So, back when I was “still cis tho”, there were a lot of aspects of male gender norms that bothered me deeply and of course I totally understand why now. Even though these days I obviously have a clear reason for feeling that way, I’m still curious if cishet men also have issues with how norms or expectations around gender and sexuality impact them in a negative way.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how those norms impact you, whether good or bad.
Also, I should mention that since this is a bit of a sensitive subject we’re talking about here, please be thoughtful and sensitive when discussing with others in this thread. Thanks! <3
EDIT: Much thanks for all the great responses here! I know it’s a difficult topic of course, so I appreciate you sharing your thoughts/feelings like this.
Speaking of which… I just looked at /c/menby and some of the posts on the front page there are over 2 years old. I see a lot of the discussion here centered around not being able to share feelings and/or not having the spaces or support to do that in. /c/menby seems like the perfect place for that, just sayin’.
I’m a Han Chinese who grew up partially in China and in Australia. While I avoided a bunch of expectations for certain forms of classic Western masculinity because I am an inscrutable removed, other aspects were unavoidable. It wasn’t a faux pas to not play footy or whatever, and it was probably expected that I was more academically inclined over playing contact sports.
Half my family are CPC revolutionaries and cadres. The other half are the peasantry that we fought for, regardless of how money hungry and reactionary.
A lot of conflicting ideas of what I should be, from 老百姓 from the country, Western liberalism and hardline Communists have been… Bestowed upon me. I have to be a breadwinner, I have to service the people, I have to be stoic (or at the very least not beheld by emotion), I have to find a high paying profession, I have to be a protector, I have to produce an offspring, I have to consider the greater good, I have to be assertive, I have to change or suppress myself to get women. As the only male heir from the one child policy, it’s a lot.
A (white) girlfriend once asked me how I was feeling after a particularly gruelling double shift where smarter workers than I walked off the job. I didn’t answer immediately. Should I be reserved because it was nothing compared to someone that walked the Long March? Or someone who immigrated to a different continent to seek a better life? Or the Platonic ideal of a masculine man? I replied “I will be fine”, which was an honest response. A bad day doesn’t mean I won’t overcome it. My grandfather became the man of the house at the age of 13 because his father was killed by Japanese, his mother couldn’t work because her feet were bound because it was the style. We were living on land stolen after a genocide. My Sous chef worked 19 hours to my 16 and a bit. Our bills were paid. There was food on the table. There was a roof over our heads. There were no bombs or snipers aiming for us. I genuinely meant what I said. I will be fine. I was 22. Now that I’ve learned to communicate better, after learning that your gender, racial and class identity aren’t as separate as you’d think, I probably would have answered differently. I could have communicated better.
My hardships didn’t stem from being a cisgender male. Nor would being trans or gay make it better. The world isn’t kind to the proletariat. It’s why I’m a communist. Your identity plays a role, it’s why I didn’t fall into stupidpol.
Who knows, I may have been able to speak about my emotions properly before I was 30.
Thank you for sharing your experience comrade. It’s interesting to hear how patriarchal ideals are similar and different across cultures. Clearly the political project that was the Long March is very different than say the settlement of the western US, but also clearly those experiences are transmuted into some similar social pressures.
The Long March was less a political project than a matter of survival. The Nationalist government purged both the left wing parts of their government and the Communist Party. Reactionaries killed off communists, socialists and the left wing of the KMT. After begging for leftists for help.
The liberals begged for help to oppose the imperialists then turned around and removed the leftist party and left leaning individuals in the KMT. When they asked again during the second war the communists were rightfully against the notion.
Fair, I was using the Long March as a stand-in for the greater project of the a Chinese communist revolution. The political project that was the settlement of the North American West generated a lot of enduring American/Canadian stereotypes of manliness (cowboys, prospectors, outdoorsmen, hunters, homeateaders, explorers that lived off the land).
From your post it sounds like the Chinese revolution also left enduring stereotypes of manliness.
For the redacted word, it’s not the C slur for Chinese you’re thinking of but the more 1700’s one. I wasn’t called the “sound effect” slur because thats a bit too old even for modern Australians.
I have no idea which one you’re referring to which must mean Australians are on a new level of racism
If it’s the one I think it is (the one Amerikans used to use regarding their imported rail workers) then holy shit, I didn’t think that was still in vogue for the crackers.
Thanks for writing this up. I’m also chinese diaspora, but with a slightly different experience than you because I was both born and raised in the good ol us of a. I’m still completely unsure of my roots, but I do know my grandfather was a revolutionary before he passed. I’m just sad I was too young to ever talk to him about my experiences when I was back in china. I can definitely relate to these social pressures, and especially the social pressures that happen at the intersection of being from an asian culture in a western environment. Get good grades, get into a good college, i’ve heard that my entire life and now that i’ve done it, get a good internship, get a good job… and the pressures to conform never stop. I don’t have too much to say, but thank you for writing this, it really resonated with me.