A (love) letter to mankind
“To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one’s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
CUT!
At 16, I resolutely marched to a hairdresser to pursue my newfound purpose: switch categories.
“I want my brother’s haircut” I announced with unusual confidence. The hairdresser opened his eyes wide and nervously shook his head… as if I’d asked him to stab a puppy. “What? What do you mean?”
“I want it short, like a bowl cut… like my brother’s”
There were two ladies, brimming with silky feminity on neighboring chairs, looking nervously at us. They whined and shrieked with compassion every time the scissors snipped and long locks of my hair landed on the tiles.
Granted, it wasn’t a good look. Mainly because I looked like I could join the Backstreet Boys or free France from brits and burn at the stake. But it opened a full range of hilarious situations, and I felt liberated from the latin-american script of feminity.
I had tried to hide the boobs, the legs, the frail demeanor, the whole physical package that (I then believed) was distorting my identity and preventing people from interacting genuinely with me.
The moment I met anyone, I could see them deciding in what box I belonged in and readjusting their interaction to match the appropriate script. Like a cyborg reading to run a protocol.
I could rant about how incredibly structured social categories were in Chile, and how I could see all sorts of biases reducing people every day.
It was all part of the same phenomenon: society likes boxes because it allows to tap into useful shortcuts, and it reduces complexity in communication. And that mechanism perpetuates crystallized perceptions and behaviors.
It’s the program that inherently comes with being a gregarious species. We need to communicate to survive together, and we can’t reasonably start every human encounter from ground zero. These boxes are evolutively built to bypass the risks of conflict and misunderstandings.
The good news is the boxes also evolve when expanding the circles of interaction and they become insufficient decoders.
But that first gender filter annoyed me greatly. Because I didn’t like makeup, I liked football and heavy metal, and I hated being talked to as if I had no substance behind my feminine envelope.
The moment I would put a skirt on, or uncomfortably show up in a bikini, women would try to recruit me into talking crushes and fashion, and men would nervously ask me stupid questions to break an invisible layer of ice.
Yes, I exaggerate. But only for added effect.
My short hair, Aladin trousers, oversized t-shirts, and Jesus sandals were doing wonders. It forced others to doubt which category I belonged in. And in doing so I had a short chance to exist outside of these constricting bubbles they stubbornly held on to.
I later realized that being mad at the world doesn’t make you more visible. It came with a truckload of confidence, with an understanding that the true value of harnessing identity lies in creating space for the world to be rich and complex.
There are no enemies when you are at peace with yourself.
GROW!
Besides being the owner of an inspiring 90’s haircut, it turns out my brother also existed (shocking reveal).
Which means he grew up. As a man. In an environment that was theoretically meant to suit him better than it did for me.
He wouldn’t have to hide, he would be invited on football fields, he could reap opportunities, and he wouldn’t be disrespected, patronized, or glanced at by older lusting humans. He would get to have intellectual conversations, go out late, safely walk the streets at night, re-imagine the world and engage in sexual conquests with the benediction of surrounding humans.
He would be free.
Except that’s not what happened. And his side of reality was uncorked when he finally called me out on some of my bullshit.
I cried out nonsense at first. How could he be so blind and diverted by a social narrative? He had so many examples of strong, self-starting, and clever women around! Women with awful stories to tell and pushed by the will to stand. How could he not understand…
But then, as I slowly made peace with myself, his side of the story started to emerge.
THE PATRIARCH ILLUSION
Haircuts don’t really have the power to reshuffle the cards. Dusting off your antenna does.
And the more I observe the men around me evolving into the world they supposedly dominate, the better I understand their invisible prison.
Men aren’t really free, and their shackles operate on an insidious level… hiding in plain sight under the guise of pre-allocated domination.
As a man, my brother does have to hide. He sucks at football. Opportunities are desperately far from reach, and other humans regularly display disrespect and aggression. The streets aren’t safe, the world can’t be re-imagined and the promise of sexual conquests was just a marketing stunt with unreasonable targets and side conditions. Just like everyone else, he fights for validation.
In this ancient script perpetuating itself, Men have to measure up. Relentlessly. Failing to do so precipitates them in states of disconnection and loneliness.
I see them worry about their future, their invisible safety, their livelihood, the size of their penis, their ability to connect, and the pressuring demand for them to become something new, better, but yet undefined… and sometimes diametrically opposed to the He-Man diet they were spoon-fed for centuries.
Whatever was advertised in this system, it was a dissonant mirage. And weirdly, I have found feminity to be an incredibly liberating identity… because we are re-engineering an entirely new universe and centuries of living in silent realms have taught us about lucidity and strategic patience. Or so it should.
Masculinity is going through a massive change of gear. It is being challenged as we collectively realize parts of the archetype are detrimental for all involved… but there is nothing to replace it with and no forgiveness for an identity we have packaged as solely responsible for social inequality.
And I often see how the new social conversations regularly invalidate their input, as we assume it comes from a place of distortion and misplaced conceptions.
I find this to be contradictory to the lessons we should have learned. On how to elevate humans of every make. On validating different stories as part of a common space. As if achieving inverted oppression was going to offer closure and balance under the illusion of social justice. But it’s not what we learned.
A pendulum is by definition prisoner of time and inertia… and it swings back.
By reimagining and embracing feminity, I realized masculinity holds the other end of social change. And no transformation could be achieved without true love and respect for what men bring on this collective boat of identities.
So what we all need is understanding, to finally overrule the conversely tyrannic script they can’t seem to shake off. Where it seems men are the self-imposing dictators paving the way to their own disconnection.
And yet we are all blinded by the shiny bling of a lonely patriarch.
My partner, my dad, my brother, my friends are also heirs of a kingdom that swallows humans to serve a narrative. They were promised a throne that kept them slaving up in the pursuit of survival. None of that war was actively chosen. So I ended up understanding that the strides made by feminism and social change could ultimately break them free as well.
But, the question is, who are you after you spent centuries chasing a golden carrot?
My family has been going through a rough financial patch. And a few weeks ago, in a rare moment of vulnerability, my partner broke down in tears… crushed by the constant and overwhelming pressure to secure stability for his tribe. He wakes up at dawn every morning and pretends that there is a war to be won.
I never demanded him to fill those shoes… it is entirely self-imposed, and it consumes him every day.
When he suddenly uncovered all the layers of weight, it made me realize I never felt the burden in the same way.
Albeit often overwhelming, being a working mom is a freedom exercise… that’s the zeitgeist I’m in.
Him being a working dad is a labyrinth with no escape… and beasts are hiding around every corner. And now it turns out he might be the beast rather than the hero.
I felt deep compassion for all these soldiers fighting their invisible battles against lost meaning and daunting horizons.
From the unknown shadows of feminity, with all the terrifying fragility and ancient scars, with all the hard-learned lessons of a dotted narrative, I am still free.
So what is masculinity and under which shape does it adjust better to the collective pursuit of meaning and connection? Or is it, just like all other concepts shaping mankind, an idea with roots in nature that constantly readapts as it crosses cultures and eras?
And more importantly, how can feminism nurture the conversation to support men in their quest for meaning? Because at its very source feminism is nothing but a dialogue, a desire to exist and propel all of humanity forward. There can’t be any of that without men bringing in their essence.
“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself” also said Antoine de Saint-Éxupéry, and that is a constructive take on how identity is built through alterity.
So this is my love letter to men, in all their flawed human glory, to remind them that lucidity is a way out of their golden cages.
Men of the world, come.
We have knowledge to share and help find paths out of the labyrinth together.
Come with your stance and thoughts, your resilience, your calling to shelter and protect, and your constant desire to build the world around you.
And come with your penises, of every shape and size. If blood floods them, far from war and pain, it is also to connect and elevate humanity. When used with the right spell, they become magical wands.
