Just Between Us: An Ethnography of Male Identity and Intimacy in Rural Communities of Northern Mexico

2. Disputes over the Meaning of “Being a Man” in Mexico: Applications of Queer Theory

63 chapter two Disputes over the Meaning of “Being a Man” in Mexico Applications of Queer Theory Masculinity as Challenge Field Note, January 27, 1999 While I sit on a bench in the Town Square in La Mesa, around the time when people retire to take their siesta and the streets look deserted, I see three boys approximately six or seven years old playing around and climbing a large olive tree nearby. One of the boys climbs to the highest branch. Looking down, he says to his friend below: “Let’s see if you are really a man. I dare you to climb as high as I did.” The boy below responds: “I’ll show you,” and rapidly ascends the trunk until he reaches the same branch where the first boy sits. Intrigued, I focus my attention on their conversation . The second climber now begins to taunt the third boy who has stayed behind, close to the ground. “Don’t be a bizcocho [sissy]. Climb up, nothing bad will happen to you! [The Spanish word bizcocho has been translated as “sissy,” but a literal translation would be something like “don’t be a sponge cake.”] The third boy, who is also the youngest of the three, responds in a fearful voice: “No, I will fall.” “Come on, climb up; nothing is going to happen, try again,” says the second climber. “Leave him alone, he is very culón [sissy],” adds the first boy from the tallest branch. [The expression used by the boy in Spanish is es bien culón; a literal translation would be “he has a big ass,” but in this context the connotative meaning is the same as sissy.] 64 • Chapter Two The second boy now turns his attention to the first climber and issues another challenge: “Let’s see who is more man—I dare you to jump from here all the way over there,” he says, pointing toward the end of the long branch on which they are sitting. “I’ll do it,” says the first boy and jumps in a hurry. The boy who issued the challenge retorts: “Well, I can do it, too . . . look, look,” and he jumps daringly only to land next to where I am seated, his knees badly scraped. “It’s OK to rub yourself,” says the boy on top sarcastically. “That didn’t hurt me,” responds the second boy confidently and quickly gets up and dusts himself off. The boys continue to carry on a little while longer and finally move away to play some other game. I am surprised to hear these boys, at such a young age, compete to prove who is “more man” than the other. Socialization into gender identities, as many studies have already confirmed, begins literally from the moment of birth (Badinter 1995; Chodorow 1978). Yet, other studies have indicated that this process of gender socialization is not universal, but rather that in some people groups gender differences are established through specific rituals performed around the age of puberty (Herdt 1981). Certainly, most of the ethnographic studies about masculinities have focused on such rituals of masculinization. In general, however, there is agreement in the literature about the deployment at some point in a boy’s life of experiences that transform his subjective understanding of himself as “male”—a process that is a matter of the construction of the boy/man as subject as well as of establishing the social and personal dispositions of what Bourdieu calls “habitus.” In fact, the behavior of the boys in the field observation above reveals a point that Bourdieu theorizes in his book La Domination Masculine: that the construction of masculinity also involves the formation of an illusio. That is, the social struggle to obtain the symbolic prize of “manliness” often involves the desire to place a “bet” or dare others to give you the opportunity to “prove it” (Bourdieu 1998). Taking into account these dynamics, something becomes exceedingly clear: manhood and/or manliness is neither a given, a fact, a fait accompli, a substance, nor an intrinsic quality. Manliness appears to be, instead, a social “good” that is in short supply—the object of everyday disputes that must be adjudicated through competitions, games, and burdens of proof. Manliness is the result of certain specific actions and ways of signification and of the capacities of subjects to enact those actions and meanings Disputes over the Meaning of...