This tweet got me thinking about “male socialization.” School for me was learning to experience the pecking order, which I was usually at the bottom of. I felt bullied and excluded constantly. As a boy who was more interested in listening to classical music than playing football, I was picked on, which often made me burst into tears, which of course only got me picked on more. There were years I didn’t really have a single friend.
I never wanted to be the weirdo, but I eventually accepted that as the only social role I was allowed to inhabit. I certainly would always rather be the weirdo than the bully, and I was not interested in pretending to like football just to try to fit in. In my era in the Midwest, there were no openly gay or trans kids in high school. I got called the slurs just for wearing a paisley shirt.
A friend recently asked me if it was weird for me to hang out in a big group of queer people. And I tried to explain why I feel more at home there. I don’t feel right trying to place any claim on the label of “queer,” having been married to my wife for over 25 years. But the weirdos at the bottom of the pecking order have always been my people. The typical male gender expression is bullshit. I feel at home in a skirt (I don’t care if you call it a kilt or not).
The pecking order taught me a lot about who I didn’t want to be, and about the sort of people I belong with. It’s probably at the root of why I have trouble trusting people, why I always expect disaster, why I jump to defensiveness and anger so immediately when I feel vulnerable. The pecking order (which encompasses both male and female socialization in our culture) scarred me in ways I’m still recovering from. And it damaged the people at the top of the pecking order in other ways–in worse ways, I think.
So I do feel that strange ambivalence of having pride in being a weirdo, in surviving those years as an outsider, while hating the system that creates weirdos in the first place. No one should have to go through that. The pecking order should never even be a thing. But sometimes it feels hard to define myself without it.
Growing up my buddies and I frequently played football on the playground at the elementary school. While there was probably some trash talk, the person getting tackled was usually laughing. It was a football version of “Sandlot.” In junior high, eighth grade was the first year we could play tackle football with pads. Even though we had “practiced” for years, we had no idea what we were doing in our helmet and pads. In a drill, I was running with the ball and I ran into the linebacker, Scott, an acquaintance of mine. Right before I ran into him, I slowed down, and lowered my helmet. As Scott fell back gasping for air, the coach yelled, “why did you slow down Johnson? Don’t be a pussy.”
My first thought: “I hope Scott is OK.”
My second thought: “Did my science teacher just call me a pussy?”
My third thought: “What the hell am I doing out here?”