Ride That Bike Like A Man

Growing up, my very best friend was my nephew, Cole. He was born eighteen months after me and we lived in the same area, so naturally, we spent much of our time together. Being as I was older, I would encourage him to come to my room and play Barbies, dress-up, or “house” with me. He always obliged that is until we began getting older. He sifted from being so happy to play these “girly” games with me and encouraged me to, instead, come play with his wrestling action figures, train set, or cars. That’s when I started to notice that we were different.

A few years later at his birthday party, Cole received a brand new bike for his birthday from his parents. He was so excited, so Cole and his dad immediately went to a parking lot down the road for him to ride. I walked with them and I was amazed at the comments his dad was making. Something like:

“Faster, faster. That’s a man’s bike. Ride it like a man.”

Cole eventually began riding so fast that he lost control of the bike and flew off, busting 2 of his front teeth. That’s when I began realizing how much pressure his father put on him to be the son he always wanted. He encouraged Cole to stop spending so much of his time with me and more time playing videogames and hanging out with male friends. When he started high school, Cole began getting involved in theatre by working on electrics. That wasn’t good enough for his dad. He wanted him to be the star of the football team, like he claims he was in high school. Cole ended up joining the team and then quit shortly afterwards because he hated it and was miserable. I remember his father calling him out in front of the whole family:

“My son’s a pansy. He quit after one week of football to hang out with the fags in the theatre department. Next thing I know he’ll come out as gay!”  

Cole has spoken to me several times about how he feels that he’s not good enough for his father. He’s failed him as a son because he doesn’t fit into his dad’s standards of what a man should be. This is all I thought about when we watched “The Mask You Live In” in class. I thought about how he must feel knowing that his dad doesn’t approve of his choices. Fathers should be encouraging their sons to be unique and caring and not to be emotionless and common.

Is the American standard couple “normal”?

When asked to think of what a “normal” American standard couple consist of, the typical response is a husband and a wife, or a male and a female relationship. But have you ever stopped to think why we believe this is normal and a natural response? If you think about it, there’s nothing normal or natural about it. We construct what is normal by our own culture and standards that we set for ourselves. Media today has a major impact on how we construct this reality of the world around us and in doing so normalizes us to what our standards should be.

One thing that is typically prevalent in the majority of TV shows are some type of depiction of heterosexuality as the type of relationship a person should have. The main characters or couples of the show are a man and a woman in the relationship. Whenever there is a homosexual couple in a show, they tend to be shown as a problem that needs to be solved. This relationship is typically called out to be abnormal, because it does not blend in with the rest of the show content and have comments or actions directed towards this type of relationship that calls it into question.

Main characters of movies constructing our relationships as we know it in society

The reading of Silence reinforces this idea where the main characters who were involved with each other were always of the opposite sex such as the couples: Cador and Eufemie, Kind Evan and Queen Eufeme. However, the scene where the Queen attempted to seduce Silence and he rejected these advances, she called on the fact that he must be a queer to not want her. Due to this rejection, she attempted to have him punished and killed. This kind of comment of Silence being a queer brings attention that this kind of behavior is not natural or acceptable and that when one exhibits such characteristics, something must be done to fix it. This thirteenth century novel and the present media today still have similar cultural responses to the couples.

Even in the reading of Middlesex, although they are not the typical contemporary American relationships with the incest, all the main couples are heterosexual. For the one character, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, who is presented to have secret lesbian activities, this “problem” is solved by sending her to America by marrying her off to a man, in order to curb these unwanted desires. Even here the non-heterosexual lifestyle is not accepted as normal, so it is considered evil, as it is depicted in many shows.

The normalized 'ideal" relationship: heterosexuality

Obviously, homosexuality is not something that has just presented itself in society recently, this has been a type of relationship since the beginning. But still, this is not something that is considered conventional or normal for the majority of people. Do people accept it? I believe so. But this does not mean these people consider it normal. It is not yet an integrated part of our reality as a whole. Granted, these standards are slowly changing by more and more roles with the different gender and sexual roles of the characters to follow today’s changing culture. However, will the family power couple “norm” ever change from all the years we have been taught about heterosexuality as the ideal standard? Perhaps, but only time will tell.