Male Guilt
The following is the first journal entry I ever write circa 2000:
"I keep having this fantasy. Usually at night; depressed; shaking in my bed because of the cold; lonely for love. I want a friend to watch me while I'm sitting in my recliner chair with no one home. I'll be distant. The other person won't say a word. Then a person in a black overcoat, with sturdy boots, walks into the door. He looks at the friend. He looks like me. He pulls out a revolver and places it by his side. Me: half naked in pajama pants, unclean and hungry, will fall off the chair on to the ground; get on my knees and start praying. He will walk up to me slowly and put the gun to my head. I will start singing. Catchy music. Happy. My friend will watch. She will fear. Then he turns the gun around in his hand, and hits me very hard in the face, with the butt end. I roll to the corner. I stop singing. I bleed.
He kicks the crap out of me. it hurts. I feel like a trapped little squirrel that 7th grade kids are trying to stomp on to kill. He stops. I look up at my friend, mouth swollen, eyes watering, teeth broken. She's crying. I know why. Really, I do."
This makes sense later on. I'll come back to it.
Male guilt is something that I have always had. I think it was cause my parents, and specifically my mom, raised me so well, to understand that women are really getting fucked around all over the world and that they work as hard and are as giving as me own mom and sis. I felt bad when I found this out, mainly cause I probably thought I could just walk into class and change it, by explaining to my friends what was going on. I found out it was a bit harder than that and the whole thing ran a lot deeper than my mind could handle at that moment.
My friend Raquel from high school wrote a poem that I never forgot. I read it once when she showed me her poetry book in grade 9. It was called damn you for being a boy, and was a diatribe about men in her life, I think, although I never asked her about it. What I never forgot was the rage at men�and I knew from experience and from my parents and the news that for the most part, that rage was justified. I always hung out with women in high school, I think they made me feel good and plus they were the only ones that ever wanted to talk and listen at the same time. I really appreciated that. One of the hardest things I ever found out was from a friend I met in uni, who hung out with that circle in high school. She talked about the patriarchical (male dominated) nature of hanging out with us. It was a constant competition to impress, out-perform, and hold mental space. In otherwords, the women were always quiet, while the men fought tooth and nail to be heard. At points it was like a room of people talking on cell phones.
I never knew while it was all happening. At that point I didn't understand.
This is a common feeling I've been experiencing, ever since I started hanging around with lesbians. It's not a bad feeling mind you, in fact I feel good feeling it. This is what I'm trying to get at here.
I'll be blunt. Hanging with dykes allowed me to see the world through women's eyes a bit better, while in retrospect, I was probably just as domineering with space as I always am. The cool thing was that there were only women around I we got to talk about their experiences and they got to ask me about how men saw things in a more detached way than they normally could. I hope they figured I was safe to ask or something. What started happening was that I became more and more aware of the fact that women suffer. They suffer constantly, everyday in a way that I do not have to endure because of luck. And I hate this. I hate this because I then feel like I am part of the problem, I feel privileged about how I can at and what I can say because I AM privileged. At some point this fostered a deep sense of guilt�not for any women in specific, but for women in general.
I became aware and convinced of the following. I would never get turned down for work cause of my sex. I would never be beaten by my spouse. I would never have to walk the streets at night afraid. I would not be judged as inferior because of my sex. I would not be raised with feelings of inadequacy, body weight issues, worries about speaking up in public, worries about having my opinions dismissed, or worries about being sexually abused at some party, or when a creepy dude got me alone. I became aware of the fact that I was on the outside and the people that I cared about had to suffer alone, on the inside and I could not understand their pain or therefore help them.
This is where things go off. This is where I stop making sense to myself. Things do happen to men. I hear about isolated incidences of sexual harassment and men wanting bigger muscles. I remember that at the age of 10 I saw a report on TV that was claiming a study had been done showing that kids (both boys and girls) were concerned about their body size by the age of 12. I turned and told my dad that I worried about my weight all the time�it felt good.
It felt good to suffer. It felt good to feel the pain. It felt so good.
I learnt about transgendered people in uni. I have always felt some deep connection with women in some of the experiences I've had after I started learning about this, although I've never really desired people think of me as one gender or another. When I lost my virginity, and it hurt so bad I was crying, I was actually happy, cause I finally knew what it was like. More importantly I felt good that for once, a man in the world finally had to go through what women did, like my martyrdom was somehow evening the score. I was happy for the same reason when I got my teeth kicked in, because my friend Allison could no longer tell me that "take back the night" was something that men should stay clear of cause they don't have the same experience. I was happy for the same reason, when an asshole I met in Montreal took me back to his place for a joint and proceeded to hold the back of my head as he tried to shove his cock in my mouth as I stood their stiff as a bored, terrified and not knowing what to say. I probably could have kicked his skinny little ass. Instead I just booted it and felt like throwing up for weeks after. I also felt relieved, even happy. I was happy when my girlfriend started punching me in the head when we got into a heavy fight. She was drunk and I never spoke to her again after that day.
I don't know why this keeps happening. I don't know why it feels good and more importantly, I don't know if I should try to stop it. Ever since I got back from tree planting one year though, I remember that my fantasy of beaten myself was finally gone. It had been replaced. And every second night or so, when I'm falling asleep�
I keep having this fantasy. I talk to a lesbian friend of mine and tell her to get all her friends together for a little S and M experiment that can push it a little bit farther. When they enter the room all they see is a half naked man kneeling on the ground with a black cotton or silk bag covering his head and his hands tied behind his back. They don't know who he is. I'm afraid. Paralyzed with fear, breathing deeply, like waiting for the dentist to put the needle in your mouth or waiting for the drill to come into contact with your teeth and hoping to god he or she doesn't hit a nerve.
They are all getting pumped up but they know the rules. He will take everything, but nothing in the teeth. He should keep all his teeth. But he is there as punishment for all the times these women have ever been fuck over, spit on, screwed around, shamed, criticized, told they were weak, told they were owned, misunderstood etc. And all their emotion, all their rage, all their hate for every man that ever tried to destroy them from the inside comes out in waves as each one of them, sometimes two at a time, pull him back up off the ground so he's sitting up again and hit in the head, on the back, in the stomach, kick in the ribs, stomp on, swear at, bash against the ground and spit on, until all anyone can hear is heavy breathing and a light wimper, all anyone can see is purple marks and light blood stains and the only essence in the air is a strange feeling of tension released, like finding out your friend/family member in the hospital is going to be OK. They all talk to eachother a bit, but seeing as it's getting a little awkward, they leave to talk it over amongst themselves over coffee, stirfries, booze and pot, possibly even a little sex.
I only begin to move after everyone's gone and I wonder if all my friends who just beat me will find out when they see me next. I think that I'll be alright though. I know why. Really, I do.