Gender Roles in MY WORLD
I have always considered myself pretty masculine. A lot of my friends has as well. The thing I hear the most from most of my friends is “You are more masculine than most of the [CIS] guys I know” and I take it as a compliment - honestly.
But it wasn’t until this year that at least 3 new people I have met thought I was gay.
Now I’m not saying that being gay means you have to be feminine, some of my best friends who are gay are super masculine (you wouldn’t be able to tell that they have crushes on men until you catch them staring). But the stereotype of a gay man is one who is more in touch with his feminine side than straight men. It’s fucked up, it’s stupid, I know.
There is this young woman I have met recently through one of my close friend. She told me not too long ago “When I first met you, I thought you were gay.” and I was just taken back by that. And she goes “Then I found out you were trans so I get it.”
She gets it? What the fuck does she get?
Being “trans” is not a reasoning for who I am and how I act. Or even what I am into. Being trans is not who I am. In fact, I don’t even identify as a “transgender man” most of the time. I identify as male. So to hear such ignorance really bothers me on how society views trans people.
Of course I have known this though. I have grown up knowing all of this. I have grown up questioning gender roles in our society. I have grown up understanding gender roles probably much better than the averaged American because I am transgender. And I know I shouldn’t get mad at people for not being informed and educated on the transgender community however sometimes it’s hard to ignore it.
It did not help that today my own sister said to me…
“You know, sometimes I still see you as a girl…I mean deep down inside you are. And sometimes your facecbook posts are embarrassing! I mean you’re trying to be a guy, but some of your status and when you post music…it’s like a girl.”
I wasn’t as offended as when she said it. I was more numb when she said it to me because I have been thinking about it myself. My interests and the things I post on my social media accounts. Of course I have realized a while back that they could sound “girly” to post certain things but it really doesn’t bother me so much of to what people think.
In my opinion music is music you can’t really classify it as masculine or feminine. Music is my life. If I could marry music, I would. It is probably the truest thing I will ever know of. When it comes to music, I don’t care if people tells me it’s more “manly” to listen to this type of music or call me a “puss” or a “sissy” if I listen to another type of music. Who the fuck cares? If it has a good beat, it makes you feel a certain way, whatever.
Society has. Society has tried to classify so many things as masculine or feminine. Why? Why can’t men like certain things that women does? Why can’t women do the same? Why does liking a certain thing will make you gay? Why does it matter?
