[Reader-list] Article: How to Make Masculinity Stop Hurting

[Chandni Parekh]

If you want to comment on this article, visit
http://psychologynews.posterous.com/article-how-to-make-masculinity-stop-hurting

Excerpts from
http://carnalnation.com/content/38206/44/masculinity-doesnt-hurt?page=0,0 -

How do you grow up into a masculinity, a maleness, an adult manhood, despite
this culture's obsession with bad boys and lunkheads, to be a caring
protective provider, to make effective, positive changes in this world, to
build something that will last, to be generous with your heart and mind and
love and time?

In this GI Joe society, where the most common toys for little boys are guns
and tanks and trucks, where the constant credo of "big boys don't cry!"
echoes in all of our ears, despite our sex, despite our progressive parents,
we cut our teeth on the masculinity that confines and withholds and
withdraws basic human emotional experiences, denying they even exist, ruling
that anything not invulnerable and impenetrable is weak, girly, or
inappropriate for a "real man."

Feminism is a powerful gateway to gender theory, to breaking down the
expectations placed on people because of their gender.

There are deep-seated inadequacies built into modern masculinity; the
expectations of provision, stoicism, and brute force set up just about
everyone to fail.

Restrictions on oneself based on gender are not new; undoing that limitation
moves at a snail's pace, taking decades or perhaps generations to implement
and rebuild. It is essential to go through the deconstruction, through the
analysis, to learn the concepts and words and language in order to move into
a new occupation of gender that is no longer painful, no longer stinging
whenever we are on the subway or interacting with our bosses or on a date or
talking to our mothers, but rather celebratory, a gendered dynamic which is
full of communication with others, full of desire, sexually freeing,
open-hearted and true, letting our radiance come shining through our every
interaction. If we keep going through the deconstruction for long enough, we
will find the healing, then the construction, to reach the rebuilding, the
fixing, the health—reaching a masculinity that is no longer painful.