Guy-entine’s Day
VOICES
Semester Exchanges - A Flimsy Narrative
Celebrating male friendships instead of subscribing to toxic masculinity
Are short-time cultural exchange interactions too banal?
BY MARLEY RICHMOND
BY HARRAM KHAN
One sweet day in February 2010, the idea of exclusively romantic celebrations of Valentine’s Day came to an end when Leslie Knope of “Parks and Recreation” enlightened us with Galentine’s day. Starting as a TV show plot, Galentine’s Day (February 13) soon became a real-life celebration of platonic love and female friendship. But while Galentine’s Day dismantles the idea that romantic love should be prized above friendship or family, it leaves some people out—individuals that, arguably, need an even greater opportunity to share their love for one another: boys! Introducing, Guyentine’s Day, the celebration of platonic male love that we ALL need.
You’re a semester exchange student and at an American university for a few months. Because it is a cultural exchange, the dictated purposes of your visit are not purely academic—rather your exchange sponsor would call it “interculturally interactive” while you resist conjuring up the image of yourself in class wearing a saari. You don’t know how health insurances work or what “cinnamon toast crunch” is, and every person you come across ensures vehemently that the weather is bound to get much worse. That is the preface to an average conversation you will have in the next four months.
When was the last time you told your best friend that you loved them? Maybe recently, or maybe you can’t remember. For many people, especially men, expressing platonic affection can be seen as weak, “unmanly,” and taboo. Toxic masculinity includes this enforcement of restrictive gender roles—praising stoicism and anger in men—and is closely linked with misogyny and homophobia. It can also contribute to rates of domestic and sexual abuse. The American Psychological Association links such a mentality with mental and physical health risks and lower rates of men seeking psychiatric help compared to women. Making space for men to share their emotions is one way to fight back against a gender-biased system leading to such risks.
You tell the “local” about your exchange semester status (or are led to tell as such by the natural stream of dialogue people tend to follow), and instantly, a frenzy ensues where the local must be categorically self-critical of the foreign policies of a certain president. Suddenly, you must be an entire country’s spokesperson or an exhibitionist at the least; anything short of that role is a defamation to your South East Asian heritage. The well being of that farmer in Punjab’s remotest, romanticized village depends on your indifferent shoulders. Speaking of exchanges, I have felt that the room for personal discovery has been greatly limited by the nature of instructions sponsored exchange students receive from different institutions. Instructions that teach about how to behave in conformity with American culture not only leads to ingenuine connections, but it does nothing to further the cause of organic cultural exchange. For instance if exchange organizations and sponsors emphasise too much on the “American” way of shaking hands, the sponsored students only get uneasy about their own conduct. They feel that they cannot be more honest about general things, and have to be agents, instead of real people existing in real, rich and very different cultures. Cultures that have multiple folds of complexities, and are not simply “better” or “worse”.
While Guyentine’s Day can hardly dismantle an oppressive system by itself, promoting male friendship and expressions of positive emotions are an essential part of creating true gender equity. As the celebration of women supporting women becomes more popular, opportunities to advocate for emotional vulnerability and expressions of platonic love between men are just as important! It’s about time that we have a Guyentine’s Day too, so boys can celebrate their love for all their buddies, mates, or bros without any stigma. So get together the guys, celebrate your friendships, and tell your friends you love them.
Identifying the place I’m from, and feeling connected to its history and aesthetics, I have always seen myself in its light. Having said that, I wanted this semester to be an opportunity to go down that Walt Whitman flavored path of “self-discovery” by trying different masks, questioning my deep-seated identities and sailing the Great Lakes with a ukulele for company (not the third part). However, since being here, I have found myself deeper in the trench of those inborn and ingrained identities and labels.
THE WAKE
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