jock in junior high, but I was never as obsessed as my teammates, and wasn't good enough to pursue it when I moved to a larger school. I did grow up in a family of mechanics, but I never felt as competent at it as my dad, my grandfathers, or my uncles. Between my dad's alcoholism and my mom's evangelical outlook, keggers and other drunken parties just didn't appeal to me. I found ways to work up enthusiasm for girls, and I dated--but there was a lot of self-delusion going on in each of those relationships. I enjoyed hunting, learning how to shoot, how to load my own ammo, and so forth, but once I reached the point I could hit the rabbit or the deer when I aimed at it, the thrill of the "kaboom" faded.
None of those behaviours are inherently or exclusively the perview of guys. I've known women who are better at or more interested in sports than the typical guy. I've known plenty of straight guys who could care less about cars. No man, straight or not, matches up to the masculine archetype in every respect. But as a teen-ager you don't have the perspective to see that. Particularly when you're a gay teen. You become an easy target for the kind of verbal and physical abuse that I experienced that day in class, because there's a part of you that believes you deserve it.
The few times I've told that story, some people have expressed disbelief that high school seniors would behave the way described. Usually, when pressed, these folks will admit that they seldom or never got teased in school. Fortunately, there's always been at least one person listening who will say that they experienced similar things throughout high school, college, and beyond.
One time while discussing this, a listener launched into a tirade about testosterone poisoning. Which, frankly, is bigoted as any of the comments those guys made to me while explaining just how unmanly I was. The testosterone-poisoning idea is also wrong. And I'm living proof.
I went through puberty a full year earlier than most of the guys in my class. I have all of the physical features associated with high testosterone levels. Because of an medical incident that happened when I was seventeen, I even have medical proof that my testosterone levels were well above average, at least at the time. There are plenty of men, gay and straight, with those high testosterone levels who don't act like adolescent bullies throughout their lives.
Whether or not guys have a natural proclivity for the belligerent behavior, our culture encourages (or at least excuses) it in many circumstances. We positively expect it in some circumstances. Any woman who has ever demanded of a boyfriend or husband, "Why didn't you stick up for me when your mother was saying…" is expecting a certain amount of assertiveness from her man.
Some will argue that assertiveness isn't the same thing as belligerence. But I say that they are only quantitatively different, not qualitatively. Undesirable personality traits are simply extreme (or unbalanaced) examples of desireable ones.
Assertiveness, competition, the desire to fix things, can all lead to good, even nurturing, outcomes. They can also cause problems. The guy who slapped the back of my head and called me a faggot was off in the belligerent end of the spectrum, putting things in perspective, and making a stand for what he thought was truth. But the guy who spoke up for me was following the same impulses--just in a more moderated degree.
When I was a teen, I thought I wasn't good at "guy things," because I (and most of the people around me) focused on narrowly defined subsets of the full range of what being a guy really means. Just as state law didn't care that I had already passed two other state's history classes, some of the people around me discount my accomplishments, and focus on what they see as shortcomings.
When I stopped buying into their definition, I had to sometimes belligerently assert my right to be different, and that upset people. Because standing up for yourself, refusing to complacently inhabit a box they've prepared for you, can be a threatening act. No matter how unthreatening I intend it to be.
Which isn't to say that I'm not happy when they back off and let me be as out and proud as I want to be. I just try not to gloat about it. At least not too much. A little smugness over the victories, no matter how small or symbolic, is unavoidable.
It's a guy thing.
As all boys are rascals, so are all men.
--Herman Melville
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