A Man Who Speaks for Himself

Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child.

Luca Brasi, ‘The Godfather’ (1972)

How much of the father is in the son and how much to the father does the son owe?
Genetically, of course, the father and mother are present in the child. The father and mother are the authors of the child. One way or another, both parents will have influence over the child’s development. No child gets out of childhood alive!
Until that moment arrives when the child decides that life is something that should be lived according to dictates of its own making. For some, this moment may never arrive and for as long as they live they will be trying to fulfill an imperative not their own. Such a person will never find any form of happiness. At best, maybe, they’ll find an accommodation, a way to live in the belief that they live their own lives - it’s a delusion.
Mulder lost respect for his father, if not his fear, around the time his sister was abducted. The family, naturally enough, broke up after this heartbreakingly overwhelming event. Mulder’s natural affiliation was towards his mother. He maintains this affiliation through his natural ability to empathise with women who find themselves persecuted by the patriarchal regime. The inverted gender roles were always one of the most attractive features of the early X Files.
At some point, Mulder decided he did not want to be his father. His entire career is based on an opposition to patriarchy. His sensitivity to extreme possibilities is not masculine.
The masculine male is a fairly easy creature to understand. Modern gender politics paints him as a monster as, it has to be said, does the X Files. Think of Virgil Incanto or Harry Cokely, for instance, both of whom are males who prey upon unsuspecting and defenseless females. The masculine male is a creature who has outlived his usefulness. Though we do him a disservice if we negligently dismiss his contribution to our survival out of hand.
We human beings are just not very good at giving acknowledgement to those who made the modern world possible. We enjoy ‘gender fluidity’ only because the masculine male stupidly gave himself in war and in defense of what he’d built, only to have his legacy devalued by those who have no gratitude in their hearts. Of course, we don’t need the almost barbaric and insensitive masculine male who fails to adapt to the modern world. However, dismissing him out of hand, denying him the gratitude we all owe him, serves no purpose other than to send him spiraling out of control.
The Harvey Weinsteins and Donald Trumps of today once served a purpose. Once upon a time, they would risk their lives and give their lives for the survival of the family or tribe and think themselves worthy of a little appreciation. And once upon a time, they were in a position to take the appreciation they felt they deserved.
The world has moved on since then but, in doing so, a mistake was made. The positives of Feminism and its struggle for equality can never be overestimated; it is debatable whether the struggle was conducted in the most beneficial of ways. Lack of gratitude never weighs well on a man’s shoulders.
No woman must feel the need to be grateful to an abusive male and every woman has the right and the duty to bring the full weight of the law against any male who abuses her as a woman. The mistake was the arbitrary dismissal of all that the male had made possible.
It might be that no woman or no gender fluid person feels they owe anything to that throwback to a bygone age that is the masculine male. The truth of the matte is, however, that they can only hold such a view because that backward thinking, testosterone driven man went out of his way and gave his life to make the world safe enough for the ungrateful to hold the views they now hold.
Mulder isn’t really a masculine male. In Season Three’s ‘Nisei’, after chasing the Japanese dude and having his gun kicked out of his hand, he pulls a second gun from an ankle holster with the quip, “I got tired of losing my gun.” Until he met Krycek, Mulder was pretty used to getting the worst of a situation. No masculine male is our Agent Mulder.
So, when he reaches that moment in Diana Fowley’s apartment, after listening to the CSM, and ready to give up and accept his fate because “there’s nothing to be done”, it is a perfectly understandable occurrence. He has given his life to the cause in a way that his ancestors would never be able to understand. He feels too much. And he who feels is not a masculine man.
His ancestors would know exactly what to do. Fight!
However futile the cause, it has always been better to go down fighting. Mulder has an option his ancestors never had to face. Like the Japanese upon the surrender of the British in Singapore, the masculine man would not know what to do with those who forego the glory of the fight.
As much as Mulder is not a masculine man he is more of a man than his father. Despite his being authored by an outside voice, Mulder insists on speaking his own story. He has learned how to be a modern male, a man who speaks for himself yet is able to hear what others are saying.