Violent Manhood
J. E. Sumerau
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sumerau, J. E., author.
Title: Violent manhood / J. E. Sumerau.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book critically examines the way men construct and explain relationships between violence, manhood, and inequality in society”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020012610 (print) | LCCN 2020012611 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538136485 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538136492 (paperback) | ISBN 9781538136508 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Men—Identity. | Masculinity—Social aspects. | Violence in men.
Classification: LCC HQ1090 .S876 2020 (print) | LCC HQ1090 (ebook) | DDC 305.31—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012610
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012611
Chapter 1
Encountering Manhood
Although I do not recall ever wanting to be a man, scars on my mind and body daily remind me how many times other people have sought to convince me I was supposed to become one.[1] When I hear certain sexual and gender slurs on television or elsewhere, for example, my mind races back to the moments such words foretold or times such words arose in the midst of conflict and violence of too many varieties to count. Likewise, when the weather is chillier, I can feel the aches in my legs, shoulders, and back where some markers of past violence can be seen while others have faded, at least in a visible sense. Similarly, when I look in the mirror even years after multiple surgeries, I sometimes still see the facial injuries that once made it hard for me to look at any mirror for more than a few moments. I may not have ever wanted to be a man, but that never seemed to matter to the people trying to convince me otherwise.
At the same time, my experiences navigating this world as a non-binary trans woman misdiagnosed as male at birth served as an advanced class in gender. I think about the times when my body and mannerisms allow me to be seen by others[2] as a potential man. In such cases, people are more likely to listen to what I say, ask for my opinions, defer to me in terms of bodily spacing and verbal articulation, and laugh at my jokes, no matter how poorly I execute them. When I am seen by others as a potential man, however, people are also more likely to react in anger when I show affection for others who may be interpreted as men, when I show any emotion at all, when my voice leaves my mouth in a higher octave, or when I flip my wrist while discussing an especially beautiful song or landscape. These moments repeatedly remind me of the expectations and norms for what it means to be a man in the eyes of other people.
Of course, there are other times when people recognize me as the woman I am, and in so doing, continuously remind me just how differently most people react to women and men in the United States. I think about the ways I suddenly receive less respect for my personal space and have fewer opportunities to be heard. I think about how quickly my opinions become a matter of emotion or something to be discarded, argued against without pause, or merely an overreaction to a given situation. I think of how much more often people will comment on my clothing choices, my body and what they might want to do with parts of it I may or may not possess at the time, and my flowing hair, though I almost never request or invite such commentary. I also think about how I am suddenly expected to have many emotions concerning any particular topic, and how at the same time, such emotions are seen as evidence that my own body and mind might not be worthy of respect or consideration. Put simply, these moments remind me of the pervasive sexism embedded within U.S. social relations, and bring such patterns to life as I mentally compare my treatment as a woman to the ways people treat me when I am seen as a potential man.
In fact, these observations become even more clear in the many cases and situations where I appear to others somewhere between a woman and a man. In such moments, the combination of a beard on my face and a skirt flowing around my knees may lead someone to exclaim—in fear, confusion, or both—and wonder aloud what I am. At other times, the combination of my feminine body language and my broad shoulders may lead someone to slam me into a bathroom wall and/or call me an abomination. There are still other times, in rural and urban areas alike, where a small child who appears to be dressed as a boy may comment kindly on my skirt only to then hear their parent or guardian insult me (usually someone who appears to be a potential man) or tell me I should be ashamed of myself (usually someone who appears to be a potential woman). In these situations, my inability to be easily categorized or read as appropriately performing either manhood or womanhood facilitates panic, anger, and potential violence from others who require binary gender categorization to make sense of the world.
At the heart of each of these examples lies the interactional processes whereby people socially construct the gender of themselves and others based on aspects of appearance, behavior, and/or other socially recognizable cues.[3] Since gender itself has no natural properties,[4] people spend much of their daily lives—consciously or otherwise—searching for clues that will allow them to determine the gender of others and perform their gender identities. Likewise, since people rarely see other people naked in social life, such efforts rely heavily on not only determining the gender of another person but also on assuming that determination of another’s gender also tells us something about the composition of said other’s body. It is within the context of such interpretive work that what we call gender is both established and assumed throughout the entirety of our interactions with ourselves and others.
In this book, I interrogate the social construction of one aspect of the gender spectrum in contemporary U.S. society: manhood. Specifically, I outline the ways that contemporary notions of U.S. manhood are often predicated on and deeply tied to the performance, or at least threat, of violence. Utilizing interviews with cisgender, heterosexual, middle- or upper-class white men concerning prominent gendered and sexual debates in society today, I
