Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Any model of masculinity that you might draft on a "not superior but healthy on its own" basis will inevitably include characteristics that women and non binary ppl exhibit too. It's a dead end.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, July 12, 2023 11:43 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to this point, i think seeing masculinty as a social force that anyone can draw upon instead of a rigid identity is very helpful.

otm

you guys are nice. just putting down random stuff. this whole discussion and everyone's contributions have been great and have really had me thinking about this over the last few days, more than i usually do haha.

and ftr i'm always fascinated and frequently entertained and enlightened by kate's posts - super glad she's posting to this thread - & i largely agree with her about capitalism being the bigger problem behind mascuilinty and rigid gender prescription in general.

map non-str8 fire beautiful post about toolbelts above

being a man is about having a toolbelt, qed

Any model of masculinity that you might draft on a "not superior but healthy on its own" basis will inevitably include characteristics that women and non binary ppl exhibit too. It's a dead end.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 12 July 2023 22:43 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

daniel a stór, this post is a dead end!

like in context i feel like in order to make this your central point towards the discussion and really mean it, you'd have to go into any other thread you want to contribute to and assert a need to exclude all efforts to define anything across all categories, ever

we are, on this board especially, starting from a place where the terms involved skew negative for most of the people who are going to contribute, imo, but have there not been some great glimmers and glimpses in the past few days alone that at least show great value in attempts to find wider definitions as individuals, if nothing else?

the world corrupts everything, after all, and has done before any of us ever arrived- or allow some positive efforts that would seem like starting points for doing good, imo

at least in a thread reasonably defined and dedicated to such a cause, i feel like the urge to consistently chime in- across so many contributors- to say "masculinity is bad, don't forget" really disappointing (in the softest way of how you can imagine my saying it, honestly).

in a discussion that can be anything, can we not demand absolutes or narrowing of how people siscuss this as a basis for our own participation, however implicitly or softly?

if nothing else.....its a toxic masculine trait imo 🤗

or allow some positive efforts that would seem like starting points for doing good, imo

ignore this half fragment mess or swap -or- for -perhaps we can- or enjoy it as a garbled impassioned plea if u like

one thing kate said upthread that's been stuck in my head is that so much of masculinity is "wanting to stick one's dick in someone".

― ꙮ (map)

booming post, loving your contributions here

ok i'm gonna get into the weird shit here. the following is _very_ nsfw so, you know, be advised.

one of the things that i could never quite figure out is that i never wanted to stick my dick in _anybody_. i did do it, i felt like it was important and god dammit, i was going to keep trying it until i figured out how to like it. i mean hell, it worked with _trout mask replica_. unfortunately, it turns out that trout mask replica is a hell of a lot easier to understand than my dick. physically sex felt good and all, but at the same time it just felt _wrong_ and i kind of hated it, and i didn't have any idea why.

so anyway, i get grs, and i'm _terrified_, by the way, scariest damn thing i've ever done is get my dick cut off, and it turns out it's great, i wake up and i'm just "ohhh, _this_ is how it was supposed to feel all along". i had no idea i had genital dysphoria until suddenly i didn't anymore.

so, ok, here's the weird thing, turns out i really like topping with a strap-on. idk, i wasn't expecting it either! i like penetrating, i like pelvic thrusts. it's fun, it feels good, and honestly, for me there's nothing "masculine" about it.

everybody's different, mind you, different people will view it differently. same way, my lack of desire for penetrating people with my factory equipment, a lot of trans women like that stuff just fine. i'm just talking about me here. you can enjoy penetrating orifices without having to be a man.

the strap on gives more of a Doc at the Radar Station vibe

i'm not bad, i'm just ge-net-ic-ally mean

funny, back before "cis" was coined, people would sometimes use the word "genetic" to mean approximately the same thing. they had buttons, i don't know who, the transsexual menace or somebody, that said "better dead than genetic".

I have days where I think a lot of people who are ready and willing to talk about the shittiness of men at a moment's notice don't actually want to find solutions, because having an enemy is more useful to them. Like how charities set up to battle this or that disease never actually eradicate the disease, because if they do, how do you justify the CEO's salary? And "evolution" (like "raising awareness") is very useful from that standpoint.

Trying to understand who men's shittiness would be useful to and for what, in this analogy. "Evolution" is just a description of what's happened to our concept of gender in the last few centuries, what's continuing to happen. It has changed, it has adapted to changing economic and cultural circumstances, we have adapted it. That evolution could point to some eventual genderless future, where the concept doesn't really register, but clearly that's not the phase we're in now. A lot of people (in society, not itt) are having trouble just adjusting to the idea of gender fluidity, we're a long way from gender abolition. (Not saying that gender abolition isn't a worthwhile goal or idea, but I mean ... this whole thread is specifically about ideas of masculinity and male-ness.)

Anyway on a quasi-related note this thread and the comments are interesting. (Ties into expectations of masculine vs. feminine roles in a household.)

I’m a feminist.

And somehow, by virtue of being married to a cis-het man in this society, I’ve still managed to end up with an unfair physical and mental load and it’s unfair. And I don’t know how to undo it and we don’t talk about that enough.

— The Madwoman in the Classroom (@heymrsbond) July 12, 2023

booming post, loving your contributions here

+1

darra, I don't know if I've fully grasped your post tbh, but I think the thing about a definition of masculinity is that it matters imensely to so many people's self-image, so we're not in the realm of philosophical pedantry: whatever norms you set up will be something that, if it were to suceed, some would grasp towards and others would avoid based on their identity. And not being accepted because you fall outside of a set of parameters or, conversely, being excluded because you're living up to them when that is not supposed to be your identity hurts. I speak from experience here.

I don't think I have any qualms in saying that yes I think masculinity is bad, so's femininity, so's the whole shebang of gender expectations. That doesn't to me mean men are bad or that masculine traits are always bad.

I'll admit that yes my stance is also a dead end to some extent on this thread, I just feel a bit alienated by how important it seems to so many ppl to either rescue masculinity or be stuck in a feedback loop of denouncing it when I think we could be moving on. Map's post of masculinity as an energy that anyone could employ situationally is interesting in this context imo.

im not sure anyone is arguing for norms (norm's?)

otherwise all good and agreed 👍

This is such a great thread. Not to say that we're not all implicated and dealing with it to some degree or another, but it's interesting to see this being argued (formulated? codified?) at a relatively abstract level. I work in a school with 11-16yr olds and am seeing it acted out daily; where it feels more lived than known if that makes sense.

Obviously, school is a brutal environment; often I'm just looking for simple ways to talk about this stuff that doesn't alienate and exclude.

Anyway, my main contribution is to say keep talking please.

To clarify: I try to find ways to work with the 'known' part of that formula, or to institute it, which is difficult to impossible when there's no shared language or conceptual framework as such, or when the conceptual framework has already been hijacked by fuckwits like Tate and Rogan.

Norms

https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/44/66/2043153462-norm-peterson.jpg

surely we could unhook, at least partially, a set of codes and behaviours from sex assignment.. i mean, plenty of gay and trans people already have, eg maybe we don't talk about "masculinity" but people being "butch"

personally i am really into certain aspects of butchness.. also super into certain aspects of femmeness, and i wouldn't want to lose the delight and deliciousness of either one

that said these are not just clothes you can put on and take off - there's something else going on here, right?

it is interesting to me - and i think i've mentioned this on one of the trans threads - and kate i'd be v interested in your take, and many of youse others too - how on the one hand it seems pretty clear that normative ideas of manly or womanly attributes are deeply problematic and often repressive or at the very least limiting, and on the other hand the vast majority of people - including many (most?) trans people - feel that deep down they ARE either one or the other, that there is an essential core of man-ness or woman-ness upon which their gender identities are built. all of us are probably good anti-essentialists and judith butlerians, so how do these things square?

Very good question Tracer, I have no answer but am also interested in what others think. Personally I don't think I do have that "deep down feeling", I don't feel trans or non binary but also don't see my cis masculinity as anything deeper than, like, historical contingency. But clearly a lot of ppl, cis and trans, do.

Ngl, I also have wondered about this question quite a lot, and often feel stupid and bad for doing so. If being against gender essentialism implicitly means that gender and its signs are socially and politically constructed, sure— I agree. But does this mean that being a man or a woman is just a vibe, and that gender dysphoria and dysmorphia are aberrations? I certainly don’t think so, but then that leads me back to questions about binary thinking, gender spectrums, and how in many cases, where one falls on the spectrum is ever in flux, mutable, and that the option to move however one wants along that spectrum should be enshrined as a basic human right.

right, that's the contradiction i keep returning to, that if gender is constructed, a performance we learn, how on earth to explain the trans experience which in many cases starts extremely young and feels rooted in something quite... dare i say.... essential??

toolbelts available to all imo

on the one hand it seems pretty clear that normative ideas of manly or womanly attributes are deeply problematic and often repressive or at the very least limiting, and on the other hand the vast majority of people - including many (most?) trans people - feel that deep down they ARE either one or the other

otm I think this is an excellent distillation of some underlying conundrums in this whole discourse.

Personally I don't think I do have that "deep down feeling", I don't feel trans or non binary but also don't see my cis masculinity as anything deeper than, like, historical contingency. But clearly a lot of ppl, cis and trans, do.

I more or less feel this, but then I wonder to what degree feeling that is also a function of privilege — to not feel particularly wedded to or defined by one’s gender is surely easier if you happen to be straight cis male.

I more or less feel this, but then I wonder to what degree feeling that is also a function of privilege — to not feel particularly wedded to or defined by one’s gender is surely easier if you happen to be straight cis male.

I think there's def something to that, and try be to be mindful of my position as man in a social context - I mean I present as male, I hold male privilege, I have a lot of traits that traditionally scan as male. I don't think I'm above gender or anything like that. But what I'm missing is the sort of platonic identity thing of feeling male outside of that social context. And I think a lot of people do, regardless of what category they're in! My status allows me the luxury of not having my position thrown back in my face at regular intervals sure, but I also don't think ppl who strongly identify as women, whether cis or trans, would say that this identification is solely about their oppression within current society. I do think there's something deeper than that for many ppl.

Yeah, for sure. And to the degree the spectrum metaphor works for gender, it probably needs to be more three- than two-dimensional where your sense of identity at any point on the spectrum floats closer or farther away from the line. (In that sense, non-binary might not be so much the midpoint on a line that has male at one end and female at the other as a y-axis to the x-axis. But I won’t presume to speak to how non-binary people experience it.)

I do think there's something deeper than that for many ppl.

I think it's probably a form of privilege to say that this is where I struggle - precisely with the 'where' of this question. As in, where does one *go* to ask it? It feels as if we're getting into questions of being and at that point it becomes an ontological philosophical position. By privilege, I mean that by *not* feeling any form of disassociation/discomfort in this area, I guess this means the question doesn't really exist for me. Or perhaps I'm not asking it in the right way?

right, that's the contradiction i keep returning to, that if gender is constructed, a performance we learn, how on earth to explain the trans experience which in many cases starts extremely young and feels rooted in something quite... dare i say.... essential??

― Tracer Hand

i mean this is a good question, i've thought about this quite a lot, innate reality vs. social construct

like, for instance, a lot of the external signifiers of gender _are_ socially constructed. there's this whole meme showing astolfo (who i think is some anime femboy, i'm not sure) and saying that everything he's wearing was at some point in time masculine clothing, high heels, makeup, hose, bright colors... what's important is not _how_ one differentiates between men and women only _that_ one be able to differentiate, clearly and unambiguously, between men and women.

and the reason for that is misogyny, is because throughout history there is a strong belief that _men are superior to women_. feminism is so important because it challenges that belief, and the belief still persists, is still normative, it's just the _expression_ of that that has had to evolve. people don't say it openly anymore. it's coded language.

anyway, i was always like "men should be able to wear dresses, gender isn't presentation, wearing a dress doesn't make you trans", and then i wore a dress and...

but a lot of it is this incredibly rigid stigma around masculine performance. the taboo around men wearing dresses is _so_ severe that you have to have a _real real real_ strong motivation to break it, and i did, in fact, have an _extremely_ strong motivation to break that taboo. so transfems are probably _overrepresented_ in the "amabs who wear dresses" category.

in the past year i've sort of... like the two narratives are "born this way" and "man who wants to be a woman", and they're both as false to me as the old "transgender/transsexual" divide is. what i relate to a lot is... one of my biggest trans role models, my biggest transcestors, is susan stryker, for a lot of reasons, so i wound up listening to this trans oral history project interview with her. and the way she frames it in terms of gender _orientation_. one is not born, but becomes a man, but nobody ever thinks of _manhood_ that way. and from a young age she had all of this pressure to grow in a direction that would lead her towards manhood, and that her orientation was to grow instead towards womanhood.

---

there absolutely is a biological component to it for me. we're all different, i'm just talking about me here. when god made my junk, he made junk. my dysphoria, a lot of it, is about my body. estrogen makes me feel _right_. my grs makes me feel _right_. most of the physical manifestations of my dysphoria, i have remediated them. wanting to conceive and bear children, that's something i'll never be able to do, but i just learn to live with that one.

to me, though, that's a comparatively small part of the problem. i have a lot bigger problem with the way i get treated socially. and mostly treated socially by men.

a friend shared with me this great piece from more than 50 years ago, and most of it resonates with me today:

https://transphilez.netlify.app/articles/dont-call-me-mr/

the part that _doesn't_ resonate me is the extent to which trans women struggled to be recognized and accepted by _women_. i was terrified of being rejected by women, especially, when i was coming out, but for all the talk about "TERFs", i _very very seldom_ have encountered anything other than immediate and enthusiastic support from the women around me. (this is portland, in the UK, i'm told, things are different.) the people who get weird about me are, for the most part, men.

and the feeling i get, honestly, is that they were taught, like i was taught, to view women entirely through the lens of whether or not they wanted to fuck them. and as a woman i send off the social signals where that deeply, deeply programmed response gets activated, but then a different part of their brain goes like "no, no, she has a penis". it doesn't change things, by the way, that i've had grs, the penis is considered to be such an important thing that _ever_ having had one, that's the permanent marker. people can talk all they want about "large gamete producers" but i'm not buying all of it. it's because i was born with an anatomically normal penis and testicles.

that's what i was taught, that's what we were all taught, over and over and over again and i can say that gender isn't anatomy until i'm blue in the face, but a lot of people who grew up learning that, i don't think they're ever going to unlearn that association. penis = man, vagina = women. and that _is_ a failing of manhood. why should you have an "aspirational" model of manhood when you already have everything you need? and with stuff like the vagina monologues, it's categorically different. women just aren't defined by vaginas the way men are by penises. afabs are taught to be ashamed of their genitals, and i was supposed to be proud of my penis, to think it was super important.

at the same time, though, i was taught that my penis made me a threat. that it made me dangerous to women. that my testosterone meant that i was an uncontrollable animal, that i couldn't respect women's consent, that i _had to fuck_. and that's bullshit. testosterone does, absolutely, cause strong feelings of aggression, particularly during puberty, but those feelings are _manageable_ in healthy ways. men just aren't given the opportunity to do that. and it's patriarchy that denies them that, but patriarchy also teaches men to blame women for it, and a lot of them are... receptive to that argument.

this categorical difference is particularly silly to me. i had a penis and testicles, i have a vulva, and there's _really_ not much of a difference, not just in biological terms, but in _lived experience_. take away hormones as a factor and a penis is just a big ol' clit. even hard-ons, clitorises can get erect. that's not something that's unique to the penis. (and of course the argument transphobes are going to make is that i don't know what a _real_ vulva is. they're speaking out of ignorance, i'm speaking out of lived experience. my vulva _feels_ like a female vulva, not a "feminized penis" or whatever. no, i can't describe that to you in concrete terms, there's no language for that. if you haven't had that experience, my saying that is going to be meaningless, but when i talk to other people who have had GRS... they understand.)

please, do not get me wrong, i'm not anti-penis. i am a big, big fan of penises, particularly now that i'm not stuck with my own. they're fantastic, and i certainly don't want the takeaway to be that there's _no difference_ between a penis and a clitoris. penises are absolutely not the same as clitorises. (is that the plural? how odd. i just realized that i've never had cause to refer to a clitoris in the plural before, even though i talk about penises in the plural all the time.) penises are not, however, categorically better than vulvas, and they have _nothing whatsoever_ to do with manhood or masculinity. that's a hard dick to swallow... wait, sorry, hard _pill_ to swallow... but it's the truth.

---

anyway. i do think that in many cases there _is_ a biological component to gender dysphoria. in my case, certainly, i'd say there's a biological component. for me, though, it's a _much_ bigger problem that people kept treating me, categorically, as a man, which, categorically, i'm not and never was. any form of masculinity which thinks of me as a "man" is not a healthy masculinity. full stop.

one is not born, but becomes a man, but nobody ever thinks of _manhood_ that way.

This is ...simply not true. Sure, it's at least partly true of lazy, secular, disassociated 21st century America, but that's far from a universal experience. I mean, read any anthropology textbook — all sorts of societies have always had all sorts of ways of marking the transition from boyhood to manhood, whether it's going on a hunt with your dad and his man friends, or getting specific facial scars, or having a bar mitzvah, or whatever. "You were a boy; now you are a man." There are rituals inducting girls into womanhood, too — bat mitzvahs, quinceañeras, etc. The idea that this is no longer applicable is likely a condition of people being alienated from their communities as much as anything else. If your village doesn't gather around you to celebrate your becoming a man, are you one?

This is ...simply not true. Sure, it's at least partly true of lazy, secular, disassociated 21st century America, but that's far from a universal experience. I mean, read any anthropology textbook — all sorts of societies have always had all sorts of ways of marking the transition from boyhood to manhood, whether it's going on a hunt with your dad and his man friends, or getting specific facial scars, or having a bar mitzvah, or whatever. "You were a boy; now you are a man." There are rituals inducting girls into womanhood, too — bat mitzvahs, quinceañeras, etc. The idea that this is no longer applicable is likely a condition of people being alienated from their communities as much as anything else. If your village doesn't gather around you to celebrate your becoming a man, are you one?

― but also fuck you (unperson)

i'm not talking about rites of passage. i was involved with the mythopoetic men's movement, a movement which evolved into, among other things, the ideas of masculinity espoused by people such as jordan peterson. although it was well-intentioned, my experience was that it was an awkward, culturally appropriative burlesque of male rite-of-passage rituals. it was also the first time where i tried to come out as trans. the men there had _no idea_ what to do with what i was saying. it was really awkward and honestly pretty traumatizing.

look, i don't know _exactly_ how simone de beauvoir meant it, but what i mean by it is that my womanhood is something i am _constantly_ made aware of, _constantly_ reminded of. it's not a one-time event, it's not a bat mitzvah, the first time i get fucked or my first period or any of that stuff. it's rather like transition itself, a slow change, imperceptible on a day-to-day level but extremely obvious and striking when viewed over long periods of time in retrospect.

See, I think that there’s something to what Stryker is saying, but also to what unperson has written. I do believe that one becomes a man, so to speak, as a gender orientation. Reaching one’s “gender maturity “ is commonly celebrated/recognized in multifaceted ways throughout many different societies.

But I also think that this gets at what some of us cis dudes have been saying about our experiences. I didn’t grow up with those rituals, or with a porn-obsessed dad, or in an environment where my friends and relatives objectified women. When I did witness this kind of behavior, I was always disgusted by it, and often vocal in my disgust.

As a gay dude, my masculinity has often been defined by my desire for other men, which has its own problems, but which for me relies strongly on tenderness and release, in the various forms such terms can take. I could never understand the misogyny of gay male scenes, and shied away from them in many ways. I am lucky that I found a person who feels similar to me around these issues, who understands masculinity in some of the ways that map describes.

Yeah I’m not sure rites of passage negate Kate’s point at all, those rites are all about becoming, “you weren’t one before but you are one now.”

really good posts, k8

the idea that this exists only for womanhood, though, is uh just not lining up with my experience? or the experience of others?

As a gay dude, my masculinity has often been defined by my desire for other men, which has its own problems, but which for me relies strongly on tenderness and release, in the various forms such terms can take. I could never understand the misogyny of gay male scenes, and shied away from them in many ways. I am lucky that I found a person who feels similar to me around these issues, who understands masculinity in some of the ways that map describes.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

mmm, that's one of the big challenges implicit in the idea of gender orientation, right? identity versus _desire_. one of the big gender anxieties i have, that i've heard other people express as well, is that of "do i want to _be_ her or do i want to be _with_ her?" (both. both is good.) and even though you are cis, that's not something that's part of hetero desire. and that's part of where the "born this way" framing comes from, queer _desire_ is stigmatized. what "born this way" teaches is that it's not ok to just _want_ something, you have to _need_ something. whether that desire is for a man's _body_ or, you know, for a _man's_ body.

and since we're both queer, in our own ways, we _do_ have to negotiate that line between wanting and needing, to know the difference. i wasn't taught that, men aren't taught that. men and people like me alike, we have to figure that shit out for ourselves.

well, let me think about this. let me step back and think about this. because i mean there is something to manhood rituals, real manhood rituals, not the parodies of them the mythopoetic men's movement tried to make. i guess what i bristle at is the binary framing of these rituals. boy/man. i mean it's better than nothing but the reality is, i mean, yes. yes, of course one _becomes_ a man, and the ritual is, to me, a signifier, a recognition of a lived reality. which is why so often the trial precedes the ritual, right? you live as a man and then you're recognized as one. a real-life test, if you will.

and i guess the thing is, the rituals happen whether you acknowledge them or not. there's so much scorn, you know, poured on the stereotype of the incel, the overgrown child living in his mom's basement playing video games, that's what he gets called.

and then you look back to, what are the markers of adulthood, what are the markers of adulthood i was raised with? you finish school, you get a career, a job you can spend the rest of your life at, you get married, you have kids, you buy a house. who has access to this shit? who can _afford_ this shit? friend of mine got laid off after working the same place for 25 years. that's just normal, that's just normal now, because what are we gonna do about it, huh?

i guess what i'm saying is that the real problem is capitalism. i know, it's really off-brand for me.

mmm, that's one of the big challenges implicit in the idea of gender orientation, right? identity versus _desire_.

This...I get why it is this way ("man" = "wants to fuck women"), but I've never seen why it had to be. Once you move past pure biological function (the purpose of dogs is to make more dogs, the purpose of humans is to make more humans), as most people at least pretend to want to do, then, again, your "identity" should not necessarily be rooted in what kind of person you want to fuck as much as how you want to relate to other human beings. The butch vs femme spectrum mentioned above makes more sense in terms of personalities rather than genders.

xp Yeah it's interesting how "productivity" in some ways defines a lot about traditional ideas of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman. For men, economic productivity — being able to "support a family" — and for women, sexual productivity, fertility. Men without work (or their own ride, per TLC) and women without children have both been often stigmatized as more or less failing their genders.

Meanwhile

You: Liberals need a positive vision for masculinity to compete with the dark version propagated by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.

Me: pic.twitter.com/jlKKmBQHBh

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 13, 2023

reminded now that i learned from my freshMAN year english professor that in old english “woman” was “wifman” eg one who weaves and man was “weapnaman” eg one who uses weapons

i feel like you folks are really getting somewhere! keep going, please!!

picked up a box of books at the store and found a paperback from 1976 called *The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege*. Chapter three is called "The Wisdom of the Penis". wait, lemme give you chapter titles.

1. In Harness: The Male Condition
2. Earth Mother Is Dead
3. The Wisdom of the Penis
4. Feelings: The Real Male Terror
5. Men In Therapy
6. Impossible Binds
7. The Destruction of the Male Body
8. The Success Trip: A Fantasy Portrait
9. The Lost Art of Buddyship
10. Marriage: Guilt by Association
11. Divorce: The Penalties For Leaving
12. The Hazards of Being Male

blurb in the front: "Today one great difference between men and women is that women at least KNOW they are oppressed." "For American men raised by parents, conditioned by society, and often encouraged by women to play a role of lover-husband-parent-breadwinner-strong-and-silent-man whose impossible demands psychically cripple and eventually physically kill them."

"Unless, that is, you wield the wisdom of the penis."

Where's the potty? I need empty the wisdom of the penis into the toiling of the plumbing

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4147098953_10.jpg

Tracklist:

1. In Harness: The Male Condition
2. Earth Mother Is Dead
3. The Wisdom of the Penis
4. Feelings: The Real Male Terror

for all i know the author of the 70s book was a proto-peterson men's rights god. i haven't googled them.

and since we're both queer, in our own ways, we _do_ have to negotiate that line between wanting and needing, to know the difference. i wasn't taught that, men aren't taught that. men and people like me alike, we have to figure that shit out for ourselves.

Yeah I think this is true, in a lot of ways.

One of the things this conversation has gotten me thinking about is the way in which so much of my masculinity was formed in opposition to a more heteronormative cis masculinity; that is, because I was obviously queer from a pretty young age, there was always a separation between me and other boys, and at a certain point, my masculinity began forming joyfully as a means of contrasting what I felt was the cruelty and bullshit of typical masc behavior.

That I still often desire those who represent some of that masc behavior is another subject entirely, but is also part of this conversation for a lot of gay dudes. Like, some of my favorite "scenes" (iykwim) involve jocks and lockerrooms. Is this because I desire what I could never have, or what repulses me? I'm not totally sure. Anyway, I am glad for this conversation, it's making me evaluate a lot of thoughts and feelings in a productive way.

This dumbass feels like he could do with the wanting vs needing dichotomy explaining a bit more.

To state the obvious: the queer voices in this thread bringing the wisdom and I welcome it hugely. So much of this seems to me to float around question of 'who truly knows their own desire?' and, forgive me if this sounds clumsy and (again) obvious, some people have faced that shit in a way I don't truly understand or haven't had to.

"Is this because I desire what I could never have, or what repulses me? I'm not totally sure."

I think it's pretty common for just about anyone to be attracted to and desirous of strength. physical strength. confidence. health. youth. and also duh, physical beauty. but its also common for a lot of people to have torturous histories with the jocks.

When I was younger I definitely knew without knowing that one of the reasons my gay friends - and women friends - liked my company - (especially out in public in a very scary decade for gay people (and heck its always a scary decade for women)) was that I was big and tall and "not gay". i was perfectly happy to be My Bodyguard because in their presence I could be who I really was 100%. Which was liberating beyond words.

And there are expressions of queerness we haven't mentioned (if we have, forgive me): bachelorhood, asexuality, both of which refute notions of species propagation, "settling down," leisure vs work time.

I realized several years ago that my family might've accepted a workaday gayness had I been the sort of guy who needs boyfriends. I've never brought a guy "home"! I never saw the point. Therefore, they regard me as a mysterious figure who hangs out with a lot of str8 guys and women and their spouses and kids but who may or may not do icky gay things without telling them (the family).