Thread by @e_urq, There are three Big Questions (TM) about gender that I find personally [...]

There are three Big Questions (TM) about gender that I find personally interesting.

What does it mean to be a man?

How does masculinity relate to being a man?

What's left of masculinity if you remove sexism?

Pls note: Interesting (to me) =/= important (to anyone).

The first question is arguably the hardest.

What does it mean to be a man?

Some trans people might answer "If you feel like a man, you're a man." I accept that, but I don't feel like a man, or know what people mean by these gender feelings. There are cis men who say the same.

I'd say that feeling like a man is sufficient, but not necessary, for being a man.

So: Everyone who consistently feels like a man is a man. Some people who don't feel like men are also men.

Let's focus on this second group. Why are they men?

Way back when I was just coming to awareness that I was trans, I really struggled with this question of "Could I say I'm a man and would that be ridiculous or a lie?"

A very wise trans woman told me about a friend of hers who believed transition was a matter of persuasion. If you persuaded the majority of people in your social millieu to accept you as a gender, you became that gender.

I found this very comforting at the time. I don't think it's quite my final answer to "WHAT AM MAN???" but I like locating gender in social relationships as an alternative to people's inner feelings and thoughts.

My gender dysphoria is based on physical attrubutes, not social role. There's nothing about a natal male body I wouldn't want, and nothing about a natal female body I'd like to keep.

I pursued/am pursuing a binary gender transition. When people gender me male that is comfortable- no part of myself cries out "that's wrong!"

So, when I say "I am a man" I mostly mean that when people see me as a man, that's the most comfortable situation for me.

So, my ultimate definition of "What is a man" would be something like this:

A person who is comfortable being perceived as a man by others in their social millieu is a man.

Note that perceived can mean different things. A person in a very queer-affirming space may be perceived as a man without any medical interventions.

The one assumption I'm making here is anyone who feels like a man also feels most comfortable when perceived as one. If someone has a counter example of feeling like a man but not being comfortable when others perceive them as one, I'd be interested in hearing more about that.

(I'm going to take a break, and come back to my two remaining Big Questions later today)

OK. Second Big Question time.

How does masculinity relate to being a man?

This is a question I love thinking about, and it's one where you can go in a lot of different directions. Compared to the first question there isn't as much of a single answer/endpoint here.

We know through observation that all masculine people aren't men, and all men aren't masculine.

I'm masculine, and I was masculine even pre-transition, but there are far more masculine men and women than I.

Butch lesbians, for example, are generally more masculine than I am.

However, there's obviously some connection between masculinity and maleness, even if it's just that men are more often masculine and women are more often feminine.

Unlike being a man, masculinity can't really be seen as primarily a feeling you have inside.

A cis man can want to be masculine, even SAY he's masculine, all he wants and not be masculine. He can even take steps to masculinize his presentation and fall short.

I think there's definitely a place to talk about testosterone here, and it's specific physical and mental/emotional effects.

Testosterone makes it easier to build muscle, so muscularity is perceived as masculine (including in women and NBs).

Testosterone deepens voices: A deeper voice is perceived as more masculine.

In puberty it also makes people grow taller, broadens shoulders, lengthens faces, squares jaws. All associated with masculinity regardless of AGAB.

I think I've been on pretty safe ground with the physical effects, so let's now take a small, risky step out into mental/emotional effects of testosterone.

Testosterone ups the sex drive, and we often consider being very horny and sex-seeking to be masculine

Testosterone reduces tearfulness, and we consider emotional stoicism to be masculine.

Testosterone increases irritability, and we associate anger with masculinity.

Now. In addition to physical and social effects of testosterone, masculinity is influenced by social pressure, social conditioning, and sex-based caste.

Here's where things get kinda fucked up (and stay fucked up for millenia and sometimes feel impossible to un-fuck).

So, on top of this sort of general condition of men usually having more testosterone and testosterone causing traits we interpret as masculine, everything gets completely fucked up by the idea that masculinity is superior, all men should embody it, and women can't/shouldn't.

If men and masculinity are superior, then positive traits that have NOTHING to do with testosterone, but are considered good, get mixed up in masculinity/maleness.

Rational thought, for instance. Leadership. Loyalty. Ability to make jokes. Ability to be a good employee.

Pain tolerance is objectively more connected to estrogen, but it ends up in the masculine/manly category because the sexist culture can't give women that one or the whole charade falls apart.

So, what we think of as masculinity is some percent the effect of testosterone on human bodies, and some percent patriarchy justifying male supremacy/women's oppression.

These threads are incredibly hard to untangle several millennia down the line. Hard enough that my attempt to separate them may easily have gone wrong, falling into the mentality of "masculine/man things good, feminine/woman things bad" however hard I tried not to fall into that.

It's also the case that, while you can't simply declare yourself masculine, you CAN increase how masculine others perceive you to be.

Synthetic testosterone is one way (lol). You can also study what's culturally associated with masculinity and work to project more of that.

That's called being socialized male. And the interesting thing about being socialized male is that it's MOSTLY about punishing anything feminine.

Which makes sense, on a certain level, bc if you can't raise your testosterone you can still avoid anything socially coded as femme.

Culturally, masculinity becomes an extremely shallow game of never being caught liking the things women like.

Then, since masculinity is culturally positive, women invariably start liking masculine things. So then the men have to abandon those things and come up with new things.

Then beneath it all, we have this deeper level of masculine/feminine based on deep voices, muscles, broad frames. These are traits some women also have, they're neutral, difficult or impossible to change, and have nothing to do with transitory sociocultural cues (like pink/blue).

And, because the culture is so fucked, there's a lot of shame around being a man and not having those traits. Not having the height, not having the muscles, not having the deep voice or the thick beard.

It leads to overcompensating, overdosing on the women-hating cultural masculinity to make up the deficit in testosterone-influenced natural masculinity.

We're getting in to my third Big Question, here.

What's left of masculinity without sexism?

What's left of masculinity without sexism....

What's left...

I think what I really mean, in asking this question, is: Can you ever feel good about your masculinity, or your male identity, in a culture where women are oppressed and femininity is devalued?

I feel strongly that men shouldn't have to "embrace the feminine" to be good guys.

Not reflexively push away, mock, or devalue the feminine? Yes. Embrace if it feels weird or wrong or embarrassing for them? No.

Men should: Challenge any impulse that leads them to mock femininity, replicating the toxic behaviors everyone from brothers and uncles to playground bullies perpetrated on them.

Men shouldn't: Feel ashamed of their sexuality/kinks/sex drive as if their thoughts alone have the power to oppress someone else.

Men should: Engage in healthy, fair competition as a mode of building and maintaining friendships, often as an alternative to long talks about feelings.

Men shouldn't: Treat women as unworthy of competing with. Feel ashamed or emasculated when they fail in competition with a woman or more feminine-coded person.

Men shouldn't: Be surprised if some tasks come less easily to them than they do to women, such as nurturing young children.

Men should: Value, and work hard to become competent at, those tasks.

Men shouldn't: Engage in over-dramatic self-shaming monologues about how they, like all men, are trash and women have it soooo unimaginably hard and, and, and...

Men should: Speak up to confront sexism. Support women's political and social equality. Vote with this in mind.

Men should generally worry less about being perceived as sexist, and more about supporting efforts to break down and ultimately bring an end to sexism.

I think about my masculinity like I do about my favorite color, yellow.

I dunno if I was born predisposed towards yellow or subtle social forces steered me towards yellow, but I'm sure I like yellow.

I don't, however, think there's anything wrong with liking red, blue, or pink.

I don't see any point in pretending to like pink (or pretending to like blue), but I do try to be vocal in my support of people who like pink, because they seem to get a lot more shit.

It is harder to have this attitude of "I like what I like but it's not better than what someone else likes" about masculinity, bc of all the cultural shit I've been talking about.

But, it's necessary to try, bc not being masculine, or not being a man, would be untrue to myself.

I think that this can be the most difficult for those who, whether cis or trans, are men, and are more masculine than not, but aren't particularly masculine for a man.

I lack a penis. I am 5'2". I am not good at and do not particularly like sports.

The urge to overcompensate is strong. I feel it. You may too.

But that's the trap- that's where you have to do the work of recognizing, and fighting, this cultural shit.

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