The Shame and the Fear

(posted by Dan)

I’m going to try, perhaps ill-advisedly, to link together a few of the themes we’ve been discussing under the general rubric* of shame and fear.

I don’t remember her exact words, but the thing Norah Vincent said in her Colbert Report appearance that most struck me was about how surprised she was, after spending months masquerading as a man, at how vulnerable she found the men with whom she interacted, and how inhibited they seemed by the narrowness of their (our) anxieties about masculinity. I don’t know the exact vector at which the truth of our vulnerability intersects with the power that shame and fear have over us (men), but it definitely intersects all over the place.

We’re ashamed of doing the things that seem too vulgar or bestial, like going to peep shows and touching the women therein. We’re afraid of not being macho enough to rise to the macho-making opportunity with the flair of, say, an Antonio Davis. We’re afraid of appearing pussy-whipped in front of our friends, but also ashamed of being too explicit in our love/affection for our friends (I don’t know a single guy who says “I love you” when parting from his friends; most women I know say it without hesitation). We’re ashamed of listening to Jim Rome—who’s undoubtedly an asshole, and at the same time frustratingly compelling—and we’re afraid that because we don’t put our idiotic macho maleness out there as brashly as Jim Rome does that we’re somehow existing in a state of diminished vitality.

The Barkley Moment Jamie had—and oh how I wish I could have heard it too!—was so powerful, I imagine, because his confidence presented such a such stark contrast to the constipated cliches that come out of the mouths of most athletes and sports commentators and dudes who wish they were athletes and sports commentators. We all know that Barkley can be a schmuck frequently, but he ends up being so likable because he’s clearly his own shmuck. I’m happy to forgive him a lot—I’m pretty sure he’s a Republican, for instance—because a straight/black/male/athlete who’s able to speak affectionately and easily of his gay friends, and of gayness in general, is a precious commodity.

This all gets rather complicated when we acknowledge, as I think we should, that idiotic macho male culture is as blustery and exaggerated as it is, and as attractive as it is, largely because there are authentic (and yes, I know that’s a dangerous word) impulses that are being expressed, albeit in a perverted way.

Men—pretty much all men—are worried that they don’t know exactly how to be men in a culture in which it’s no longer taken for granted that men are and should be the primary holders of power and bearers of responsibility. I mean, it’s a good thing, in sum, that it’s not a given that we’re the wielders of power in society, but there’s no question that we men, even somehow those of us who never had it, miss the unquestioned presumption of power. (I assume that women would miss it too, if they’d ever had it and then lost it; power's pleasant.) And then there’s the matter of responsibility, and here we get back to the shame and fear thing. We’re afraid that we’re failing to properly discharge our manly responsibility. What is our manly responsibility? Most people, and I definitely include myself in this, feel better with some sense of what their cultural role is supposed to be. But what now are the expecations? What are my responsibilities? What are the rules? (I never get tired of asking that last question, by the way. I think it’s appropriate to so many of our anxieties. What are the rules? What are the rules? etc.)

To get back to the sports thing, I have a distinct memory of how meaningful it was to me, in high school, to be as good a wrestler as I was. It had to do with physical confidence, and the general pleasure of being good at something, and the excellence within an all-male society. It also had to do, I’m sure, with being really good at something which 99% of women couldn’t best me at. I miss all that, and compulsively challenging women to arm-wrestling matches doesn’t really compensate for its absence (though it does ease the sting). Within my high school society, wrestling was something that men did, and it happened to be something that I did well.

Glory days.

* I still remember the first time that I heard the word “rubric”; it was used by my senior year English teacher, and I immediately found it a hilarious-sounding word, and said so repeatedly, much to his consternation. I still find it hilarious, though it’s hard to say exactly why. It has something to do with its family resemblance to “prick,” or the name “Ruprecht,” or it has something to do with some sexual or excretory linguistic essence that undergirds all of the above.