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"Take It As a Man" by Underscored
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TAKE IT AS
A MAN
Antonio Cortez
Underscored
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CONTENT
INTRO: My contribution
MASCULINITY: Help! I'm a man!
- Male protocols with Antonio
THE BODY: Long Johns in July
- Male protocols with Antonio
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FRIENDSHIP:
- Male protocols with Antonio
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FEEL BAD: Find your own Susan
- Male protocols with Antonio
VIOLENCE: Not all men.. or?
- Male protocols
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:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
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-: I AM JUST
SO TIRED OF
QUIET MEN :-
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MY CONTRIBUTION
Women have always taken the biggest responsibility for equality, everyone's equal value and rights. Even today women are taking the feminist fight and are often required to yell to be able to claim their
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rights. Maybe not like before with posters on streets, but on Twitter and in the comments on Facebook-posts. Then what does the men do at the same time? Some of them are supportive and want to same things, and some people claim that women are wrong, but
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the majority are quiet. They don't say anything. They let it be as it is and let it be as it will be. That's what I am so tired of. I am tired of quiet men. I am so tired of being a quiet man. As long as we humans has been on this planet men has always
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been in charge. There is men who, in 2019, is sitting in the White House in Washington and decides if woman's bodies and if they should have to right for abortion or not. It's men who has voted through a law where beating your wife makes it legal in
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Russia. It's men who are the reason for the high number of rape in Sweden. It's all men. Why? I think that there's alot of theories and explanations, but I think that a part of the answer lies in how we grow up in a society where we learn boys not to cry,
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be unaffected, and does not have any needs to talk of show emotions. We learn that a man is a person who should take care of himself and be strong and know everything. But.. no. He, she, or it, it doesn't matter. We are all humans. We think and feel and
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have a need to express ourselves. And a person who can't show their emotions or talk about them probaly express it in other ways, not in a good way. For example through violence.
TAKE
RESPONSIBILITY
I don't want to be a part of this.
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I don't want to feel one thing, and show another. I don't want to pretend to be strong when I am weak, say that "everything is fine" when there's a war going on inside of me or assume that I know everything when in fact I am f*cking lost. That's why I, we
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need to work to change what it's like being a man. We men and boys needs to gather knowledge and take responsibility. We have to get the courage to show our true feelings and talk about our own experiences to together be able to change the norms
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who does not only harm our society, but also ourselves.
This is my contribution. I want to talk about my experiences, how crazy they may be. I want to show my feelings and thoughts, hoping to challenge the silence.
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:- I HATE SPORTS
AND I'M MORE
AFRAID OF
FIGHTS THAT
DEATH ITSELF :-
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HELP! I AM A MAN!
My name is Antonio. When I was 14 years old it hit me for real that I am a man. I of course already knew that since I had a male genital between my legs but I had never reflected about what a man really is. I filled one criteria,
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but no criteria for what a man is or should be. What even is a man?
According to Wikipedia:
A man is a male human. The term man is usually reserved for an adult male, with the term boy being the usual term for a male child or adolescent.
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However, the term man is also sometimes used to identidy a male human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "men's basketball".
OKAY WIKIPEDIA.
Then what are these "expectations" that belongs to being a man?
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SPORTS?
I hate sports!
VIOLENCE?
I'm more afraid of fights than death itself, so no.
BARBEQUE?
I have tried to do that once, one of my eyebrows disappeared when a flame blew up
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and my other eyebrow is begging that I should never grill again.
HANG OUT WITH OTHER MEN THEN?
Meh, I guess I don't have that much in common with other men?
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That's how my thoughts went when I, as a 14-year old discovered that I was a man. When I went through all of these preconceptions that I had about how men should be, I did not really fit in that, and that is what I had been trying to do
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during my whole life. I had simply enough been trying to live up to the male stereotype.
A SIMPLE DOUCHE
The worst part was probably in high school where the man-norms made it so all guys had to prove our masculinity
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for each other. During that time we talked very much about how a man is., and what is considered as "manly". And if someone was outside of that line, they got to know that pretty quickly, often by getting called gay.
Me and the other guys in the class
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tried to get each other to know who was the most bravest one, and the strongest one. Everything basically was about showing the other guys that you were manly and to get accepted by the othe guys.
I felt accepted when I got all the guys to
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to laugh at something I said or did, even if it was something bad. I also got a huge adrenaline-kick when we did something we were not allowed to do, for example to "go to the bathroom" during class and instead play table tennis. There was something
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awesome about the excitement, to do whatever we wanted to. We could do it, we were guys! At the same time it never felt right and I always regretted it after a while.
I took alot of space in class, and took every chance I could to make myself funny on
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someone else's cost and I did not show alot of respect either. I used the sentence "how gay" to express alot of feelings, and I was a simple douche.
I remember how I yelled "idiot" to my teacher in school. How I alot of times "joked" with my friend
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Jacob about his posture. I almost immediately thought to myself "if mom and dad would have seen this they would have been ashamed of me being their son".
I AM BREAKING
APART
I was really just a insecure guy with my grandma
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as my best friends with a big interest in singing. I was so afraid of being picked on for not being a :man:. I am just as ashamed now as then. Every sunday-night when I was falling asleep and wake up to a new week I thought for myself: from now and on I
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am going to stop being so annoying and talk so loud and just be myself. It went great!
The whole busride to school. When I arrived at school everything fell. As soon as I met a classmate I went back to the same role as before: the funny guy who took
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space with other funny and loud guys. When I think back I understand that it wasn't only the girls who had to step back and and share the small space left with the guys in the room.
WHAT IF I AM GAY?
I started to analyze myself and started to think
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of why I used to be the person I was in school. I remember things from my childhoos, I loved pop, I wanted a toy vacuumcleaner as my christmas gift, my best friend's name was Lisa and I never hung out with any of the other guys because they were so loud
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and annoying. I drew parallels between how I was a child and how I was as a 14-year old. Then it hit me.
IS IT REALLY.. CAN IT BE.. OH MY GOD.
YES. I. AM. GAY.
I'M GAY!
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Of course, I had to be gay! In the middle of this I got a notification on my phone. I got a message by the girl that I started to fall for. My thoughts stood still and I got warm and started to smile. It was late and I replied with a "good night", and
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told her that I liked her. I didn't understand anything. Then I got mad: how prejudiced I was. That my first thought was that I must be gay just becayse I'm not a stereotypical man. And that my spontaneous feeling about eventually being gay was sadness.
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Just because it was the worst thing that you could be growing up. After that I got aware about my middle-school mindset and could drop it and be a modern human again.
So, ok. About the fact that you are not a stereotypical "man" does not have anything to
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do with homosexuality. Then what is it about?
DO IT LIKE THE
CHILDREN
That night I shut off everything and went to sleep with the thought: "You are just tired, it will be over by tomorrow".
It was not over the next day. I woke up with
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the same thoughts as the night before. I reached for my phone to see if I had gotten a morning text from my crush. And I had, so I got up from bed, answered, and went to the bathroom. When I sat down the same thoughts popped up again. Exactly the same as
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yesterday.
IF I'M A MAN BUT DOESN'T ACT LIKE ONE. THEN WHAT AM I?
I started to question myself. When I used to watch my dad play soccer I for example thought that "It doesn't matter if you don't like to watch football. It's like vegetables, you'll
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learn when you get older". That's what I thought and that I never would like soccer. And maybe that's okay? It was like everything that I had believed when I was younger, my view of men, just ran out of my hands.
But there was not anything to replace
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that with. I didn't come that far with my thoughts yet. I was just lost and I felt unsuccessful.
GRANDMA
I had no appetite in the morning and I didn't know if I wanted to be alone or if I wanted company. So I did what I always used
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to do. I talked to my grandma.
I took my bike and on the way to my grandma, through the woods, I cried. I cried, screamed, and talked loudly. It was like crying in the shower, the tears just became a part of some more drops.
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I couldn't see where I belonged or who I would be if I wouldn't be like my father, grandpa, or my male friends. There was no one who I could identify myself with nor a place where I felt that I belonged.
When I arrived at my grandma's house
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nothing became better. I just looked at the food and slept most of the time, even though the sun was shining outside. If someone asked "how are you?" I would quickly respond with a "good, why?!".
Maybe not the best way to deal with a crisis on.
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OPEN UP
I realized that I had to get help. I did not want to open up to someone. I started to visit a man called Lars once a week and I just talked, and alked. You know when you have thought of something for a long time and then you're going to
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tell someone about it, but you get too excited and it comes out incohorent?
I have always thought of psychologists to be scary and not understand anything, but Lars was the exact opposite. He was cool, and calm. That made me calm. We started to talk about
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how different men are and that there is nothing wrong or right, just bad norms. That opened up new thoughts inside of me, that I didn't fit in the stereotypical man. And that is not my fault. It's the society's fault.
I was born with unique
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characteristics which I started to show as a child. I think that all men have tried to ignore their own will to fit in. Even though it's about pretending to strong when you're weak, not wanting to color your hair the color you want to, or give up your