Originally authored 4th August 2009
It worked; it did hurt. I can't pretend it didn't.
So what is this? Why does it matter to her who walks down the street with whom and holds their hand? Perhaps she is a fruit with not enough fibre in her diet and she's backed up? Whatever the reason, it calls into question a very simple idea: respect.
You don't have to like me; you don't have to agree with me; shit, you don't even have to talk to me, but how about a little respect? And if that is so difficult, try just minding your own business and not be so reckless in tearing others down with your judgements.
You see, for me, when the Federal Government carries on every government's legacy before it of not recognising same sex relationships, they are doing two things: one: they are telling me and everyone else that my relationship with my partner can NOT be considered as meaningful as one where the partners are of opposite sex.
And two: they give to those people in the community that agree with them tacit endorsement to mock, humiliate or ridicule my affection for my partner in public when I hold his hand.
When a man and a woman walk down the street holding hands, they are ignored, unimportant, insignificant. The nature of their relationship is also not assumed. They could be brother and sister, father and daughter, cousins, friends.
When a woman and a woman walk down the street, they are given cursory curious looks (oh well, they might be sisters or good friends!)
When a man and another man walk down the street holding hands, they are the wonderment of those they pass. derision, shock, surprise, disgust, revulsion, horror, contempt are some of the looks conveyed. How many male friends take each others hands as a mark of close friendship or even family members?
Well guess what? I want to be ignored and unimportant. I want the fact that I am holding another human being's hand to NOT MATTER.
Before we get to having our relationships recognised, perhaps we need to have our love for each other made visible? I don't mean out of control snogging, I just mean holding hands. Something so inoffensive, so simple, yet such a measure of the esteem and love you feel for someone special in your life.
Sadly, there are places where the mere action of taking my boyfriend's hand in public is so threatening that it is actually dangerous and one runs the risk of being verbally or physically assaulted for doing nothing but holding hands. So, we don't. Even though we might want to.
When you're straight, you never have to think about it; wherever you are.
I want to know why in our western Anglo-Saxon culture, we as teenagers, stop holding our father's hand. We stop any physical affection for our fathers around puberty; presumably because the blossoming of male energy in our children maybe misunderstood, and further it raises a false notion that affection between males is a show of weakness. Steve Biddulph in his book, Manhood, wrote that by demeaning or oppressing homosexuality we oppress our masculinity and this is especially apt here.
What are men, any men, so afraid of? Why on earth would they want to be able to express themselves ably to each other so that they might also form strong powerful and meaningful connections with women? Given the success rate of marriage (as an institution meaning to unite a man or woman, not a marriage of convenience or a marriage of ingredients or any other possible mixture of the word marriage); and given the high rate of alcoholism and domestic violence, gambling addictions, infidelity, and on and on; one might imagine that someone might stop and say: "I think things aren't really working the way they are and perhaps we need to take a good, hard, long look at how we raise and cultivate our men."
But we don't. We target the symptoms listed above and undertake stinging rebukes upon the men in our lives that have failed us or let us down. Yes, they have. But they have been singularly let down by a culture that gives them such false pretenses about how to be a strong, yet compassionate human being.
Matthew Fox is a theologian based on the west coast of the USA. A heterosexual, he has been ex-communicated from the Catholic Church because of his views on spirituality generally, but even more so, because of his notions of masculinity & sexuality. In his work: The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, he takes us on a journey to a more traditional notion of male strength and compassion; one that allows for the gamut of human emotion and not some contrived, put upon, dressed up notion of what it means to be a true blue aussie male. Or any male for that matter.
The interesting thing is that gay men are just as lost. For those unaware of some of the courting rituals of the modern gay male, one only needs to avail oneself of the internet and there you will discover a cornucopia of copulating possibility. Found all too frequently among these portals are descriptors such as "straight acting", "no fems", "girlie types move on" - usually accompanied by the disclaimer "no offense."
None taken.
The sad thing is that these poor deluded souls are engaged in a game of their own diminishment. We have carved such a powerful cultural idea of what being masculine really means, that it has been incorporated into what it can often mean to be sexually attractive for two men.
Does anyone see the irony in this? The very cultural norm that sets us up as victims of rampant persecution, also is the very cultural asset we, as gay men are trying to invest our souls into to ensure we uphold these created cultural assets, endorse them, and frame them as being right and proper.
100 years ago at the crossroads of the Victorian and Edwardian eras we were still a frigid society that frowned utterly on public displays of affection, usually being considered as in poor taste rather than any crime against civil society.
In 1950, photographer Robert Doisneau (1912-1994), captured a couple kissing on the street in Paris. The work is famous and has been replicated all over the world, but for its time it was wildly provocative and represented the new era of liberation and freedom found in post war Europe.
Since the 50s the world has undergone some profound social shifts. Today, same sex couples are at a precipice where the valley of acceptance and respect swirl beneath them in a deep haze of fear, loathing, religion, politics, courage and pride.
Change will come. It is as inevitable as tides (or princes). But perhaps, in seeking that change there needs to be a broader invitation sent up to all males in our society to see the fact that two men who are attracted to each other are not a threat, but a window to our own connection to compassion. Compassion for others and even more so, for ourselves; a lesson in how we see ourselves as men, how we relate to ourselves, how we relate to each other and then how do we relate to our wives, boyfriends, sisters, children, girlfriends, mates.
The biggest part of this answer lies not in Government approval of how you relate to another and whether the State can rubber stamp it, the biggest part of this actually relates to your relationship with self. The way you create the space to love yourself first, above all else, and in so doing emanate that love as compassion towards others.
Will i stop holding my boyfriend's hand? No. Will i continue to consider where i do this? Yes.
Should i have to?
THIS SUNDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2009, HEAR
Jeff and hosts
Susie Bonham-Craig & Craig Hannas will meet on the Wisdom Wide Open Radio Show and talk about the premises of this group: How do we heal generations of gender tensions? How do we heal the rifts? How do we soften male armor so that love has an easier time finding its way through? How do honor the divine feminine, and create the conditions where women everywhere can feel safe enough to honor their dreams and live fully from their hearts? What would accountability circles look like, where men are owning their past actions, and where women have a chance to give voice to their pain? What would a gender bridge look like- a bridge where both genders meet heartfully in the middle, where our focus is on our soulshaping journey first and foremost, rather than divisive considerations?
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/WisdomWideOpen
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