Tearjerkers

From as little as ten years of age, my father would discipline me when I bawled my eyes out, when I complained about a papercut. He would say "Nom yun dai jiang fu" which means man-big-husband. He excoriated me for acting like a sissy and ordered me to act like a man and to be tough. To possess a hard exterior, a hard shell without flinching and without breaking into tears. For most of my life, I bottled up my tears and repressed all my fears and anger so that my father would not reprimand me. I did not want my mother to see me cry either as I have never seen my mother and father shed tears more than once. I believe that a sense of masculinity was instilled in me. This masculinity not only indoctrinated a certain kind of Asian masculinity, but it also instilled in me a subtle type of misogyny. For the many times that my father berated my mother and quarreled endlessly with her, tears would secrete into my pillow. I would wake in the morning to air-dryed blankets that stained of tears and my eyes crusted from crying. I can describe my early relationship with my mother as incredibly amazing and euphoric. I remember when I was seven and eight, and my mother would bring me to Confucius Plaza swings. She would take me all over the Chinatown area. But when I dig deeper into the recesses of buried memories (bad memories are memories nonetheless), I recall attachment issues with my mom. Every Sunday my mom and dad would take me to places all around the city, but when my mom had to leave for work at 5:30PM, I had to leave her arms. This was more than heartbreaking, it was traumatic even as I reflect on it now. I would start crying and crying in public. In fact I cried so much in my childhood years I must have been a momma's boy and a crybaby. My growth of attachment issues can be corrorborated by Freudian theory as well. Once my mom left me for work every Sunday (up to the point when I felt hurt that it was happening at such a high rate), I sought my Dad's attention and affection in order to spite mom. Once Mom took up full time work which consumed her Saturdays as well, I was left with my Dad at home. In fact I spend 90% of my life with my Dad because he's constantly at home and I'm constantly under his supervision and tutelage. It is no wonder that they say "like father, like son." The constant love that I felt from my father trumped the love from my mother solely because she was always at work, struggling hard to make ends meet. I denied all that she did because I forgot about the day I entered mom's sweatshop in the Garment District. I denied all the hard labor out of necessity, and to concentrate my life around myself and my Dad. But this selfish act left a rift between me and my mom, which I am happy to say is being amended right now.

I suppose that my muddled past which contains rejection, trauma, forgetfulness, regrets, and abuse, give way to who I am now. I am sensitive because I have learned to cry at an early age--I have learned that I cannot get what I want, and my bubbles of hope would always get popped by verbal harassment. From first grade to third grade I nearly cried everyday when I was yelled at. It became a reflex when my teachers (authority figures became pronounced in my life) chastised me. I remember Mrs. Tricamo from third grade who screamed at me for getting up to go to lunch without being told to. I remember the nasty librarian Mr. Foccarrazzo (short, bald Italian man with a short temper and guttural voice) who shouted at me and pointed me towards time-out for leaving the line to go get a book. Here is when I learned sensitivity and the destruction of my wants. I learned to be discouraged and to be shot down. My confidence level knelt to authority figures and sank under the weight of filial piety at home. My need for independence was not discovered until high school because of a distinct dependency on my parents (I have never had a sleep-over, I've never been away from New York City, I've never traveled without my parents). I identified with my parents in terms of dependency---they were so overprotective that I did not even know of their overprotectiveness until I wanted independence from them. They were so overprotective that my views of the world until college were incredibly limited (I "didn't get out much"). I was not allowed to go to the park until the end of my seventh grade year. I was not allowed to go anywhere alone until my last year of high school. It is safe to say that I am so sheltered and shielded by my parents. Now you as a reader can criticize my parents, criticize me, or criticize both my parents and me for remaining incredibly old-SkOoL, but you should understand that I do not want to blame my parents because I am guilt-tripped to respect and show reverence to my parents at all times. Therefore if you were to say malignant things about my parents, I would be guilt-tripped to instantly defend my parents under the very reason that they are my parents, the very virtue that they had me and raised me as their only child. The unacceptable thing to do is to find a scapegoat because it does not solve a problem or point towards the independence that I seek.

If a person is shaped by his primary sites of socialization and it occured early in his/er childhood, can you fault let's say, a teenage woman for being a golddigger? Can you say that she is a b word for being a golddigger? Can you ignore the very fact (her telling) that she was always awarded gifts and monetary portions by her single father when she grew up? Can you accuse her of having these primordial golddigger traits? It would be wholly ignorant if you dismiss her past and fault her entirely for being a golddigger. If we are consistently ordered by our own self-interest, then it is clear why this woman accepted the gifts and bestowed a golddigger "personality." However, it does not make it morally correct that after she gained knowledge of her golddiggerism, she does not change for herself. She is not obligated to change for her partner or her husband, but she is due to change for herself if she consents to taking her life into her own hands.

Back to the masculinity thing. I've been shaped by ideas of masculinity as early as ten years of age. My storybooks like The Berenstein Bears and Little Red Riding Hood and A Wrinkle In Time or Knights of the Roundtable or even The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly depicted gender roles---the male worked while the female remained in the domain of the home. I began watching television at the tender age of ten--my earliest exposure to sexuality and sexual intercourse was Poltergeist the Legacy. I remember watching a nude male riding a nude female in bed. I had no idea why he was humping her at that time, but it did begin my interest in the nude female body which is highlighted in the artsy, foreign-produced film Cashback. But misogyny appeared when I was in high school. After hearing my father's constant accusations of mom, I assumed a state of helplessness--I could not defend my mother because my father's incessant shouts won mine and his rising temper was simply unbearable. My inability to defend my mother stripped me of my own masculinity which ended up in a deprived state of masculinity, or a "lack of balls." It wasn't until I realized the height of the models in the magazine that I started to doubt my own height. Then when I looked at the Asian men around me, it became clear that my height was far from that of "gangster" Asians/whom my mom calls "liang jai liang mui." I became disappointed and yearned to become them so that I could have their height. At this point I also yearned for a bigger brother that I never had. This bigger brother would be masculine, tall, and a fitting role model I can ascribe to. It's pretty strange how I once felt that Jackie Mai could have been my older brother the week we worked on Ms. Lang's history project together (on Marx and his Communist Manifesto).

All through my life I had a sense of what masculinity was. I had a sense of the duty a male had to fulfill. I felt that men had to be strong for this, for that. The word for increased the burden on my part because I felt it was my duty to be a man and work to the benefit of others, especially women. I am clearly aware that I owe women nothing, lest women vanish from the face of the earth. However, I remember my early crushes Joanna, Samantha, Ivana, Francesca, Danielle, and I recall how infantile my crushes were, how interesting I found these girls to be. I began to grow this interest for girls with auburn hair (Danielle) and Asian girls with innocent faces (Joanne). I held onto their faces and through the years I would try to find a girl that matched their faces or resembled them head to toe. Clearly this failed because of some thought-of-as intrinsic uniqueness attributed to each girl. This is possibly fuelled by nostalgia and regret.

Where does the hatred of women come in? Where do my sexist notions come from? My conceived failure to meet a certain criteria for masculinity causes me to feel frustrated at myself, at my own failures so I scapegoat and project my anger on women who have caused me to feel hurt and shame. This comes from my history of rejections, starting from junior high school. Rejection became a normal thing for me because I learned to accept rejection objectively while the subjective feelings of self-hatred and self-loathing increased by each rejection. For the few times that I was liked and went dating, there were many more times that I was turned down and used and forgotten. This goes hand in hand with expectations. My homegirl would always ask "Well what did you expect, Ken? ...you can't always expect so much from people. People are stupid." She's right: if my expectations were not so high or so framed, maybe I would not get hurt. I only build it so high so that it can crumble down at a faster rate. These rejections caused me to turn tables around and project my hatred towards not just a single girl, but towards women as an entity, as a reified term. I am too scared to face one single female so I decide to take my anger out on women in general. To regard every female as my enemies, as the ones who will dispossess me and use me. Once I established this primary scrutinization, I would not let women in until they passed the first test of trust. These are guards and shields we put up when we want to defend ourselves. I don't want to get hurt again so I implement this net, this barrier so that I can become immune and smug towards nuisance and rejection.

What develops out of this is righteousness and wrongfulness. Self-righteousness gets played up because of the need to differentiate myself from others around me. To posit myself as the person who has been the perpetual victim of bad vices, bad elements. Because they are bad, I must the harbinger of good. Therefore I begin to take everything around me as personal attacks, taking things personal, and straight to the heart so that I can defend myself. In defending myself, I posit myself as righteous and the attackers as completely wrong and immoral. The need to black and white (verb) everything causes a sense of self-admiration and a sense of artificial confidence. But it feels good to admonish others in order to protect my own self esteem. To police others and be smug, self-righteous because my world rises above everyone else's. My way or the highway kinda mental schemata. If this isn't a work of ego (Sartre would disagree), I don't know where it comes from. The counterargument would be that the ego is part of yourself! Therefore you can't shelf blame on your ego for something you did because the ego is still part of you as it rests inside of you, no matter how you divide it up.