On Masculinity

Okay, now for something a little more serious.

In today's Toronto Star, sports reporter Damien Cox interviews Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke about the latter's 20-year-old son, who happens to be gay. That fact has been known to the Burke family for almost two years, but it's just now coming out, as it were, in the media.

In the article, the elder Burke quite understandably wishes for the day when items like this won't be considered newsworthy. And some of the readers commenting on the article protest that the day is already here, arguing that the story isn't relevant to hockey fans. That may be true. But the fact is that the article is fully deserving of its column inches for the effect it hopefully will have on a sports culture that lags well behind the times in terms of accepting differences.

Brian Burke isn't just any old professional sports executive. He's a proverbial man's man, an opinionated and tough-minded guy who believes bare-knuckled fighting belongs in hockey and has placed a premium on qualities such as "truculence" and "testosterone" in his so-far unsuccessful attempt to rebuild his team. He's old-school - a beat 'em in the alley type who'd just as soon win a physical war of attrition as a test of skill.

In other words, he's the type of guy you might expect to deny or bury reports about his son's homosexuality. Instead, he's acknowledged it in public with honesty and without squirming equivocation. He doesn't claim, like many in his position would, to love his son in spite of his sexuality, but rather professes more admiration for the young man because of the courage it's taken to come out while still working within a hockey environment (the younger Burke analyzes statistics and video for a U.S. college team).

Moreover, Burke senior shows that he's not afraid to use his famously salty language or his celebrity to defend his son against bigots. Cox's article relates Burke's cussing out of anti-gay marriage protesters in California and his openness to marching in Toronto's gay pride parade next year.

That the coarse, aggressive Brian Burke has taken this stand is meaningful in a sports world where "don't ask, don't tell" would actually be considered an upgrade in terms of the acceptance of gay people. He may be a prototypical man's man, but Burke's uncompromising support for his son is his most admirable display of masculinity.

Masculinity, of course, is a notion under siege these days - and not from the people that some men would complain about. Sure, feminists have for years (rightly) questioned some of the more unsavoury aspects of stereotypical maleness, but as this article from a couple of weeks back by Eye Weekly's Edward Keenan shows, it's actually men who could render manliness extinct. Men like the writer-turned-filmmaker Tucker Max, whose movie I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell opened a couple of weeks ago.

Max - who I hadn't even heard of since the Eye piece - has apparently made a name for himself by evangelizing for what Keenan calls "dude culture," a lifestyle predicated on binge drinking, sexual promiscuity and general obnoxiousness. Keenan makes an excellent argument that this form of "manliness" can be defined more accurately as childishness - the refusal to assume and perform the responsibilities that, in previous generations, would have been central to common notions of masculinity. You don't have to spend much time in a downtown bar, a mall or a movie theatre without encountering this kind of misbegotten idea of what makes a man.

The definition of masculinity will continue to evolve and be debated. With any luck, men will pass up Tucker Max's infantile version for the one exemplified by Brian Burke and his son.

arrowsplitter.blogspot.com

Riddle Me This, Nova Scotia

The first thing I did was go to Tim Hortons.

After an early-morning flight from Toronto to our new home in Atlantic Canada, I was eager to start this new chapter with a cup of the old, familiar sugar-water. Being that the nearest location is within two downhill blocks of the new place (I believe there is a bylaw in Dartmouth requiring that there be a Timmy's within spitting distance of each resident), this should have taken only a couple of minutes.

But as those minutes passed, I found myself progressing no further than a nearby stoplight, where I stared, mystified, at a flashing orange hand that never seemed to give way to the white glow of the "walk" signal no matter what the colour of the streetlights. If I wasn't supposed to walk on green, red or yellow lights, when was I supposed to walk? Was the Timmy's, its sign visible above a row of houses, permanently out of my reach despite its palpable proximity? And what were these curious buttons with arrows above them on the pole beside me?

This traumatic experience made it clear that adjusting to Dartmouth after a lifetime encased in the friendly concrete of Toronto was going to be difficult. The entire Halifax Regional Municipality area, it turns out, is a land of riddles seemingly designed to confuse innocent, vulnerable Torontonians.

The ever-present, admonishing traffic hand is just one of these. After nearly two weeks on the East Coast, I have made several similar observations, which I shall list here:

1) Garbage, recycling and composting here is complicated. Apparently, the residents of HRM are clever enough to understand and execute instructions that call for organic materials, solid waste and two different kinds of recyclable materials to be dropped in entirely separate bins. I noticed while at the mall that most people were able to do this without crying, even though tears were welling up in my own eyes as I stood helplessly in front of all those options, wondering whether my crumpled-up napkins belonged in the paper recyling or organics bin.

2) In Toronto, one can be reasonably certain that climbing aboard a streetcar marked "Queen Street" will result in a steady progression in the same direction down said street. Not so in HRM. The buses here dip and dive down streets with no regard for their passengers' equilibrium, making sudden, unpredictable cuts and switches as if they're following an especially complex offensive scheme designed by an NBA coach. Yet the locals register little to no alarm as all this goes on, their knowledge of the bus' number and eventual destination inexplicably filling them with confidence.

3) The people here have a habit of speaking to you. Even those who have never met you or friended you on Facebook tend to say hello without warning. Despite their clear violation of my personal-space bubble, they respond to my aggrieved grunts as though I'm the one who's committed the social faux-pas.

There are, and will be, more such revelations as life here proceeds. Reporting them may be the only thing that keeps me sane in this insane town.

arrowsplitter.blogspot.com

All Apologies

But who am I apologizing to? Myself?

That's probably right. But in any case, I was surprised to see that I'd split nary an arrow in the entire month of October. And a high percentage of my irregular posts since July have been apologies for posting so irregularly accompanied by resolutions to get back in the blogging groove. Empty promises, as it turns out.

Here's the thing. It's been rather busy. Travel, marriage, a cross-country move impending. Said move will put me in a position where I will likely have to blog to save my own sanity, so while I might remain quiet for a couple more weeks, after that I'll hardly be able to shut up.

I mean it this time.