Masculinity

As I get older, I wrestle more and more with what it means to be a man. It’s different from when I was a teenager and full of weird hormones and splattered with acne- rather than questioning what a man is physically, I wonder more and more what it means to be a man in the day-to-day doldrums of life.

I interact with a lot of people from a wide variety of walks of life on a daily basis. People much older than me and people much younger; Americans and foreigners alike. Having spent time overseas only pushed me to question classical American notions of masculinity more than ever, and now that I’m back in the generally conservative Midwest, I find my notions once again challenged.

What is a man?, I ask myself. What does it mean to be a man at 25 years of age, with no family to support and wholly single? When my father was my age, he had three children and another on the way. My grandfather had lived many lives by this time, married the love of his life, bought her a house and began having children after his service in world war 2.

Insecurity most likely plays a part in my questioning. I look around me to those that I care about and inevitably measure myself up against them. It’s natural that I’ll pay closest attention to those things that I’m already aware that I’m failing in- if failing is even the right word. It’s all so gray and cloudy that I barely even know how to put the search for a satisfying answer into words.

As a gay man, especially, it’s difficult to answer the question sometimes. I’m comfortable with my sexual orientation, though not everyone is, and somehow their discomfort is something that works to make me feel bad, insecure, and inadequate as a man. Logically, I recognize that as bullshit, but of course I can’t help but feel bad at times. I know how I sound when I talk, and even if I’m not running around with make-up and tights on like a stereotype out of Hollywood, I still get called ma’am on the phone, and the knee-jerk is always to just feel… sour.

I can’t help but wonder how many of the mannerisms are natural and how many are accidentally manufactured. I’m gay, sure, but I don’t meet a lot of the other stereotypes. Mostly, I’m a skinny nerd who likes to read and play video games, eat a lot and drink beer with my friends. But still I can’t shake this feeling that I’m not butch enough, I’m not man enough, and I just begin to feel awkward as hell around people that ARE butch enough- according to some strange and Byzantine standards that should be irrelevant, but somehow aren’t.

It’s not something I spend hours agonizing over every day, or every week. It’s just a question that runs through my head from time to time- something that I want to understand about myself and my society. Especially as I try to prepare myself for the future, I can’t help but want to know where I am so I can build a good path to where I want to be.

But that’s a whole different story.