Thread by @AlexPetrovnia

So Hemingway is actually a fascinating example. He was actually raised by his mother as a girl for the early part of his life, until around age 5. He later wrote in his life that he despised his mother for this, and blamed his issues with women on it.

https://twitter.com/sadydoyle/status/1387828563882164224

Hemingway struggled with gender identity and reclaiming his masculinity for most of his life. He had many wives and extreme marriage troubles for most of his life. His books are dominated with a sense of “lost masculinity” and he was obsessed with toxic masculine ideals.

It’s entirely possible this was influenced by his time as a soldier in WWI, where trauma suppression and self-sacrifice were encouraged through appealing to soldier’s desires to be masculine. He showed a notable disdain for women throughout his life and in his writing.

Perhaps most fascinating is that his obsession with gender and masculinity really came to a focal point in his novel, “The Sun Also Rises”. This novel is about a man who was a soldier in WWI, and who suffered a war wound to his penis, making it unusable.

The novel follows this man and, in particular, his relationships with his controlling girlfriend (Hemingway was never subtle about his gender issues) and his freespirited mistress. Jake (the protagonist) is in love with his mistress, but she refuses to be with him long-term.

She blames this on his inability to have sex with her, and leaves him for another man. Jake becomes a protege of a famous Spanish bullfighter (NOT SUBTLE). He breaks up with his girlfriend, and his mistress has turbulent affairs with other men.

Jake’s mistress continues to use him as her emotional support through all of this, and he allows this, believing he is good for nothing else. She eventually gets married, but not before they lament together at what could have been if he was “whole”.

Jake’s injury is meant to be a metaphor for how the masculinity of young soldiers had been stolen by the trauma of WWI, which made them unloveable (a convenient narrative for Hemingway). He was largely describing symptoms of untreated PTSD and its impacts on relationships.

However, chalking it up to gender and a “loss” of masculinity through trauma is an interesting lens, certainly impacted by Hemingway’s own turbulent relationship with gender.
However, this novel becomes much more interesting when considered through other lenses.

Ironically, Jake is a fairly apt metaphor for trans men in general, and many of us, like him, struggle immensely with personal conceptions of masculinity and inferiority.

However, I would argue that in Jake’s case as well as ours, the issue isn’t in our inherent lack of masculinity or “failure” as men, but that the painted models of “ideal masculinity” are deeply inaccessible and unhealthy, especially for those with trauma.

In a deeply ironic twist, Hemingway’s intended point, that masculinity was “lost”, may in fact be further evidence to show that the toxic masculine ideals he so admired disappoint and destroy everyone and every relationship they touch.

I’m a Faulkner fan, anyway.