Undercurrent-Issue-Fall-Winter-2014-3

to embrace a more holistic self, one which accepts her or his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities andsees value in them. This, however, proves to be quite the challenge for me.For years, I have put significant effort into making myself appear intelligent, physically strong,unemotional, outgoing, and independent. I would always place emphasis on the fact that I wasunemotional, that I had the ability to do things that “girls shouldn’t do”: I could fish, hunt, climb, hit, play,think, and speak like a man. Nothing made me happier than being deemed an “honorary bro” by myfriends who were young men. I must emphasize that one should be able to express her or his gender inany way she or he pleases; that being said, I consciously suppressed certain feminized qualities whileinteracting with my male friends and colleagues. Within this paper, I will demonstrate how I haveinternalized hypermasculinities in order to maintain power and avoid vulnerability, and how myexperience abroad forced me to confront this reality. I will also explore how through acknowledgingone’s own weaknesses, growth as an individual as well as within a community can occur.Before I continue in this exploration, I must first position myself to you, dear reader, on thespectrum of power and privilege in order for you to gain a deeper understanding of what internalenvironment I am struggling and my relationship with my external environments. I am a white,Euroamerican, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, able-minded, middle-class, educated femalewho was raised in a stable home in a stable country in a nuclear family. This is the lens through which Isee and interpret the world. I share this with you, the reader, in order for you to consider my bias whilereading this paper.One may notice upon reading my identities that each identity leaves me in a relative state ofprivilege apart from my identity as a womyn. This is the identity which I will be exploring today. It is notsimply sex; having a vagina does not make me a womyn. As Coston and Kimmel explain, “doing genderinvolves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that castparticular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘natures’” (2012). One is not a gender, butis gendered by society and the self. With this understanding of gender, I choose to express the gender ofwomyn within this paper. I also choose to use the terms “feminised” and “masculinised” because it isimportant to consider that traits and qualities which are typically associated with womyn and men arenot inherently female or male but are constructed as such.In today’s society, gender is created to be a noun. One is either born a womyn or a man, a girl ora boy: it is something that is normalized as a dichotomy. This is problematic in many ways. Considerprimarily that there are many forms of gender expression that do not simply conform to notions of what a“womyn” or a “man” should be. Further consider that through this suppression of gender expression thatone ought not to express themselves in a way which does not conform to these gender norms, or elseshe or he will be ostracized by her or his society. It is also incredibly problematic as, within thisdichotomy presented, man equates to that which is brave, dependable, strong, emotionally stable,critical, logical, and rational (Coston and Kimmel 2012), all qualities which are prized within the currentEuroamerican society. This gives men, or those who embrace masculinised qualities, wealth and power,or as Coston and Kimmel label it, “hegemonic masculinity” (2012).This is contrasted with the womyn and her feminized qualities: weak, emotional, irrational,unintelligent, and dependent. Not only does this suppress one from fully expressing themselves for fearof acting outside of her or his own gender norms, but this also removes agency from a womyn, as theyare not allowed to act and think without the help and protection of a man. However, the problem withthis dichotomy which I would like to further investigate is the notion that the feminized qualities areconstructed, within this society, to be undesirable. By demonizing these qualities, one is not able to seethe value in vulnerability, the naturalness of being emotional, and the need for interdependency. One,within this frame of values, is not able to appreciate the reality of being fully humyn.Those who do not fit the constructed gendered norms often attempt to compensate this“abnormality” through expressing themselves in certain ways in order to regain power. Coston and66