If you consider soft-spoken and gentle as feminine traits, Fred Rogers goes on that list.
I had a publisher all lined up, contract signed… they went out of business. I am (again) seeking a publisher. Really, a book. 97,000 words (roughly 330 pages, + or -, depending on typeface and stuff).
Cool, I expect it will be interesting. I hope the search for a new publisher goes well. 
I should add that, in the eyes of society, a gay man who is a “bottom” is looked down upon more than one who’s a “top.” This is not true among gay men ourselves, but is a common attitude among society in general (“cocksucker” is rarely used as a compliment). Also, it’s a common misconception that all gay men enjoy being the “insertee,” whether anally or orally. This perpetuates the equivalence between being gay / feminine / passive / weak / inferior / etc.
And I have known men who would do anything and everything with other men, sexually … but would not kiss, because that would make them gay. So the expression of actual emotion would make them less of a man.
Um… That’s every non-gay bar.
[QUOTE=Budget Player Cadet]
[QUOTE=AHunter3]
We don’t have a part of town or night clubs that cater to people who are wired like us [heterosexual].
[/QUOTE]
Um… That’s every non-gay bar.
[/QUOTE]
No.
I’m not heterosexual. It’s something different. Heterosexuality is more than “people with male parts and people with female parts getting it on”.
That’s what I’ve been saying.
Tony Randall and Rock Hudson were (as I understand it) good friends who had worked together on several films. One was fussy and effeminate, the other was gay.
The answer is misogyny. I’m not really sure it needs to be unpacked any deeper than that.
Not even a year, and Prince has been forgotten. So sad.
I was about to suggest him as an uber-example. Also from the music world, Dave Navarro and Mick Jagger. And while David Bowie’s sexuality was fluid, he was married to two women for a total of over twenty years.
Bullies and idiots will look for anything they can use to justify an attack. Heck, if a man says he likes cats in a youTube commentary or 4chan thread, watch out.
I don’t know how to respond to this. I think many, possibly most people have a HUGE problem with gay.
Back To The OP
I like kids, small fuzzy animals, sewing, and antique shopping. I do not enjoy beer, watching sports, or hunting. I am heterosexual and crazy about women.
I have to agree. It’s misogyny. It’s usually not even conscious misogyny.
Re Effeminate Straight Men
AHunter3 leaped to mind when I read the OP. (Glad to hear you finished the book. Good luck on finding another publisher) Other than that, I’m having trouble thinking of any. Frasier Crane was straight and had many effeminate qualities- but was the butt of many jokes because of them.
ETA
I’ve heard but not confirmed that the etymology of sissy is that it was short for sister. Just as uncle used to be a term of generic respect for any male (That bit is backed up by Shakespeare and the footnotes added in), a man who was effeminate or ‘weak’ was sister or sissy.
Significantly, though, Frasier could fight back with sarcastic comments about the stunted intelligence and classlessness of the other Cheers patrons. One of my personal favourite bits, which I can’t recall with anything approaching high accuracy, was when Frasier and Lilith told everyone their concerns that their infant son, Frederick, was testing only “normal” for intelligence. This prompted a round of derision from the others. Lilith took offense.
Frasier: Oh, really, Lilith. You weren’t expecting any sympathy here in Mayberry, were you?
Manly women and feminine men are going to be judged whether anyone else likes it or not, that much is not a myth.
I wonder what most find more important in life. What their sexual preference is or what other people judge their sexual preference to be?
What it really is might likely be irrelevant to you but judgements and treatments from others might have a higher priority.
When people talk in disdain about social expectations, conforming with society or how they don’t care what others think. I always ask how do you want your life? Easy or hard?
There are some things you have to care about because it’s going to make life one or the other so for people to just dress and/or behave as another gender have to face the consequences whether anyone likes it or not.
Forget Frasier. How about Niles?
I honestly don’t understand what any of this means. Are you saying that if a person conforms to what other people expect him to be, lying about his true feelings, that his life is somehow “easier” that if he simply lived his life honestly and openly? I’ve known many people who spent decades of their lives trying to fulfill other people’s expectations - getting married, having kids, etc. - and though they genuinely loved their spouses and kids, their lives were filled with frustration, torment, guilt and resentment. There was never anything “easy” about it. And of course, the process of coming out is NEVER easy, especially when other people’s feelings are involved. But to a man (or a woman), virtually every person will agree that their current lives are freer and easier than they had ever previously imagined. It’s never easy to hide under the cover of conformity, and those who continue to do so often have no idea of the price they’re paying, or the rewards that are otherwise possible. Trying to “pass” is a constant drain on the soul.
Is it easy in our society to be Black or Jewish or Muslim? Is it easy to be a woman? The difficulties of being in any minority are beside the point. People are what they are, and few would think of changing just to make their lives easier.
It’s because the physical attraction between male and female members of a species is related to the complimentary sexual differences, which biologically speaking seem to relate to the differences in sex hormones, which males naturally produce more of (e.x. testosterone).
The biological rule seems to be that emphasizing the sexual differences increases attraction, while minimizing them decreases is - which is why men generally aren’t as attracted to masculine women, and women to feminine men, and vice versa.
This isn’t just the case in humans, but other species such as primates as well.
On the other hand I’d say there’s a difference between a guy being “feminine” in the “metrosexual” sense of the word, and him being ‘feminine’ in the “wuss” sense of the word.
I think the latter seems to be less attractive because it’s more of a case of a man lacking masculinity, possibly related to low testosterone. While a guy can dress nice, or even a little flamboyant, but still act ‘confident’ and ‘masculine’.
It’s because women started wearing pants when they began entering the workforce in larger numbers, since pants are primarily designed for function, not for fashion.
Dresses and skirts however are designed for fashion, not function (e.x. they’re designed to enhance the hips and the ‘feminine’ parts of the body), so there’s no reason for a man to wear one unless he just wants to look like a woman.
Even in societies where men and women both wore ‘open garments’, such as Roman tunics and togas, the male garments had a distinct design from the female ones, and a male Roman wearing a female toga would’ve stood out as odd.
So that’s actually poor comparison. A man wearing a dress in public would be perceived more like a woman wearing a beard in public, and yes if a woman did that it wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms either
Not sure what ‘covert’ feminine shoes are. But again the same facts apply. High heels for example were not designed for function, they were designed to enhance the ‘feminine’ parts of a woman’s body, such as heightening her booty. So there’s no practical reason for a man to wear high-heels unless he’s trying to look like a woman.
I’d venture that medical evidence shows that low testosterone, or lack of healthy outlets for masculine energy can have negative health and psychological purposes, likewise while humans are rational, we still have a bit of that ‘hunter-gatherer instinct’ tucked away in our subconscious behavior, and our instinct understands that if men became to weak or effiminate to hunt and fight, that it could endanger our ‘tribe’.
So even in a modern day and age when most men don’t have to hunt or fight to survive, the ‘monkey brain’ in us still doesn’t know the difference and tends to perceive male effeminacy as threatening.
As far as why ‘masculinity in women’ isn’t less tolerated, well again that’s not entirely true. Most guys aren’t very fond of the idea of dating a 300 lb biker chick who wears combat boots and doesn’t shave her 5 o’clock shadow.
I’d assume that because in hunter-gatherer societies, women were allowed to hunt and fight if they met the physical requirements. So ‘aggressive’ behaviors associated with masculinity served more of a collective survival purpose; while feminine behaviors have little to no practical purpose in males since most of the behaviors we perceive as ‘feminine’ seem to be geared more around trying to attract a male mate (e.x. dresses and heels were designed for that purpose).
Those who don’t believe in ‘traditional gender roles’ aren’t worth listening to, since think that men and women can or should be ‘exactly the same’, despite male and female having innate biological and neurological difference which are not ‘constructed’ by society as outdated ‘tabula rasa’ psychology postuated, but ingrained biologically, which modern science of course shows is a fact, not just in humans but all other animals as well.
People who deny the biological innateness of differences in gender behavior and roles should be ignored, since they’e ignoring basic biological and sociological facts which in favor of some androgynous fantasy world that only exists in Sci-Fi movies,
So they should be ignored for the same reason that young-earth creationists are ignored in scientific academia in my opinion.
Or if they’re interested in actually educating themselves about the reason that gender differences exist, they could find a book such as “The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright which might inform them on it, rather than repeat the trite old “why can’t men wear dresses if women wear pants!” arguments which are so easily debunked it’s preposterous that they continue to be brought up in actual discussions.
Not to mention even the pants argument is poor, since male and female pants are not designed the same anyway. “Girl jeans” have a distinct design from “guy jeans”.
Plus if I recall correctly, laws forbidding cross-dressing have been repealed since the 1970s - so there’s already a “right” to cross-dress if one wants to.
So for all serious purposes, the rights issue is resolved. Unless one thinks there’s a right to cross dress and somehow have the government “force people to like the way they look”, which is a right that only exists in adolescent imaginations, in my arrogant opinion.
I can’t wait for AHunter3 to return to this thread. 
People who don’t believe in mandatory gender roles don’t believe that men and women are exactly the same.
Rather, most believe that people should be able to act and dress how they like. And if your little boy plays with dolls or wears a tutu you shouldn’t freak the fuck out and start screaming at him, likewise if your little girl plays with trucks.
Both my daughters were obsessed with princess-style dress when they were little, and spent hours dressing up. I didn’t scream at them and slap the tiaras out of their hands and give them trucks to play with. Neither would I have done the same if I had a boy who did the same thing. It turns out that lots of boys like boyish things, and lots of girls like girlish things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Except when you’re not a boy who likes boyish things, and you’re brutally punished for it.
And of course, the world is full of “straight acting” men who only act that way out of fear. If people knew what you were really like, they’d hate and despise you, and so you join the masculinity police, and you’re the first one harshly punishing the sissies who can’t hide.
Again, go ahead and let your little boy play with trucks. Most little boys do. Just try to control your fear and disgust if he turns out different than most other little boys.
Actually, what I’ve observed is that masculine men aren’t as attracted to masculine women, and feminine women to feminine men. There’s astonishingly little conjecture or surmise about what kind of women feminine men find attractive, or what kind of men masculine women find attractive. What I’ve observed there is that, like left-handed people in a right-handed world, we tend to be more ambidextrous but if there’s a preference (and the person with the preference happens to be attracted to the biologically opposite sex), feminine guys kind of like masculine gals and vice versa.
Regardless of attraction, I’ve always admired feminine women (obviously, since I sought to emulate them) and have seldom thought of them as “wuss”. They are strong people of moral conviction and courage. So am I, I think. I am not flamboyant, neither am I extroverted in the conventionally masculine way. I’m more towards prim and demure myself. Dunno whether you characterize that as “wuss” or “metrosexual”, but some of us are more Katherine Hepburn than Auntie Mame.
Skirts, unlike dresses, aren’t particularly structured around a female-shaped body. My reason for wearing them on occasion (besides symbolic reasons) is that they are comfortable in the summertime. Pants are not very functional in the sticky heat of summer.
I don’t own any dresses. I’ve thought of working with dress patterns and/or consulting someone who sews clothes from patterns to see what kind of garment you get if you remove darts and other parts of the upper torso structure that are designed to make it flow around breasts. Also interested in designing/modifying garments to come up with something as an alternative to those ubiquitous male garments that pass for “dressed up”, the male suit uniform thingie with the wide coat opening and low-placed mid-torso button(s), collared shirt, necktie. All in all I’m less interested in copycatting garments designed for the female body than in extrapolating from the look and feel (and the range of ideas and elaborations) and applying some of those notions to the project of adorning a male body in an attractive yet dignified fashion.
There’s no practical reason for any human to wear high-heels unless they’re seriously into self-torture and wish to ruin their ankles and toe joints by the time they’re 60.
:dubious:
If healthy outlets for masculine energy are good, they’re good for male-bodied people and female-bodied people alike.
The only dangers to our “tribe” are from others of our own species, either directly or as a consequence of stupid decisions made by same and how those decisions affect our overall environment.
The acceptance of the minority of us who are masculine women and feminine men, or female men and male women or however you wish to conceptualize us, doesn’t mean the rest of the species is particularly likely to dash off and try to become just like us. That’s like saying that if we allow gay and lesbian people to breathe air and be seen and accepted, everyone will want to drop heterosexuality like an unpleasant hot potato and get all lavendery and then no childrens will get born. It’s a silly proposition.
Male masculinity is threatening to most people too. It prides itself on being so because masculine males and monkey brains or something, I don’t know… anyway, female people both masculine and feminine have found male masculinity to be threatening, and feminine males have found masculine males threatening.
So if we feminine males are threatening, hey, deal with it.
Give her my number.
Feminine values have to do with social cohesion and nurturance and they have imminently practical values to societies, including ancient and modern ones.
Yes and no. You’re not 100% wrong by any means (except about me not being worth listening to) but what we believe is not that every male and female should be forced into precise gender neutrality, but rather that each person should be allowed to express themselves as they actually are instead of the outliers being pressured to tuck in our odd corners and put on pretenses and otherwise emulate someone we aren’t in order to not be “threatening” etc.
Once again, yes and no / you’re not 100% wrong. I think gender is a generalization about sex differences and as a generalization it isn’t wrong, inaccurate, or politically incorrect. But when we generalize about roses and say they are red we don’t go around taking scissors to the white ones. There’s no need for sex generalizations to become prescriptive! I am one of the exceptions to the rule and as such I’m a perfectly healthy and normal exception to the rule. And you should read this. I wrote it and it explains this point in detail with cute illustrations and stuff.
** goes back to repairing the zipper on his skirt **