Are 'feminine men' the way they are mostly due to biological factors?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s a simplified question for such a complex issue but I’d rather put this in IMHO than Great Debates.

For men, masculinity would be considered normal. Even in today’s ‘liberalized’ western society that’s portrayed by the media…Feminine men IMHO - (desire to look attractive, caring for appearance without fear of exploring the female arena of appearance and cosmetics, rejection of physical or verbal agression unless in really necessary situations, more nurturing towards friends and partners, no obession with masculinity or femininity but rather being mature in personalitye.g no campness)

People talk about non-gender conforming men or feminine men as something they see regularly…but in reality, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Feminine men are not the minority. The minority even in a country is still a large population. One would have to call them a fringe minority. If we exclude camp behaviour as categorizing men as ‘feminine’ and go with the definition in the second paragraph, then I’d say it’s really an abnormality.

I want to clarify that abnormality is referring to the frequency of these traits among men and I’m not using it as a derogatory manner i.e feminine men have mental disorders Similarly, there are some dopers who feel like I’m saying that mainstream masculinity is somehow bad. I don’t really care if someone is masculine or feminine whether they be man or woman, I’ve just always been really curious about the tiny…tiny amount of non-gender conforming men I’ve met.

So going back to the question, if an incredibly few amount of men are feminine, does that mean that there is more than just a simple choice in regards to how these traits arise in someone? If it were mostly a choice I would think that we would see 2-3 truly feminine men a week in liberal areas of America, Canada, UK as opposed to 2-3 per year. What do you think?

2

There are very few non-cultural traits which are universally associated with being born male. Besides body shape, there’s aggression. Aggression and violence.

There’s also, I believe, a generally increased talent for visualizing objects without seeing them (such as revolving an imaginary cube in your mind). And there’s probably a few others that similarly do not bear on the topic.

Almost everything about male behavior is culturally determined, as far as sociologists can figure out.

So, things traditionally associated with maleness in western cultures, such as poor impulse control, being unable to understand why one shouldn’t wear white socks with sandals, the ability to change tires, and propensity for STEM professions, are all cultural constructs.

The reason male persons aren’t “feminine” is because those traits are thoroughly punished from earliest childhood, while anything “masculine” is rewarded.

3

When was it determined that the only innate male traits were violence and rotating cubes in your head?

For instance, there has been recently a thread here about kids supposedly raised “genderless” still showing a preference for gender-appropriate toys. And it’s not the first time there’s a study about this issue, toy makers are very interested in the topic. That’s definitely not a settled issue, in any case. And that’s just toys.

We hardly know anything about whether human traits and behaviours in general are innate or acquired. How could it be stated with certainty that traits traditionnally associated with masculinity/feminity are entirely cultural at this point in time?

4

[citation needed]

5

I am so tired of reading this sort of thing. It’s 2017. Do you not realize that there is almost nothing that you can say is applicable to “men” or “women”? Give it up!! People are people. We are all unique. (Y’all are making me AGGRESSIVE. And I am not MALE.)

6

This question was raised by the OP in this thread. Unfortunately, the subject immediately got hijacked to sexual orientation, which too many people assume is the same thing.

7

Angry is not the same as aggressive. I’m fucking angry all right. Not aggressive though.

In most species of mammals males are more aggressive (especially toward each other) than females. We’re mammals.

The toy situation is that, given the exact same toys, boys will do more aggressive imaginative play with them than girls will. Sticks that to girls are magic ponies are guns or swords to boys. Rocks that girls will delineate a house with, boys will tend to throw at targets. I’ve seen it at day care plenty of times. Naturally boys will gravitate toward toys and games which have a focus of aggression rather than neutral or nurturing.

We’re all unique but we also have a gender.

8

If that’s the case why don’t 100% of people turn out exactly like everyone else? Why do some people buck the trend and turn out differently? Are those of us who dare to be different simply stronger than the rest of you guys?

9

I was interested in the subject at least ten years ago, I will see if I can find the studies again

10

Anecdotally only, people buck the trend despite the difficulty when

  1. there is no possible way for them to pretend to be ‘normal’, they are just too different and/or
  2. they grew up in some kind of social bubble which supported them becoming who they felt they were.

You still have to be damn strong if the dominant paradigm you don’t match isn’t going to wreck you inside.

11

Nature versus nurture.

Please pardon my personal impatience about this, but I have been observing throughout my life, that it is entirely obvious from the most simple application of logic to observations, that the answer to this is that it is MOSTLY NATURE.

Were it not so, the preponderance of males raised by a single female parents, would exhibit primarily female-like behaviors. In addition to that, I have personally witnessed children within a single family unit, where each one came to have distinct masculine and feminine behaviors which were CONTRARY to how their own parents behaved (i.e. the very masculine father and very feminine mother had a very feminine son, and rather masculine daughter. And I knew the family long enough and well enough to know that there was no “rewards” structure, formal or informal, for these behaviors).

All of the physical behaviors that I personally have, which match my father, are explained by the obvious fact that I inherited his bone and muscular patterns. Not that I copied him and was rewarded for doing so.

Finally, I have observed non-humans with mixed or reverse gender-specific behavioral patterns as well.

Frankly, having seen absolute ZERO support for the idea that these behavior patterns are taught, and massive support for the opposite, I am losing patience with those who insist on ignoring reality that is all around them every day, and who insist that people (and those other animals) are actively CHOOSING to behave as they do.

Oh, one more thing that I just remembered:

Occasionally, there have been cases where brain damage has occurred to someone, and although they mostly recovered, they acquired a FOREIGN ACCENT when they spoke. If speech patterns and dialects are thus proven to have a PHYSIOLOGICAL origin, why continue to insist that femininity and masculinity are magically immune?

12

And then there’s the case of the baby boy whose genitals were mutilated in a botched circumcision. They decided to remove his genitals, give him estrogen therapy, and raise him as a girl. He had all kinds of therapy, psychiatric and hormonal, to reinforce the idea that he was a girl. Except he never became a girl. He became a very unhappy boy who grew up into a totally fucked up man, who eventually took his own life.

Some things are innate, and cannot be changed by external pressure.

13

Agreed.

14

I agree that nature is a strong force with regards to our temperament and behaviour, but I think this is a fairly weak argument. If the male raised by a single female parent identifies as male, goes to school with other males, watches TV and movies that depict male roles, there’s no reason to expect the child to “act female.” This is not enough on it’s own to disprove a cultural element.

15

I’m not.

16

I don’t know if I have biological factors or if my self-identification (and other-categorization) as a feminine male is entirely due to life-experience and other social & cultural factors. I mostly don’t care.

The atypical specks on the wall didn’t get there by a different process than the rest of them. Whenever you have a distribution with these characteristics —variation within each population and overlap — you are inevitably going to have some atypical points such as the mango flecks on the far right or the mint flecks on the far left. You can’t not have them. It’s a mathematically guaranteed outcome when the distribution matches that description.

Therefore I don’t find myself in need of any more explanation than that. I’m an exception to the general rule.

17

I had…questionable role models from age 0-6. Mother largely absent, and abusive stepfather (who was largely a SAHD…in the early 80s) and sometimes grandparents who fit a very traditional mold. I do not remember EVER really playing with toys (imaginatively–I would sometimes “set them up” in tableaux and then move on) unless encouraged to by neighbor kids. I read. Constantly.

Anyway, my active playing was more boy-like, I guess. I loved smashing rocks into smaller bits (with or without studying mineral patterns or embedded fossils), building dams and forts, exploring the woods, frying leaves and ants with a magnifying glass :o, shooting bb guns or setting off firecrackers, playing Nintendo or doing elementary programming on the Commodore. I’m not sure what the “real girls” did all those years, and yes, that’s how I would have thought of it. Maybe that says something.

What am I now? Honestly, if I were 20 years younger, I think I might be uncomfortably bogged down into all the gender-mishmash that younger people are somewhat compelled to identify with. It must be confusing. In a way, I find some of that intricacy more sexist and stereotyping than anything I had to deal with. I was a “tomboy,” more or less, who grew up to be semi-feminine, as it suited me, and took on a very gender-stereotypical role (housewife/stay-at-home mom, mostly). I did have both male and female lovers before I reached what I consider full maturity. I don’t think any modern, more specific term for my gender or gender role would make me more comfortable with myself or easier to delineate as far as others are concerned.

Just throwing that out for a data point. :slight_smile:

Oh, and back to the OP–I was conceived, supposedly, while my mother was on birth control pills. She said she continued to take them for a few months because she didn’t know she was pregnant. I do have endocrine issues.

18

I’ve got two daughters and a one year old son. He’s never been “punished” for being feminine nor rewarded for masculine behavior yet he is unmistakably a boy.

19

I don’t know that it’s possible to completely eliminate the influence of social pressure to conform to the gender associated with biological sex. The “rewards and punishments” for conformity/nonconformity are basically part of the atmosphere. You wouldn’t necessarily be aware that you were encouraging your children to conform, because from your culturally conditioned perspective, you’d be behaving neutrally.

That doesn’t automatically mean that all the gender differences between boys and girls would disappear if we could remove all social conditioning, but the impossibility of (ethically) conducting a proper experiment means we might not be able to precisely determine the degree of influence that society exerts. Oh well.

20

Sounds to me you have a set of pre-conceived notions that you have no interest in overcoming so you ignore evidence that doesn’t support your thesis.