One of the reasons I enjoy studying critical social theory is that it helps me understand my own life (when I understand what I’m reading, at least!). When I chose to take this class, I hoped to not only gain a foothold in masculinity literature because of its scholarly value, but also to gain a deeper sense of how the ideals of masculinity have informed my relationships and my subjectivity as a man. Being home with my family for the last several weeks, along with our recent unit on fatherhood, has led me to reflect on my relationship with my father. In this final blog post, I reflect on our relationship.

 

The impetus for this post is a conversation I had with my dad the other day. He came home from work in the afternoon, changed out of his work clothes, washed his hands, and stood in the doorway of the room bordering the kitchen, where I was washing dishes. As the only person actively leaving the house these days, he’s currently quarantining from my sister, myself, and my mother, who is immunocompromised. From well over six feet, he asked me a question I was not at all prepared for: “Bilal — why don’t you ever tell me things about yourself?” He pointed out how often my sister talks to him about what’s bothering her, and how their relationship is much more openly loving than our own. There are lots of answers to his question, and I’m not sure how much of them have to do with gender. But I realize that there are many ways in which gender has informed our relationship.

 

To begin, my parents have always been more protective of my older sister. In part because of their upbringing in Pakistan and their Muslim faith, my parents believe that women are in need of greater emotional support and physical protection. Although these beliefs may be sexist in themselves, I admire the extent to which my sister feels she can rely on my dad when she’s going through something. On the other hand, when I was growing up my father encouraged me to be relatively independent and to face obstacles head on. I remember when we would play-fight when I was younger, and my dad remarking that it served the function of preparing me for any fights I might encounter at school.

 

I don’t mean to say that my dad has not been supportive of me. And the question he posed clearly indicates a critical awareness of the tension in our relationship. But our story is not unique in the following way: his expectation of me to be relatively independent and able to confront my problems on my own, and my internalization and idealization of those expectations, has created a distance between myself and my father. I’ve always seen his relationship to my sister as what a father-daughter relationship should be, and I’ve always thought that my relationship to him is what a father-son relationship should be.

 

My own internalization of these norms has also hindered our relationship. During my sophomore year at Rice, I was generally sad and socially anxious. I began seeing a counselor, but didn’t tell my parents about what I felt was a significant emotional turn in my life. I had no reason to fear a negative response from them. Rather, I was worried that my own emotional baggage would unduly burden them, and that they would freak out about their son who was too far away to see. I felt that I had to deal with the problem on my own.

 

When I was in middle school, I was bullied for my ethnicity and religious faith. As Stanley Thangaraj writes in Desi Hoop Dreams, the South Asian body in the United States serves as “the specter of ‘terrorist’” (75), and the materialization of this discourse in the bullying I faced deeply saddened my parents. I remember how willing they were to reach out to school administration, ask if I wanted to switch schools, etc., and how much the situation stressed them out in turn. As I dealt with emotional turmoil in college, I felt I had a kind of duty to deal with it myself rather than contribute to greater stress in their lives. In hindsight, and in conversation with my dad, I now read this as an attempt to live up to that original ideal of independence and emotional/physical strength.

 

My perception of my father has changed a lot over time. When I was young, he would often tell me stories from his youth about fights with his friends, or about his brief stint in the Pakistani air force. My perception changed when my dad was laid off from his television repair job in 2008. He eventually found a well-paid position in appliance repair, but he hated his job. I had never seen my dad so openly emotionally distressed about anything — a few years later, he compared his situation at the time to my situation in middle school. My perception of my dad was also complicated in high school when my mother’s cancer diagnosis left her unable to work for a short time. Not only did my dad pick up forms of housework that were usually left for my mom, but I also saw a kind of emotional vulnerability as we reeled from the initial fear that came with the diagnosis. When my mom recovered and started working again, housework was distributed more equally between them (see Wang 2014).

 

During our long conversation the other day, my dad and I talked about much of what I have described above, and I left the conversation with a stronger belief that I should share my emotions with my dad. I know it will be a challenge to actively ask myself when I should do this, and to initiate those conversations. Over the years (and through this course), I’ve gained an appreciation for the ways that each interaction constitutes and either reinforces or challenges preexisting relationship/social dynamics. My dad and I have a lot of time to talk these days, so I challenge myself to make the conversations count.

 

– Bilal Rehman

 

Hansi Lo Wang. “To Model Manhood, Immigrant Dads Draw from Two Worlds.” https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/09/01/343984726/to-model-manhood-immigrant-dads-draw-from-two-worlds

Stanley Thangaraj. Desi Hoop Dreams. New York University Press, New York. 2015.