So what qualifies me to write about what makes a man? It’s a fair question, and one I’m not completely sure how to answer. I have no relevant academic credentials[1], which might go either way as a qualification. In Advertisements for Myself, Norman Mailer, who was more concerned than most with existential questions of heavyweight manhood, framed the question of the ethical appeal in manly arguments regarding Hemingway’s fiction:

Let any of you decide for yourself how silly would be A Farewell To Arms or better, Death in the Afternoon, if it had been written by a man who was five-four, had acne, wore glasses, spoke in a shrill voice or was a physical coward. That, of course, is an impossible hyposthesis.[2]

And here’s me at five-eight, putting off replacing my glasses, annoyed by a pimple under the stubble on my neck… maybe this line of comparison will prove unhelpful. Still, while I’ve never stabbed my wife, I have scored a few Mailer points, if that happens to be how you’re keeping score.

Here’s a list of facts about your correspondent to keep in mind, sorted conveniently for your consideration:

THINGS ABOUT EDWARD KEENAN THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED, BY SOME PEOPLE, MANLY:

• Born with traditional male primary sex characteristics
• Developed traditional male secondary sex characteristics at the roughly appropriate age
• Was a Boy Scout, and is good at camping stuff like starting fires and pitching tents
• Played organized ice hockey until he was 21
• Was once named the Most Valuable Player of his baseball team
• Has run for and won elected office
• Has a barely noticeable scar on his forehead
• Never bothered with braces
• Has a faded blue tattoo of the gonzo crest on his shoulder
• Dropped out of university to get a job
• Was once arrested in an elaborate takedown on the Don Valley Parkway involving three police cruisers surrounding a cab



• Has fronted a rock band
• Has never, to his knowledge, had his voice described by anyone as shrill
• Has had his nose broken twice, once by a close friend
• Moved in to share an apartment with his friend months after that friend broke his nose
• Has organized protest marches
• Has debated politics on public stages
• Has been in bar fights
• Has been willing, historically, to consume more alcohol than almost anyone else in the room
• Once ran a business (a restaurant)
• Has fired people
• Has worked in physical labour jobs and factories
• Was employed as a cook for several years (how’s that manly? See Bourdain, Anthony)
• Knows how to tie a credible Windsor knot
• A four-in-hand too
• Is someone’s husband
• Is someone’s father
• Is a breadwinner
• Has a great uncle who once won a fight to the death with an angry mother bear
• Thinks for some reason that manliness is actually a topic worth thinking about, unlike the vast majority of people

THINGS ABOUT EDWARD KEENAN THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED, BY SOME PEOPLE, UNMANLY:

• Unable to grow a convincing beard
• Despite this fact, shaves seldom enough that people always assume he is trying to grow a beard
• As types go, he is not particularly strong, and is decidedly un-silent
• Got kicked off the high school hockey team for missing a practice to be in the school fashion show
• Was named “Most Sportsmanlike Player” on his hockey team two years in a row
• Elected office he held was on high school student council
• Has increasingly little hair on the top of his head
• Fainted midway through tattooing process (apparently because smoking and allowing yourself to be repeatedly cut with needles at the same time is not good for the oxygen-to-the-brain situation)
• Dropped out of university
• Once called himself a feminist on national television
• Was production editor of a women’s issues magazine in university
• Has no criminal record to show for his brushes with the law
• Signature fighting move is continuing to shout insults while having his ass comprehensively kicked
• Cannot hold his booze (and has stopped trying)
• Has been described as “yappy”
• Has held the job title “executive assistant”
• Knows how to cook, and enjoys it (how’s that unmanly? See Unger, Felix)
• Doesn’t win all that much bread, really
• Has never once even tried to fight a bear
• Is currently writing about himself in the third person

There I am, reduced to a not particularly helpful and radically misleading set of facts. Make of it what you will. Tomorrow: Enough about me, let’s talk about my bear-fighting uncle!

NEXT POSTS:
I Come by it Honestly: Teenager fights bear. Wins.
Guys vs. Men: It ain’t (just) a battle of the sexes

PREVIOUS POST:
Is This What You’ve Become? It all began in an east-end pigsty

________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Unless you count an introductory gender studies class at Ryerson, in which my signal achievement was having the professor illustrate a study point by saying “I’m guessing you generally pass as a gay male.” I took it as equal parts compliment and insult, given where he was coming from and who I wanted to sleep with. [back]

[2] Of which Mordecai Richler wrote a great takedown, in his book Hunting Tigers Under Glass, regarding one of Mailer’s heroic characters elsewhere in Advetisements: “Sergius O’Shaughnessy … sounded ominously like the fantasy of someone who was five-four, had acne, spoke in a shrill voice, etc. etc. etc.”[back]

photo credit: xcatherinax