The Man With No Van: uncovering the roots of a utilitarian masculinity

It’s been almost a decade since I stopped writing about stuff with a social purpose. It might not just be the right time to get back to it, but also the fair thing to do when you read a book that every man who praises his confidence should read.

Cartas sin Remitente 2, by Andrea Sarmiento, is an art piece that collects letters on feminism like no other book has. And among many of those letters she’s written to herself and her readers, there’s one letter that tore my ego down. Allow me, with this post, to navigate the why. 

Andrea, I am now in a reliable position to tell you what masculinity meant for me, what it has meant to my male ancestors, my generation, and my social circles even here in the UK: as the Queer expat that I am entitled to be today, I didn’t know the man that I had built for 25 years, until I consciously stepped away from it. Away from him.

My masculinity was one that, unlike so many others, wasn’t utilised to gain or impose power. My masculinity was utilised to survive. Whether you believe the Theory of Adaptability or not, what worked for me wasn’t to be a smart boy, nor a strong one.

I used to stay silent, watch and learn what other confident boys did at school, then I almost developed a script to use in case of my masculinity being challenged or questioned. I realised that the script was utilised by all boys. I guess there was book out there, somewhere.

I did survive. But having read your book, I fear that regardless of my survival skills as a social animal, the exercise of my manhood could have harmed as much as the manhood of any other boy. 

While my intention isn’t shaming nor questioning the ancient construct of this gender, it is my moral dutyx to uncover the roots of a utilitarian masculinity, which I’m afraid haven’t changed since Ancient literature: trauma and fear. Trauma from our childhood, and fear from repetition in our adulthood. 

Babylonian texts and ancient scriptures somehow coincide on the fear of men being the consequence of traumatic loss. Loss of women, loss of lands, or loss of communities. Not so distant from my school days in the country of normality, where we are often taught, through cultural capital, that one can belong to someone else. 

What was my loss as a developing 9-year-old man? It wasn’t certainly a van. It was happiness. Or we could put it in other words: the trauma that chose me (who chooses a trauma deliberately!?) was the “walk and talk like a man”. Talk like a man, or else you will be excluded, you will no longer have friends, women will not want you, you’ll be single for the rest of your life. Walk like a man, or else, you will disappoint your family.

I didn’t even have the chance to explore with freedom what I was sexually attracted to; I could not know whether I felt masculine or feminine. My school, my telly, my music, my family and my church dictated who I was, and as such, I was meant to be attracted to women, with pride. A lot of senseless pride. You would think, at first, this journey is a choice that forces no one to join. 

Andrea, I love my hard-working parents with my eyes, soul and mind wide open. In the days of my trauma, I loved them differently: I loved them blindly. I wouldn’t do anything that disturbs my dad, and I would do everything that pleases my mom. The never-questioned food, home and education didn’t leave me with too much choice but to follow the expectations they had of me and my manhood.

And who could blame them, anyway? I feel forced to say perhaps that my generation was a bit less patriarchal than their generation was, and I had no choice but to accept that their education shaped their parenthood. It was the fear of losing their love and the security of a place to live that made my adolescence meet society’s expectations of masculinity.

I did question the masculinity as much as your 2025 book does today, and, I’m sorry to disappoint you with my findings: being a man, a masculine man, is just being like El Paisita de Sexto (Only those who read the book will understand). I utilised the behaviors of men like El Paisita and I mimicked them. It was the Darwinian thing to do, and it didn’t raise any alarms from my “friends”, my cousins and ultimately my parents, about my resistance to being a man.

I was in a constant lookout for the confidence and tranquility with which boys behaved with girls, and how they would not mind hurting people’s feelings. My obsession with getting an answer reached a level where I felt sad for not being able to hurt like other confident boys would. For not picking up an after-class fight because I couldn't care for loyalty, territory of respect. I felt anxious for not judging girls’ shapes like other proud boys did. For not being able to give unsolicited compliments about the beauty of other girls. 

And I wondered for so long what the natural bit was that I missed in my DNA. 

Perhaps I was just an educated man? A man with a good mother? A man with values and intelligence? I can understand how attractive they can be to you, Andrea. But even in the comfort of their support towards me at school, I wasn’t able to feel confident, something that all these smart and educated boys still have to their advantage. 

The answer to that search had always been in front of me, I just didn’t have the distance to see it. The confidence, the power, the rewards, the respect, the sexual pleasure, and the admiration that my classmates received were due to their conscious heterosexuality. They knew they were attracted to women, so they could utilise masculinity more easily than I could: their motivations were clearer than mine. An ugly boy needs to be good at banter. A handsome boy needs to be a badass boy. I knew the rule book, I just couldn’t understand what my motivation was to practice what I read. 

Andrea, that’s what being a man in our generation is like. All heterosexual men have read the same book that I have. My book is now full of dust, somewhere in a bookshelf. Those who still read it, will utilise it to build society, and some others will continue to make a mess out of it. 

I only had fears, questions and frustration. Surviving was my only motivation. Utilising the masculinity the way I did it got me through 25 years of life, until my body started to scream what my mind had muted for so long. Andrea, though we have different walks of life, something that brought us together on the evening of your book launch was the freedom that had been taken away from our early childhood, when our only concern was what game to play next. 

I hope you never forget how beautiful, smart and powerful you are. I’m sorry for what some men have made you feel in life. And having analysed your letters on the trilogy of men, I trust you now deal only with the ones who don’t need to stick to the rule book to feel masculine. 

Copyright © 2025 Haroldmosquera.co.uk. All rights reserved.