Masculinity revisited

Some of you may recall my previous piece asking who gets to define masculinity, in which I argued that men who do not necessarily live up to Western standards of macho-ness are just as “manly” and physically attractive as their more conventionally masculine counterparts. As someone who opposes patriarchy, I find the rigid standards it imposes on all of us abhorrent, but for now, I want to discuss a particular way in which this system harms cisgender men. It is because of patriarchy that men are taught that they shouldn’t express emotion, that they should be hypersexual beings who objectify others, that they should dominate others, that they should assert their physical strength rather than their strength of character… and the list can go on forever.

But the horrific definition of manliness that patriarchy imposes goes much deeper. It seems to me that patriarchy upholds white masculinity as an ideal. That is one reason why, for example, Black and Latino men are fetishized, and Asian men are regarded as androgynous or asexual.

Consider the character of Raj Koothrappali on The Big Bang Theory.

Kunal Nayyar is, in my opinion, the best looking actor on the show—I’d go so far as to argue that he is the only attractive actor on the show—but his character has consistently been stereotyped and desexualized. For several seasons, he was incapable of speaking if a woman was even in the room, unless he consumed alcohol. 

In addition, there have been homophobic jokes throughout the series about his close friendship with Howard Wolowitz and his comfort with his female friends.

After Raj finally got a girlfriend, Emily, I have very few recollections of them being shown together in an affectionate or sexual manner. What I do remember are the following two instances of Raj being shown in a post-coital scenario: (a) when he wakes up next to an obese woman after a drunken night and (b) when he wakes up next to Penny, again after a night of heavy drinking, and he admits that they didn’t have sex because he ejaculated prematurely.

Anyone who has watched the show over the years might recall that many female characters have said that they find Raj physically attractive, including Howard’s wife Bernadette; yet the message from the writers contradicts this. Basically, more than making Raj an asexual character, the writers seem to have gone out of their way to mock any insinuation that Raj might be a virile heterosexual man. Meanwhile, Leonard and Howard have consistently been shown in the opposite light—often being depicted as oversexed. As the writers of the show are overwhelmingly male, one cannot argue that it is women imposing such ideas about masculinity on men; it is a patriarchal mindset that first and foremost influences how men view masculinity.

Sticking with the sitcom theme, consider the short-lived series Selfie.

This show was entertaining, and it was an important series because it featured an Asian actor as the romantic lead—something that remains unfamiliar on American TV. John Cho, known primarily for his roles in the Harold and Kumar movies and the contemporary Star Trek films, played a charismatic, successful marketing executive.

While the show seemed to have a following on social media, ABC chose to cancel it after 13 episodes. The show was very modern, as the title suggests, the writing was good, the acting was good; so what was the problem? There was even a petition to rescue the show. Sadly, Selfie’s fans had to let go before Henry and Eliza could officially get together.

So, once again, I question what this culture values in men. In my previous post, I had said that I’d never questioned Prince’s masculinity. He was certainly a pretty man, his mannerisms were perhaps not what one usually expects of a straight, cisgender male, and his art definitely suggested that he was sensitive.

Nevertheless, his testosterone and sexual attraction to women were palpable, no matter how he looked or what he was doing. It is common to hear that he “transcended gender”. He himself professed something similar to this in the song “I Would Die 4 U”: I’m not a woman; I’m not a man; I’m something that you’ll never understand. But what does it really mean to transcend gender? In my mind, this would imply truly embodying both femininity and masculinity, to the point where people don’t want to label you male or female but accept that you are something else that encompasses both or that so defies what we think about gender norms that it seems like neither. Where Prince was concerned, there was absolute consensus that he was a man. Reinforcing his identity as a heterosexual male, his desire for women was central to his music and stage performances. Here, his sensitivity was also apparent, as even when he sang about sex, he did not objectify women. 

The song “Gett Off” immediately comes to mind. In addition to highlighting consent and body positivity, it focuses on mutual pleasure. Indeed, Prince does not merely express a desire to get off but to get someone else off as well. The song is, thus, both literally and figuratively music to a woman’s ears. This message is diametrically opposed to the patriarchal idea of focusing on catering solely to the penis.

In my opinion, his gender bending was part of his identity performance. There was something far more political going on: Prince was challenging what we think a man is supposed to be—and, importantly, he was doing it as a Black man. This is something that seems to get overlooked in much of the discussion surrounding Prince’s persona, despite the fact that his activism is well-documented. Thus, to focus solely on his defiance of gender norms would do him, and us, a great disservice. When he adopted the unpronounceable “love symbol” as his name in the 1990s, it was an act of protest against his record label.

Warner Bros owned his name, so he changed it in a defiant assertion of his autonomy in an industry that loves to make money off of art created by Black people without actually valuing their blackness (and many of the consumers of said art feel much the same way). 

He would even appear on stage with the word “slave” written on his face to reinforce the constraints imposed on him and lack of respect from his record label.

Therefore, it would be wrong to focus solely on the gender neutrality of this symbol, which he abandoned as soon as his contract was up in 2000, and overlook all that he stood for—this proudly Black, unapologetically sexual, political, and beautiful man. 

Although we must always be careful not to idolize our stars too much, for what they choose to show us is marketed for us so we keep their career afloat, Prince was different from most of the capitalists working in his field because he challenged several dominant, oppressive systems.

Every achievement of anyone who doesn’t fit into the so-called mainstream is a revolutionary act. As part of the fight against patriarchy, let us be aware of, and denounce, insidious Eurocentric notions of beauty and gender that tell racialized people they are inferior.