Performing Masculinity

“Shame shame, you weep like a girl,” my parents used to tease me whenever I wept during my childhood days.  I was told that a boy should not shed tears. That is not a ‘masculine’ quality. So, I used to control myself because I did not want to be ‘feminine’. I was taught that stoicism and self-restraint are masculine qualities and that men should always be careful not to be guided by emotions as it debilitated the masculine traits in men.

Those lessons I was indoctrinated during my childhood days made deep impact in my world view. Gradually as I grew up, I became careful not to do anything that was ‘feminine’. I learned to climb the trees, played volleyballs and even changed my way of speaking and dressing up. (I still remember how I tried hard to emulate Amir Khan’s style in Rangeela).

When I passed my eighth class, we were offered to choose between two subjects--optional mathematics and economics in class nine. I instantly chose mathematics because 'doing mathematics' was 'doing masculinity'. Still one of the hardest subjects for most students, I chose mathematics to prove my intelligence to those around me. I wanted to prove that I was strong and ‘masculine.’

When I came to the city to join college, I was introduced to a new trait of masculinity—one should have a strong, muscular body.  A boy of mid teen with a puny body, I even started going to gym.  I even accompanied boys in eve teasing. I had to be accomplice in that act to show my manliness. When my sisters used to watch movies with melodrama and full of emotion, I watched action movies. I still remember, how I declined the job offer in a primary school even when I was having very hard times economically simply because I thought teaching small kids was not a masculine job.

After a decade, in retrospect, now I think my acts of being stoic and self-restraint, doing relatively ‘risky’ things, taking mathematics as an optional subject and joining gym house, were simply the display of masculinity as a public performance to establish proof of being a male. I had to control my emotions, my feelings, and my inherent traits so as excel in my role of performing masculinity. That means, the so-called masculinity or femininity is a social construct. It is role to be performed in this ‘social stage’. Society prepares the script and we need to learn that by heart so as to be the perfect actors.

There is no masculine identity behind the expression of masculinity and that “identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results”, argues Judith Butler.  It means, femaleness and maleness are produced through reiterative performances in such a way that they appear to precede these performances and so are experienced as natural by the performers. So, there is no necessary reason why bodies should be gendered as masculine and feminine.