On Maleness, MaleID/Trans Masculinity, Expectations and Being "Less of a Man"

[Nat]

If man and woman were of equal value in this culture, I don't think manhood would be nearly as strictly policed as it is. I have a cisgender straight male friend who is terrified of small town Texas because he is sensitive, bookish, nurturing and artsy - and he's faced gender policing and gay baiting his whole life because he doesn't conform to that impossible sized box labeled "real man."

I blame Rudyard Kipling.

But seriously, definitions of manhood involving what leisure activities one does or does not enjoy have their roots in a power structure kept in place by clear delineations between men and anybody deemed not to qualify. The rules at their strictest would exclude the vast majority of men.