From: joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Redefining Self (was, Redefining masculinity)
Date: 22 Aug 92 21:38:52 GMT

<<``Short'' form.  Long form to Jess.>>

Part One:   response to Jess
Part Two:   conceptual family request

Jess (anderson@macc.wisc.edu) writes:

    >In article <joelp.714438821@cs.man.ac.uk> joelp@cs.man.ac.uk
    >(Me) writes:

        >>Continuing to follow the Sarver/redefining masculinity
        >>thread, I want to let go and cry.

    >Certainly that's allowed, I think.  If you want to, why
    >shouldn't you?

    >I'm responding here for a coupla reasons. One is, I'm anything but sure I
    >fully got what you were trying to say.

You grokked pretty well, I think. I think I was trying to respond to Bob, but
in a different way, a positive one?...

(I tried posting him, which was probably a waste of time.  I was tempted
earlier to suggest setting up a support group for people who had responded to
Bob's postings.)

        >>I realize I'm having trouble reading some of the postings
        >>(especially the ones from Bob, with the sheer intensity of
        >>their emotion) because of the strength of the response they
        >>evoke in me.

    >Other than contempt for the ideas expressed, and pity for
    >what I see as an amazingly warped personality in the author,
    >Sargon's tripe has evoked little emotion in me, so I'm
    >wondering what more specifically you might mean here.

I wanted to avoid Bob-bashing, to which I admittedly was tempted.  I wanted to
get at the heart of my response to his postings, which I think I did.  His
hatred -- it really came across as hatred, despite his counter-claims -- maybe
touched on places within me, places I'm still separated from.  I wanted to
weep (and maybe laugh a little, too) for me, for him, for all of us:  so often
misguided and foolish, so utterly unable to see the misguidedness and
foolishness when it is there and instead seeing it when it isn't.

....

    >Now here comes the part of your thing that I had trouble
    >following, though *maybe* I got some of it:

        >>Anywhere where expectations remain -- any expectations
        >>beyond human respect and dignity -- I will feel like a caged
        >>bird who vaguely remembers he once knew how to fly....  The most
        >>wonderful thing about me is the driving fire within me that
        >>I think I can never begin to understand: the whirling
        >>confusion carries a satisfaction I cannot begin to explain.

    >An image I used to find vivid (corresponding maybe to your
    >cage) was the idea of being tethered, that I would kind of
    >run, spreading my falcon's wings, building up speed almost
    >getting to the point of being airborn, when <whap!> the
    >tether would crash me to earth in a very undignified heap.
    >It was painful, but I got so I didn't cry out (my ability to
    >endure physical pain is nil, but my capacity for psychic
    >pain is enormous, having at times been suicidal).

I can relate.  My church upbringing seemed constantly to reinforce in me:
turn the pain within; turn the anger within.  A twisted interpretation of
Jesus' turning the other cheek meant everyone should be always really, really
nice to each other.

    >It's the fire part I understand least well in what you say.
    >I can relate to it as passion, as a rage to express
    >something, but more than that, I'm unsure about.

It's like the Holy Spirit :- ) -- a driving, consuming energy that cannot be
controlled, only ridden.  It's the wonderful feeling that I don't *need* to be
in control, I don't *need* to grok fully, if at all.

        >>I am drawn, have always been drawn, to uncertainty, to
        >>insecurity, not as negative things but as a source of great
        >>creative force within.

    >This is one thing in which I find myself strongly
    >contrasting; all my life, if I could spot insecurity in the
    >offing (and my background made me well-nigh flawless at
    >that, long before radar was invented :-), I used cunning to
    >avoid being engulfed by it.

The *positive* need for insecurity is definitely a central part of my
self-understanding.

        >>I will never be content with anything less than finding my own path;
        >>and always -- well, hopefully not always -- terribly afraid that I
        >>am giving in, that I am sacrificing my image of who I am for the
        >>adulterated image that others would give to me.

    >What I've discovered about that, especially about the last
    >part of it, is that all you have to do is give yourself
    >permission....

The difficult bit is that you can never be objective with yourself.  So when I
*think* I'm acting independently, someone else may clearly see that I'm
conforming.  The capacity of the human mind for self-deception is
extraordinary.

....

        >>Hoping this makes sense,

    >Mostly.

Good.  Cheers!

==============

Now then, Jess (and anyone else who has read this far down in the article):

I have in mind to be setting myself up a conceptual family of my own in these
environs, to fill an important space that has never really been filled. I'd
like to ask Mara to be my mother (I only met her briefly at the con, but
*nice* impression, reminded me of my Aunt Marilyn) and Sim and John (Dorrance)
to be my older brothers.

Jess, would you be the younger brother I never had?  I'll spend lots of e-time
with you if you want; take you kite-flying, bicycle riding; remind you to
practice your music....  At least think seriously about it, if you would.

Joel,
        to whom the answer is important, and hoping this is in order