On Masculinity, Gender & Letting Go
A photo/essay collaboration with Quebecois-Berber Photographer Sara Hini
Hi all! It’s been a minute, and there’s been a lot of changes. Like many, I needed a little respite from “content” and had to focus full tilt boogie on my mental health. During this time, I collaborated with Quebecois-Berber artist and photographer Sara Hini on a photoshoot exploring gender and masculinity. Posing for Sara opened up a lot within me, and she asked me to put my experiences into essay form.
The following essay is also available on Sara’s Patreon, where more extensive photos from our shoot much more of her work will be available for her paid subscribers. I am still processing much of what has unfolded internally from this experience, and I hope some of my experiences can spark dialogues with all of your loved ones.
I remember the first time I was told how to be a man. I was six-years-old and my cousin Sophie informed me, exasperated, that my legs crossed just so were “not how men are supposed to sit.” She reached down to me, and adjusted my crossed leg, placing it into a parallel position, rather than folded in an angular fashion. Not how women sit. I can distinctly recall a quick almost electric jolt of shame. I had made a mistake. I was wrong. I made a note to never ever cross my legs wrong again.
These gender binaries were subtly and sometimes forcibly patrolled and policed all throughout my childhood, by sports coaches, teachers, friends and elders. Even family.
Men don’t cry.
Women like men who take control.
You’re too sensitive.
Men don’t wear pink.
Faggot.
In middle school I was made fun of for the pitch of my voice before hitting puberty, or the lack of hair on my legs. My basketball coach routinely called all of our team”pussies” when we did not perform up to his standards. My teammates called me a faggot, because, well, I still don’t really know. Always, always, I was told that to be feminine--whether in dress, demeanor or just how you were born--was bad. I experienced it at school, in how I heard females in my life speak of their adoration of “alpha” males, of protectors, of big, brawny, authoritative men. To be anything but this mythical version of a man was tantamount to exile. You were simply undeserving of love.
And so, like many men, I turned to shame; shame that, despite my best efforts to uphold this mysteriously defined version of masculinity, I could not reach the peak. I was always falling short. I would never make it unless I learned to bend and mold myself into an acceptable form. It was the only means to survive.
“To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.”
-Bell Hooks, The Will To Change
I don’t remember when the shift began, but over time, with intense attention, I made myself into a homogenized self, a chameleon who could avoid the radar of public shaming. I wore mute colors. I cut my hair short. When I felt overtaken by life--whether through the awe of a sunset or the grief of heartbreak--I buried my tears. I hid my “sensitive” feelings behind a facade of smiles, of an easy-going demeanor and intellectual rationalization. At one point I recall not crying for over five years.
But what is buried and hidden also festers and grows. I carried my unexpressed grief, my sense of unworthiness under the spotlight of masculinity into my romantic relationships with women. I entered a creative career that gave me attention and a modicum of wealth, thinking it would soothe, and only found greater emptiness, and higher vaults to jump over in order to prove my worthiness. I lashed out at my partners during times of conflict, raised my voice, and often wielded anger thinking, in some convoluted way that, it demonstrated my masculinity, my prowess, my worthiness. Conflict was not a place to turn toward one another, but a battlefield, a place to hold my ground and defend. I knew that no matter how they said they loved me, they would inevitably find me out, discover my imposter masculinity and leave. So I struck before they could strike me.
In this devastation, when I would wear out my healthy connections with domination, what remained was depression; a depression that I nearly always hid from my male friends. How could I trust them to hold my grief with me if I did not trust them to accept me with grace, with nurturing? How could I trust them not to harm me for my failures, for my continued descent from masculinity?
I can’t write about this time of my life with total clarity, because much of it is a blurry haze of self-loathing. I envy those who can recall their past with a vivid recognition of the hues of a sunrise, or the touch of a loved one during hard times. I remember fragments and shards, mostly because I was rarely able to sit with myself in the present moment with attention. I was either digging into the past, or frantically projecting into the future, hoping I could transform into an acceptable man, someone who could be loved intrinsically, fearing it might never be possible.
There was no euphoric moment of realization that freed me from what I came to learn were the harsh and punishing definitions of gender. It has been a gradual evolution into acceptance, through conversations in anonymous support groups, therapy, journaling, friendships and community. In 2019, a man I knew for only ten minutes took me aside after a meeting and recommended Bell Hooks The Will to Change to me. I ordered it immediately and then left it by my bedside for months, intuitively sensing it might transform me, release me from shame, yet fearing what greater waves of shame it might unearth along the way.
When I did finally open the book, at the height of the early pandemic, I was simply gobsmacked. I highlighted and dog-eared nearly every page, cried many times, and threw the book across the room in the kind of shooketh terror when a stranger reads you your life, your mind, your fears, your insecurities and then, without asking, offers you a path toward absolution.
I had already begun to walk the path of making amends with those I had harmed in my life, but recognizing how we hurt others when unconscious of our own traumas does not bring immediate relief. It takes patience. Self-forgiveness, after so many years of internal punishment, feels almost like another impossible realm to reach.
As I rooted out how the conditioning of patriarchy had pummeled my spirit, I began dissecting how my gender presentation was formed in the first place. I made a (lengthy) list of all the times my gender was policed, thinking it might fill a few lines. I ran out of pages in my notebook. I cried again--wept, really--with the realization of how long (36 years) I’d been driven by a culture that was force-feeding me toxicity. Was it possible for me to discover the self that I had hidden in the shadows as a young boy? Had my sexuality, my clothes, my demeanor, been my own, or the product of a thousand razor cuts to the skin to keep me in place?
On the other hand, I suddenly found myself with a path to freedom. There was a way out. I had awakened to an entirely new set of possibilities, a sense of unknown that could, if I allowed it, unlock a world of discovery. But was I willing to walk through the door and find out?
When Sara first approached me about doing this shoot, my initial brain synapse told me “No no no no no no no fucking way!” But instead of indulging this old calcified and bitter internal voice, I said yes. I wanted to feel beautiful. I had wanted this in my life for a long time, longer than I could remember. I used to wear “women’s clothes” with my childhood friend, Jack, but had absolved myself of this pastime because cis-het boys didn’t do this, I believed, and because I knew if my secret emerged I would be irreparably damaged. Fuck no. I was done with this shame. I wanted it out and I was going to confront it with my eyes looking forward, my back arched and my pride just beaming. I deserved to feel beautiful.
Sara created an environment of collaboration and openness, and our dialogue before the shoot centered around gender presentation, and what it means to be “masculine” or “feminine.” She asked if I would paint my nails? I said yes. She asked if I would wear makeup? I said yes. She asked if I was comfortable wearing lingerie and being nude or nearly nude? I said yes.
Five years ago, I would have run to the hills at such an offer. But I had seen Sara’s work, seen how she allowed her subjects to unveil their beauty with trust and safety. And I wanted this for myself. I wanted to exalt in my form, lay in the sun, touch my own skin with adoration and appreciation, for all the years I had muted myself into a greyscale version of a human.
For most of the previous year, I had been writing the affirmation: “My creativity creates self-forgiveness” as a morning affirmation. Over and over; engraving it into my thoughts, into my cells, not knowing if it might ever take effect.
The night before our shoot, I remember crying, sharing with Sara the grief I felt letting go of this presented self. I was afraid I would not be accepted by my family, my peers. How would they react? And at the same time, I was letting go of approval within a toxic framework. My masculinity was my own to define, and those that truly loved me, would accept my presentation as a celebration. I cried again, but this time with a sense that I deserved to cry, that I deserved to feel my grief about an imagined, presented self, that I deserved to forgive myself.
Within these photos I see a version of myself that I know will only continue to evolve. All this time I believed that I had to open the door myself, that I had to walk alone, but Sara had one waiting for me to enter. I see the grief in my eyes in some images, and in others, I see the gradual dissolution of shame, transforming into a kind of ecstatic celebration. A celebration of my form being neither male or female, masculine or feminine.
While I long thought of myself as a cis-het male, I find myself opening to wider, far more fluid definitions of gender. Sara shared with me a term called “gender expansiveness,” a term used for “people who challenge cultural expectations regarding gender roles, identities, expressions or norms.” Working with Sara opened the door for me to walk through, and now I feel as though I am in a field of wildflowers, streams and birds. There, I am not asked to define myself, to give a definition of how I must be to satiate an antiquated and toxic paradigm. I get to be whomever I wish to be, however bright or loud or quiet or reserved, because these old definitions were imposed upon me. I did not choose them. And I hope to be choosing new ones for the rest of my life.
I am very excited to share this collaboration with writer and artist @philipeastman - He agreed to write a very vulnerable essay on his exploration of masculinity and gender to accompany this series I shot. I, myself, have been reflecting on the fluidity of my own sexuality very much lately and his writing resonates with me deeply. Here are some excerpts from his piece.
‘I remember the first time I was told how to be a man. I was six-years-old and my cousin Sophie informed me, exasperated, that my legs crossed just so were “not how men are supposed to sit.” She reached down to me, and adjusted my crossed leg, placing it into a parallel position, rather than folded in an angular fashion. Not how women sit. I can distinctly recall a quick almost electric jolt of shame. I had made a mistake. I was wrong. I made a note to never ever cross my legs wrong again.
Within these photos I see a version of myself that I know will only continue to evolve. All this time I believed that I had to open the door myself, that I had to walk alone, but Sara had one waiting for me to enter. I see the grief in my eyes in some images, and in others, I see the gradual dissolution of shame, transforming into a kind of ecstatic celebration. A celebration of my form being neither male or female, masculine or feminine.
While I long thought of myself as a cis-het male, I find myself opening to wider, far more fluid definitions of gender.
I feel as though I am in a field of wildflowers, streams and birds. There, I am not asked to define myself, to give a definition of how I must be to satiate an antiquated and toxic paradigm. I get to be whomever I wish to be, however bright or loud or quiet or reserved, because these old definitions were imposed upon me. I did not choose them. And I hope to be choosing new ones for the rest of my life.
Copyright: All Photos by Sara Hini, 2021