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

[JustJo]

Originally Posted by 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.

As the mother of a bookish, nerdy, dramatic, sensitive son who prefers cooking to sports and likes his fingernails long....I appreciate this post.

My son is barely 13, and is just peeking at puberty, but already I've heard the "gay" rumblings. It makes me nuts. Whether it turns out that he's gay or straight....I love him....he's my only child and one I thought I'd never have. It just makes me crazy that people have decided his sexuality for him based on the way he runs or throws a ball (or doesn't).

He is a boy. He will be a man. How he defines that is up to him - not society's screwy criteria.