this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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If enough of us behave girly, it's no longer girly.
This is why I like it when I see men wear skirts/kilts, wear eyeliner and/or paint their nails. It's not something I'm into but I think it's cool when I see it.
Ngl it's also just because femboys are hot.
That and that painted nails can look good on anyone
Sure, but not every guy who wears the stuff they mentioned is a femboy
True, but there is significant overlap.
Is it tho? Being gay is liking other men. Why must those things be feminine things? Who decided? Warriors wore war paint. Now covering your face in whatever you like is for women. Pink used to be a boy's color. Lesley was a boy's name. We're all just people doing shit.
The instant I saw this picture, I thought of the Parks and Rec scene:
"That's not really the attitude I expect from an award winner."
"Everything I do is the attitude of an award winner, because I have won an award."
That should be the case for the picture "Everything I do is manly because I am a man." And the same for the person you are responding to "Everything I do is gay/straight/other because I am gay/straight/other." That one part of someone's identity has no bearing on defining the rest of them - ie, being gay means that he's attracted to men but doesn't define what he wears, how he acts, etc.
High-heeled shoes were invented in Persia for cavalrymen and later used by sharpshooters. Men wear flowing cloth garments like skirts/dresses in many extant cultures. Men used to play all of the female roles in Western plays, in full clothing and makeup. Men have been removing and shaping body hair since the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Even as recently as the 1970s men would wear cropped tops and short-shorts.
There are so many examples to deconstruct things that we view as feminine or masculine as being entirely arbitrary, culturally-locked and era specific. It’s all socially constructed, and therefore can be deconstructed - but only if you’re willing or able to engage in reflection.
Men doing feminine things doesn't mean anything about who they are attracted to.
You are conflating two very different things. About half of the gay men I've known were fairly or very masculine, they just were attracted to men. And I've known plenty of straight guys that ranged from feminine to downright flamboyant. The way you tell if someone likes men or not is either if they tell you or flirt with you, and if they're a man, then they are gay (or bi or whatever non-strictly-straight flavor).
Incidentally, most of the (non-trans) men I've known that were feminine or flamboyant were artists of some flavor, which tend to be a group with less inhibitions, so I would guess there are plenty of non-artist men that would show more femininity if they felt more comfortable with doing so.
Nope, it’s more common with those groups but gay men are into other men, what they do is unrelated. Goth is a whole thing as is Scottish. And trans is not identifying with the sex you were assigned at birth. Part of the reason why these groups are more likely to do these things is because of those assumptions. If a straight cis man just feels like he likes the way he looks better dressed like that that’s cool and while people may make assumptions they aren’t necessarily true.
Anyone can wear makeup or nail polish or wear a skirt, doesn't say anything about their sexuality. Nor do all gay men do those things (I'd hazard that most don't).
Think of it this way...
You're the only person on earth. Does your gender matter anymore? Hair colour or length? Cock or boob size? What you put on your face or wear? Whether you like sewing, math, fishing, dancing, or frolicking through a field? No one's there. You don't have an identity because you're never being identified by anyone. You're not goth, gay, feminine, trans, or Scottish—you don't know what those things are and actually never will because they won't be invented. I mean, you could invent them by some astronomically improbably chance, but how, why, and what for? They're all made up things along with all the socially expected tropes that come with those "identities".
So what you perceive as "gay" is just nothing for a lot of people. They wouldn't have considered it, nor would care, you'd be struggling to hold their attention as you tried to explain it and they'd forget it in moments anyway. These people say "I am me", not "I am a..."
Some of those things wouldn’t exist anymore but others while the words and grouping may not the concept they represent would. I am gay, not because society puts me in that box, but because society has drawn a box around where I sit and given it the label gay. If I were the only person I would still crave the touch of another woman and not of a man. I may not feel insecure about the size of my breasts but I’d be uncomfortable if I didn’t have them.
It's only gay if you kiss a guy and like it
By definition.
I've had that discussion before.
Gender roles, and thus gender presentation, are cultural for the most part. Some are common enough to multiple cultures that it approaches being just human culture.
But even in western (us, canada, europe) cultures, there have been periods where the presentation of masculinity would be considered feminine in other eras. So gender roles & presentation aren't fixed in a given culture.
If I, regardless of what my genitals are, present as a man, then I am effectively the same as whatever a man is in my culture. If that also includes taking on the gender roles of "man", then that's another layer.
However, this also means that when enough men shift their presentation and roles, anyone holding to the previous roles and presentation are now "less" a man in the cultural sense. It really, truly is a majority rules situation, and the minority are what get relabeled (usually).
The more men that reject an arbitrary paradigm of masculinity, the more we shift to an open, loose definition of what is and isn't masculine, with the eventual possibility that gender becomes so loose in definition that masculine and feminine become irrelevant terms, if the labels also lose relevance to the majority. And I believe that if enough people reject fixed gender paradigms, the terms would inevitably cease to matter.
I mean, we've already started to add qualifiers. We have traditional gender roles as a specific thing as separate from current gender roles.
This isn't to deny that hormones and genetics will push people into behaviors that are linked to gender because they're mostly linked to sex. But even with those pressures, we usually have room how we express those behaviors.
It's why I always tell folks, particularly younger folks, to not worry much about labels. Be who you are, as long as who you are isn't a douche, and you'll eventually find the labels that feel right. And there's a good chance you'll end up shifting your self over time anyway, which is fine. As long as you don't fixate on labels as defining the person, the self, you can freely shift labels as the self shifts. It's when you pick a label and think that you have to fit it in all ways, forever, that you run into trouble.
So, fuck yeah. If you feel "girly", be girly. Enjoy that shit. Be your best self. It'll eventually work out :)
Exactly. I think labels are useful as communication tools, but they’re an active hindrance to self exploration. One of the greatest things I ever did for myself was completely setting them aside when exploring my gender until I knew what I wanted. It was a lot easier to run off a checklist of options than to sort through a variety of labels, even when I fell solidly into some labels.