If you think about, the gay son born to a very strictly Mormon family sets up the perfect scenario for amazing transformation and opportunities for learning. They are a perfect foil for each other. In literature, a foil is a person who is a contrast to another character. I am admittedly not an English major, so if any English majors want to jump in and add anything, feel free. By providing this contrast, the foil might help the main character understand himself better, or help the reader understand the main character better. A foil gives something to be played off of. It provides some amount of tension.
A gay Mormon might help his conservative family learn to live a little bit outside the lines, in a way that expands their understanding of the gospel. The family might help the gay son not live self-destructively outside the lines. Each provides a necessary tug in different directions and as a result, they help each other live more fully.
I was recently involved in a retreat for the choir I sing in. We had a guest clinician come work with us. She had us do some exercises that helped us ignore some of the standard rules of good singing. She told us that sometimes you have to go outside your boundaries to see where they are. To add to the conversation, our director said that she sometimes has a lady come help her clean her house and she always warns her that it’s going to get messier before it gets cleaner.
This isn’t to say that I believe that we should explore everything and forget all boundaries. I do think, however, that we are sometimes way too scared to make mistakes. We cloister ourselves so far inside the lines that I think we miss out on opportunities for growth. Let your gay Mormon son be your tour guide and continue to be his. Just a warning though, his tour will probably be much flashier and might include song and dance. Just go with it. Trust me. The term foil refers to the practice of putting dark, polished metal (a foil) underneath a gemstone to make it shine more brightly.
OK, so there's that. Now here's a video that TGD posted recently on his blog. If you have very clearly defined lines and roles around what you think it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, you might find this video weird and it might make you uncomfortable. The good Lord knows that earlier in my life this video would have made me feel uncomfortable.
So here's the challenge. Watch the video. Allow yourself to mentally slide around a bit on what you think it means to be a man or a woman. You don't have to end up completely embracing everything he says, but at least allow yourself space to slide around and believe for a minute that what he's saying is true and valid. Explore what that means for you and how you experience your own gender and the opposite gender. In doing so, you might end up reworking your lines and boundaries in ways that make you feel more whole and more integrated.
bergk. i always think this video would have been a lot stronger if he had been doing the grooming & makeup himself. y'know instead of just sitting there and having a woman do all the work.
ReplyDeleteand not just any work. but work that fits into the box that would be things females are expected to know how to do. its not oppressive at all that she is stuck in a position doing all of the work while he gets all the face time/gets to be heard. & hes the only one listed in the credits.
it could have been appropriate to have him go outside looking like that. The house is a box.
& he still slips in his macho-barrier by saying: i want my fiance to have fun putting make-up on blah blah blah. NO! that both says that she likes to play dress up & also goes and adds the "Oh and I'm still a man and this wasn't what I really want to do, so its all good" qualifier.
Also sharks are just awesome & pink camo is a travesty. \\\\\
Maybe I'm just being cynical.
@paul, are you trying to put the author of the video in a box? Your box?
ReplyDeleteyes.
ReplyDeleteits full of sharks.
With lasers strapped to their fins.
ReplyDeletethey are also probably half octopus! complete with their beach rockabilly surfer song.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the guy in the video is trying to do. Has he really been put into a box? Is someone telling him not to wear make up? The only box I see is the one he puts himself in. It's almost as if we're witnessing him realize that, "hey being a man is more than how I look." Men have been figuring this out for centuries. I don't think anyone out there would accuse him of not being a man for fantasizing about his wedding day. If you feel like you're a guy, then you're a guy. If you feel like you're something in between, then you are. Why are you looking to someone else to tell you who you are anyway?
ReplyDeleteWow. Thanks for making me aware of sharktopus. That's a box that I don't wanna be in. Favorite scene: sharktopus dragging that lady in the bikini down the beach and into the water.
ReplyDeletePaul and CJW, you guys are just jealous because you don't look as good as he does in drag.
even with my manliness as overflowing as it is, my incredible beauty can not be stuffed into the box of a drag queen. its basically asian drag-on empress level.
ReplyDeletei just dont like make up. its why i dont wear it. and i dont see it as a feminine thing. have you ever read the book "more than just a pretty face"? do it. love it. dont wear make up, its full of cancer. also it takes forever, as deomonstrated by this video.
ReplyDeletehowever i do think we should all step out of our boxes. way to go guy! but not into a sharktopus box.
Boy oh boy do I love a man in drag.
ReplyDeleteThe image that inspires me in this regard is the composite image of Dustin Hoffman that emerges in the movie Tootsie. Dustin's character is forced to get in touch with his feminine energies in a way that ends up transforming his entire self. The final scene reveals a man totally changed by having played the role of a woman. He displays a fullness of person-hood, and a wisdom, that he had not possessed at the beginning. I love witnessing the arc of his character that culminates in a beautiful final scene featuring he and Jessica Lange.
ReplyDelete(He has to learn to put on his own make-up, by the way. :) And how to take it off as well.)
His final exchange with the character Julie (played by Jessica Lange) sums up what the whole experience has taught him:
Julie: I miss Dorothy.
Michael: You don't have to. She's right here. And she misses you. Look, you don't know me from Adam. But I was a better man with you, as a woman... than I ever was with a woman, as a man. You know what I mean? I just gotta learn to do it without the dress. At this point, there might be an advantage to my wearing pants. The hard part's over, you know? We were already... good friends.
Jungian scholar, Robert Johnson, explains the task of balancing the masculine and feminine energies within one's self this way:
Jung found that the psyche is androgynous. It is made of both masculine and feminine components. Thus, every man and every woman comes equipped with a psychological structure that in its wholeness includes the richness of both sides, both natures, both sets of capacities and strengths. They psyche spontaneously divides itself into complementary opposites and represents them as a masculine-feminine constellation. It characterizes some qualities as being "masculine" and certain others as being "feminine." Like yin and yan in ancient Chinese psychology, these complementary opposites balance and complete each other. No human value or trait is complete in itself. It must be joined with its masculine or feminine "mate" in a conscious synthesis if we are to have balance and wholeness.
The psyche sees our capacity for relatedness and love as a "feminine" quality, emanating from the feminine side of the psyche. By contrast, it views the ability to wield power, control situations, and defend territory as strengths that we find in the "masculine" department of the psyche. To become a complete man or woman, each of us must develop both sides of the psyche. We must be able to both handle power and to love, both to exert control and to flow spontaneously with fate--each value in its season.
When we speak of the feminine in this sense, we obviously do not mean "pertaining to woman." We are speaking of inner, psychological qualities that are common to both men and women. When a man develops the strengths of his inner feminine, it actually completes his maleness. He becomes more fully male as he becomes more fully human. The strongest man is the one who can genuinely show love, as well as fight his battles in the business world during the work day. His masculine strength is augmented and balanced by his feminine capacity to be related, to express his affection and his feelings.
In each of us there is a potential for wholeness, for bringing the conflicting parts of ourselves together in a synthesis. We have a simple name for this totality of the individual: Jung called it the "self."
He is my Favorite Terp Wrestler!
ReplyDeleteI love your foil metaphor and the idea of the "necessary tug in different directions." Beautiful.
ReplyDelete