This is a continuation of an interview done originally by audio. That audio is lost, so I am responding in text. This is question 9:
It is clear in your writing that you go to great lengths to develop masculine men and feminine women, yet you go to great pains to make your masculine men not macho, and your feminine women not submissive or needy in the least, while remaining very feminine. What draws you to explore these issues of masculinity and femininity?
I suppose there are two aspects of this question. What draws me to explore these issues and how did this get reflected in the presentation of men and women?
The ‘draw’ is easy enough. In my own life I felt that there were a missing components of ‘masculinity’ in my own life, like I was meant for something quite different- as a man- but for one reason or another I was not acting like a full man. If there is a ‘masculine ideal’ I wasn’t measuring up. There seemed to be others who felt the same way, even if their conclusions were different. The extraordinary success of Elridge’s “Wild at Heart” I think illustrates this. I don’t think that only men feel this disconnect, either.
At any rate, it seemed to me as I tried to find a way to resolve this issue that the very structure of our lives de-masculinizes and de-feminizes us. Every where you go, no matter what you do, we are asked to… no, required to, water down the virtues of our respective genders. No system could hold a fully masculine man or a fully feminine woman, each aware of the potency of their being and allowed to express it. Systems would break in the face of that kind of individual Manhood and Womanhood. But in Birth Pangs the systems and structures have already all been broken.
Because of the raw anarchy of the times, no man or woman can rely on some institution to come in and do what needs to be done. If it is going to be done at all it will have to be done by people. In Fidelis, this is expressed in a number of ways and in particular are expressed by the characters Fermion and Tasha.
For example, after one battle in which Tasha performs as admirably as Fermion, it is Tasha who swoops in to take care of the wounded and the wounded prisoners. When others want to ‘finish off’ the wounded prisoners, Tasha inserts herself. She does not insert herself diplomatically or passively. She doesn’t offer a suggestions. She asserts herself stoutly and dares all men to cross her… as I mentioned, she had already demonstrated that she was a formidable warrior… crossing her would not be wise.
This concern for the weak among us, this expression of the nurturing instinct among women, is revealed in all of its fierce righteousness in the conduct of Tasha. I believe that this is well represented in Spero, as well.
Similarly, Fermion provides idealized illustrations of masculinity on the loose. Not machoism, but masculinity. Fermion does not need to do dangerous things in order to feel manly. He does dangerous things because he is manly. That is, he does them because they need to be done. He does them because he has studied reality and man’s place within it and has a carefully thought out view of the world. Still waters run deep, you might say. When Fermion takes a life it is not malicious or arbitrary or bloodthirsty, but rather the manifestation of a principled way of thinking. He commits his body completely to the task his mind has decided must be done.
Fermion makes decisions and makes wise ones. He is the sort of man that others would want to submit to, and he is the sort of man who knows when it is time for he himself to submit.
Other characters represent various degrees of these somewhat idealized versions of men and women. Fides, the main character of Fidelis, struggles to find truth in the broken universe he finds himself in- truth about the world and God, and about man.
I guess the lingering question posed by the Birth Pangs series in regards to masculinity and femininity is how exactly we are going to let men be manly and woman be womanly in our current life and times. To that I don’t know the answer.