Somehow I'll Make a Man Out of You

How many of you have heard that song from the Disney movie Mulan, "I'll Make a Man Out of You?" I feel like that song represents an interesting part of my ex-gay experience. I've been visiting San Diego State University for the past two weeks (my husband is a student here) and they've been having Greek Week, which is a time for students to find out about the fraternities and sororities on campus and then perhaps rush for them. There was one fraternity that really caught my eye, Alpha Gamma Omega, SDSU's only Christ-centered fraternity. So I decided to check out some of the things they do. They do: Worship Night, Wakeboarding, Beach Football, Broomball, and then "Bigger or Better" (I'm not sure what that means exactly).

Their activities they have planned really got me thinking about gender roles and how they could possibly be trying to re-assert their masculinity by these activities. I was taught through my reparative therapy counseling sessions that men engage in these activities not to necessarily "butch" ourselves up, but because sports are a natural way for guys to connect with another.

Because I was told that my father did an inadequate job raising me to be a "man of God," I was assigned to male mentor in the church.

For us guys in the program they partner us up with straight male mentors, particularly men who are a little older, overweight, and balding. Well, the therapeutic theory behind this is that they believe that these guys will serve as less of temptation for us. But I have a little confession to make. I find those guys kinda hot. --Chad, Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House

My male mentor's job was to pretty much be the good Christian example that my father wasn't. We went out to play catch at the lake, we went to go see action flicks at the cinema, and like every good Christian "dad" he took me to a Promise Keepers convention where I was supposed to learn how to become a "man of integrity." From my mentor I was supposed to receive constant reaffirmation for the good things I did that were representative of an authentic "man of God."

However, through my attempts to "reconnect with my masculinity" I ironically began to feel like less of a man through the activities that I was doing. I felt like masculinity was being defined for me. I always knew that I was a feminine guy. I had heard that since I was a small boy and I had learned to accept it. But my male mentor didn't know how to respond to that. He had 2 sons that were older than me and I'm sure he was just doing what he done with his sons when he raised them. Eventually he had starting feeling like he was doing something wrong as a leader, but then changed his mind to the belief that there was just more that was wrong with me.

So as these fraternity brothers play their beach football and tackle one another with no shirts on, I wonder if they do so because they too believe that sports are just the natural way for men to connect with one another.