Men like me

I was just reading, on the recommendation of Mu Ling at The Pavilion, the blog of Hiromi X. Both blogs are written by women unafraid to tackle personal issues that cut to the heart of who they are. It had been my intent initially to attempt something similar here, and yet...

And yet, I've found a couple of things inhibit me.

First is the old gendered, stereotyped characterization of this sort of soul-baring; that it's unmanly, somehow marked as unmistakeably and disagreeably feminine, and that any man who would engage in such an activity is similarly, well, you know... That this should carry any weight with me at all surprises me, having grown up in the era of feminism and having fought battles and carried scars about just such expectations since I was around 10 or 11.

In fact, my depression, social anxiety and a whole host of other problems probably have root in the social dynamics (or, he thinks, ever the careful social scientist, may themselves have caused the dynamics - one musn't get the causation backwards when all we really know is correlation) surrounding the expectations of maleness. I entered junior high school in 1974, about the high point for the ERA-era (sorry) of feminism, when all sorts of gender stereotypes were coming into question. I heard phrases like "male chauvinist pigs" and the like a lot back then, and I didn't want to be one. Anyway, my point is that this sort of self-examination, despite Socratic admonitions regarding the unexamined life, seems culturally typed as feminine.

Second, I note that men rarely comment on each other's blogs of these sorts. Instead, those of us who do it at all seem to have our own cadre of what might uncharitably be called 'blog hags', a group of women who are supportive and read the blogs, comment on them, etc. Maybe plenty of men read them, but to actually interact with the writer, well, that seems to cross into a sphere of intimacy and connection that is, again, gender-typed and inappropriate. How this came up is that I was reading Hiromi's blog and in addition to all the other reactions I had to it, I was just kind of jealous of the support she gets from other women to her experiences. I wish men would do that for each other, too.

Third, now that the anonymity of this blog has been destroyed by my ex, I wonder still about the utility of it. I really valued that aspect of it. Of course, I could just post whatever the hell I want to now that the relationship is over and damn the consequences, but I've already self-censored two posts concerning her for various reasons, on the assumption that she'll occasionally check back in on this blog. I'm pissed at myself for doing that, and of course still angry with her for having so fundamenatally violated my boundaries in this way (she talked a lot about her boundaries and my failures in respecting them, yet seemed unable to recognize mine and her own depredations against them).

Fourth, I notice that my posts veer wildly in tone and focus, making me wonder what exactly it is that I'm doing - the changes in writerly voice seem indicative to me of....something. The blogs of women like Mu Ling and Hiromi seem much more consistent. This could just be doubts about my own authenticity, borne of an early immersion into the preoccupations of existentialism (hey, it was the only philosophy available in libraries and bookstores in small, conservative Southern Californian towns in the mid-late '70s).

So that's it. After a start filled with promise (uncensored exploration of the area where my sexual history intersected with my self-image and depression, and in particular with my issues surrounding attachment), I come to this point, wondering whether I've realized that the goal was either beyond me, poorly conceived, too socially proscribed, or...