men as grifters not as people
i am fascinated by dudes in fiction who create elaborate lies
by Zoë Hayden
Something my wife and I talk about a lot is how we are glad we are not in a position where we have to pursue dating again -- especially the possibility of dating straight cis men. Both of us are bisexual, and we are still attracted to men, but the practical process of engaging with them in society poses challenges. Any queer person could be forgiven for thinking there are two versions of reality: the queer one, where gender and sexuality are fluid and beautiful and whatever you want them to be, and the cisnormative, heteronormative one. The longer you're in queer space, the harder it is to return to the level of rigidity imposed by a cishet-normative world. In short, it's why "are the straights okay" has become its own meme.
This is a long way of saying that it has been extremely fun for me to re-frame my attraction to cis men as a fantasy rather than something that exists in reality, and I think this says a lot about how masculinity currently functions in Western society. This is a period during which trans and queer visibility is more common and mainstream than ever before on a global scale -- which is of course why there is also a rabid group of assholes in various Western countries trying to restrict our rights, paint us as dangerous pedophiles, and prevent trans kids and adults from receiving transition care and basic human dignity. They are terrified, of course, because as trans and queer people become more visible, all gender constructs and are being openly challenged. Masculinity is being re-framed as something more tender, more fun, more loving, and something that everyone can have a part in if they so choose. We are living in the modern golden age of masculinity as performance.
One of the great joys my wife and I share is consuming narrative fiction, and there is a type of male character in media that appeals to me on a very basic level. I call him "the sincere grifter." This is a man who lies and manipulates, and who knows he's lying and manipulating, but is doing it for very personal reasons or sincerely held beliefs. The existence of this type of character pops up a lot in television in the 2000s and 2010s, but his origin story is everywhere throughout history if you look for it.
The rise of the sincere grifter in fiction in recent decades was, in retrospect, a harbinger of the ways in which "traditional masculinity" and gender roles were about to be disrupted. Queer culture is hardly new, but its mainstreaming is. And the sincere grifter shows us the cracks in cishet rigidity, because to him, masculinity has to be part of his performance, or part of the armor he wears to shield himself from pain, and he does this consciously and with intent.
It isn't just that Don Draper, for example, isn't who he says he is. It's that he goes to great lengths to obscure aspects of himself and hide them behind "traditional masculinity." He's a rape victim, an abuse victim; he suffers from complex PTSD, alcoholism, and severe anxiety. He is also a terrible person who abuses and gaslights the people who love him.
But he isn't just a con man, playing out this scenario for short-term gain. His entire existence is constructed out of a lie. He is gifted at compartmentalizing because to him, it has become necessary for survival. Mad Men was the canary in the coal mine of the sexual and gender revolution of the 2010s. The characters in that show are portrayed in a world where gender and sexuality are deeply constraining concepts, and much of the character tension in the show comes from people trying to reconcile their inner lives with the appearances and performances they've become accustomed to -- many of which are based in binary, cis heterosexuality and associated norms. This doesn't exactly mean anything truly revolutionary in terms of the show's character arcs, but the show deserves credit for even looking at gender roles the way it did, and showing how they were oppressive even for the straightest and most cisgender among us.
But Don Draper is not a great example of the sincere grifter. He lacks emotional awareness about himself much of the time, and the show portrays that with plenty of candor. This is limiting in terms of the sincere grifter fantasy, because to be truly sincere, our grifter must know who he is and why he is lying. This is especially appealing, I think, to people who have had real romantic relationships with cishet men and found them lacking.
The sincere grifter is, then, a fantasy of both emotional awareness and hypercompetence. He can manage his lies. He knows how he's feeling. He can use real emotions and real, factual truth to inform his grift. There's also an element of secrecy -- he's a great fantasy because there's a possibility that you could truly know him and his secrets, and therefore, you can be special. Millions of words of fanfic have likely been written on this theme. There's something very tantalizing about the push and pull between truth and performance, especially when you start to tease out the difference between an informed and restrained performance and an opportunistic lie.
I find myself drawn to men who seem to struggle with their masculinity in other arts as well. One of my very favorite writers, Richard Brautigan, had famously difficult relationships with women, wrote self-indulgent prose about longing, and committed suicide in 1984. The raw, idiosyncratic economy of his work is still arresting today. His fiction is very overtly masculine, but also quite vulnerable, and it sends up plumes of violence, always centered around manhood or boyhood experiences. In Brautigan's novels, being a man is a dangerous, bloody, and cold business, and while his POV character is normally an outsider, he finds himself in proximity to stereotypically cishet-masculine interests (guns, booze, beautiful women) which trigger irreversible acts of violence around him. Brautigan's finest gift as a writer is his ability to look at the world of men in 1960s and 1970s America with the voice and wonder and insecurity of an anxious child. He doesn't present a solution, but he does put a lamplight on the dark abyss and cultural crisis of Being A Man.
The sincere grifter is adjacent to this crisis, but needs no part in it, because he's performing for a greater cause. Philip Jennings, from The Americans, is probably the best example available of the sincere grifter. Philip weaponizes intimacy with his marks and sources as a KGB agent, but he can usually be honest with his wife Elizabeth, and even honest, in a completely different way, with his source, Martha, who he seduces and marries to get information on the head of counterintelligence in the FBI. The tension in Philip and Elizabeth's partnership heightens as they both try to unpack the contradictions in their values and actions, and, for most of the series, find themselves with different views of what they want their lives to be like.
The depth of Philip's compartmentalization and contradictions is vast, and yet he remains sensitive and emotionally available. The management of his lies requires an awareness and familiarity with his emotions. Even when he might feel like his whole world is falling apart, not to mention the couple's goals with the KGB, he quietly pursues sincerity in his private and inner life with the attention of a master craftsman. The culmination of this comes in season 5, when Philip marries Elizabeth in a secret basement ceremony -- taking her as his wife not as part of his KGB cover, but as his given name, Mikhail, and her given name, Nadezhda.
This level of control, and ability to know oneself deeply while dealing with incessant stress and trauma, is rare or impossible to find in the real world. And it makes appealing fiction for people who have been burned by inaccessible men and petty liars in their personal lives. Have you ever been lied to by someone and then realized, with a strange sinking feeling, that they don't even care that they're lying? The sincere grifter knows, and cares, and does it anyway. It's a perverse kind of conviction.
Of course, there is absolutely nothing practical about this kind of man. You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life with him. Being around somebody who generally can't be trusted only works if you, too, cannot be trusted, and most of us rather enjoy being trusted and liked and respected for who we are -- in fact, when you're queer or trans or nonbinary, this is kind of the ultimate goal. Too often, we are painted as grifters ourselves, as liars or fakers, or even as delusional, dangerous, and insane. The cishet world views us dubiously. Maybe that's why it's so refreshing to see ostensibly straight, cis men in fiction adopt their masculinity as pure performance. It highlights the fact that gender is a construct, that sexuality is fluid, and that the straights are really playing the same game as we are -- and usually losing.