WHILE scrolling through my Google News feed earlier in the week, I stumbled upon a headline quoting one of my favourite macho actors Sean Penn.

He was apparently lamenting the fact that American men had become “feminised” and, as per usual with the internet, he was rebuked by actor Thandiwe Newton who called him a “gibbering fool”.

I am not one to spend hours scrolling through entertainment news and gossip but I found this news event interesting and although I didn’t follow up (maybe things have progressed since), I always find discussions or debates on femininity and masculinity fascinating because they reveal a lot more than just someone’s opinion on how to behave according to their gender.

Just like the band Devo’s 1977 song Jocko Homo, to fall back onto gendered tropes is a form of devolution.

A personal anecdote about gender still tickles me whenever the issue of gender and behaviour crops up.

I arrived right smack in winter at the start of my three-year sojourn in Australia in the mid-1990s and, since my parents had also travelled to help me and my two housemates out, some household products they bought with them were left behind after they returned to Malaysia. One of those was a bottle of skin moisturiser.

Since it was our first real experience of winter, all three of us were clueless as to what to do with dry skin, which is a common side-effect of the cold.

As my skin was so dry that it hurt to smile or laugh (and I like doing both a lot), I figured out the purpose of that solitary bottle of moisturiser on the shelf and proceeded to apply it to my cheeks to ease the dryness, and of course it worked.

I passed the bottle to one of my housemates who was smoking in the kitchen and he promptly refused, stating: “We are men, we should not use that.”

I just laughed it off and said: “Suit yourself, man”.

Safe to say the bottle magically emptied itself in the coming weeks and I bought my own bottle for myself.

It’s interesting to ask men about what they think constitutes “masculinity” – the typical thing tends to relate to common ideas about being “strong” and of course expressions like “men don’t cry”.

However, it is more telling of how men are socialised into ideologies about masculinity in the products they consume.

Growing up as the older sibling in my family (my brother is eight years younger than me), my direct models of masculinity were my dad and my late grandfather.

While my dad was never pushy about doing “manly” things or behaving as such, he was a real cool cat who I looked up to and he had many skills that I figured were essential to being a man.

An example is in thinking of what cologne smell is associated with manliness. Thinking that I’d impress girls, I started buying cheap colognes at grocery stores that were mostly “musky” in character.

So, I assumed smelling “musky” is how men should smell and being a man was my destiny and I needed to smell that way.

I also did not use shampoo until my teens because as boys, the bar of soap alone was a miracle that covered all my basic showering needs. I only knew what conditioners were for in college.

It was around this time that my late grandfather remarked something about gender since I grew my hair long – he said long hair was only for girls, but didn’t tell me to cut it or what to do next.

Being a girl was the last thing I had in mind when I let my locks grow long: I wanted to look like my rock n roll heroes.

Even my dad and uncles looked cool with long hair and goatees in the family picture they took in the early 1980s. 

Looking back, I never really fit the conventional idea of being “masculine” although like most boys, we took stock of the stereotypes and assumed that these were gospel – and this is also where a lot of sexist ideas about both genders tend to be played out.

Personally, I think the simplistic binary of “feminine” and “masculine” is limiting but serves its purpose to create some social norms and behaviour that is assumed to be predetermined biologically.

I also personally think that gender would be irrelevant in the afterlife since gender and sexuality is something earth-bound related to procreation and continuing our individual gene pools.

However, gender is very real here on planet Earth and the feminist movement was an important catalyst to not just the empowerment of women but also forwarding the important ideals of equality for everyone.

It perplexes me when men – and it always tends to be men – complain about feminine behaviour and equating it with being “gay”, the typical slur used by men to square up another into proving their “masculinity”.

Dig deeper into the history of the Nusantara and you will find how the dichotomy of “feminine” v “masculine” to be a very Western construct. Think of the humble sarong: is it masculine or feminine?

All human beings are born with both masculine and feminine traits, it’s all down to our socialisation and cultural experiences.

Ultimately, we choose for ourselves which gender identity suits who we feel we are inside. I also think that someone like Sean Penn – his masculinity is old school – should not be publicly shamed for his opinion (his body of work and the characters he has portrayed speaks for itself).

As flawed as it may seem, he is expressing a part of the broader spectrum of what denotes “masculinity”.

I think men have a lot to learn from women and I’m all for women taking over the world – look at the mess that it is now.

Qualities like empathy are often misconstrued as “feminine” but what is wrong with empathy? I think the world needs empathy in abundance right now.

If anyone challenges me into a shallow debate about being “manly”, I have this to say: eat my sarong. – February 4, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.