There appear to be several write-ups here about female genital mutilation and male genital mutilation, but surprisingly, I couldn't find any about intersexed genital mutilation. This struck me as a bit odd, as ratio wise, a far greater proportion of intersexed individuals have nonconsensually had their genitals mutilated, at least in the USA and the UK.

The theory goes something like this: a baby is born, and this baby has ambiguous genitalia. An enlarged clitoris, fused labia, a tiny penis, something along those lines. In short, the genitals are not entirely female or entirely male.

What happens is the doctor gets rather worried and calls for an "emergency" operation to have these genitals "fixed", even if they function perfectly well.

According to modern society, people can only be male or female; anything else doesn't exist and can't legally be put down on a birth certificate, driving license or passport. Then again, in America, tomatoes are legally a vegetable.

Lest these babies grow up illegally and have to point out to people throughout their whole lives that they do exist, they're not male or female, and they're quite comfortable with that, immediate action is taken. The doctor chooses a binary sex for the baby. This is usually whichever most closely resembles their genitalia's current state. Then they perform surgery on the baby to make the genitalia match the sex chosen for them. Needless to say, the baby is too young to consent to such an operation. Not that it matters much, as parents are usually encouraged to keep the baby's real sex a secret, even from the baby. Many intersexed people at least reach puberty before they realise something is wrong, and only then manage to get the truth from their parents.

The main problem with this is that most people have an inherent sense of what their gender is. Just because your genitals were changed to resemble that of a girl's doesn't mean that you will feel like, or indeed be, a girl (or vice versa for people whose genitals were changed to resemble that of a boy's). Once you're old enough to work out what your gender is you can always have your genitals surgically altered if they don't match it. The main problem here is that many intersexed people's genitals have already been altered in the other direction, which makes any further surgery very difficult. Some intersexed people identify as intergendered, meaning their gender itself is not completely male or female. If this is the case, then the best solution would have been to never have surgery at all, but they were too young to object at the time.

That's just the surgery side; there's also trouble caused by your parents making you take testosterone or oestrogen, but that's another matter and one that's slightly harder for them to lie to you about.

In conclusion, although it's possible to mutilate someone's genitals, it doesn't mean that person will grow up to think that it was the right thing to do, even if you give them pills and try to deny that anything happened. Most intersexed people agree that it's best to just leave their bodies alone and let them make their own decision about how to alter it, when they're old enough.

_{For more information on how mutilating someone's genitals and giving that person hormones and lying to em about eir past does not affect eir gender, see David Reimer's life.}

_{As someone pointed out to me after writing this, there are many other bad points of lying to a child about eir sex and trying to change it without eir consent. Knowing there's something "wrong" with you that no one will talk about can't be very easy to go through. I'd recommend browsing http://www.isna.org/ as there's much more to this.}

Cast: Audre Lorde, Harry Hay, Barbara Gittings and Allen Ginsberg
Directed by: Greta Schiller
Studio: First Run Features
Running Time: 87 min
MPAA Rating: NR
Year: 1985

As anyone with an inkling of knowledge in gay history knows, life before the Stonewall Riots for queers like me in the United States wasn't the most pleasant thing to experience. This documentary traces the various trials and tribulations of the gay rights movement and gay culture from the early 1900s up to 1969, the year of the riots themselves. The film itself is mostly composed of archival clips and interviews and is narrated by Rita Mae Brown. Overall, the ideas and people are intriguing, but they probably could have done a better job restoring and transferring the old footage and film itself to DVD.

The documentary starts out in the early 20th century, where the majority of gays were both socially and intellectually isolated. In families and in pop culture, there were little references to homosexual concepts, which inhibited self discovery and discouraged communication. Recognition occurred within a small active community by gestures like having a matching necktie and hankie. Things got slightly better with Bohemianism as gays moved into Bohemian neighborhoods, where they found themselves at peace with their nonjudgmental neighbors. Refuge was also later found in Harlem with the downtrodden black population. As the gay movement began to pick up speed in the 20s, there was a glut of gay and lesbian published works, most notably books like The Well of Loneliness. Several relevant Broadway plays were also in production at the time, but these were eventually censored by being declared indecent.

Ironically with the controversy over gays in the military nowadays, World War II ended feelings of isolation by bringing many queers together and fostered feelings of toleration by bringing people against a common enemy. As World War II ended, many queers settled in the port cities where they could get away from their judgmental parents and join the burgeoning urban gay culture. Unfortunately, things went downhill after this with sweeping conservatism in the 1950s and the advent of McCarthyism. Queers were actively suppressed and denied employment in the federal government because McCarthy created a link in everyone's mind with communists and homosexuals. At this time though the seeds of the modern gay rights movement were being planted with the formation of the Mattachine Society and the publication of ONE Magazine.

The 60s brought with us many splendiferous things, notably the civil rights movement. This film connects the movement for equality for blacks and women with the gay rights movement. Many frustrated queers weren't ready to fight for their own rights, but were more than willing to fight for other people's rights. Lesbians were at the forefront with NOW and one woman interviewed speculates that finding a mate was one of the conscious or unconscious reasons why she and many lesbians got involved. Regardless, things picked up greatly as queers acquired experience with nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Eventually this fermented into the discontent that led up to the Stonewall Riots, which is where this film ends and the newly released 1999 film, After Stonewall, begins.

What follows is another excerpt from a lengthy academic paper I wrote for an Independent Study project of my own design, analyzing crying and nudity in American college men. I am a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park. The excerpt below focuses particularly on nudity, and the section is titled:

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Naked Beneath his Clothes

I have written about how American manhood manifests in the arenas of emotion and biology, but have left its most visible arena of expression for last: American college men construct and display their façades most routinely with their clothing.

In no other arena are American gender norms more rigidly enforced and fervidly expressed than in clothing. It is on the canvas of his costume that an American man paints, assembles, and proclaims his masculinity. In the wrong garb, he is ‘out of uniform’, and vulnerable to serious questions about his commitment to being a proper man. His every public activity, from grocery shopping to attending class, will require of an American college man the display of relatively conformist, masculine clothing if he wishes to be treated with the respect and honor granted to "men".

On a recent visit to a podiatrist’s office, I noticed a chart advertising the orthopedic shoes available from a certain manufacturer. On the left side were all of the shoe styles available for men, and on the right were those for women. The men’s shoe styles were practically indistinguishable from the women’s shoe styles: both genders’ styles came in a selection of four boring colors, and, after struggling to find any visual difference between the men’s shoes and the women’s shoes, I concluded that they were exactly the same. Looking closely, I saw that the each shoe style was actually named. Not named things like “Pro Sport 4000” or anything, but actually named things like Chuck, Joe, and Bruce for the men’s shoes, and Mary, Sally and Doris for the women’s shoes. Then I noticed that even the colors had different names depending on the gender market for that shoe. The men’s “khaki” was the women’s “tan”. The men’s “white” was the women’s “ivory”. It became apparent to me that the manufacturer’s aim was to accommodate its customers’ demand that clothing -- in this case, shoes -- be associated with gender, even though the shoes themselves displayed no inherent gender association.

In addition to establishing their masculinity per se, American men use clothing to convey their standing in the social hierarchy—i.e., their degree of masculinity. David R. Williams, Ph.D., makes this point in his consideration of neckties:

What, after all, is a tie? Why do men wear a piece of cloth around their necks? Is it to hide the buttons? What is the symbolic meaning of a tie? Ties are first of all masculine objects; men wear them. They are also symbols of authority, which is a form of power. World leaders, lawyers, businessmen, men who expect to be taken seriously, all wear them. So ties are long narrow objects that hang down in the middle of men’s bodies and are symbols of masculine power. They tend to be pointed too. Those squared, cutoff ties can be found in the backs of the racks, but they are clearly less popular. Maybe John Bobbitt wears one. And what about bow ties? Aren’t they usually associated with . . . nerdy wimpiness? (118)

Williams is suggesting not just that academicians and scholars could view the necktie as a phallic symbol, but that most Americans do view it this way, though often unwittingly. The meaning of a necktie is not buried or esoteric, as Williams demonstrates. If a man is unaware of the representation of his penis in his raiment, it is only because he works subconsciously to deny it to himself.

Phallic suggestion surfaces elsewhere in American clothing too. Denim jeans usually have alternate-color stitching along the fly, depicting -- again, perhaps without conscious intentions -- the outline of a phallic shape directly in the groin. Even though I noticed this imagery long ago, I had dismissed it as a coincidental byproduct of the functional purpose of the fly. But I was forced to readopt my position that the fly-stitching does indeed symbolize a uniform, displayed phallus when I purchased a pair of Old Navy brand swimming trunks that had this same sort of alternate-color stitching in the groin, but no functional fly—just stitching. The purpose of fly-stitching can be, at least in the case of these swimming trunks, none other than to suggest the image of a penis.

A striking irony in the phenomenon of phallic imagery in clothing is that the whole purpose of clothing in the first place is presumed, (by almost everyone), to be the hiding or obscuring of the underlying body, particularly (and at a minimum) the ‘private parts’. The depiction of the penis in clothing that was supposed to hide the male body is a lot like a man’s shedding of a single tear to show he is not going to ‘cry’. In both instances, the message men send to the world around them seems to be, “Look at me—I’m denying myself, just like I’m supposed to.” And yet, the man underlying the façade -- his body, his emotion, his true self -- refuses complete suppression.

Masculine body-symbols other than phalluses are also exhibited in American college clothing. Shoulder pads were once the most common example of this, but such things as bicep-hugging t-shirts and gluteus-enhancing jeans have become quite a bit more common—even nearly required—among heterosexual men in recent years (Carmona). Together with other body-enhancing behaviors previously associated strongly with femininity, such as attending to one’s hairstyle, this trend is known as “metrosexuality” (Berger, et al., 3, and Carmona), a term which has gained almost-annoying popularity in the last year. By its most popular definition, a “metrosexual” is a male who attends to and recognizes his body's potential beauty. Usually the term is used for young, heterosexual men, (presumably because these behaviors are taken for granted in homosexuals).

The surge of metrosexuality in popular culture is paving the way for the objectification of young men in the same way that young women have historically been objectified. The increasingly-ubiquitous idealized male body image has led to a disturbing phenomenon of body-shame and body-awareness in the current generation of college men, so much that the phenomenon now has a name: ‘The Adonis Complex’ (Hoyt/Kogan, 199). The Adonis Complex is a body-image disorder, (or 'Body dysmorphic disorder'), rooted in modern social messages that pressure young American males to achieve physical perfection in order to establish their value as men (Cowling, 2). In its most serious form, the complex involves compulsive starvation, excessive exercise (with particular emphasis on muscle training), and the abuse of illegal steroids and supplements (Ibid).

Confronted with ever-constricting norms governing their physique, American college men are now encouraged as never (recently) before, to maintain certain bodily hallmarks of masculinity. Unfortunately for the man who aspires to cooperate with these new expectations of physical perfection, he is likely to be forced to concede that the idealized form is unachievable. In fact, much of what is demanded of a man wishing the Adonis physique -- a thick, fashionable coiffure; sparse body hair; a tall, slender figure; bulging but apparently-natural muscularity; a flat, rippling abdomen; and more (Berger, et al., 8-13) -- is determined by genetic composition, not effort (Hoyt/Kogan, 199). Clothing can serve the purpose of veiling natural genetic diversity, making it possible for men to convey the image of an idealized body that they do not truly possess.

Indeed, it is the cultural role of almost all clothing to change the appearance of the human body in such a way that it conforms to cultural expectations.

The valuation of the idealized American male form -- or, more importantly, the resultant fact that many college males are unsatisfied with their bodily features as measured against that ideal -- is an influential factor in college men’s anxiety about common nudity. The expectations of aesthetic conformity which have historically surrounded American male clothing -- and still do surround American male clothing -- have now breeched the male body itself. More than a few subjects I interviewed in my research reported feeling shame and concern about being “too skinny”, too fat, or otherwise abnormal, therefore preferring to constantly hide their bodies from view by using clothing, rather than submit themselves to potentially humiliating scrutiny.

Another factor cited by the male interviewees in explaining their hesitation to be nude in the presence of their peers was the notion that nudity is patently erotic. Members of the male focus group pointed out that the presence of a known homosexual male in the locker room would increase their discomfort at being nude significantly, because of concerns that their nudity would attract sexual attention. Even if satisfied that there were no homosexual men present, the focus group participants reported, they would still worry that the patently-sexual nature of nudity could create an homoerotic environment. The possibility that an homoerotic situation (of an inexplicable and indeterminate sort) might arise was described by subjects as unbearably awkward, even if no sexual behavior or feelings were to surface in those subjects themselves. Most subjects, though, conceded that the practical realities of college life, especially for those involved in athletics, made it necessary to set aside this discomfort with nudity, provided that certain boundaries are respected. Most of the subjects said that they had learned to become comfortable with brief locker-room nudity, as long as nobody directly or obviously observed any part of their body, and as long as such nudity was unavoidable. So, despite an obvious preference to never bare his body to his peers, most American college men are pushed by circumstances to take on the mindset that incidental nudity is “no big deal; whatever” (as one interviewee put it), and that nudity is not in fact always patently sexual.

Some subjects also confided that they were unsure whether their genitals would be considered of acceptable or normal size. Though I was encouraged by their self-disclosure and honesty, this anxiety was difficult for me to make sense of alongside the rules forbidding visual observation in the locker room, since, if followed, those boundary rules would obviate any concerns about genital shortcomings. Evidently, many young men anticipate a certain pervasive curiosity in their peers. It is a curiosity which, I speculate, they may themselves share.

The matter of common nudity presents an obvious mental tension for many college men. While there is, on the one hand, an undeniable American cultural message that the sight of certain body parts is necessarily erotic -- e.g., Janet Jackson's Superbowl wardrobe malfunction -- there is also, on the other hand, the simple commonsense fact that it need not be erotic. This tension sometimes presents earlier in life than college age, especially for particularly athletic boys involved in team sports, but since showering after gym class is rarely required anymore (Tom, 9), college is sometimes the first place it is dealt with.

The equation of nudity with eroticism is not uniquely American, but is nonetheless very unusual in other Western nations, particularly those in Europe (Leahy, W16). Americans friendly to the European open-mindedness about shared nudity aspire to divorce the concepts of nudity and sexuality in American public opinion. The primary benefits of naturism , according to naturists, are the elimination of body shame and the achievement of total comfort with one’s sexuality (Peckenpaugh, 11). One Christian organization I encountered in my research, RejectShame.com, seeks to “[Break] the Grip of Shame Among Christians by Promoting Body Respect.” Here is a synopsis of how common nudity is justifiable, and even laudable, from a Christian perspective, in site author Nate Dekan’s words:

Discomfort with simple nudity, or worse, believing it to be indecent or obscene, is an indication that something about our relationship with God is off. (Let me be clear, pornography is NOT simple nudity, it is corruption . . .) If our discomfort is not from the pride of wanting to be more it most likely comes from the satanic deception that the human body is bad. God said that His creation is very good, that to the pure all things are pure, and that as His children, we have the mind of Christ. To believe that nudity (itself) is indecent, obscene, causes lust, is to believe the deceiver, not God. It is to discern or "know" nudity differently than God intended (~¶16).

An American man wouldn’t need to be a Christian (or even any other sort of theist) to appreciate the spiritual value in rejecting body shame. Even setting aside the overtly-religious aspects of Dekan’s argument, there is a clear benefit in the self-affirmation that must attend a man’s rejection of the cloak. By casting off clothing, he is one step further to casting off the shame of who he is. Body shame is metaphoric self-hatred.

American masculinity demands self-hatred -- shame -- from its men.

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Works Cited

Carmona, Chris. “The Metrosexual Phenomena: One Man's Struggle to Accept Fashion's Latest Avant-'Garb'. The Villanovan. 30 Jan 2004. 12 May 2004.
http://www.villanovan.com/news/2004/01/30/Entertainment/The-Metrosexual.Phenomena-591581.shtml

Berger, Allison, Ben Dockery, and Steven Holland. The Universal Definition of MAN. Undergraduate paper. George Washington University, 2004.

Cowling, Tania K., “The Adonis Complex: Is Your Son at Risk?”. Family TLC. 13 May 2004.
http://www.familytlc.net/adonis_complex_pre.html

Dekan, Nate. “The Root of Shame”. RejectShame.com. 2002. Natura Family Naturist Resort, and the International Naturist Association. 6 May 2004.
http://www.rejectshame.com

Hoyt, Wendi D., and Lori R. Kogan. “Satisfaction with Body Image and Peer Relationships for Males and Females in a College Environment.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. (2001): 199+.

Leahy, Michael. “I See Naked People: Megastars Baring All, 'Girls Gone Wild,' Nudists Next Door. Where is America's Fascination with Nudity Taking Us?” The Washington Post. 2 Nov 2003, The Washington Post Magazine: W16. (Republished online). 13 May 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30524-2003Oct28?language=printer

Peckenpaugh, William D. “Familial and Societal Attitudes Toward Nudity, and the Effects on Children's Development”. Federation of Canadian Naturists Web Site. 1996. 6 Apr 2004.
http://www.fcn.ca/children.html

Tom, Jessica. “Hitting the Showers: Inside Yale’s Locker Rooms.” Yale Daily News. 11 Dec 2002.

Williams, David R, Ph.D. Sin Boldly. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000.

I am an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park, majoring in Philosophy. In the Spring of 2004, I did an Independent Study project (of my own design) on the connected subjects of crying and nudity in American college males. I did my research under the supervision of an American Studies Department professor. In addition to surveying scholarly literature (of which there is suprisingly little on my topics of study), I conducted personal interviews with college men, and focus groups with college men and women. What follows is an excerpt from the rather lengthy paper I produced, documenting the results of my research.

Please note that the aim of this paper is not to be detached and scientific, but rather, to recruit the reader to my position that American masculinity constructions need critical examination.

This excerpt focuses specifically on crying. Enjoy.

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Even the most stereotypical of interviewees and focus group respondents conceded that college men are socially allowed to cry in some very specific (and predictable) circumstances: in public over the death of a loved one; in private over the loss of a romantic relationship; or when in evident, excruciating physical pain. That last example, of physical pain, was carefully delineated by each subject who brought it up, to be physical pain that was either believably painful, or “really bad”, from the perspective of another person. For example, a guy could be feeling the most pain he has ever felt in his whole life because of, say, a broken pinky. But unless that finger has changed color, was bent backwards, was bleeding, or in some other way provably “really bad,” the rules would forbid his crying. More surprising was the uncontested assertion in the male focus group that an athlete’s crying in response to losing a very important football game was quite acceptable, even commonplace.

Let me review this point before moving on: So, emotional tears are acceptable in response to losing a game? But not in response to wrenching internal pain from hurt feelings? I prodded the focus group for the ruling principles in the matter. I wanted to know what values governed these specific rules. One male responded: “It’s OK for guys to cry about something if they’ve lost something that meant a lot to them [as in girlfriends, loved-ones, or football games], but it’s not OK if it’s just over hurt feelings, or if the situation can be corrected.”

Hearing that, an epiphany came to me: To these guys, crying is a mark not only of weakness, failure and loss, but one of utter despair. Crying is surrender to emotion; often an acknowledgement of unmitigated crisis. With that premise, it is no wonder that crying at unsanctioned times is viewed as unjustifiable. It is not the crying per se which is so reviled by American college men. Rather, it is the loss of power -- the loss of control over oneself and one’s vulnerability. That’s what was so disgusting to this group about a crying male. Crying symbolizes a failure not in deed, but in thought: a failure to find strength and hope within.

In fact, there seems to be something about a young man’s resisting his need to cry that American society lauds even more than if he never showed any hint of emotion in the first place. This was evident in the interviews and focus groups alike. Several subjects emphasized the importance of clarifying the ‘degree’ of lacrimation in determining whether it was acceptable for a man to cry. One subject responded to my question with his own, asking, “Wait -- do you mean like crying as in teary-eyed or like bawling and sobbing?” The distinction between fighting tears and surrendering to them was of notable importance to the respondents.

The famous Scottish economist Adam Smith (Chew), regarded this manly struggle against emotion as deserving of respect, and quite different from outright crying (Lutz, 295). Smith wrote,

We are disgusted with that clamorous grief which, without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears and importunate lamentations. But we [revere] that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant, but affecting coldness of the whole behaviour (qtd. in Lutz, 295).

Surprisingly, even shedding a tear or two with a slightly-cracked voice, flushed cheeks, and a lump in one’s throat isn’t really ‘crying’ by many modern definitions (Harper and Porter, 154). Writing about the emotional reactions of British moviegoers to film, Sue Harper writes that “For some men, even watery eyes fell outside their definition of crying”(Ibid). The subjects of her study spoke carefully, saying, “I have on occasion been moved to a wet eye — but never to tears,” or, “I would never admit to crying in the pictures though I have often had to stifle back what were suspiciously like tears” (Ibid). Even Tom Lutz, himself an expert on crying by virtue of his authorship of Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, points out that, “A man could let a tear fall, sometimes, in order to show that he was not going to give in and cry” (182). Perhaps my own subjects would have responded differently if I’d had the foresight to thoroughly define “crying” in a way that included everything that even resembled emotionally-driven ocular secretions, ‘choking up’, or outright lacrimation.

The consequences of men’s suppression of emotion is the subject of much scholarly research and modern psychotherapeutic dogma. Nearly every common psychological problem displayed by men is assumed by some psychologists to be a result of the failure of those men to emote vulnerably. From these assumptions, these psychologists reach the conclusion that men need to start ‘getting in touch with their feelings’ in order to achieve emotional health. Psychotherapist Terrence Real, one of the leading male voices in the movement to evoke feelings from American males, summarizes the dogma well:

By equating pain and vulnerability with the repudiated and devalued “feminine,” traditional socialization places boys and men in double jeopardy. First it requires a wholesale psychological excision, then it teaches men not to admit their ache, like the pain of an amputee, for the lost parts of themselves . . . the forces that push boys toward “masculinity” and the forces that push boys toward depression are inextricably bound to one another (233).

The conclusion that those forces pushing boys toward masculinity and depression are inextricably bound to one another is rather quick. Real’s twenty years of work in the field of psychotherapy may have biased his view of American males. After all, his primary contact is with emotionally-troubled men. His argument is specious, particularly to those among us who are in the first place emotional, sensitive people.

It is gratifying and endearing for we emotional-types to think that secretly, beneath a façade of invincibility and indifference, masculine men are always frightened, passionate, loving and warm. But the fact is that sometimes, we can have no idea whatsoever about the truth of the matter. A well-constructed façade prevents us from knowing anything about a man at all. Furthermore, it should at least remain a considered possibility that for some men, there is no façade at all -- that some men are just not very emotional. Taking the view that stoicism is somehow ‘illegitimate’ gives us an air of privileged enlightenment, breeding a subtle arrogance justifiably reviled by our emotional ‘inferiors’.

The unwelcome entreaty to men to ‘get in touch with their feelings’ is errant even if its audience is secretly suffering. Little good can result from attempting to convince such men to ‘open up’ to others by condescending them. This condescension itself is an excellent reason for them to beware vulnerability.

Furthermore, it is contradictory and insulting to posit simultaneously that a man should express his feelings, and that you will, by the way, be letting him know shortly what those feelings are. All males, even stoic ones, deserve more respect than that.

I have in the last few paragraphs disclaimed the idea of imposing sensitivity and emotion upon unwilling men because I want there to be no mistake about my purpose. That's because I desire to recruit you to the position that males who have chosen to forgo a hypermasculine façade should be treated with the same honor and respect that America currently reserves exclusively for “real men”. But I have no agenda to sissify college men, and in making my argument, I wish to avoid imbuing any American men with ‘hidden emotion’ that is not really their own, but my own.

Though I can make no claim about the emotional repression of any specific male, I have shown that repression of emotion by males is commonly valued in American culture. It is to those men who do participate in this self-suppressive behavior that I now turn. I do not know who these men are. Of course, perhaps these men don’t know ‘who they are’ either. For such self-suppressed men, masculist Herb Goldberg contended in 1976 that the question, “How do you feel?” is incoherent, because they have for so long considered it their responsibility to feel absolutely nothing:

It is very much in style today to urge men to feel. However this urging is partially reminiscent of taunting a crippled man to run. It is unlikely that a mere act of will on his part can unlock the hurricane of repressed feelings within him. Today's man is the product of massive, defensive operations against feelings. These defenses are geared to protect him for survival's sake by transforming the host of powerful, socially taboo impulses, needs and feelings into acceptable male behavior. To survive and contain these repressed feelings he must detach himself increasingly from all relationships that might stimulate or provoke him into an uncontrollable response. Because feelings are not permitted free expression the male lives in constant reaction against himself. What he is on the outside is a façade, a defense against what he really is on the inside. He controls himself by denying himself. [Emphasis in original] (qtd. in Robinson, 134-5).

One more recent (and more scientific) analysis than Goldberg’s demonstrates that the gender-variegated rules governing crying are changing somewhat. Faith Fritz at Missouri Western State College conducted a controlled, scientific experiment in 1997 to determine how three homogenous groups of male and female subjects (totaling 95 individuals) reacted to one of three different videos of a college-aged male. In the first group’s video, the male (an actor), cried while discussing a tragic hunting accident that happened to one of his close friends. In the video shown to the second group, the same actor cried while discussing his struggle with alcoholism. Finally, in the third group, the control video, the male confederate did not cry at all. In each video, the script was exactly the same -- the only variable was at what point the actor cried, if at all. After watching their respective videos, each participant filled out a survey regarding their attitudes about what they had just watched. Fritz concluded that overall, the societal view of male weeping may be seen in a more positive light than older literature on the subject predicts, but only under some circumstances. The subjects seemed to be more forgiving of crying over the loss of a friend than over personal problems, corroborating the outcomes of my focus group discussions.

There are some unique circumstances under which American men are actually expected to cry, but few of these apply to the college man’s culture. One notable exception is that very-occasional, emotional male crying is increasingly mandated in the rituals of heterosexual courtship (Lutz, 191). My discussions with college women supported the men’s well-known locker-room secret that displaying joyous tears to a female about how important or beautiful she is will advance his cause of winning her heart. The authenticity of these tears, according to the male focus group, is unimportant. The only requirement is that the display appears authentic to the courted woman.

This circumstantial allowance for the exhibition of disingenuous emotion among men is not inconsistent with the ordinary expectation that college men not show emotion. On the contrary, it conforms to precisely the same maxim, commanding a college man to disregard whatever it is he may actually be feeling, and play his assigned part -- read his assigned lines -- in an elaborate social drama. The theatrical terms in the preceding sentence are meant metaphorically, of course, but the conclusion that follows is meant literally: The American culture I have examined realizes the value of a man by his abilities as an actor. And that's a shame.

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Works Cited

Chew, Robin. “Adam Smith: Economist and Philosopher.” Lucidcafé Interactive Café and Information Resource. Jun 1996. 14 Apr 2004
http://www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/96jun/smith.html

Fritz, Faith. “The Perceived Societal Attitude Towards Men Who Cry.” Student and Faculty Research. St. Joseph, MO: Missouri Western State College. 1 May 1997. 25 Apr 2004.
http://www.mwsc.edu/psychology/research/psy302/spring97/faith_fritz.html

Harper, Sue and Vincent Porter. "Moved to Tears: Weeping in the Cinema in Postwar Britain". Screen 37.2 (1996).

Lutz, Tom. Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1999.

Real, Terrence. I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. New York: Fireside, 1997.

Robinson, Sally. Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Gaydar is also the world's biggest online gay commmunity website, linking gay users across the world in a spirit of freedom, tolerance and.... well, actually it's just a personals site. A very good one though.

Gaydar splits each participant country down into a group of regions to which users belong. Users may submit many photos, and can message, email and phone other users. When visiting other users' profiles, you leave "tracks" so they can see that you've visited, and respond accordingly. It's demographic is quite balanced, with roughly equal people from the age ranges 18-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60 and 60+; slightly fewer users fall in the 40-50 age bracket, for some reason.

It is quite a central part of the gay culture in the UK, where the website started some years back; often gay men will swop Gaydar profiles along with mobile numbers; the site is particularly popular among university LGBT societies.

Gaydar has become so successful and profitable that it has launched its own radio station, playing a wide range of music, mostly gay bar-style anthemic dance tunes. It broadcasts live from G-A-Y Club in Soho (Britain's biggest gay bar) on certain nights, and is easily more popular than its only credible competitor, Purple Radio.

The site's url is www.gaydar.com. A sample Gaydar profile (ie, mine!) is at http://mygaydar.com/ajwazzer.