Do you have a cite to this “social definition”? Or are you just going by what some people told you in the past?
As a straight guy, I never heard that gay guys weren’t men. Sure, in the past I heard “insert slur here” or whatever, but I don’t remember anyone saying they weren’t men.
I’ve now been in three or four threads on this topic, at least, and I’m still no closer to understanding it.
I understand femininity and masculinity as a social construct, I understand that not everyone is gender binary, I understand toxic masculinity and the scapegoating of femininity. I understand, to some extent, what it means to be transgendered or to have a different gender expression. What I don’t understand is where AHunter3 fits within this schema.
I want to make a distinction here between the radical effeminist /profeminist male supporter of feminism type of position on the “being a man” issue, and my own position on that same issue.
As I said of John Stoltenberg, we would not agree on everything.
The radical effeminist / profeminist males are more likely to say that the construct of masculinity, the personality differences and behavioral patterns and everything else that gets rolled into masculinity, is all an artifact of patriarchy and is all of it, in its entirety, oppressive. Morally bad.
(Not that they are all in unanimous agreement, any more than people of any social movement ever are)
I don’t regard myself as the arbiter of how to “human be” as a male. Aside from which, a lot of the same characteristics I find attractive in a female person.
I do not think I am a better person than masculine males.
But I do not consider myself to be like them, and I do not wish to be like them, and I do not wish to be thought of as being like them. I do not have the moral authority to say every male should do as I do and reject this barrel of stuff called “masculinity” and opt out. I’m only asserting that I get to do that because it is not right for me.
It is not for me to say “how other males are”. I’m not inside their heads and I have not lived their lives and for the most part they don’t talk to me very often or in much relevant detail, so I don’t know. I do see people’s behaviors, and I have made generalizations about males and their behaviors and that does seem more or less compatible with the social ideology about “being a man”, the stuff that people attempted to push onto me as a requirement for being excused from the harassment to which I was exposed. So if “how other males are” (in general) isn’t roughly identical to the ideology, it’s because a lot of other males are pressured into behaving in a way that contradicts who they are on the inside.
Is what I’m doing in some fashion an attempt to “liberate males” from that? Hell if I know. Most of them may have zero sense that they are being other than true to their internal genuine nature when they behave as they do. And, once more and with feeling, I’m not here to judge them if that’s the case. Just leave me out of it, that’s all I ask. Well it’s a good chunk of what I ask. The rest is that if you harass me for not also being as you are, I’m going to stand up to you and assert my pride in how I am, which is NOT like that.
Ask your gay friends and associates to confirm it then.
I think it is often true that it is primarily the cattle who don’t stay on the intended path who know about the cattle prods.
Ask them if they are men, or if people who adhere to outdated gender stereotypes consider them men?
Surprisingly I don’t have any gay friends or associates. Or, I might, but I just don’t know it. I’ve known some in the past, and they seemed like men to me. I don’t know how much credibility I would give people who denigrate gay men with terms like “Not a man”. I know there are gay men on this board, perhaps their opinions might suffice?
And again, you would have to define what “them” are. And your definitions are, to me, simple stereotypes that one would see in movies or on TV and not representative of any sort of majority that I am familiar with.
In US history and today, plenty of people would have said my husband was not a man, since he’s black. I find it difficult to understand why I would accept their definition.
YOU are the one in this thread telling us how true it is. We are saying it is not true in that way anymore. We can blame some random 1950s guys for it, or we can tell you, here, now, the definitions no longer hold.
In 1980, when I was 5, you may have been told, loudly, that you werent a man. My first crush was David Bowie. In person crushes, in the 1980s, tended to be men who who wore jewelry and makeup, and never hesitated to laugh in the face of someone who might say “that isn’t manly.” In the 90s, god, my favorite straight boys wore glitter and danced with glorious abandon. And that was what, 2 decades ago? More than, really.
There are gender expectations that still exist. But what I KNOW s that you are the one who keeps saying how real and true they are, and that means my gay male friends aren’t considered men by society’s standards. It means that any femme men I know aren’t really “men.” “you” aren’t saying it, I guess you are just the messenger, right?
I have a sex, a morphological biological classification that fits into the backdrop of existing categories: male
Like transgender people in general, I have a gender identity that is not the one that others assigned me as. The verb “to identify” in the sense of defining one’s self as a member of an existing group means recognizing that “these are the ones who are like me”. I identified with the girls when I was a little boy. Not each and every one of the little girls but the aggregate of them in the plural, as a group. I was one of them.
That officially makes me transgender as transgender is defined by trangender people in general.
I don’t use that word though. The reason I don’t use it is that most people outside the transgender community (and many within it as well) use the term more narrowly, to mean someone who, because they have a gender identity that doesn’t “match” the body in which they were born, decides that they should transition their body so that they do match.
I’m not a transitioner. I am male bodied, and I am one of the feminine people (girls, women). It’s not the expected combination but that doesn’t (in my opinion) make either factor — the biological or the gender-identity — wrong.
For that reason I prefer “genderqueer” which means “not of the expected gender” in much the same way that “queer” by itself originally meant “not of the expected sexual orientation”. It doesn’t convey the sense of necessarily wanting sex reassignment surgery or of wanting to present in such a way as to be perceived as a female-bodied person.
I live in a world that has male people in it.
I make generalizations about them.
They make generalizations about themselves which largely overlap my generalizations, although not always expressed the same way.
Books, television shows, movies, etc, also reflect a notion of what they’re like and these, too, contain a lot of content that overlaps with all those generalizations.
Generalizations always omit a lot of information. By their very nature they ignore exceptions.
I live in a world where the generalization I’ve just described is accompanied by a set of attitudes, beliefs, and images of the exceptions.
All of this is “simple stereotypes” (or starts there and goes on to more complicated stereotypes). A “stereotype” is nothing more than a generalization held in a set of rhetorical tweezers so we can sneer at it.
My issue is not with the set of generalizations about male people, per se. It’s about the cluster of half-understandings and attitudes and equivocations about the exceptions. I’m one of the exceptions and I take exceptional exception to the treatment that was accorded me, the interpretations foisted upon me, and so on.
You can scream your little throat out about how jaded and inaccurate and dated the “stereotypes” are but they still have a lot of social currency and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. In addition to which I think that, as a generalization, the observations aren’t entirely inaccurate. Somewhat, maybe. But not entirely.
I don’t get how you’re boycotting the idea that men must be manly to be men.
You call yourself a male-girl. When asked why, you explain its because you don’t fit the “requisite” man pattern, whatever that is. You are more like “one of the girls”, you say, which again is only nebulously described on your part. The behavioral codes that other men follow, you do not, you say. When asked what these codes are, you don’t specify but you assert they exist anyway, and you also insist that other men know these codes and impose them on each other.
Where in all of this, are you saying “You know what? Fuck all these rules and whatnot. Ain’t nobody got time for this bullshit. Real men come in all flavors, not just the kind that line up with macho stereotypes. A man that likes pink is as much as a man that likes blue, and that’s all there is all to it. Now where is my cocktail?”
That is what I would expect a true bucking of such a predatory belief to look like. I expect to see a dismantling of the notion that manliness is not only a rigidly defined property but also one that is incompatible with femininity. In contrast, you draw attention to how the construct of manliness applies to others, but because you see yourself as deviating from this construct, you create another that suits you better. And this alternate construct essentially divorces you from the male gender and classifies you as a girl. Do you dispute this characterization of your position? If not, explain how this view does anything but strengthen the manliness concept?
I think this is where you’re going in circles: you identified with some characteristics of the little girls, the characteristics you liked, and you designated those feminine. The characteristics you didn’t like, the ones you designate as masculine, you have rejected. And this does a pretty big disservice not just to the girls who like slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails, but also the boys who prefer sugar and spice and all things nice: if, based on your preferences, you are declaring that those boys are feminine, that they aren’t actual boys, then the corollary is the girls equally aren’t actual girls. There isn’t an aggregate of girls in the plural, any more than there is of boys, unless it includes a representative sample of the full range of their behaviour: you can’t just pick the bits you like and say, “Yeah, that’s what girls are like so I’m one too”. Do you throw like a girl, or is Valerie Adams not a real girl?
What do you think of girls who pursue more masculine pursuits? Are we not “real girls”? I like obscene jokes, my father taught me work on cars, I took great pride in grade school at being faster physically, and stronger in many cases, than the boys, I took risks more easily than many of male classmates - do I fit into the aggregate of of girls as you see it?
Here;s an anecdote related to sexuality and romance: When a friend’s brother expressed interest in me, his sister told him that while Raven may fuck you, she won’t *date *you. She is not a relationship kinda girl.
Am I still part of your girl aggregate? Do you identify with me and mine?
^Exactly. You can’t liken an individual to a group composed of half the population and expect to convey coherence. It’s about as crazy as saying a person is similar to Americans in the aggregate. What does that mean? They are Christian, white, and into guns? They live in the suburbs, own three or four Apple gadgets, and drink boxed wine? Like, why shouldn’t we consider this a lazy way of talking about people?
Sure, there are groups of men that conform to your stereotypes. Of course, some men are loud, constantly hitting on women, proclaiming their sexual conquests to all and sundry, and drink beer, burp, watch sports, and all the other things that you apparently think make a person “a man”
Not ALL men are like that. Not even a majority. SOME are. Some men don’t like sports, but do all the rest. Some don’t do most of those items. I don’t go out and hit on every woman I see, and I am no less of a man for it. I don’t watch sports either. Nor like cars. Doesn’t make me any less manly. I get dust and dog dander in my eyes while watching “This is Us” on TV. Still a man.
You seem to attribute to “all men” characteristics that only apply to certain subsets. And since they don’t apply to you, you are not a “man”
Out of curiosity, when you tell women you are a “girl man” or whatever, what do they say? What common paths have you traveled that allow you to identify with women? What troubles that women typically face have you faced? How do you let women know that you are one of them even if your outward appearance shows that you are a man?
I wonder where Ahunter3 is from – maybe that’s part of it? Like when you have Dopers who grew up in the Bible Belt seem to think that all Christians are Bible-thumping Fundies, for example, and are puzzled by moderate, non-literalist Christians.
I think one problem with your thinking is that you’ve internalised a lot of the treatment that was accorded you when you were younger, at least in terms of absorbing the world view that there are boy behaviours and girl behaviours, they are rigid and exclusive, and that if you’re displaying one you must belong to that group. And it must have been hugely difficult and painful for you being, feeling that you identified with the girls more that the boys and being exposed to the taunts and the bullying and the shaming and the cruelty that must have followed.
I get that, I do. I grew up in small town New Zealand in the 1970s, where the options for being male were rugby, boozing, driving cars, and casual violence: I wasn’t allowed music lessons at home despite a love of music, because piano lessons were for my sisters: I was forced into sports, which I had no aptitude for or interest in, and I hated it. Then in the 80s, the perennial taunt for a small, quiet, bookish teenage boy was “Whaddarya?!”, which translates as “What are you?”, or “Are you a real man?”. There was a huge amount of cruelty attached to getting young men to conform to gender expectations, and an enormous social stigma - and sometimes physical harm - for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t. This shit was institutionalised: I can still remember being jeered at by a teacher as a “drip” because I was more interested in a feather I’d picked up on the field than the school sports day. That shit goes deep, and it hurts.
But as I got older and more comfortable in my skin, I got to reject the binary dynamic I’d been raised in: sure, there were differences in gendered behaviour, but they were constructed, not innate. I could be man who hated rugby and liked flowers, and that didn’t make me any less of a man, or even a different category of being: if society taught boys that liking flowers was for girls, that was society’s loss, not mine. I could plant lavender and still be manly. And the converse is equally true: if a woman prefers athletics and cars to flowers and texting her friends, that doesn’t make her less female.
!
Some of y’all identify as other than. Others do not. More than a few who sort of fall in between, or so I’ve been told by various butch / tomboy-esque female people.
I don’t think it really works that way. Group identification, I mean. When I identify, that’s me saying I am part of some aggregate. Now, it’s also separately possible that I might go around questioning Person A or Person B’s authentic inclusion in that same aggregate, but I think that is, indeed, a separate evaluation.
Boston MA from 1959 to 1961 but I don’t remember it at all
Tallahassee FL from 1961 to 1964
Los Alamos NM from 1965-67 (first time)
Valdosta GA from 1967-1973 aka 2nd thru 8th grade
Los Alamos NM from 1973 on to adulthood / also Albuquerque NM on and off from 1977
(8th grade thru HS grad, then trade school / working at auto mechanic / college at UNM)
Emigrated to NY in 1984
