On Masculinity

I'm honestly not apologising for not writing, except to myself. Not writing is probably the worst thing I could've done for my writing. So I apologise to you, me, for the negligence I have shown to you and your various talents. I've been tired, me. However I will endeavour to do better. For you, and me. For Us.

This may be quite lengthy. You have been warned. Enjoy.

Who, or what, is a Man? 

We now live in a world where gender and sex are:

1. No longer the same thing.
2. Complicated.

To illustrate this Facebook now has 58 gender options... don't believe me? I'll list them... well the 56 except the two you're probably more familiar with.

1. Agender
2. Androgyne
3. Androgynous
4. Bigender
5. Cis
6. Cisgender
7. Cis Female
8. Cis Male
9. Cis Man
10. Cis Woman
11. Cisgender Female
12. Cisgender Male
13. Cisgender Man
14. Cisgender Woman
15. Female to Male
16. FTM
17. Gender Fluid
18. Gender Nonconforming
19. Gender Questioning
20. Gender Variant
21. Genderqueer
22. Intersex
23. Male to Female
24. MTF
25. Neither
26. Neutrois
27. Non-binary
28. Other
29. Pangender
30. Trans
31. Trans*
32. Trans Female
33. Trans* Female
34. Trans Male
35. Trans* Male
36. Trans Man
37. Trans* Man
38. Trans Person
39. Trans* Person
40. Trans Woman
41. Trans* Woman
42. Transfeminine
43. Transgender
44. Transgender Female
45. Transgender Male
46. Transgender Man
47. Transgender Person
48. Transgender Woman
49. Transmasculine
50. Transsexual
51. Transsexual Female
52. Transsexual Male
53. Transsexual Man
54. Transsexual Person
55. Transsexual Woman
56. Two-Spirit

So. I wont be going into that any more. If you're interested in their meanings then go here. You can probably see how this complicates things. I mean, back in the good ol' Male-Female binary days people still pretty much still couldn't really figure out what it really meant to be male or female, or if it meant anything. Now we have options, and options ain't ever hurt nobody right? Wrong.  You've now taken a complicated concept and made it impossible. 

Accurate. 

So now, with that as background, my original question. "Who, or what, is a man?"

My concept of "masculinity" really isn't a concrete one. It's so abstract, that I struggle now even to grasp it and arrange letters to give it substance (though I will try anyways).  I asked a certain mandevillegirl her thoughts (because her thoughts are usually stellar and different from mine but when our thought's coincide I know something is right.) and two points are exactly what I had trouble trying to put into words (which she did beautifully in my humble opinion)

The socialisation of men as cold, emotionless creatures which has somehow done our boys a great injustice of stripping them of their ability to sympathise, emphathise, feel anything at all. We as a society has failed our men by teaching them that the absence of emotion greatly adds to their value. Instead of teaching our boys how to hug and cry and say 'I love you', we have fed their egos... and worse, taught them that their masculinity is in any way related to sex... We have socialised our sons to be incompatible with our daughters.

This is one of those crucial points. I have lived the conflict between being emotional as hell and being "male". It does wonders for your self-esteem when the natural picker-upper for a crying boy-child is "be a man". Believe me. I can honestly say that this has led directly to all of my problems with not only my emotions but with those of others. Emotions are scary. You either learn to deal with them or you try to bury them and face the occasional explosion or break down (I've faced both, neither is pleasant). 

 If we are raising our sons to be the protectors, the providers and the partners for our daughters, why are our daughters having to step up and "grow a pair" (forgive me) and provide for and protect themselves? Where are the men? Why have they turned into the very persons our daughters seem to need protection from? 

Again, crucial. But, I have realised that a lot of society's concept of masculinity, funnily enough, has to do with women. I personally have a strong bias towards women (even to those I don't want to have sex with! *gasp*) It is funny because as women grow more and more independent of men they have a worse and worse reception of male kindness (though a good cross-section of male-kind seem to think that kindness should be repaid in sex or kind... ). While society's ideal places men as protectors, in practice it has put males and females into groups Hunter and Hunted respectively.  This isn't good for either group. 

But like everything else, I don't believe in there being a rigid structure to the concept of "masculine". It's not a thing that comes with a checklist or textbook definition. As a male (Cis-Male? Trans-Male? Male-to-Female? Female-to-Male?) you basically have to make your own masculinity. You have to take the you you were given an mould it into the you you can can look at without shame or disappointment and that will be your "masculinity". (I said a lot of nothing in this paragraph)

I have this kind of, unspecific view because I think a problem males and people in general have is that the pursuit of society's "masculinity" or "femininity" or any"nity" is void of any real awareness of self. With all of the confusion, it's no wonder we have >50 genders really. I mean if you don't see yourself as fitting society's mould of a male/female then you are probably going to define yourself as something outside of that male-female binary. 

It seems inevitable that the generations that follow us will drift outside of the gender binary we grew up in (I look forward to the new public bathroom schemes), and as we march into that future it will become even more important for us to know and understand ourselves in that regard. 

Female, Male, Fabulous

(I had intended to write more, but this ended up being longer than I planned. So I'll follow up this post. Soon. Like Tomorrow. I hope.) 

-Me. 

PS.  I actually delivered. Part 2