# The Femmy Boy's Guide to Flirting **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 8, 2018, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144 "2018-01-08T15:21:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/281 "2018-01-18T17:36:34Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I like the way that you adopt a deliberately convoluted, confusing writing style, then get irate if people don’t read and remember every high word-count, low content post that you’ve made over the course of years. It’s like some kind of performance art. I, on the other hand, do not believe you are participating in this conversation in good faith. You may have been originally, but you are sufficiently polarized against me and irritated with me that at this point you would mock absolutely anything I did. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/282 "2018-01-18T17:43:00Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > In your OP, you said that flirting was a female things, and that no one talks about men flirting “All I can say is, if all guys learn this and do this, there sure is an odd dearth of anyone talking about it!”. I found half a dozen articles in popular media discussing men flirting and how men should flirt without expending any real effort. That’s a good example both of you projecting your internalized view of something being inflexibly gendered onto the world, and of you ignoring evidence to the contrary. How to flirt as a man is a common subject of conversation in the transman communities, and in many cases the dudes talk about how cisgender straight males go through their process of flirting with girls to get them. Anyone who hangs around enough transmen in real life gets to know this quickly. I’ve even had some of them “test out” their flirting with me, like a role-playing scenario. Well in one case he really was flirting with me, not testing, but I was too blind to see it until it was too late. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/283 "2018-01-18T17:44:51Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I like the way that you adopt a deliberately convoluted, confusing writing style, then get irate if people don’t read and remember every high word-count, low content post that you’ve made over the course of years. It’s like some kind of performance art. QED: > [@AHunter3](#): > > Men collectively are not having “manhood” imposed on us from the outside such that we’re all in this boat together as people defined and pushed into it. Males, individually, yes, but the people doing the imposing and the pushing are MEN, overwhelmingly so. I don’t even know… what? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/284 "2018-01-18T17:53:19Z")
That’s actually an easy one. Women are tired of being forced into traditional gender roles by men (outsiders) and so they are fighting back as a group against this outsider. (Feminism, or Women’s Lib or whatever) Men are not being forced into traditional gender roles by an outside force, they are being forced into traditional gender roles by other MEN, so there is no outside group for men to rise up and fight against. Not that I agree with that, but I think I understand it. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/285 "2018-01-18T18:00:03Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > That’s actually an easy one. Women are tired of being forced into traditional gender roles by men (outsiders) and so they are fighting back as a group against this outsider. (Feminism, or Women’s Lib or whatever) Men are not being forced into traditional gender roles by an outside force, they are being forced into traditional gender roles by other MEN, so there is no outside group for men to rise up and fight against. > > Not that I agree with that, but I think I understand it. Does he mean that I’ve been busting my ass in the gym my whole life just to please – other men? :eek: :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/286 "2018-01-18T18:03:04Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Does he mean that I’ve been busting my ass in the gym my whole life just to look good for – other men? :eek: :rolleyes: I think something like that, yeah. Of course, I could be wrong. However I know for a fact that women want to look good to impress other women! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/287 "2018-01-18T18:05:15Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > \*\* nods \*\* > > There’s an essential difference between the situation you’re describing and my situation (and rhetoric). If you look at women as a whole (and generalize about them yet again) _women in general have risen up against the imposed blanket of sexist beliefs and assumptions about how they are, or how they are supposed to be_. > > For all that it is true that a good portion of femininity-conformity is imposed upon female people by other female people, ranging from who performs the clitoridectomies in the places where they are practiced to who it is who makes disparaging catty remarks about an athletic Tonya Harding who doesn’t skate with the feminine grace of a Nancy Kerrigan, _it is still not true_ that female people who don’t match / don’t wish to match the feminine description predominantly experience the pressure to conform to it from members of their own sex. Generalizing always oversimplified but in general women have rejected those stricture and favored more freedom for each other, and have found their progress impeded far more often by _men_. > > But for male people not matching / not wishing to match the masculine description, it is our experience that it is being imposed by men. And that there’s no contrasting male group voice of anything rebellious against that, pushing back, that men in general can be said to have engaged in and embraced. “Male feminists” are perceived as taking their stance for the benefit of women (for social justice and fairness reasons) not for their own sake. “Men’s libbers” are perceived as anti-feminist men’s rights people. > > Women as individuals who feel oppressed (or just seriously annoyed and irritated) by the “femininity” thing have less reason and less excuse for self-defining as “not one of those typical girls” precisely because women in the aggregate have said (if not precisely in a unified voice) that the “femininity” thing is a load of unfair bullshit. > > Men collectively are not having “manhood” imposed on us from the outside such that we’re all in this boat together as people defined and pushed into it. Males, individually, yes, but the people doing the imposing and the pushing are MEN, overwhelmingly so. > > I would blow the bugle and call male people to rise up for our own sake against it if I judged that that was the best way to package the concept, to attain the communication. I don’t think it is. Instead, it’s “sissy lib”. We need to push back against the plurality called “men” who have, in the aggregate, attempted to impose the “masculine” thing on us, and who still represent the most violent and insistent reaction to our sissy existence. The male people in this thread and all the others have expressed how untrue your generalizations are. But you always discount what they have to say. You have it in your head that if someone isn’t “bugle blowing” or walking around with a “I am a gender invert” t-shirt, then they aren’t sufficiently rebellious enough. Yes, it is more socially acceptable for guys to “gender police” themselves. But it is way easier to be a feminine male today than when you were growing up. Take a stroll on your average college campus and you will find many flavors of maleness strutting around. Hell, just turn on a typical children’s TV show and watch the commercials. Who would have thought there would be a day when little boys would be shown playing with Barbie dolls? You can blow your bugle. Just be aware that the folks you are trying to reach out to may not think they are all that oppressed. Just because you don’t hear about men pushing back against gender expectations does not mean you are the only one doing so. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/288 "2018-01-18T18:05:40Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > That’s actually an easy one. Women are tired of being forced into traditional gender roles by men (outsiders) and so they are fighting back as a group against this outsider. (Feminism, or Women’s Lib or whatever) Men are not being forced into traditional gender roles by an outside force, they are being forced into traditional gender roles by other MEN, so there is no outside group for men to rise up and fight against. > > Not that I agree with that, but I think I understand it. Thank you. Yes, that. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/289 "2018-01-18T18:06:54Z")
The men who rebel against the " inflexible" expectations are called sellouts. The women who question your" inflexible" roles are dismissed. The fact that many of us interpret your statements as boxing us into " inflexible" gender roles means we are at fault, we are misinterpreting your arguments, we are the ones who are wrong. As are the men who push back and say we are men even if it doesn’t fit some outdated idea of manhood. Do you see why this is problematic for both genders? ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/290 "2018-01-18T18:19:52Z")
At this point in his life, AHunter3 is not going to let all the opinions that differ with his have any influence. It seems he has dedicated much of his life to his “theories.” Tossing them aside now would be acknowledging it was all a waste. I think that is why he so resolutely refuses to hear any of his critics. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/291 "2018-01-18T18:31:54Z")
I don’t feel like I’ve had manhood imposed on me by anyone. Maybe when my wife makes me kill a spider, but that’s about it. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/292 "2018-01-18T18:33:54Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > I don’t feel like I’ve had manhood imposed on me by anyone. Maybe when my wife makes me kill a spider, but that’s about it. Nor do I. Which is why I disagreed with a lot of the blog posts. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/293 "2018-01-18T18:39:23Z")
I think we all have gender imposed on us. That’s absolutely true, in my opinion. In response to that imposition of gender, the OP, again in my opinion, creates two straw genders and reacts to them. He’s on the “girl” side because he doesn’t like the “boy” side. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/294 "2018-01-18T18:45:05Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > That’s actually an easy one. Women are tired of being forced into traditional gender roles by men (outsiders) and so they are fighting back as a group against this outsider. (Feminism, or Women’s Lib or whatever) Men are not being forced into traditional gender roles by an outside force, they are being forced into traditional gender roles by other MEN, so there is no outside group for men to rise up and fight against. > > Not that I agree with that, but I think I understand it. I would say that in the past, women imposed those rigid standards of femininity upon other women as well. Mother taught their daughters to be ladylike, and Father taught sons to be manly. But this rigid structure has been fading for quite some time now. Some may be due to pushy people, but a lot of it is due to men and women who say “i don’t care if it is appropriate for my gender, I am going to do \< whatever\>” It still exists, this sense of gender expectation, but it is fading. I don’t know how reinforcing things expectations by saying if you like girly things then you are a girl, and of you don’t agree you’re a girl, then you are a sellout, helps eradicate the expectations. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/295 "2018-01-18T18:45:45Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > I don’t feel like I’ve had manhood imposed on me by anyone. Maybe when my wife makes me kill a spider, but that’s about it. Oh yeah? Who opens the jars in your family? When there’s a noise downstairs in the middle of the night, who gets sent down to check? No external pressure, my tight gluteus maximus. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/296 "2018-01-18T19:05:20Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I didn’t mean to ignore you on this post. This was thoughtful and helpful and I thank you for it. That was gracious; thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/297 "2018-01-18T19:38:18Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Oh yeah? Who opens the jars in your family? When there’s a noise downstairs in the middle of the night, who gets sent down to check? > > No external pressure, my tight gluteus maximus. Whoever is getting the jar tries to open it first. If they can’t, they give it to a stronger person to try. If that stronger person can’t, then the stronger person gives it back to the original person, and that original persons uses tools (to include hitting the lid with a butter knife) to try to open it. You might have me on noise checking, but if there is a mouse or some sort of animal, to include spiders, I sure as hell am not going down to get it! ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/298 "2018-01-18T19:51:17Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > I don’t know how reinforcing things expectations by saying if you like girly things then you are a girl, and of you don’t agree you’re a girl, then you are a sellout, helps eradicate the expectations. Neither do I. But then I never said either of those things. Or anything remotely equivalent. I have said that I am a girl. I have posited that this may be true of other male people but I haven’t gone around labeling them as such. I’ve written (at length) about the internal mental process of _identifying_, to try to make it accessible from the outside, for you to understand what that might be like, but at no time have I gone forth attempting to label people from the outside as male girls or femmy males or whatever. Whenever I’ve spoken of us in the plural it has been an abstract plural defined only as “people who, like me, have that as their identity”. Self defined. Not AHunter3-defined. At no time have I come even remotely close to saying that if someone is male and is a feminine person but refuses the label of “girl”, he’s a sellout. I have said that if you are male and feminine and have been through the kinds of experience I have described _and said so, to me, saying “that’s nothing special”_, and have furthermore told me I’m talking about something that I don’t need to be talking about, that no one cares and that those experiences are no big deal, _those_ males, yes, I have accused of selling out. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/299 "2018-01-18T20:32:33Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Define “never allowed” in such a way that it diverges appreciably and discernably from “is perceived to violate expectations”. I’m talking about something stronger than “violating” expectations, because violating expectations is so common as to be mundane. For instance, I’m black and my husband is white, and yet between the two of us, I’m the expert in classic rock. This defies expectations. Another expectation we violate: I make significantly more money. That is about as big of a deal as the classic rock thing, which is zilch. (Years ago, it would be have been a bigger deal, though.) When I say “never allowed”, I’m looking for an example of a behavior that is socially off-limits to boys/men, that we _only_ consider to be normal in girls/women. The only thing I can really come up with is clothing and makeup; skirts and dresses on men are still considered taboo. But beyond appearance-related stuff, I can’t think of anything truly man card revokable. > [@](#): > > And link to a couple of places where I have said that male people are NEVER ALLOWED to do something. I don’t recall ever having said anything of the sort. I have said things like “male bodied people have to operate against the backdrop of an expectation …” or “the male person who behaves this way is likely to to have that behavior interpreted as…” and things like that — a hell of a lot more nuanced than anything remotely akin to the rigidity and absoluteness of “NEVER ALLOWED”. What do you think you’re implying when you speak about behavior codes and rules, as you did [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20730150&postcount=237)? You implied that men are subject to something stronger than just “expectations” when you facetiously wrote: > [@](#): > > So I actually live in a world with virtually no inflexible gender expectations and everyone but me is aware of that. I’m projecting my own internalized notion of social beliefs about masculinity and declaring that I’m an atypical case, **when actually there are very few if any remaining behavioral codes and rules outside of my own moldy-ass brain.** So again I ask: can you give an example of a “behavior code or rule” that men have to adhere to? ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144/300 "2018-01-18T20:42:27Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I, on the other hand, do not believe you are participating in this conversation in good faith. You may have been originally, but you are sufficiently polarized against me and irritated with me that at this point you would mock absolutely anything I did. That’s fine, I believe you constantly dismiss other’s viewpoints while pretending to take them into account, denigrate people who don’t fit your exact labeling scheme as sellouts or fakes while pretending to be open minded, and that you constantly play word games, doing things like attempting to set rhetorical traps and refusing to clarify your position, instead insisting that the other person do so so that you can nitpick their reading instead of discussing your position. I would consider that sort of thing to be ‘not in good faith’, but if you want to consider it ‘bad faith’ for someone to point out what you’re doing it’s not like I can stop you. I would not mock you if you’d take criticism, stop talking down to people, attempt to write clearly, stop bragging about your ability to write large tracts of unclear text, and in general stop doing things worthy of mockery. But when you do things that are simply absurd, I will gladly point out the absurdity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-femmy-boys-guide-to-flirting/806144.md?page=16)