Lately, I’ve been very confused about my gender identity. I've been trying to figure out why I don't feel comfortable in my own body and what gives me gender euphoria. To give you some context, I was assigned female at birth yet all the roles and stereotypes placed on me because of such never appealed to me. I don’t like being perceived as some sort of delicate flower or pure-hearted because I looked like a girl. I also hated that I wasn’t allowed to do certain things just because I was perceived like a girl. I can’t have hair on my body, I can’t sit or act a certain way because that’s not how “ladies” are supposed to be, I get criticized/asked by my own mother why I don’t want to show off my body with tight clothes or stuff that is “girly”. I do like “feminine” things and I like “feminine” clothes (sometimes, when I’m in the mood), but I never got the appeal of being perceived as a woman. The first time I decided to play as a masculine figure in a dress up game on ROBLOX of all places, I felt something akin to gender euphoria. I didn’t get it at first. For all my life, I was just barely content living as a “tomboy who would eventually grow up to be a woman” (whatever that means), but something about that moment lit up a switch in my brain that I couldn’t brush off. I have only been vaguely aware of the Transgender umbrella, but never thought it could apply to me. I was clearly cis, right???
As a side note: I don’t really quite understand why certain experiences are considered a monolith for a specific group of people. Yes, we all have similar experiences as a collective, but we often forget that there will still be some individual experiences that don’t always line up with the stereotype. It doesn’t make them any less valid or something that isn’t worth considering.
With that being said, I have been feeling quite masculine recently and trying to find ways to affirm myself of that fact. Gender Dysphoria is a bitch and it’s even worse when the body you’re in does not quite match up to what you want to present as. I’ve been going down the gender quiz rabbit hole, starting with the Open Sex Role Inventory test ; A personality test based on Bem’s Sex-Role Inventory created by a psychologist, Sandara Bem and published in 1974. It was a series of 60 questions that served to determine an individual as masculine, feminine or androgynous based on how they answered. If you’re curious as to how I tested, my results were:
Masculinity: 91
Femininity: 100
“Undifferentiated-Feminine”
Which I took at face value because, one; It’s an online test, it’s not going to determine every single part of my life. And, two; The series of questions themselves were very shallow and stereotypical. It serves to depict femininity as passive and masculinity as aggressive. I got the sense that questions related to creativity were feminine coded, while those that related to destruction were masculine. I realize that this is could also be part of my projection and I could have some bias regarding a few simple traits, but I don’t really trust a test that was based on very little nuance and takes at least 3-4 mins to determine what is means to be a man, woman, non-binary or anything in between. It did leave me wondering though; What does it actually mean to be masculine?
If you aren’t interested in something like the military, guns, sports, or whatever “manly” traits society has peddled is what it means to be a man; then what does it mean for you if you don’t really feel connected to any of those things? Are you considered feminine now? What if you don’t actually connect with that either? The easy answer is “androgyny”, but what if you lean towards one thing over the other? Does it make me less like a man just because I don’t believe in toxic ideals about masculinity or want to engage in “girly” activities? If so, why? Why do I have to pretend I’m tough, don’t have any feelings, conquer everything in my path, and assert myself to be considered a man? Why as a society have we just equated manliness akin to aggressive animals with no self-discipline or respect for femininity? I don’t want to buy into that bullshit, I wanna celebrate my masculinity. I want to celebrate in a way that does not degrade femininity, but it’s so difficult when acceptance, care and compassion is considered something only a “woman can be” by these awful gender roles that we still pretend mean anything.
I don’t want to feel that, just because I care about my appearance or that I don’t agree that force is the solution to every problem, I’m less of a man. I don’t want to pretend that certain colours or certain activities are only for “girls” or “boys”, and that I need to “pass” to be a man. Why should disrespect of others be considered masculine? Why do I have to prove that I’m “man enough” for men when if I look or act girly for even just a second, I’m now doing it wrong? Why do I still feel the need to apologize to every woman about my “privilege” as if I don’t already get discrimination on all sides? Does anyone even know what being a man is like without being a huge asshole??
Another side note: There’s a weird sense of misandry in general LGBT+ spaces that make me feel unsafe as someone who is masculine. I feel like I have to try harder to prove that I’m not like the other cis, straight men out there, as well as “pass enough” to be considered a man. It’s very easy to filter it out online, but real life is another story. There is a weariness towards the idea of masculinity that exclusionaries breed by depicting men as tyrant manipulators that serve to take advantage of women. Which is very dangerous and generalizes a lot of things, but I don’t feel like going all “erm askually not all men, all lives matter actually” because that’s not what I’m trying to say. The point is that a lot of men’s toxic behaviour isn’t the inherited sense to do evil, but one that has been perpetuated by society’s double standards. Flipping the oppression and discrimination the other way will not be the solution that exclusionaries, like TERFs, seemingly think it will be. This isn’t to say that men aren’t responsible for their own behaviour either, but you don’t need to stoop to a level where you degrade men for something a woman is societally allowed to do. Transmascs should not feel the need to apologize for being a man, just because they don’t want to be feminine. Everyone has the ability to be terrible, no matter the background. A handful of bad people should not determine your opinion on a specific group of individuals.
Forgive me for being a bit heated, but I’m so tired of being told that I’m a lesser man just because I don’t fit into the stereotype of being the “Gangster who gets all the girls, has large pecs and doesn’t give a fuck about anything”. I want to look up to someone who is stable in their masculinity enough to genuinely, not give a fuck if they’re “manly” or not. I want to be flamboyant or have “androgynous or feminine traits” and still be considered a man. I want to feel like manliness is a spectrum, not a rigid ideal that every man has to do to be one. I want to be celebrated as a masculine figure without having to go the extra mile to “look cis”. I want masculinity to be beautiful too.