I’ve been watching a documentary called My Own Man via Netflix and it’s got me thinking. (Which is good, because that’s what documentaries are supposed to do. )

In it, this documentary film maker named David is prompted by turning 40 and by finding out he’s to be the father of a baby boy that go on a journey to find out how to be more of a man so he can raise his boy right.

You see, David’s always been a timid, cowardly fellow who has a lot more feminine qualities than masculine, and he is worried that this leaves him inadequate to the job of raising a boy.

One thing he tries is hunting. He actually goes out into the woods, learns to shoot, and kills a young stag. (Luckily, it’s a clean kill, so the deer does not suffer much. Bullet to the heart (or is that hart), game over. )

A younger me would have said, with total conviction, that I would never hunt. But as I get older and get more in touch with my primal id, I am not so sure any more.

There is nothing inherently wrong with hunting food that isn’t also wrong with eating meat. Either way, an animal dies for you to eat it. It might be argued that David’s stag had a much better life than most cows or chickens. It just fell to a different kind of predator than usual.

David does this to feel more like a man, but it doesn’t take. He feels the same afterwards as he did before. And I am pretty sure I know why.

It’s because he maintained emotional distance from what he is doing. He’s a nerdy liberal-ish guy who, like a lot of us intellectual types, is not comfortable with strong emotions that put him in a position where he has to go from the gut because the emotion suppresses reason.

This is true for all us intellectuals, and it is especially true when it comes to instinct. We have instincts for aggression, struggle, dominance, submission, and all kinds of other things that come from a place far deeper than reason and therefore make people who “lead with their head” extremely uncomfortable.

We only trust impulses from the intellect. That’s why we tend to intellectualize everything. David did not get a primal rush of masculinity from the hunt because his mind fiercely suppresses that kind of thing.

That’s why there is this dichotomy between intellectual liberals and primal conservatives.

Conservatives are comfortable with deep, instinctual emotions like ambition, love of family, fear of change, and greed. And they are not at all comfortable with acting on products of reason, which can be confusing and upsetting. So they strongly suppress their reason and listen only to their instincts, or their “gut”.

Liberals are comfortable with the products of reason (and compassion and cooperation and so on) but like I said above, they do not trust impulses than come from deeper than reason and suppress them strongly.

But the thing is, you need both. As we learned from the Star Trek : The Original Series episode “The Enemy Within” (aka the one with two Kirks), you need your primal aggressive side in order to be decisive, in order to be fully in touch with yourself, and most importantly, you need it if you want to feel truly alive.

The id is not the enemy.

So David got no rush from his deer hunt because he didn’t open himself up to the experience. He approached it as an intellectual exercise, and suppressed the very manly emotions he was seeking.

This intellectual approach at the cost of suppressing primal motivations is at the heart of what is wrong with modern liberalism. The liberals are, unquestionably, the side of the angels. But without their primal ids to drive things, they end up diffident, uncertain, and unable to stick up for themselves, let alone aggressively pursuing their agenda with no apologies.

So liberals are wimps, and get bullied by the stupid but definitely in touch with their ids conservatives, and it is the schoolyard writ large upon the globe.

Of course, we can’t visit the topic of manliness and such without touching on my own gender confusion, or is that gender diffusion. I have never felt myself to be strongly in either camp. If I had to tally it up, I suppose I have more feminine traits that masculine, but it’s a pretty close call.

As with a lot of things, I am in the middle somewhere.

There are times when I feel very manly. Aggressive, directed, killer instinct in full effect. Ready to take on the evils of the world and kill them one by one. Ready, in that sense, for war.

But there are other times when I feel quite womanly. Deeply sensitive, with great emotional depth, and caring about every little thing. Wanting everyone to get along and be happy.

So my position is this : cooperation and accommodation up to the point of facing evil, and then it is time to stop cooperating and bust some fucking heads.

As for my own gender identity, I really can’t say. Or perhaps I just don’t want to. To pick either side seems like it involves suppressing a vital part of myself, and given the choice, I decline to do so.

I sometimes think of myself as a maternal male, which sounds like a contradiction in terms to those still trapped in an outdated gender binary. But I am a man who is not afraid to be loving, nurturing, supportive, and even submissive (though not necessarily obedient, if that makes sense).

I don’t always have to be on top.

I love kittens and cats and other animals too. And not in some lame “I guess they’re okay” defensive male way either.

Throw in advanced communication skills and a certain flamboyance, and by gender binary standards, I am practically a woman.

But I’m not a woman, and I am not a man. I am both, in full force.

In the end, I am simply myself.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.