Well, no, unlike Elephant Man’s John Merrick, I haven’t been egregiously targeted or pervasively marginalized, but still, Merrick’s protest is my own. “I am a human being!” he shouts, cornered in a urinal by the gawking, frightened, threatening crowd. We have much more in common than otherwise, in my opinion, and not just I and Merrick, but also I and you.
Every society, whether transient and small like the riders of an elevator, whether grand and lasting like China, extends its privileges to those it recognizes as full members of the tribe. The way to inclusion is to define the tribe as “all human beings.” Period. If you specify your identity beyond that, you are setting the stage to leave someone out. “I am a human being” should be an entry visa to any society, and only misconduct or incompetence should be stigmatized and marginalized. (Even misconduct and incompetence should not cost full membership in every social situation, only in the roles that the person is incompetent or unwilling to play.)
When Merrick croaks out a final, “I am a man,” I (rather idiosyncratically, I admit) don’t hear it as him refining his definition of himself. I hear it as a comment on what he has just done, which was to face down his demons and to speak the truth that he is a human being. Every person would be well-served by trying to be a better man (and by trying to be a better woman, but that’s another post).
True story. I taught in a psychology graduate school (not in Colorado) and I left after not getting a full-time position there. On my last day, a group of students asked me why I had never seemed to fit in. I said, “This place goes on and on about multiculturalism, but there has never been room here for my culture.”
“What’s your culture?” one woman asked.
“I’m a man,” I said. “I think it’s more important to test ideas with argument and evidence than to be nice about everything that’s said.”
Frankly, I also meant that I like providing for my family. I like being right, and I like sex. Anger doesn’t alarm me. I think that honor is a useful concept and a good guide to living. I think it’s usually better to cowboy up than to whine. I think it’s more important to be funny than to be tender. I don’t think “you hurt my feelings” is a valid argument. I take no satisfaction in being offended by words. I’m proud of success and I am not ashamed of being smarter or better at something than someone else. I don’t feel guilty about other people’s suffering unless I caused it. Allow me to repeat that part: I don’t feel guilty about other people’s suffering unless I caused it.
Perhaps you are also part man? Probably on your father’s side. You and I both come from a long line of men.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 