I’m still not sure what you mean by “being the girl”. Does that mean accommodating your partner’s needs and desires, rather than aggressively pushing your own agenda? If that’s the case, then it’s similar to the way my husband is. Both in and out of bed, he has the attitude of “What are you needing now? What can I do for you? What can we both do that’ll make you feel better?” When I try to focus on HIS needs, all I usually get is that he needs to please me… but not necessarily in the conventional sense of a “bottom”. Is that what you mean by “being the girl” or am I way off?
** thinking **
These examples are almost too concrete. panache’s description has some resonance but it’s only sort of a manifestation of things… but yeah, I’m like that in most of my relationships, although not to the point that there is nothing a partner can do for me except to let me please them, it’s not that one-sided. clairobscur’s example of the door-opening thing… that’s not something I specifically crave but it’s sort of a reflection of being thought about a certain way, so that, too, isn’t far off.
Within an already-established relationship, it’s more about being thought of a certain way than the specifics of how it is expressed. Of course I’m not a genuine mind-reader so it’s back to expression, and how I read those little behaviors and whatnot.
As I said upthread, it’s all of more critical importance in the earlier stages of things, interacting with strangers, flirting, making the initial connnections.
Hope this helps.
Maybe it isn’t what you mean, but I’m getting is that, because you’re not the typical macho type, you somehow interpret this as an entirely new kind of “gender identity”.
At least, that’s how it comes across. It sounds more like you want to challenge traditional gender roles, which isn’t really something new or profound.
Where does one leave off and the other begin? If traditional gender roles were to be sufficiently challenged that they did not persist as expectations and generalizations, gender would not persist; there would still be biological sex but with all the beliefs and assumptions about personality and behavioral differences stripped out.
Hmm, OK, that’s assuming that there aren’t strong real natural tendencies in the sexes towards different personality and behavior. All right, if there are such natural tendencies, then if traditional gender roles were sufficiently challenged, you would have pictures in people’s minds not only about the general rule but also about the exceptions, so that when exceptions were encountered, people would tend to treat folks accordingly, and not as “people who aren’t correctly being the sex that they are”.
Is there anything new and profound about positing a male-bodied … let’s not say “girl” or “woman” here, let’s go with your idea of not positing it as a different gender identity… a male-bodied person who is way more like a (typical) girl or woman in personality and behavior. Oh, we have pictures in people’s minds about such a person, we do! He’s a gay guy. Hmm, how about exceptions there also. (Not saying that such males are or are not more likely to be gay, but if they’re not more likely this is an idea that would go away when traditional gender notions were sufficiently challenged, whereas if it stands as a natural and accurate generalization there would indeed be exceptions). Is there anything new and profound about positing a male-bodied person who’s feminine in personality and behavior* whose attraction is towards female-bodied folk? No? It’s been done? Recommend me some movies and books. Some positive portrayals. In particular I’d like to see some romances where he meets someone who finds him fascinating and really goes for him. 
- it’s a long and clunky description isn’t it? “Male girl” is a lot more concise.
It appears to me a bit like that, indeed. That he wants these roles to be reversed (rather than abandoned) in his relationship. And maybe that he wants this to be done deliberatly and consciously. Which would make his preference to fall somewhere in between an ordinary couple where the male spontaneously tends to take on the nurturing role (as described by panache45 for instance) and a kink couple where the male is deliberately feminized for sexual purposes.
I wouldn’t consider that a “gender identity”, either. Possibly a “lifestyle”.
Once again, I posted before seeing your answer. Yes, it’s more concise, but as you saw, it leaves people confused about what you mean. That’s a convenient wording, but as long as it doesn’t pass into common speech with a generally recognized meaning, it’s not very helpful.
You don’t fit squarely into a common category (regular guy, lesbian, sissy, submissive, etc…) but I still don’t think that making a “gender identity” of every variation is a good idea. After all, I’m not convinced that nowodays the majority of males fit squrely into the traditional male role, either. It seems to me that you would want to be more stereotypically female than most actual females are and your female partner to be more stereotypically male than most actual males are.
You’re (I think) a bit on an undefined border between the “nurturing pleaser” regular guy and the “submissive sissy” kinky guy but you’re still on a continuum. Having a name for it would presumably be useful so that people would understand more or less readily who you are and to find more easily a partner similarly inclined, but I don’t think that would constitute a gender identity anymore than, say “macho man”, “traditional gentleman”, “man in charge”, which are all very different versions of the traditional male role (and wouldn’t appeal to the same women).
I agree. Working on it
I am open to being persuaded of this, but it’s all a matter of positioning and strategy.
Conceptualizing it as a gender identity is actually a return to my original insights on the issue in 1980. I didn’t pursue that very long before shifting gears and describing what I was about more as Guinastasia did, a male-twin effort mirror-imaging feminism’s political move to discard sexist assumptions about personalty, behavior, double standards of behavioral evaluation, proper roles, and all that. I was a women’s studies major as an undergrad and was trying to pursue a sociology PhD rooted in radical feminist theory and do a dissertation on the experience of heterosexual sissies (yet another term I’ve applied to my identity) in conjunction with the women’s studies certificate program, but I was largely viewed as an inauthentic participant. I finally came to view it as being true that women’s studies could not continue to be women’s studies and also have male partipants take on a leadership role and define relevant issues for the movement, and the latter was of course what I would need to do.
If the goal is to draw attention to a set of experiences and a societal position that some male people find themselves in, and raise public consciousness about what that’s like and what our social concerns are, it has to be positioned as something, some variation on things that have been said before, to give people a context in which to process what you’re saying.
Paradoxically, what some of you have been leveling as a criticism, that this isn’t anything particularly new, is not a critical problem but a necessary precondition of it going anywhere: it can’t be entirely new, or not easily, or folks don’t have a mental box to put it in. Of course it needs to have something new that hasn’t already been said and already established socially, but trust me, that one is not a problem here. If it had been done to a useful degree already, there’d be a recognized name for it, and I wouldn’t be perpetually in the process of naming myself.
Anyway, as I said, thinking of myself as a fundamentally Different person, sex male but with personality sexuality behavior priorities inclinations etc being, on aggregate, feminine, was how I first understood myself, so going that way with it now isn’t just opportunistically hopping on because gender politics is trending. But the latter is admittedly part of it.