Kicking Ass as Batman: Exploring male gender roles through Arkham Asylum.

This is the manliest feeling in the world

So I just finished playing Batman Arkham Asylum for the first time this week.  Needless to say, it’s fucking awesome.  Having the freedom to dispatch a group of thugs by either silently stalking them and taking them down ninja-style in a variety of methods or just running up to them and crunching their bones beneath your legendary fists is fantastic.  This is why we like superhero comics.  This is little boy fantasy fulfillment at its best, which is the core concept of superhero comics.  Male power fantasies.

In fact, this got me thinking about what it means to me to be a human male.  Gender roles are an entirely subjective concept and are usually built from years of pointless twists and opinions that society has attached to them.  Talking about the history and impact of gender roles in society is a common subject, thus I’m going to ignore them entirely and talk about my personal ideals and what my gender means to me.

WARNING: This is classic watercooler, armchair philosophy; opinions and hypothesis’ drawn out of little academic context (even more than usual).  So I’m not assuming I have greater intellect in this topic, nor am I that attached to it.  It is untested hypothesis only.  To me, masculinity is a focus on the physical while femininity is focused on the emotional, and I consider mental development and intelligence gender neutral.  The reason I feel this way is simple; the AVERAGE human male’s growth is centered on muscle development much more than in the female, while the AVERAGE human female hits puberty and starts the long trek of emotional growth a couple of years before the males.  Male social interaction, especially at an early age, tends to focus on fighting and openly insulting both friends and enemies alike, while it appears that females like to resolve conflict through passive–aggressive backstabbing and emotional manipulation.  As for the positive traits of the two sexes, masculinity to me seems to be focused on personal improvement (which enhances the strength of the group) while femininity seems to be focused on improving the strength of other members of a group (which helps the individual on a personal level).  Every other trait that society seems to slap masculine and feminine labels are just compounded memes that “evolved” from these basic traits.  These traits are shadows of our hominid ancestors that we instinctively carry in us today.

I’m still not sure whether or not I think ALL instinctual desires and behaviors are inherently bad in my personal moral system, or if some of them are okay in moderation.  Let’s assume the latter opinion in this case.  My favorite feminist theory is the more classic liberal feminism of the 60’s, which simply put asserts that women and men are equally rational (or irrational, as the case may be) and thus deserve the same rights and respect, an ideal which should be strived for through political and legal reform.  I’m not going to put all my eggs in this basket because I think they are several key biological differences between us that prevents us from being literally equal, but as I’ve shown above I think we are born with different pros and cons that balance each other out pretty equitably.  More importantly though, I really, really, REALLY like the liberal feminist ideal of androgyny.  Each one of us are the products of both a mother and a father, therefore each one of us should have both masculine and feminine characteristics regardless of our sex.  If the equal society that liberal feminism is striving for were to occur, then the obligatory gender roles preventing us from achieving this goal would disappear.  I think we all deserve the chance to achieve androgyny, where we are able to accept both the male and female aspects of our personality and keep them in balance, thus clearing out that background noise so we can focus on our asexual intellectual growth.  I think I’ve done a pretty good job of this.  I cry openly during a lot of emotional scenes in movies, and I’m not too shy about admitting that.  I know how to be emotionally passive aggressive, but in my heart I rather be open with people.  I love watching superheroes beat the shit out of each other.  I can enjoy a good action movie or a romantic drama but prefer the gender-neutral comedy genre to both of them. 

I think the main reason I can do this so well is my parents.  My father is loud, assertive, individualistic, and used physical violence as both punishment and playtime.  All classic examples of masculine traits.  At the same time he showed us that he wasn’t bound by masculine gender roles; he loves romantic comedies more than my mother (he took a family trip up to Mystic, CT just because of the Julia Roberts movie) and wasn’t afraid to cry (while channel surfing once he stopped to catch the tail end of some movie where a little boy was kidnapped and was returned to his mother by the detectives at the end.  He said he always cried during the final scene.  We watched the random 5 minutes of the end and sure enough, he started balling.  We all teased him mercilessly).  At the same time my mother was pretty gender neutral, her behaviors never seemed defined by either gender roles.  With these examples growing up, I was able to become the kind of person who can largely ignore the insults to my manhood and can instead act as I want.  Now I just gotta figure out how to repeat that magic with my kids; I’m not sure I have enough masculinity in me to be a good enough male role model for my children.  Maybe we’ll just play superheroes a lot. 

I want to be this dad: