I’ve been thinking about this a lot, so I’m going to try to flesh it out a little bit.
At this point in my life, I am almost universally perceived as a man. Even to people who know my history, my thoughts/actions/experiences are considered to be male. Not because of a conscious identity, but because of social reality. I don’t have to establish and reinforce my not-female identity like I did 10 months ago; it’s just given to me. It’s a type of privilege, and I recognize that. When I act in ways that are gendered “feminine”, I’m considered to have a non-traditional masculinity rather than having “residual” femaleness. It’s easy to convey to others that I don’t subscribe to traditional misogynistic masculinity; it rarely even requires words. I feel that I am closer to women as a [someone perceived as a] man than I would have felt if I had been a male-identified [person perceived as a] woman.
This is confusing; let me try again. I don’t have to establish my difference from women; I don’t have to separate myself from femininity and womanhood. It’s taken for granted. When I express myself now, I feel like I am considered by women to be a really great guy–an especially nice guy, a feminist guy, a guy who is building community with women. If I had claimed a male identity before, I would’ve felt like I was forcibly separating myself from a community that I was a part of (for all intensive purposes). It would have felt like I was leaving a community with which I shared many common struggles in order to ally myself with a community that is the source of many of those struggles–a community I wasn’t a part of and knew nothing about.
And I just didn’t feel like a man, and I didn’t know what a man felt like. Now, though, inasmuch as I know what it’s like to be any gender, I feel like I know what it’s like to live as male. I am still just as profoundly uncomfortable with the sexism and homophobia and violence that are the hallmarks of traditional masculinity. But I do and will look like a man, be treated like a man, receive male privilege, challenge heterosexism as a queer man, and combat patriarchy as a feminist ally.
I want to live my life as the kind of man that I wish all men would be. I think that, at long last, is my working definition of what it means to be a man. And I am one, and I’m alright with that.
