What is Masculinity

WHAT IS MASCULINITY

BEING A MAN GOES DEEPER THAN LISTENING TO PODCASTS AND MANSPREADING

BY JUDE SAMPSON

I often find myself wondering what a man truly is. What it means to inherit masculinity as someone who was not born a man. These inquiries come out mostly at night, while my gender dysphoria takes over as I look in the mirror— my room barely illuminated by candles scattered around my body.

Candles. Do men light candles in their room? Do they trim the wick each time before they light it? Do they light the ones from Bath and Body Works named things like honey crisp apple and fall farmhouse? I can’t confidently say that they do. Should I forgo things like nice scents and a tidy living space to fit in with the men who live in apartments akin to crime scenes? What else must I forget? What traits must I take on to wholeheartedly embrace masculinity as a transmasculine person? I turned first to your classic, good ol’ American boy brand of masculinity, a kind of masculinity that many claim to be missing from society today. So, I decided to take a stand against this shortage of virility and search for these traits myself. I bought 3-in-1 shampoo; I went bankrupt buying smelling salts; I took a stand against washing my legs. These things, albeit disgusting and against my nature, took minimal effort on my part.

I still had to tackle my own learned behaviors to emulate the masculine energy I desperately wanted to put out. Prior to this endeavor, I viewed group conversation as a collaborative effort. I spoke when there was a brief silence and didn’t drone on for too long to let others speak. I trained my brain to forget all of this. Real, manly, masculine individuals talk over everyone so they can give their take that not one person gives a shit about. This one especially hurt me because the victims of this phenomenon are women a majority of the time. I live to hear women talk. Truly, my day is not complete until I hear a woman passionately give her take on a topic of conversation.

And there I go again. Defying my own rules. Repeat after me. Men. View. Talkative. Women. As. Combative. I’m really slacking on that one. This alpha male brand of masculinity got stale fast. I hated watching football on Sundays and pretending I knew what a first down was. I got tired of letting laundry pile up before yelling at my mom to do it for me. My legs hurt from climbing into the truck I bought that had those six-foot tall wheels. How else could I let everyone on the road know that I had the biggest dick known to mankind? Alas, none of these things suited me.

I knew what I had to do. Although it pained me, I turned to a different type of masculinity. A type even more dangerous than your average alpha male. Themen who are “different”. The “nice guys” that call themselves feminists because they “love women”. The kind of guy who has “deep thinker” in his Tinder bio. I knew this type of man all too well. I’ve heard friends drone on and on about this chilling facet of masculinity. It was easy to emulate.

I tried so hard to be this guy. I exhausted every last resource I had. My female friends who dated vinyl snobs and skaters. Reddit. Film Twitter. Letterboxd users who had Joker or The Wolf of Wall Street in their top four. I didn’t wash my hair. I made promises I intended not to keep. I did crypto while simultaneously tweeting “Fuck Capitalism.” I sat in the presence of other men and talked about craft beer. It was torturous. Forcing these values on myself only made me spiral more. My envy of men did not dissipate. I became a puddle of the person I was before I concocted this idiotic plan. I began to kneel in front of my bed and cry until my eyes stung, begging for some kind of higher power to magically turn me into a cis man. I felt pathetic. The crying felt fantastic though. The crying is what snapped me back into reality. I realized I could not change the very inner workings of my brain, and after much reflection, I really don’t want to. Yes, I was assigned female at birth. Yes, I was raised as a girl. As a result, I never got berated for crying. I was encouraged to cry. I really do love crying. Perhaps, if I was born a boy I would have been told that crying is weak. But why would that matter? I would be living in a world that was taught to listen to me. However, I would have nothing of value to say. I would spit out the same thoughts and biases that men as a whole have possessed for so long. I think the time I have exhausted struggling with my gender and the myriad of mental issues that accompany that struggle have turned me into someone who has something of value to say. Someone who’s next paragraph will hopefully captivate you.

Fuck what textbooks say about masculinity. Forget about the criteria that everyone silently walks around regarding masculine presenting people with. People assign masculinity to inanimate objects like kids toys or tools. What is stopping me from declaring the seemingly outrageous as masculine? From going about my day and assigning masculinity to everything I do? Everything I see? For instance— I’m at my most masculine when I’m frying eggs in the morning. When I’m petting my cat. When I’m painting my nails. When I’m watching movies with my mom. When I’m singing in the car with my friends. When I’m crying underneath the tattoo gun. When I’m making people laugh. When I tell someone that I love them. When I’m putting on my binder in the morning, one boob at a time.

All of these things make me masculine. In a perfect world, none of these things should lead people to question my masculinity, but some of them do. I cannot change people, and therefore I refuse to change for them. For the first time in my transition, I have found a sweet spot. I love and am embracing how sensitive I am. How I allow myself to love and be loved in return. To allow myself these things after believing for so long that I didn’t deserve them because of my masculinity, is the most masculine act I have attempted thus far.