Blog Response: "What is Masculinity?"

The definition of masculinity can be subjective from person to person. But ultimately, I would consider masculinity to simply be the essence of a man. Thus, “masculinities” would probably be all the traits and characteristics that encompass what a man ought to be.

The look of a masculine man differs depending on the viewer and has undergone significant change over time. Knights in shining armour were definitely more heavily clothed than most of the print ad models of today. However, I do think that there are masculine ideals that remain unchanged, and I find the most prominent of these to be that of a leader.

The idea of masculinity being equated with leadership seems to be so rooted that we can even see it in little boys who pretend to be superheroes, police men, cowboys, firefighters, race car drivers, soldiers or any role that involves some level of valor or strength. Men also generally seem to prefer action movies (or at least opposed to the majority of females). It is almost as if being a leader is paralleled with being a hero. This is evident in the case of marriages where men are usually depicted as being the ones to lead the family by having a good, stable job to provide for his wife and kids. It’s like the father figure is basically Superman saving Lois Lane (his wife) from the danger of finances and stress. The leader/hero figure is also evident in the workforce, where men appear to value big leadership positions (eg. Being a C.E.O.) or jobs where they can feel the extent of their contributions to humanity (eg. Being an architect or an engineer).  Most print ads also do a pretty decent job of trying to show the physical embodiment of a hero—which is generally some buff guy with smoldering eyes, and either minimal clothing or a sharp business outfit. Perhaps it’s unrealistic, but it’s probably just an exaggeration of a man’s underlying desire for strength. And I don’t think most guys would disagree with me if I said that they’d want to prove that they "have what it takes" to succeed, whether to themselves, or the rest of the world (Eldredge).

Whether this leader-hero-man is in the form of little boy dressed up as Captain America or a grown man trying to work his way up the corporate hierarchy, a masculine man seems to always be striving for that sense of heroism, control or leadership. I’m not trying to objectify men by saying that all men SHOULD be in control. I’m just speaking from the observation that most men appear as if they want to be.

In 1984, George Orwell portrays Winston Smith as a seriously repressed dude. He has a job he detests and he can’t have sex. I am NOT saying that I think that chastity and an unfulfilling job equal emasculation; not at all. Rather, the role of Big Brother and the Party as having complete control over all of Oceania, and the severe scrutiny of their citizens (Orwell 5), deprives Winston of feeling entitled to his own happiness at all. If Winston doesn’t have ownership of his wants and thoughts, how is he supposed to find any assertion in his masculinity? Winston’s frustrations towards Big Brother and the Party in wanting to destroy them (Orwell 19) begin to consume him so much that they eventually intertwine with his feelings for Julia. Therefore, having sex with her is not so much out of love as it is a form of revolt against Big Brother (Orwell 133). If anything, it is almost Winston's desperate outcry/attempt to regain his sense of control over his life. Winston exemplifies that too much repression can result in violence. Likewise, he embodies the struggle to establish a sense of identity when one is repressed; in this case, his masculinity. (This is where I would like to subtly congratulate Sigmund Freud for his work in this topic, even though Civilization and Its Discontents was painstaking to get through).

1984 is a perfect example of what happens when masculinity, perhaps even human nature in general for that matter, becomes so repressed that it results in explosion. (Again, thanks Sigmund Freud). It is a story of a man trying to re-establish his masculinity, and the extent that people would go to in order to find themselves when their identities are jeopardized.

Works cited:
Eldredge, John. Wild At Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. 2001. Print.
Orwell, George. 1984. Ontario: Penguin Books, 2008. Print.

An Ordinary Day--- Mistakes included, and accepted

9:47 am. About 17 minutes later than I intended to get up. I should’ve gotten up the second I read the time, yet I stayed in bed anyways.

10:30 am: The time my family was supposed to attend church.We all took our time in the morning. We decided to go to a different church at 11.

11:09 am: We were late for church. My parents easily get upset when we’re late (although it happens frequently). We planned to go to a church in Cloverdale. We changed our minds and went to one in Langley.

“If we risk nothing, we gain nothing” read the description for this week’s Mass in the little red Sunday Missal. Well, that was something to think about.

12 pm: My family planned to go to IHOP for brunch.

Sometime after 12 pm at IHOP: There was a bit of a line up so we just looked at the menu while waiting to get seated. I wasn’t sure what I was craving. I planned to get this Cinna-Stack French toast thing.

After we got seated: We were given this “Holiday menu” that featured these exciting-sounding holiday-inspired pancakes. I glanced upon these “Pumpkin Praline Pancakes—I was instantly enticed. I had never heard of them before, let alone tried them. But they sounded delicious.

Ordering: I ordered them.

1 something: Our orders arrived. The pancakes were amazing.Good conversation with the family.
Approximately 2 pm: We came back home. I planned to start homework. I got distracted by Facebook and listening to music on YouTube.

2:30ish: I decided to start doing this post.

3:04pm: The time now. (As I wrote/am writing this)

In “Improv Wisdom”, Patricia Ryan Madson says that a mistake is usually a “result that we had not planned –something unexpected, an odd outcome or side journey, usually something new” (p.104). Between the time I woke up and the time that I’m writing this, a lot of “mistakes” happened. Somewere unplanned (waking up late), some were deliberate (choosing to stay in bed and take my time in the morning), and some just happened because they did(deciding to go to a different church). You can even say that my ordering of Pumpkin Praline pancakes was a mistake. Thank goodness they were fantastic. But my point is that despite whatever mistakes I made or were made today, I still ended up getting to this point where I am completely engrossed in doing my homework perfectly fine.

The value of this “eventual okay” is something that I’ve learned to appreciate because it reminds me that there is nothing so problematic that can occur that doesn’t have a solution. Moreover, it reminds me that it’s okay to not always be certain of an outcome, because we always learn something from taking chances. What if the Pumpkin Praline pancakes were gross? Well, at least I’d learn that they’re gross and I’d know not to order those again. Perhaps that means I probably shouldn’t try that particular flavour again. But it doesn’t mean that I should stop trying new flavours.

Making mistakes is inevitable. And I tend beat myself up for the ones I make, whether deliberate or accidental. But what I’m learning to accept is that since they are inevitable, we might as well choose to be happy anyways and do the best we can to move on. We might mess up A LOT along the way. But maybe it’s that balance of mistakes and lessons that makes life awesome.

Late night ramblings about dance and life

Tonight was one of those nights where you do the most random assortment of things (whether productive or unnecessary) and at the end of it, realize that you've stayed up late enough to be the only one awake in your house. Then you find yourself alone with only the silence of your home, and the restlessness of your thoughts. Consequently, you can't sleep because your mind won't rest. And I am currently wide awake. Since I was up, I decided that I was going to write about these restless thoughts.

About two years ago, my relationship with dance was just as much a struggle in self-acceptance as it was a lesson in perseverance. I was very focused on learning to be confident in myself in spite of whatever skill level I was at, and trying my best to keep doing my best even if I wasn't where I wanted to be yet.

Two years later... I'm STILL working on trying to be confident in myself as a dancer/person, while still trying my hardest to do my best no matter how badly I wish I was where I want to be. But where do I really want to be?

I've literally been praying pretty much my entire dance life to be where I am now--to take virtually every technique class that my studio offers, to dance at Worlds, to teach a huge class, to be so extremely passionate to learn even though I can't always get choreo. Where I am now is exactly where I wanted to be when I started getting really into dance. Yet I still find myself so easily dissatisfied with my progress. Hmmmm.

But you know guys, maybe that's life. We're going to want things, and if we want them badly enough, we're going to work for them. And then we're going to be so caught in up wanting those things, that grade, that person and that opportunity, that we're probably not even going to know when we're there or when we have what we want. Maybe we already have what we want. We have a chance to live, a chance to learn from yesterday, and a chance to find out what living life full out means. We have TODAY.

Maybe I don't have the skill set of a seasoned choreographer, but I can still move. Maybe I haven't had the opportunity to teach somewhere prestigious and totally new to me, but I have my students, and I try to do the best I can to help them grow. Maybe my musicality isn't as good as I wish it was, but I still cherish music. Maybe I can't always take class in Vancouver or Burnaby, but I have my home studio and my whole family (dance and real life) there to support me. Maybe I'll come to a point where I'll be so tired that I just want to give up-- but I know I love dancing anyways. And it's love for anything or anyone that'll see us through.

I'm nowhere near to having this not-giving-up thing figured out. But I'm learning, as we all are, and I write these things in the hopes that you'll remember that you're not alone because we're all on this journey together. Perhaps we won't end up where we want to end up; maybe we'll end up somewhere better. Either way, we can't get there if we don't start here. All that matters is that we just keep going, and that we forgive ourselves for being human as we go on.

PS and Note to Self: Today is a good day to be thankful for how far we've come :)

To God be all the glory!

So what do we REALLY want?

Question: For both (or either) Adam Curtis and Sigmund Freud, is it possible to be happy? Why?

I have always been a firm believer that happiness is a choice. I have also been a big believer in the fact that although we don't always have control over our circumstances, we have control over our attitude towards them and ultimately, control over our own happiness and unhappiness. However, watching Adam Curtis' depiction of humans as "happiness machines" and reading Freud's strong sentiments regarding civilization and our many discontents does make me think. Is it possible to be truly happy? Why or why not? To some degree, I don't think that Curtis and Freud find it possible to be happy. Or at least, not for long.

Both Curtis and Freud emphasized that humans are driven by the "pleasure principle". We want to do things that'll make us happy. And we want to avoid all situations that'll make us unhappy. And it's very true. For example, if we buy a burger (random example) that we've been craving for a while, we're happy. But let's say we wanted to buy a milkshake to go along with that. If we didn't have enough money to afford it, we can't deny that we'd probably experience a slight feeling of dejection or sadness. Perhaps this isn't a very good example. Ultimately, their point is that in spite of how much happiness we "attain", there will always be some reason why we will find ourselves unhappy.

Freud says that one of the biggest reasons why we find ourselves "discontent" are because of the rules and regulations instilled by society. For example, we can't totally satisfy our sexual desires all the time because there are many reasons as to why it could be dangerous and it could also make us look like animals. And as people, we do fear looking bad to others, and it does make us unhappy. Also, if someone did something to upset us, it is frowned upon to justify it through violence. No matter how much resentment or anger we might feel, we are discouraged to act upon those feelings because it is wrong. Does that make it right? Does that mean we are truly unhappy because we can't act upon these instinctual feelings? Maybe what Freud and Curtis mean is that we're not always going to be ecstatic, peppy human beings because we won't always get what we want. The question may not even be whether it is possible to be happy, but do we really know what we want? I don't even know if Freud and Curtis have the answer to that.

It's funny because I think the reason why Freud and Curtis think that we as human beings will never be happy (to some extent) is because there will never be a time when we will have exactly what we want. At the same time, I don't think we as people will ever know exactly what we want, other than to be happy.

I think that Freud and Curtis are realists in the sense that maybe they believe that happiness is shortlived. But I think it's too presumptuous to say that they don't believe it's possible at all.

Compliance: Abundance vs. Scarcity

Question: Do you think Socrates is a man who is willing to die for his personal and philosophical beliefs, or do you consider him to be 'playing' the martyr figure in the extreme sense? The former has connotations of personal conviction whereas the martyr-figure, in this instance, to quote a nearby dictionary (Apple's), is "a person who displays or exaggerates their discomfort or distress in order to obtain sympathy or admiration." Can we separate the two?

Upon reading this question, I found myself intrigued by Apple's dictionary of a martyr. As far as I was concerned, and according to the Webster's New Dictionary which was conveniently situated beside my computer, a martyr is "one who chooses to suffer or die for one's faith or principles". I believe that there is a fine line between being giving for the sake of giving and giving to receive. Taking my belief and both of these definitions into account, I strongly find Socrates to be a man who is willing to die for his personal and philosophical beliefs.

Socrates was a man who believed that an “unexamined life is not worth living” (45). He committed his whole life to interrogating people to filter out the truth in their statements as so to teach people to be wise, reasonable and just. He did this because he said that he was once given an oracle by Chaerephon, the god of Delphi, that he was the wisest of men. Trying to prove this to the poets, artisans, and politicians of Athens wasn’t beneficial to him since it jeopardized his relationship with the state. It wasn’t like Socrates benefited financially from these cross-examinations either because he lived in poverty even until the time of his death. He was also considered to be a corruptor of youth. “Corruptor of youth”… Ouch. If obtaining sympathy or admiration was the objective, Socrates clearly wasn’t successful.

Socrates also recognized that his ideas to promote justice didn’t always sit well with the majority. According to Socrates himself, "There is no man who will preserve his life for long, either in Athens or elsewhere, if he firmly opposes the multitude, and tries to prevent the commission of much injustice and illegality in the state"(38). Knowing that his life was at stake while continuing to refute others for the sake of proving what is just exemplifies that Socrates valued the truth over other’s opinions of him. Furthermore, he valued the truth at the expense of his own life. What a guy.

 The biggest reason I believe that Socrates can be defined as someone convicted in his own beliefs even to the point of death is because of his eagerness to accept his verdict by the law. Socrates had the option to renounce his beliefs or even submit to exile, but he declined out of integrity. He even refused Crito’s offer to help him escape out of prison just prior to his execution. Although he knew that he wasn’t guilty of his charges, he accepted his fate with understanding; understanding that he must always stand by what is just and that perhaps the gods had a better plan for him in the after-life.

Socrates remained an advocate of justice and true wisdom until the last seconds and at the expense of his life. He was the kind of man that expressed no discomfort or distress and sought no consolation in saying that “to fear death… is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know” (35).

AdeNINE

Our first performance!! I love my girls :)

Where else can I go?

<3