In Gloria Anzaldúa’s essay “La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness,” from her book Borderlands: the new mestiza / La Frontera, she writes about the meaning of the word macho, both in the past and now, and how the modern meaning is “an Anglo invention” (83). She writes that, “For men like my father, being “macho” meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able to show love. Today’s macho has doubts about his ability to feed his family. His “machismo” is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self-esteem. It is the result of hierarchical dominance” (83). Is it possible to regain the initial sense of the word macho in a world that is still dominated by White men? Anzaldúa writes about how women (in this particular case Chicana women) should no longer condone or excuse this type of behavior, “Though we “understand” the root causes of male hatred and fear, and the subsequent wounding of women” (83). But how can men move past that, when all of the root causes are still in place?
I saw an excellent example of this in the Life C.Y.C.L.E. program in Soledad State Prison (more information and a personal anecdote here). In the Life C.Y.C.L.E. program, the men go through twelve (I believe) units, each of which is an area that they should focus on improving in their lives—and one of these units was “manhood”. I had the opportunity to sit in one of the smaller breakout groups (about 15-20 men), and they asked me which topic I wanted them to discuss, since they were at the end of the course and had covered all of the units already. I chose manhood, because I was very curious what manhood meant to these men who were lifers in prison.
From the resulting discussion, where different men shared about what manhood means to them now and what they thought it meant before, I learned that many of these men had gone through the exact transformation Anzaldúa wants men to go through in general. Many of the men shared that before being incarcerated and before being in this program, they had thought that manhood was about being tough, about being strong, and about gathering respect from their fellow men; but they had realized that this was not true. One man in particular said that to him, manhood meant being able to provide for his family and being able to show love to his children and his wife. Another man shared that manhood meant showing women, and people in general, the love and respect that they deserve.
The things these men talked about as constituting “manhood” to them are the exact things that Anzaldúa argues that manhood used to be, before Chicano men were exposed to the Gringo world (and many of the men sharing were in fact Chicano). It seems that it is definitely possible for men to achieve this transformation, even in a world where the root causes of the problem of the modern “machismo” exist. However, men need spaces where it is okay to be vulnerable about their feelings and their past or present faults with other men—and they should not have to go to prison to find this healing space.
Critical race theory 