For generations, society has taught Filipinos and Filipino Americans what our specific gender roles should be. For men, masculinity is usually associated with ideas of strength, competition, emotion-less, family responsibilities, and protection. At times, these concepts can create narrow definitions of manhood and can pigeon-hole heterosexual men into certain prescribed racial, classed, and gender identities. How can Filipino men navigate an increasingly isolating, brutal, and hyper-masculine society particularly in the United States? How do men make room for different forms of masculinity? How do men reject notions of toxicity, violence, and domination as they remake and redefine heterosexual masculinity for ourselves?
In this TFAL episode, Joe talks to Don Martinez, a Marriage and Family Therapist based in Pasadena, and Joseph Reynoso,
NOTE: This was another feeble attempt by Joe to record and edit the episode without the almighty Producer Mike (who was still in the Philippines). Please direct any hate mail to him.
Listen or download the episode through the embedded player on ThisFilipinoAmericanLife.com, or subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
Do you have thoughts on Filipino American masculinity? Let us know and maybe we’ll have further discussion on a future episode! Leave us a voicemail at (805) 394-TFAL or email us at thisfilipinoamericanlife@gmail.com.
As referenced in the episode, here is Joseph Reynoso’s latest work, Sports and Psychoanalysis, an edited volume of essays that explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis.
After listening to the podcast, I want to make one correction: I (Don) associated the early beginnings of rites of passage theory with “Hillman,” a reference to the psychologist James Hillman. That is incorrect. The French anthropologist Arnold van Gennup is credited with originating rites of passage theory. In 1908, Gennup published Les Rites de Passage, a work that cobbled together classical studies, archeology, and anthropological field studies of indigenous cultures, particularly in Papau New Guinea. James Hillman is an archetypal psychologist, a noted speaker at my graduate school, and he often incorporated rites of passage theory into his work.