"At dawn, look to the east"

There is a scene at the climax of the third act The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers where the heroes lead one last charge into the overwhelming army of Uruk hai, to what seems like certain death. Then as Aragorn turns to look to the east, there, the rising sun at his back astride his white horse is Gandalf with a full battalion of Rohirrim. The relief is palpable as hope wells up in your heart and you realise it is not the end, and that the heroes will survive. This is the only way I feel I can describe the feeling of relief and hope I found sitting in my Media Studies class half way through my fourth year at Rhodes University, discussing the concept of masculinity.

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My whole life I had been at war with myself about what I needed to do to be considered a masculine man. It had been journey filled with countless contradictory examples that had left me with no true north, no guiding force pushing me in the right direction. So I had stayed still, treading water in a vast ocean of confusion unable to find land, waiting for something or someone to rescue me.

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I find it funny that I would find the revelation that would lift me out of my state of resignation, half asleep in a class that until recently had been dedicated to educating me about coloniality. But the words came none the less and shook me straight out of my idle state: “Masculinity is not singular, there are many masculinities”.

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Those nine words were like the keys to a door that I never knew I could open and when I did it changed what I thought I was and what I should be. For the first time in my life I understood two things. First that just because I was different did not mean I was wrong. And second, I was not alone.

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It was as though I had been walking my whole life looking down and now, looking up, I could finally see more than dirt and my own two feet. It felt good, because for the first time I felt as if I had a direction, a vision for myself that I didn’t seem so hopeless anymore. I could be the man I wanted to be without fear of not fitting into some mould preordained by a bunch of old white guys who I will never meet and could care less about. I knew the fight was not over and that I would have to face many things in my life that would tell me I was misguided but despite that I finally felt like I would be okay.