Gender Roles

There was a kerfuffle about Tosh Zhang, a “personality” who was a brand ambassador for Pink Dot. He once made some discriminatory remarks about gay people. Maybe called them ah kuas or whatever. And then he got called out, and then after facing the barrage of the hate mob, he released another video, where he apologised again, was close to tears, and he announced that he was going to step down as ambassador.

So there have been very strong reactions on both sides. There was a very strong reaction about him being an ambassador when in fact he used to be homophobic. And after that, Pink Dot released a statement about it being a pity that he had been cancelled.

It wouldn't be a surprise to find that I side with the latter sentiment. I didn't know how anybody could justify lashing that kind of grievance upon him. Then I remembered that when I was 16 years old, I wrote a whole school essay about how much I hated Michael Bolton because he was culturally appropriating black culture by singing soul music and watering it down. (Back then the term “cultural appropriation” wasn't yet in vogue, but the idea of a person being hypocritical and inauthentic certainly existed.)

Then I came across this essay about how a trans person felt that it was so hard to forgive people like Tosh Zhang, who tormented him for most of his childhood. In this instance, he felt as though straight people were leaning on him to accept the apology. Why would you not accept an apology? Why would you force him to pay the price?

Just what is it that you want? If you don't want acceptance, then why would it be such an ordeal, the way you were treated in your younger days? If you want acceptance, why would you not reciprocate that acceptance and say that people can change and get better and society can become better....

To be fair, that essay eventually comes to the conclusion that Tong Zhang will eventually be forgiven, but not right away, and says that people shouldn't be demanding forgiveness and redemption. But why not have an ambassador who used to be homophobic and then turned over a new leaf? Isn't he one of the best role models for straight allies?

For a few years when I was in college, I briefly thought about being a transsexual. Maybe it was a period in my life when more of my friends were ladies. Or maybe I was just more horny and felt more drawn to them. It was a fairly intense period of soul searching. I thought about a good friend in school (who I now know to be gay.) and he was always preaching about how masculinity was inherently toxic, about how and why the feminine side of things was always the better half, the more gentle, caring and nurturing side.

That little left turn didn't last for long. Eventually it occurred to me that no matter what my argument with my own gender was, I was a straight male, and nothing was ever going to change that. Every guy, though, always has his feminine side, and that is the philosophy behind yin and yang.

I was wondering why guys were more toxic. Then we've seen research that shows that people are sociopathic for a reason, and under certain conditions, sociopathic behaviour is good for leadership because these people have fewer qualms about doing what needs to be done in order to serve the higher objective. So you sometimes wonder if toxic masculinity has a good side, or maybe is an unavoidable consequence of bloody mindedness and ruthlessness.

Anyway, when I rejected the possibility of being a transsexual, what did occur to me is that being a transsexual in many ways is a form of dissent. A person has come to the conclusion that he's not able to live as a cis-gendered person, to act as one, to perform the role that one supposes he's to play. A transsexual is somebody who's in a way, a misfit. Or he may be somebody who wants a custom made role for society.

There are a lot of things that guys aren't allowed to do. There's only so much a guy can do in the way of expressing his emotions: too much of that and he's creepy. There are ways for him to be low key. There's a lot of suppression of emotions. That's something I've been able to do for most of my life, but during that one period of time, it seemed as though I was transitioning to something else, something more flighty and extreme, and I thought the old model wasn't going to hold me back anymore.

And here's the thing: you might think of the standard view of masculinity as being rigid and unbending. But the paradox is that I was able to fit that mould – not exactly, but fit enough – because I was flexible enough. It then occurred to me that it was the transsexuals who were being inflexible. And I wonder to what extent this inflexibility hardens to become some kind of militancy.

Of course, there are aspects of myself that I rebel against. I rebel quite a bit against my Asianness. I'm not afraid to be cranky and iconoclastic to an extent that might not be accepted from an Asian guy. But I don't think I've questioned my maleness that much.

There were lots of things about being a lady in your 20s that seem to be quite comfortable. Guys will usually try to be nice to you (even if you don't know if they're really just trying to get into your pants.) Your youth and beauty will automatically give you a few perks. You can always rely on kindness of strangers. You have some kind of a safe space to emote, you don't have to worry about showing a little bit of weakness. Life's a lark.

But what happens after that? All of that gets taken from you in the end, and after a certain point that you were given that one time bonanza because it allowed you to attract a mate, and hopefully a good mate. Not getting married by a certain age confers some kind of social stigma, or the end of the possibilities of motherhood.

Being a guy by default means you have a bit of a stunted emotional growth, because people don't expect you to be that emotive, and also they won't allow you to be too emotive. And I may have been headed in a certain direction at one point, I may have thought, in my early 20s, that I was going to be more in touch with my feelings, that I was going to live the great emotional extremes of your bohemian artist. But I also realise that losing that may not be such a bad thing. I don't have that much emotional intelligence, I may not express my emotions intelligently, or read other people well. I may not want to open myself to other people and get hurt in the process. I might find it harder to compose myself and go about whatever my daily business demands of me.

I was going to work as an engineer, and however rewarding that job is in certain ways, it's not something that you'll tolerate easily if you are looking for some kind of emotional engagement. The satisfaction you get out of it is not the emotional sort. In fact, at the beginning of my career, I was finding my engineering job fairly intolerable until I realise that you have to shut off your artistic instinct or your heightened emotional state for the duration of the time that you're in the office and let that part of you which likes neatness and absence of fuss take over.

Part of being a guy is the robustness, the machoness. The pride that you get in achievement, in being strong and capable, in being active, in taking initiative. There's quite a bit of freedom in this, rather than the more self-doubting, circumspect and reactive role for the female. Granted that these days the gender roles are more fluid, but there are still some of these differences. Females get judged more harshly for being non-conformist, for coming across as unfeeling. Maybe I might not want that. In fact, I'd say that I'm pretty happy to be in whatever role I'm in at the moment.