Masculinity on a College Campus
As I said in last week's blog entry, I bailed on the college-bound path that was expected of me and opted for vo-tech training and then attempted to live as an auto mechanic. I was a virgin as my high school days came to an end, and wanting a girlfriend (and some sex in my life) was a high priority for me. The blue-collar version of masculinity had a strong appeal: that it was about being good at what you do and being confident in it, of doing as you please and not being subservient to people in order to get along and be promoted, and that the appeal to women seemed to be rooted in who you were, not your social status and earning power.
But my blue-collar aspirations did not work out. I wasn't good enough or fast enough to get and hold a job in a garage that would pay me well enough for me to be self-supporting. So I let my parents talk me into pursuing a college degree after all.
By now I was 20, and still a virgin and if anything even more obsessed with wanting a real adult sexual relationship. But as the semester began, I tried to keep things light and playful, not wanting to come across as desperate.
Some things were immediately better in this environment: the college students were a lot more sophisticated about sex and sexuality, and there was far less hostility, less expression of a judgmental attitude about being feminine. And it was a mixed-sex environment, so there were women in my classes, women living in my dormitory building, women attending university events and using university facilities, many more opportunities to meet someone.
It all looked very promising but I hit some snags almost immediately. First off, while trying to approach dating and flirting in an easy and breezy nonchalant manner might have been a good idea in many ways, I discovered (or rediscovered) that casual sex and playful flirting and all that lightweight nonserious stuff was more polarized by gender than the soul-baring serious conversational approach - boys act one way, girls act a different way; the behavior of a person means this if he's a boy, but it means that if she's a girl. So much of the effortless casual lightness came from playing the roles and using the script, so that no one had to explain what they want or how they want it. I'd always hated the boy-role stuff, with all the assumptions that come with it, but there didn't seem to be any obvious way to be all suave and smooth and laid-back about sex and wanting a girlfriend without playing into those role scripts.
It didn't help that I had a pretty bad confidence problem. I didn't really understand how other guys experienced it, but the popular legend about how it is for guys, the "narrative", if you will, sort of portrays males growing up and at a certain age they become attracted to girls and as soon as that happens they start trying to act on it, to start fooling around and making out in ways that put them on the road to full-blown sex happening.
I couldn't relate to that: I had been sexually attracted to girls all along, as far back as I could remember, definitely way before I understood that these were sexual feelings and that it wasn't weird or unusual to have them, definitely way back before I knew a damn thing about sexual appetite and sexual pleasure, back at the age when all the adults have told you about is how babies get made, an explanation that never included how it feels to have such a fascination with the delicious shapes of someone else's body, including (to be blatant and coarse about it) a fascination for the delicious shapes of their private parts, what they have inside their underwear. So instead of it being like immediately upon starting to find girls sexy and cute a boy starts trying to make sex happen, my narrative was about not letting on to anyone for years and years that I had such feelings. Because although I didn't feel like they were bad or harmful, I was sure I'd be mocked and teased pretty awful if anyone knew. I'd be branded a pervert, for sure!
So along comes that "certain age" when behaving as a sexual creature is expected of you, you know, when you're a teenager, and I was still pretty self-conscous about sexual feelings. I could share with someone special, someone I could trust to be understanding, that yes I had those feelings, but here in particular I did not want to be treated and regarded as a generic boy, boys were so filthy and crude about it and seemed completely without that kind of secretive self-consciousness, how did they get that way? How was it that they hadn't been hiding their sexual feelings all through elementary school or, if they had been as I had been, how could they not be shy about it now?
The university environment was a lot more accepting of people's differences. It seemed like it ought to be an okay place for someone like me, a place with more space for variations. What happened was that other students, casual friends and acquaintances and roommates and their friends and all, would drop in little innuendos. Insinuations. Jokes. Double entendres. Oh yes, college students are a lot more sophisticated. Instead of bringing up my femininity to make an issue of it with contempt and disparaging hostility, they invoked it with a wink and a quip, letting me know that they knew.
Oh, sometimes people said things more openly. "You know, you'll find people are ready to accept you as soon as you accept yourself". And "Frankly, I've always thought the most liberated person is the one who can see anyone as a sexual possibility". And "I know a lot of people who are out now. I think it's cool". It seemed to me that they meant well. They were a lot less snarky about it than the ones doing their clever little insinuendos and raising their eyebrows at each other about me. But they didn't make me any more comfortable.
Masculinity in the college setting was still written around the notion that men have the responsibility for making sex happen. That women don't start stuff. Or if they do, everyone laughs at them, mocks them, makes insinuations about them. Which is a big part of why they don't. When the college folks laugh, the laughing is different than how the blue-collar guys laugh at such things. The guys in the garage would use words like "slut" or tell contempt-laden jokes about what so-and-so did to her because she invited it so openly. The college students would relate a similar tale of a wanton woman and end it with a pretend-embarrassed "well, so, that was interesting, we hadn't been expecting that", and everyone chuckles knowingly.
A few months' worth of all this-with the picking at me to come out and accept myself, while internally I was feeling trapped and isolated-set the stage for what happened next.
--------
I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
But my blue-collar aspirations did not work out. I wasn't good enough or fast enough to get and hold a job in a garage that would pay me well enough for me to be self-supporting. So I let my parents talk me into pursuing a college degree after all.
By now I was 20, and still a virgin and if anything even more obsessed with wanting a real adult sexual relationship. But as the semester began, I tried to keep things light and playful, not wanting to come across as desperate.
Some things were immediately better in this environment: the college students were a lot more sophisticated about sex and sexuality, and there was far less hostility, less expression of a judgmental attitude about being feminine. And it was a mixed-sex environment, so there were women in my classes, women living in my dormitory building, women attending university events and using university facilities, many more opportunities to meet someone.
It all looked very promising but I hit some snags almost immediately. First off, while trying to approach dating and flirting in an easy and breezy nonchalant manner might have been a good idea in many ways, I discovered (or rediscovered) that casual sex and playful flirting and all that lightweight nonserious stuff was more polarized by gender than the soul-baring serious conversational approach - boys act one way, girls act a different way; the behavior of a person means this if he's a boy, but it means that if she's a girl. So much of the effortless casual lightness came from playing the roles and using the script, so that no one had to explain what they want or how they want it. I'd always hated the boy-role stuff, with all the assumptions that come with it, but there didn't seem to be any obvious way to be all suave and smooth and laid-back about sex and wanting a girlfriend without playing into those role scripts.
It didn't help that I had a pretty bad confidence problem. I didn't really understand how other guys experienced it, but the popular legend about how it is for guys, the "narrative", if you will, sort of portrays males growing up and at a certain age they become attracted to girls and as soon as that happens they start trying to act on it, to start fooling around and making out in ways that put them on the road to full-blown sex happening.
I couldn't relate to that: I had been sexually attracted to girls all along, as far back as I could remember, definitely way before I understood that these were sexual feelings and that it wasn't weird or unusual to have them, definitely way back before I knew a damn thing about sexual appetite and sexual pleasure, back at the age when all the adults have told you about is how babies get made, an explanation that never included how it feels to have such a fascination with the delicious shapes of someone else's body, including (to be blatant and coarse about it) a fascination for the delicious shapes of their private parts, what they have inside their underwear. So instead of it being like immediately upon starting to find girls sexy and cute a boy starts trying to make sex happen, my narrative was about not letting on to anyone for years and years that I had such feelings. Because although I didn't feel like they were bad or harmful, I was sure I'd be mocked and teased pretty awful if anyone knew. I'd be branded a pervert, for sure!
So along comes that "certain age" when behaving as a sexual creature is expected of you, you know, when you're a teenager, and I was still pretty self-conscous about sexual feelings. I could share with someone special, someone I could trust to be understanding, that yes I had those feelings, but here in particular I did not want to be treated and regarded as a generic boy, boys were so filthy and crude about it and seemed completely without that kind of secretive self-consciousness, how did they get that way? How was it that they hadn't been hiding their sexual feelings all through elementary school or, if they had been as I had been, how could they not be shy about it now?
The university environment was a lot more accepting of people's differences. It seemed like it ought to be an okay place for someone like me, a place with more space for variations. What happened was that other students, casual friends and acquaintances and roommates and their friends and all, would drop in little innuendos. Insinuations. Jokes. Double entendres. Oh yes, college students are a lot more sophisticated. Instead of bringing up my femininity to make an issue of it with contempt and disparaging hostility, they invoked it with a wink and a quip, letting me know that they knew.
Oh, sometimes people said things more openly. "You know, you'll find people are ready to accept you as soon as you accept yourself". And "Frankly, I've always thought the most liberated person is the one who can see anyone as a sexual possibility". And "I know a lot of people who are out now. I think it's cool". It seemed to me that they meant well. They were a lot less snarky about it than the ones doing their clever little insinuendos and raising their eyebrows at each other about me. But they didn't make me any more comfortable.
Masculinity in the college setting was still written around the notion that men have the responsibility for making sex happen. That women don't start stuff. Or if they do, everyone laughs at them, mocks them, makes insinuations about them. Which is a big part of why they don't. When the college folks laugh, the laughing is different than how the blue-collar guys laugh at such things. The guys in the garage would use words like "slut" or tell contempt-laden jokes about what so-and-so did to her because she invited it so openly. The college students would relate a similar tale of a wanton woman and end it with a pretend-embarrassed "well, so, that was interesting, we hadn't been expecting that", and everyone chuckles knowingly.
A few months' worth of all this-with the picking at me to come out and accept myself, while internally I was feeling trapped and isolated-set the stage for what happened next.
--------
I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts