This past weekend I went to the Loch Norman Highland Games. It was awesome as usual. Nothing beats spending a whole weekend immersed in Celtic music and wearing a kilt. At these particular games I, thru my parents, am involved in the historical re-enactment section. So, I am able to do some people watching from my parent's candle making tent.
All types of people came and went. However, I saw something that stood out something you don't see in our society: middle aged man, average looking, and a young teen or preteen boy walking together. Based on their appearance I would guess they were father and son, though they could have been related in some other familial fashion. What surprised me was that they were holding hands. I had to watch for a while to see if there was an obvious reason. Perhaps one had lost their footing so a hand was offered for aid. But no, they continued to hold hands, much the same way a young newly married couple holds hands while strolling about in pre-offspring bliss. As they strolled hand in hand thru the tent lined field, I kept remarking to myself how one never sees something like this. I tapped my imagination for an explanation. I thought it possible that the boy perhaps needed his hand held due to some unusual mental capacity. However, I remembered the boy from when he came by our tent an hour or so before. He was by himself and interacted with us quite normally.
What does this all say about our society? Why is this so remarkable? If the couple were made up of females, this would be overlooked. If one member of the two were very young, again it would be overlooked. The aforementioned boy was not young child; he was just a head shorter than his dad/uncle/whoever. If these two males were adults, it wouldn't be overlooked, but there would be an assumption of homosexuality. Why that assumption? Again, why was this so remarkable? Why did my imagination have to grope for odd explanations?
However, these aren't even the correct questions to ask. Why is two males (not involved in an amorous relationship) holding hands such an anomaly? Why do I have to qualify the previous question with the parenthetical statement? All types and combinations of people are allowed to hold hands except for boys and men. Why?
This phenomenon is not a human thing. This is an American thing. Our society has hard and fast (though unwritten) rules on how each of us is to act and interact, males especially. The post-feminism era has given girls and women the freedom to break out of their gender roles. It is acceptable for females to do things that were thought of in the past as being "masculine". Yet, boys are not allowed to break out of their "gender straitjackets". I am borrowing this term from Dr. William Pollack's book Real Boys. Beyond the freedom, or lack thereof, to break out of gender roles is the very idea of what belongs to the masculine or the feminine.
I am quite happy to see such disrespect for our society's archaic rules. I wish I had the guts to have approached those two and asked them their thoughts on this subject. But I am sure they were thinking nothing of their remarkable walk thru that field. My overture would have seemed to them quite ridiculous... which makes me all the happier, because that is the way it should be.
J Ian Wilson
20 - april - 2004