Benji's surrounded by almost exclusively male characters in this novel, and being a growing teenage boy growing up in 1980s America, masculinity is commonly considered an incredibly important part of growing up. Benji describes how they used to get into fights constantly as children, and the word "pussy" is thrown around by the other boys commonly to undermine each other's masculine status. The few female characters who do exist are almost always treated by the boys as sex objects. In general, I felt very taken aback at multiple parts of the book by the sheer bluntness of the boys as they discussed girls.
I was also taken aback by how determined the boys seemed to be in embracing typically masculine things. I already mentioned the fights they got into as children, and in the chapter Gangsters, Benji notes that it transitions into guns. Benji seems a bit hesitant about how much his friends are embracing their guns. It's also useful to note that they're mainly posing with their guns - it's completely about looking good, looking masculine, proving themselves to each other.
I think the intensity of the grabbing onto masculinity is directly linked to Benji and his friends' struggling with their identity. The boys are, as Benji once describes them, a walking contradiction - black boys with beach houses. Ben often notes how Benji, and the others, are steeped in insecurity. They're all faking it, and just trying to figure out themselves. Benji also notes how his friends differently embrace their blackness. The time period is key here. (Excuse Nika as she goes into full out history nerd). As we juniors learned this year in Mr. Leff's class, the social movements of the 60s and 70s brought along the Black Power and Black Panther movement. I think the influence of the movements plays a key part in Benji's life in main ways, but for the sake of this blog post, I'm going to focus on the embracing of masculinity within the movement. Masculinity was considered a key part of regaining power for black people, and so it was embraced by many within the movement and became a key part of the rhetoric, alienating some women from the movement. Another crucial part of the Black Panther movement was that they armed themselves with guns. When reading the chapter the Gangsters, I immediately began to think about how Benji's friend's newfound fascination and attachment to guns had not only to do with masculinity, but also with their race, and how insecure/confused they felt about both of those elements and their identity at this point in their lives.
Benji shows throughout the book that he never felt as comfortable with the intense masculinity his friends seemed to be adopting, but he too - and he admits that it seems strange to him now, as well - often got into fights as a child, and he often goes along with what his friends do. I think it's also key that the main encourager of Benji's fights as a child, his father, lived through the time of the Black Panthers and likely took the ideas of masculinity to a new extreme - his father taught Benji to fight in an aggressive manner we even described as abusive in class. Benji also finds earlier in the book a piece of paper on which his mother describes his father as abuse. Abuse is all about power, just as toxic masculinity is, and they often feed into each other.
Toxic masculinity is a huge part of this book and Benji is deeply rooted in an environment at Sag Harbour that encourages it through historical context, his father's role in his life, and the influence and lead of his friends around him.
