Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Anecdote of Contemporary Hyper-Masculinity


             A few years ago I worked for a major grocery chain store as basically a handy man. I did everything and anything they wanted but spent the majority of time unloading and separating grocery truck deliveries. One day I was on the back dock, business as usual, and one of my coworkers asks me if I caught a certain baseball game on TV the previous night. I tell him no and that I actually don’t follow any sports. So he makes a wise-crack to another coworker that I’m never going to be accepted as a man by other men in the workforce because I don’t follow sports. Side note: the guy was completely serious. So I come back with, why should I be excluded as a man if I don’t watch sports? I carry all the necessary biology to be considered a human male, but since I don’t pay any attention to a male dominated field then I’m classified as sub-male?
I’m not athletic by any means. From childhood through high school I’ve played baseball, basketball, football, and ran track and cross country. Never excelled and to put it bluntly, I was actually quite terrible at all sports. Inevitably this lack of athletic ability made me less interested. Sure I enjoy watching a ball game from time to time, but I don’t care to know who is playing or what the spread is.
By my coworker’s standards as what makes a man male is, in part, that he religiously follows sports to no viable end. Thank you media for making sports just as important as the third world’s struggle for survival.       

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