MASCULINITY
MASCULINITY By Ephraim Freese When my friend first asked me to write about what masculinity means to me, I thought, “Oh, I can go on for days! Sign me up.” I had about ten different starting paragraphs going in my head, each heading in different directions. Then I sat down to write the damn thing. And I drew a blank. I found myself running into one problem after another, no matter which direction I chose. Oh, I’ll talk about what masculinity meant to me as kid, when I was wily and dressed in hockey jerseys and spelt my name “Tommy John.” But I don’t want to wax poetic about a nine-year-old that wasn’t allowed to use the little boys’ room because he had a vagina. Oh, I’ll talk about what masculinity meant to me as a high schooler, when I would look around at all the overcompensating, over-cologned, misogynistic, grab-their-crotch-ten-times-aminute-to-make-sure-it-was-still-there boys and would think, “If that’s what it takes to be a guy, I want no part of it.” Oh, I’ll talk about the time my “sister in Christ” confronted me about my relationship with a girl, and how her question— “Do you want to be a boy?”—revitalized a long dormant identity in me. I’ll talk about how just under a year later, I found myself unable to say the word “transgender” because it seemed to connote something less than real, something pretend. Yet I knew that whatever butchness I found didn’t fit what I felt,
so I changed my name, wore another layer, demanded lower pronouns with my higher voice—until hormones brought changes I couldn’t demand. But that’s not what made me the man I am today. My views of masculinity and what makes someone a man have changed so much through my different stages of life. What has remained static is the man I want to be: the son of my father. I could talk about how growing up with a single father promoted masculinity, but my dad never shamed or hid his “softer” ways. I could talk about how the douches of school presented an awful representation of manhood, but I found redemption in my dad’s example. I could talk about how he didn’t know how to respond when I told him I was transgender, but he took me to every therapist session and physician’s appointment for over a year. And I could talk about how my experience as a woman led me to be the self-identified feminist I am today, but it was he who first showed me the flaws in society’s definition of what a woman deserves. In him I found someone who was patient when he didn’t understand, strong in his sensitivity, open to critique even when endlessly stubborn, aggressive in the face of oppression, surrendered to those he cared about and infinitely forgiving of the hearts held close to his.
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