Culture Log

Gender?

I am male. I’m not sure how far back I should go in considering how I learned my gender. To tell you the truth, I’m still fairly confused about what it means to be a man. It feels like I have some biological imperatives at work in my psyche, as well as some social forces at work. I think I learned most of what it means to be a man after my son was born.

Bree was born in 1992, and, at that time, I think gender roles and requirements were in flux. I remember learning a lot about feminism in college, and for quite a while, I was somewhat ashamed of my gender and felt like I was a part of some oppressive regime, and after Bree was born, there was constant strife between my wife and I about who should do what. I was raised without a child in my childhood. I mean, as a kid, I don’t think I held a baby once, nor did I pay much attention to them when they were around, so when my own son was born, he seemed like a little alien to me. Let me be honest, I was scared to death.

My wife expected me to pick up the reigns immediately. Shortly after he was born, she started back at aerobics three times a week and I was responsible for my child al by myself. I was tense for the whole 2 hours she was away. I fed him, changed diapers, and these were the things I knew to do, but what else? I hadn’t a clue. How do you play with a baby? What do you do with a baby? How do you stop them from crying?

I learned a lot about gender at this point. I learned what I never learned about children because I was male; I also learned what it meant to be a woman, by extension. I realized, and was sometimes told, what my expectations were for a woman, and this was truly news to me, but invariably true. I expected her to take care of the baby, and I would “help” when it was convenient for me. I also learned that this wasn’t fair, at least to this particular woman. It was a time of growth, and strife.

Race?

I am white.

What do I know about being white? This is a tough question to answer. I feel at a loss to really come up with what I think. I know what the party line is, but I wonder if I really believe that about white people. White means power. I know that I haven’t had some of the difficulties other races have in simple, daily life.

My old roommate was black, and he told me stories of the overt racism he endured. I also sensed after living with him for a short while that we were different in some fundamental ways, and part of those differences were because of race.

I know that I feel like I belong most places that I go. I know that people do not have negative stereotypes about me. I know that white people expect certain things from the world, like safety and security. I have this sense that white people are not, generally, all that reflective about race in general. I lived for a year in south Texas, right on the border with Mexico, and this region is 98% Hispanic. I remember vividly my first glimpse of “the valley” (the Rio Grande river valley; this is what the locals call the region), and it was frightening to me. I stopped at a gas station in Edinburgh to fill the big U-haul diesel I was driving, and walked into pay, and there was not a single white face in the bunch. Furthermore, when I asked the clerk how far to McAllen, I did not understand her reply, said “Pardon” once, twice, and then dropped it. It’s not that she wasn’t speaking English, just that the accent was thick and threw me.

I learned to respect the Hispanic culture, probably a great deal more than my own. My white culture is materialistic, and, what’s worse, a throw-away culture; it is a culture of short memory and newness.

When I was a kid, I lived near three Indian reservations. I went to school with a few Indians, and I remember absorbing the local stereotypes about Indians – they are lazy, drunks, and dangerous – but I’m not convinced I ever really believed these stereotypes. I used to hang out with Chuck Vizenor quite a bit and I can say that I didn’t see him differently than anybody else.

All in all, I’m really naïve when it comes to things like race and class. This probably isn’t a good thing, but it’s who I am. Certainly, I sense class and race issues. I sense when I am being judged, when people are calling me cracker or gringo behind my back, but it’s just an intuitive knowledge, not quite in the foreground.

Generation?

I am 35 years old. I entered my teens and graduated from high school in the 80’s.

I think I’ve always been drawn to the fringe. When I was in high school, I was arrested at the Grand Forks Air Force base protesting the nuclear missiles housed there. I can say, with certainty, that I really didn’t feel threatened by nuclear war, but I wanted to be a part of that new hippie movement, or the remnants of the old hippie movement. The group I protested with was called Bemidji Partners for Peace, and it was headed by a charismatic guy with a badly-scarred face, Greg. He seemed to have the answer for everything. He seemed to know how to behave in most social situations. He was cool.

We sat ourselves outside the front gates one morning, blocking the entrance to the base. The MP’s arrived in minutes and carried us away. Then we were sent to the Grand Forks police station and booked there. We were released shortly after being booked. I was a minor, nothing happened to me. I did, however, have to serve one day In-School Suspension for missing school. The principal found out about the protest, and that I had lied and said I was not in school because I was sick. Ah, yes, I remember now, it was Martin Luther King day, January 15, and we were in school.

What else about my generation? I think we grew up in a period of affluence of sorts, and I don’t necessarily mean material affluence. What’s better, quantity or quality? Well, I think the members of my generation would agree it’s quantity.

Region?

I lived in the Midwest. I grew up in northern Minnesota. This reply must necessarily speak to ethnicity as well because where I grew up is dominated by Scandinavians. There is a large population of native Americans as well, but it’s the white folk who have always had the power to shape and mold the region.

Minnesota is tidy. The streets are organized, business efficient, the people friendly, but cold. There is this stereotype of Minnesotans, Minnesota Nice, but it aint true. Certainly, we are superficially friendly and polite. That is, the clerk at the grocery store will always say thank-you, and if someone greets you on the street, you will greet them back. But, beyond those niceties, and behind closed doors, it seems to me that people are harsh on others, and judgmental, not at all nice.

I remember one time, I was driving my motorcycle home from work, fifty miles one way. It was late, two in the morning, and I ran out of gas. I was about five miles out of town and I started pushing. I was surprised at the number of cars out this late at night, and after a while, I started counting the number that passed me in either direction. I counted 78 cars. Not one of them stopped. I pushed my bike five miles into town. I got there just as the sky was brightening, and not one of those people stopped to help. That aint nice.

Religion?

I was raised Lutheran. I was confirmed Methodist because this was the church that most of my friends attended for Wednesday morning church school. Can you believe it, when I was a kid, every Wednesday morning, we were let out of class, allowed to walk to our churches, and spent 50 minutes learning religion? My friend’s and I even had time to walk uptown on our way to the Methodist church and grab a few donuts at Dahl’s bakery, piping hot, fresh from the deep fryer. To this day, I still dream of this, the excitement of being free to walk uptown, and the pleasure of donuts eaten on the run, with friends, with freedom. Wow.

Then, for a long period, I did not believe in God, and, in fact, felt quite a bit of disdain for organized religion. I suppose it started out as that fringe thing I spoke of earlier. Agnosticism, or outright atheism, were not popular beliefs to hold in my high school, which might be why I was drawn to them. I haven’t recovered.

There was a short time when I tried on religion again. I had a friend from work who was very nice, very cute, and very religious, and she talked me into going to church with her. I did, a few times, and I really respected her belief and the comfort it gave her, but try as I might, I could not find faith.

At this point, I find religion interesting, but in an entirely academic way. For example, on my way home from family’s Easter celebration, I was thinking about the whole idea of Easter, the rebirth, the symbols of fertility, the sacrifice, and I was thinking there must have been precursors to these ideas that the Christians absorbed to create the holiday we now celebrate as Easter. Christianity is just a bit too convenient for me. There seems a historical basis for much of the thought and philosophy behind it.

I hate, with a passion, the religious right as well, or any fundamentalist for that matter. I just can’t see my world in black and white, and I just can’t ever believe that I’ve got the final solution to any problem, even what color to paint my dining room walls, let alone a sticky moral issue. Sure, I have opinions, but I sense their fluidity each time I consider them.

Ethnic Heritage?

I’ve already spoken of this a bit. I’m 3/4 Swede, and 1/4 German. I feel somewhat fortunate to have such heritage. Two sets of my great grandparents immigrated to this country, and my mother tells me that Swedish was spoken by her grandparents in their home.

However, ethnicity was not important when I was growing up. I’m not exactly sure when I discovered my heritage, but it wasn’t because it was emphasized in the home. Maybe at that time, for my parents, entering adulthood during the civil rights era, America was truly a melting pot, and any one race or ethnicity was as good as any other. I’m not sure.

I, however, have always been interested in my heritage. As an undergraduate, one summer, I took “Scandinavians in America,” a history class, taught by Professor Art Lee. Prof. Lee has published two books on Scandinavian heritage, one of which, Leftover Lutefisk, we read for that class. We also read Ole Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, and watched a Danish film, Pele the Conqueror, in addition to the history texts. This was a great class, all about ethnicity, and primarily, my ethnicity.

I’ve never been harassed because of my ethnicity, unless you consider Ole and Lena jokes a means of harassment. I don’t, I find them quite amusing. I do remember, as a kid, local Lutheran churches having lutefisk dinners around the holidays and to raise money for the church. Have you ever had lutefisk? It’s disgusting. In the old country, lutefisk was a term given to the fish the people caught and preserved for the winter. The fish is preserved by soaking it in lye. Yuck. When it’s reconstituted, it’s mushy and smelly.

Again, I like that Scandinavians crave order. It’s comforting, and you can see this influence all over the state of MN. The city streets are laid out in an orderly fashion, grid-like, and there is thought and care put into the directional signs you see. If you get lost driving through a Scandinavian city, you’re a dunce.

Education?

I attended Park Rapids Area High School, in Northern MN. I never much cared for school, but I’ve respected intelligence, and teachers. I just never quite found an personal connection to what I was learning in school – my fault, not theirs. I did, however, always like English classes. It’s funny, I always did well in English, even the grammar and mechanics stuff, which I do not really know to this day. For me, this stuff is intuitive knowledge, not explicit.

I was part of the fringe group in school. I was sort of a punk-rocker, but our group was characterized by more than just alternative music and dress. We were a smart group, but disdainful of education. We did well in school, but not because we cared or chose to.

I remember sitting on the benches near the entrance to school, posing, looking cool – god, when I think of it, it was such work to be constantly aware of every move and gesture. I wouldn’t have the energy nowadays to be so diligent – and Kim Schubert came and sat right next to me. We were talking about something, and she says to me, “Cory, you’re so profound.” I said, “yeah, sure thing,” minimizing the joy I felt inside at the compliment, even though I had little idea what profound meant; I guessed it was a good thing. I looked it up that evening at home. I wasn’t profound. I was just posing and posturing in the same way everyone else was in high school, trying to identify themselves with a certain group, and/or against another. What a complex social situation, high school.

I was often afraid in high school. My locker was down the row where the hicks hung. They stand down at the end chewing tobacco and making fun of everyone unfortunate enough to venture into their territory. When I was a freshman, there was a fight between two boys. It started as I was pulling books out of my locker, and this was the first time I realized that high school could be dangerous. I suppose I learned something about being male too – you gotta be tough.

These guys made fun of me constantly. They made fun of my clothes, my hair, my shoes – whatever. Kids are cruel, and always know where the jugular is, and they go for it, every time. By the time I was a late junior, and senior, I had made friends with a few of the hicks. One guy, nicknamed “Doofey,” promised to go to the mat for me if anyone ever gave me a hard time. After he said this, I wasn’t bothered again. Doofey had power, a masculine power, and if he said someone was okay, then they were off-limits; I was off-limits; Doofey thought I was cool.

I really don’t think high school is about learning reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, it’s about learning the way of the high school world. When we get out, we learn the world doesn’t work at all like it does in high school, and it’s a relief to realize this.
Social Class?

I was born into a middle-class family. We had a house, two cars, both my parents worked, and for a while, in the 70’s, I thought we were really well-off. My dad sold real estate, and in the 70’s, interest rates skyrocketed. Sometimes, people were paying 19% or more interest on their mortgages. The real estate market dried up. These were hard times. My dad sold the boat. We didn’t go out to eat much. I could sense the stress in the household, but remained largely oblivious to it. Both my parents switched jobs. My dad began selling advertising and commuting 50 miles to work, and my mom became a waitress.

I have always felt, however, that there is this sort of safety net below me. I know that I will never be homeless, and no matter how hard things get, if I absolutely had to have money, I could get it from someone in my family.