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“Klaus was a face - elfin and painted as a Kabuki robot. He was a style - a medieval interpretation of the 21st century via Berlin 1929. He was a voice, almost inhuman in range, from operatic soprano to Prussian general. He was a master performer - a master of theatrical gesture. Above all he was a visionary. He said the future is based on the needs of the artist, deciding how to live and living that way every minute. Klaus, the man from the future, lived that way in the present, and held out his hand saying, “Come with me. You can do it too.” His vision was naive, quaint, almost foolish, but forceful in its purity and innocence. Even at his most wildly ridiculous (”Lightning Strikes”) or quaveringly sublime (Purcell’s “Death”) there was an acknowledgment of impending apocalypse that lent it conviction. For Klaus, apocalypse was a metaphor for purification, and as the oddball optimist surrounded by cynical detachment and resignation, he dared to believe in a better world.” - Kristian Hoffman
It’s gotta be a sensibility rather than a set of rules but I have been asked before about how a straight mang with ‘emotional maturity’ might actually manifest in a relationship. I tend to shy away from this question because I don’t want to come over all didactic (and I also tend to think … well, work it out for yourself!). But what the hell … it’s Friday, I have twelfty PhDs to write and it’s humid.
Emotional maturity in the straight mang is not, as the cuddly Steve Biddulph once put it, ’simply about being willing to sleep in the wet spot’.
It *is* being comfortable with being vulnerable, aware when you feel uncomfortable or threatened by intimacy, and being able to articulate this and take responsibility for it. This includes being willing to say no to intimacy when it’s not something you want, rather than just going with it for fear of ‘hurting her feelings’ and therefore being ‘an insensitive non feminist man’ (think about this. just.think.about.it.).
It is also being willing to think about how certain man behaviours can make ladies feel (which many ladies will be willing to advise you on), even if you haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re talking about (one of the things about privilege is that you don’t have to be aware of how you affect others because your position is just taken for granted. So when you’re confronted with it you can just say ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about’).
It is also being willing to think about this stuff in a lifelong sense, that is, not just thinking that because you aren’t the boyzclub gangrape type or Some of Your Best Friends are Feminists or you have been seen giving your man friends a hug in public means that you don’t need to think about your position as a mang in a patriarchal society (patriarchy is thousands of years old and intersects with all sorts of other silly oppressions so shifting it within all of us is a fairly long-term goal). It is actually possible to, as Juan Felipe Hererra puts it in a very funny piece of writing, ‘live with a feminista and (still) be a macho’. He was mainly talking about Chicano masculinity in the US, but y’know. Some things are globally distillable.
And if you Feel Bad about yourself as a man as a result of talking to a woman from a feminist perspective, sit with that feeling for a while and see where it goes. Don’t turn it into the woman (or feminism)’s problem for ‘making you feel bad’ - this is how the loveless marriage between feminism and censorship began (e.g. women using policing/shaming tactics to shut down conversation or men not being able to cope with bad feelings long enough to actually think about the bigger picture they fit into. I truly believe that if you practice you learn to discern differences between being ’shamed’ and being ‘challenged’). Being confronted with your position is always uncomfortable - but it could develop into something better than this, like sustainable relationships full of mutual understanding and shared sarcastic gender politics jokes and dry spots (just change the sheets for fuck’s!).