When You're a Man
One day when I was in a bad neighborhood of Minneapolis, I
overheard a young urban youth - maybe fourteen or fifteen -
trying to pick up on girls. None of them seemed to want to give
him the time of day and in frustration he yelled: "Hey, I'm a
man. I've been to jail."
Whoa. It made me think, that one did. Could it true that in some
sub-cultures incarceration is considered a rite of passage into
manhood, rather than a blot on your character? This young boy
obviously thought so and he probably wasn't the only one who
did, either. I'd suppose it's like a test of sorts. If you can
survive that type of environment you're tough, and therefore a
man. To my mind, though - not. Most people do, in fact, survive
- perhaps not very well, but they do. And who says it makes you
a man? Being in the gentle custody of the corrections system
means you're a criminal (or suspected) and it also means you're
lousy at it because you go caught. Does being a lousy criminal
equate with masculinity?
That's the problem with being a man in America. There's no one
ritual or test that means you've crossed that magical line into
adult-hood. We have any number of informal yardsticks, for sure.
For instance, if you manage to talk your way into some teen-age
girl's pants that's widely thought to mean you've grown.
Although, again, I would tend to disagree since there are no
real manly skills - other than lying - that are required to seal
the deal.
Around where I live hunting is the big thing. When you're old
enough to be trusted out in the woods with your own shotgun,
then you're one of the guys. After your first kill somebody,
probably your father, will take some of the blood from the dead
animal you just created and they rub it on your face. You're
'blooded'. Not everybody subscribes to that ritual, but a whole
bunch do.
For me it was Navy Boot Camp. Getting through that and then
being fully qualified to defend my country was quite an
accomplishment. It just would have been nicer if there weren't
so much explicit homo-eroticism in the experience. Like in the
chow line the company commanders would scrunch you together so
the line would be shorter and they would do this by yelling:
"Nut to Butt! Nut to Butt! Make the man in front of you smile!"
Now, what exactly did they mean by that? How was I supposed to
make the man in front of me smile ... unless they meant ... No!
Not the Navy!
In other cultures they have very well-defined manhood rituals.
When you're a certain age the village elders will kidnap you and
the other pre-man boys and then they take you into the jungle in
the middle of the night, dance around with big scary masks and
throw mangoes at you. Or whatever makes sense to them, because
what happens isn't so important as the fact that it does and
everybody knows what it means.
This is what our country really needs. We need one clear manhood
ritual at a clear certain time in a boy's life and everybody
should subscribe to it. That way guys wouldn't have to commit
crimes so they could go to jail to prove themselves, or be
smeared with raccoon blood by their dads, or even join the Navy.
I imagine the American Manhood Ritual would involve reciting
sports statistics while lighting farts on fire or peeing on
trees or something like that. The details don't matter so much
as we all agree on it and do it, and once you're done with it,
then you are a man.