Theory

You remember standpoint theory. You think about your gender in regards to your standpoint, your cultural positioning, your world view. You recognize the privilege in your soft androgyny. You recognize the ubiquitous pressures steering you toward a particular masculinity become weaker the more privilege you garner. You think to your own social capital. You try to see yourself as a heterosexual, white, educated, middle-class man. You notice your view of your position is clouded. You can not see yourself clearly, the assumed normalcy of your position creates fog and prevents your immediate analysis. You recognize you are the constant demographic. You understand every sitcom on network television because you are the presumed audience. You understand the dramas and romances of every film because the white-washed assumed cultures of their protagonists, their antagonists, their universes are the same assumed culture you live inside. You realize you have never explained an argument from the white perspective. You have never been asked, “As a white man....” Your answer is the safe answer, the constant answer, the answer of society. As a heterosexual man, your answer is the answer of every president, the answer of power, of privilege, of permission. You notice the image in the mirror is the image of the oppressor but even your guilt over the cultural history of the body you inhabit is a privilege. You realize guilt and androgyny are, for you, indulgences of class, of your standpoint. You recognize you have the time to consider your guilt and revel in it without consequence. You realize the ease of white androgyny compared to the pressure of normative standards of masculinity combining with specific cultural standards of masculinity in the face of those normative standards. You like to think the consideration of others increases your objectivity, the knowledge of the society built around you which you have accepted by omission of protest, which you have accepted via your continued presence. You hope your education is enough to guard you against the title of appropriator, studier, observer. You hope your quite androgyny, in attitude more than body, serves as some form of quiet protest to your dominate position. You hope you present an alternative, if only a soft one. You try lending your voice when you hope it can help. You strive to understand. You hope. You hope. You hope you expand your glance, your view. You hope.