American “Manhood”
I am around a half-century old, and as such, was probably in the last cadre of Americans saddled with the notions of American manhood that would have been recognizable to DH Lawrence:
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.
I have come to realize that the notions of what constituted “masculinity” that I was raised on and which I absorbed from a million TV westerns and adventure shows was a fraud, and a terribly destructive one.
I have done too much in my life in a fruitless attempt to live up to a species of manhood modeled in a million ways in my youth – I hunt deer, drink scotch, volunteered for the US Army in my youth like all the generations of men in my family did, and so on.
I got a hint that what I was searching for was an illusion during my tour in the Army.
When I was fresh out of basic, I had a Sergeant I’ll call Sergeant Williams, who had been in Vietnam. I was telling him one day about my eagerness to see action and so on (I was an especially clueless human being when I was young.)
He looked at me a moment and then said, “Let me tell you a story.”
He then told me a story from when he had been a freshly minted private from boot camp, and out on a patrol in the boonies in Vietnam.
His unit took fire from a treeline, and a couple guys were hit. Amid the noise of the firefight, his lieutenant came to him, handed him the radio, and said, “we have fast-movers [an air strike] coming in – talk them in.”
Williams marked their position with smoke, and guided the planes in…and they dropped napalm on that treeline. He then spent the next few minutes (minutes he would give anything to forget) listening to men about his age — just as scared as he was, loved by their mothers just as much — burning to death.
Because of him.
“That day gave me some idea of what Hell might be like” said Sgt. Williams, eyes fixed in the middle distance.
Clueless me said, “Yeah, Sarge, burning is a tough way to go…”
He looked at me sharply then, and, stabbing his finger into his chest, said: “No, Talbot. I’m talking about the way I felt that day.”
—–
John Wayne. John Wayne. John Fucking Wayne.
But the thing is, John Wayne himself couldn’t live up to his own image – he smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day, and pounded down enough scotch to put a bison into a coma. He couldn’t do it either. John Wayne himself couldn’t be John Wayne.
I think there are a million ruined livers from men trying to live up to The Myth. I think there are a million ruined lives from men trying to live up to The Myth.
Not to mention veterans sitting in a circle with paper cups of coffee, struggling to come to terms with doing what their country told them to do – learning too late that war is not romantic and good-affirming, but rather ugly, inhuman, and death in its essence.
Not to mention the soldiers who never got to sit in those circles because they are present now only in the folded flags and the abiding grief of their parents and friends.
Well, I’m done with that. No more.
That mythic American manhood doesn’t really exist. It never did.
My God, but I’m tired of chasing ghosts.
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Good piece Matt. My spiritual director in seminary always told me: viriliter age in christo semper. Words to live by for a Catholic man in the world…especially in the USA.
Thanks Padre – could you translate the latin for the language impaired among us? :)
and act manfully, ever in Christ would be the rough translation I always think of it as
Do everything in a manly way for Christ.
Thanks, Padre – and yes, there is much wisdom there, I think.
Matt,
Good post. Who would you hold up as a model for manhood, understood in a spiritually healthy way?
Great question, Kyle. Off the top of my head, I’d say John Paul II, Martin Luther King, maybe RFK, too.
Bobby gets it…definitely. We may have lost more when we lost him than when we lost Martin, and that was a huge loss.
Very salty piece Matt. VN needed a little manliness. nicely done.
I love that this is somehow a purely American myth. Not it any way practiced in ANY other nation or at ANY other time in history, eh?
Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t claim that then, isn’t it? ;)
I know other nations have their manhood myths. I am addressing the American mythos – the frontier, self-reliance, one-man-against-the-world, etc.
Well said Matt. The myth of American manhood you describe is just one iteration of a lie that has been afflicting men (and women) since the dawn of time, when the serpent said, “Eat this and you will be like gods.” Dueling over points of honor; “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”; honor killings; “whoever dies with the most toys, wins”; and on and on and on.
Things began to change a bit during my youth, just after the Vietnam era (I think we are of like ages). But the masculine ideal that evolved then is no better than what came before: the consumerism, the reflexive worship of violence, the misogyny combined with “liberated” sexuality: I have seen these as I try to raise my own teenage sons.
Regarding your story about boot camp, I am reminded of the fact that in my family, the men of the “greatest generation” who fought in WW II and Korea were in no hurry for their sons and nephews to fight. I think they saw enough to take the shine off, though not to make them challenge the myth completely. In particular, my Uncle Bill was an army engineer who told stories of burying Chinese casualties via bulldozer, privately told each of my older brothers that he would kick their butts if they volunteered for Vietnam.
Thanks David. I imagine trying to raise boys in the current environment is challenging indeed.
Excellent post Matt.
I also recall reading about John Wayne that a lot of actual marine corps combat vets had very little regard for the man. William Manchester wrote in an article I read years ago about how John Wayne showed up at a naval hospital ward and was booed and jeered by every wounded and maimed marine that were recovering there. The movie Sands of Iwo Jima brought him even more contempt; John Wayne wasn’t respected by actual combat vets. Ironically, when I went through the recruit training at Parris Island decades ago that movie was shown to us in a very edited form to get us “Motivated!” Just goes to show how much of that is fantasy. Clint Eastwood said the same thing about his “Dirty Harry Callahan” character, that it was only popular because it appealed to a young man’s fantasy.
I have 3 sons. The oldest is 16 and just starting to identify the man in himself.
I consider it a huge blessing that he is able and willing to loudly rebell against conforming to anyone else’s ideal of manhood.
Sam (the oldest) is really openly questioning what he can do or be that will make him not just a man, but a Good Man.
Hey Matt,
Are you acquainted at all with the Tucker Max phenomena?
Nope – who is he/what is it?
Okay, I googled him.
Yeesh.
If you’re going to sin, sin with the will, I guess.
I think he is the epitome of a culture that has forgotten wholly and completely what it means to be a man.
I am soooo glad that once I accepted being gay that I was able to get waaay beyond such “masculinity” nonsense. The strongest wrist in the world is a limp one! And you can quote me on that.
JM “I am soooo glad that once I accepted being gay that I was able to get waaay beyond such “masculinity” nonsense.”
Interesting. My sister & I have had discussions about this very thing. I think the only place where a guy can “easily” get outside the myth and rules is the gay world, no? I know there are rules and expectations, even in the gay world, but I think it is far more open to different expressions than the heterosexual male world. We have male straight friends who are so sensitive and there is really no place for them in the straight world, if you know what I mean. It is such a sad place for these types of guys who are labeled “effeminate.” One person I know is constantly called “gay” by everyone when he does not identify as such. I think it says a lot more about everyone than it does about him.
Good post, Matt.
Good piece Matt.
I remember thinking years ago how much John Wayne is truly America. It’s how we like to see ourselves. It’s our macho, rugged individualist, laconic, man of action myth. It’s truer than most people realize b/c just like John Wayne, he wasn’t his image neither is America hers.
The great tough-guy war hero of film never served in the military. Sound like any American leadership cohort of the last decade or more?
This piece needed to have been broadcast across the country after 9-11. Instead we had the drumbeats of war braggingly beat out by “chickenhawks” in Congress, the think tanks and their media lackeys. Almost to a man, none of these “tough guys” served a day overseas as a GI in a combat zone. From the top down with Bush & Cheney, to advisers like Richard Pearl and Paul Wolfowitz to the blowhards like Rush & O’Reilly preening hypocrites all.
I have to second JM; as a gay male often taken as female (I am very feminine in build and affect), I have been screamed at, threatened, and even physically attacked on the street, public transit, etc. And being in a Midwestern city, even among gays there is a lot of prejudice and insecurity about masculinity vs. femininity.
Ironically, the years of danger and abuse make you a much tougher, harder person. Yet as a gay person, people seem to expect you to be a lot more forgiving of their faults. It’s a tough balance, being enough of a scrapper to not take any shit, and then figuring out when it’s worth taking a little shit for the sake of compassion.
I actually remember an old therapist trying to “heal” my masculinity. Every description of manhood he provided was laced with violent imagery. It made me so angry I threw my ideas of manhood away for good — and actually went immediately to Mass, where I had a quiet (and helpful) conversation with God about my gender.
Anyway, thanks Matt. Straight or gay, Catholic in good standing or not, gender is a hard construct to live with. It’s not worth trying to be an imaginary person that everyone fails at; going about your daily life can be tough enough. I’m just trying to be a stronger, more compassionate, beautiful person, regardless of my apparent sex.
The currently prevailing mythic man is the man who likes to think he sees through all myths simply because he can talk about the subject. The “war’s hell, son” mythic man model is that adopted by all those men who spent far too much time with and under the influence of non-males growing up and who secretly think of themselves as cute, in the cuddly sense of the word. Give me a sodded John Wayne any day.
Give me a sodded John Wayne any day.
You can have him. I hope you’ll be happy together, but I have my doubts ;)
There is a part in the movie “Tootsie” in which Jessica Lange tells Dustin Hoffman (in drag as Dorthy Michaels) how refreshing it would be if a man just came up to her and said, “You know, I could lay a big line on you . . . etc. etc.” Then Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey comes up to Jessica Lange later and says pretty much word for word what Jessica Lange said she wanted to hear: “You know, I could lay a big line on you and we could do a lot of role-playing, but the simple truth is, is that I find you very interesting and I’d really like to make love to you.” And she hauls off and slaps him and stalks away.