Men and their spaces.........

De Certau talks about the overlap of spaces of work and leisure. These overflow into each other and “create dents in the proper space”. He does not identify a person/ people but dominant language. We are all part of this language, a “victim” of and at the same time the creators/ reinforcers of this language.

What if I were to apply this theory to gender relations? What if we were to “trace” and describe events when gender relations are diffused, when men and women both act outside their prescribed roles, maybe instinctively and deliberatively. Though gender relations develop and demand a proper behavior vis-a-vis a particular space, these deviations are not specific to or constrained to activities related to these spaces (i.e. specifc to say religious spaces, institutions, markets, public spaces). Rather he seems to suggest that they are instinctive, dependent and slaves to opportunistic times.

When would these occur? Moments of pleasure, intimate exchanges or breakpoints when something about the other is revealed, guards relaxed, “boundaries opened up” as de certau explains it. Moments of instinctive desire or want, assertion on the other? Let me start somewhere.

For example, it was one of those late cold nights in the local train, when a friend of mine (cant mention him, he'll kill me!) and me were coming from work. We were tired, exhausted from work. It was winter I remember, because I used to carry my lip gloss as an attractive alternative to the more functional chap stick. We were facing each other. He was sitting in the direction of the movement of the train. We both had window seats. I can’t remember what we discussed but we were laughing, quiet at points, joking with each other, discussing our day. I was cold and he was dry. He asked me if I had chap stick. His lips were dry and he kept licking them again and again. So I told him I had a nicer alternative and produced my all purpose lip gloss. He applied it generously and then pressed his lips closer to spread it evenly on them. And at that moment, something happened. His lips were glowing! They were glowing with the desire that is supposed to occupy a woman’s lips but they were his lips, glowing, inviting as a woman’s would? I loved it! I poked him, I thought he looked beautiful. Suddenly he became more attractive to me because it had broken some part of him, made him softer, numb-er? It made him more vulnerable. He was incredibly conscious. He thought everyone in the train was looking at him. There were 4/5 scattered wanderers in the train (men’s compartment). They along with the train had transported far away from everyone, oblivious of everything except their thoughts.

He tried to rub it off and I stopped him. It was an incredible moment for me. I can’t say that work and leisure overlapped here, but this event did something. The lip gloss had ruptured a part of his “manliness” and revealed a conscious, more human person. (I know it sounds corny!) As men they are supposed to................. not be conscious of themselves or how they appear, to always conquer but not succumb, to conceal but not reveal. There was an incredible tension between his morals? and need. One that wanted to close the soft rupture, restore the wound back to its cold smoothness. The other, a physical need for the gloss because his lips were dry and hurting. I can’t say our roles were reversed. Yes, I was looking at him, however it was the imaginary gaze of those who did not exist that seemed to control him. He was aware and conscious of men around him.

I want to place this event in my larger (and currently intermittent) attempt to understand how men are constructed, how they think, what pressures /powers they are supposed to contain.... I realised a few things from this and some other experiences (I have elaborated below):

Men are conscious of men. They watch each other. They judge each other. They control each other. They are each other’s measure of power, virility and weakness. Does the woman’s body even matter here? The actions, gestures of claiming the woman’s body are silent dialogues between men, of reaffirming their position. Is the woman only a means of asserting that power? Is she a part of this dialogue at all?

Where women compete, look or are under their own gaze and that of other women and men,
men on the other hand, judge themselves by what other men think of them. There is a constant (and always unsaid) interaction between them, evaluation of their actions… Men are sources of self-affirmation and discomfort for each other.

There is however no space for a rupture to occur within their roles. This rupture has occurred through sexuality, through men who are uncomfortable with the expectations of “power” (that we now generally call chauvinistic and others “manliness”) that they are supposed to embody(usually gay/ bisexual men?). Though I don’t completely know or understand the discomfort. I don’t even know if I am completely correct.

This occurred to me while I was writing and from some of my guy friend’s experiences.

A guy/ man’s virility is affirmed within the male space, amongst guy friends and the discussion of their success stories.
The term faggot. It is an attack on the man’s masculinity and most “effective”/ disgusting when a man evokes it.
Why cant guys be close friends? They never exchange intimate secrets/ pressures. Do their interactions always have to be “productive”? Are the networks that govern relations between men so powerful that they are invisible (and hence cannot be questioned)?