How obsession with masculinity is destroying young men

I only wondered because I sometimes ask myself whether it's the social constructs of gender that cause me to feel dysphoria and need to transition. It's all well and good saying now that gender roles are BS and outdated, and pink isn't for girls and blue isn't for boys but I grew up in a social environment where gender was not a spectrum with feminine boys and masculine girls, but a very clearly two separate things - male and female with a strong divide and boundary between the two. For some reason, it was not OK for girls to be boyish or vice versa. Sure I came across such boys and girls at school but they were in a very small minority and were singled out by my mum. She made me aware that they were different. I think it was knowing that these people didn't 'fit' the social norms that led me to believe that being a masculine female or a feminine male was wrong, and so even though I felt I was more boyish as a teen rather than express it outwardly I started on a journey to mask it over with make up, hand bags, shoes and dresses. For some reason, I thought a more feminine exterior would fix the interior feeling.

I just wonder how it would be in society without the social aspects of gender.

 

I don't know. My family was fairly progressive about gender roles, and spent a lot of time teaching me that girls could do whatever they wanted, and be whomever they wanted. It never occurred to me until recently that they probably thought that I was ashamed to be a girl, because I dressed and acted like a boy, and had male role models. They used to praise me to the skies every time I wore a dress or put on makeup, but didn't really criticise my boyish tendencies, except on rare occasions when my mother got frustrated at my utter lack of interest and skill with almost anything feminine.

To answer your question ... I think my upbringing may have made the social dysphoria less pronounced, and for a long time I just considered myself a feminist, but in the end I still feel like I'm trying to be something I'm not. It's just ... in my mind's eye, I don't think of myself as a woman, not even a masculine one.

 

I'm still obsessing over masculinity. There's so many feminine things I dislike about myself, yet I don't exactly like the masculine things either. They just feel more ok. I'm glad to hear your parents were like that. I wish mine had been, or at least gave me some kind of male and female role models I admired and looked up to.

 

And I'd say that part of the problem is historical meanings of terms, and the mental metaphors they represent. Read the dictionary definition of "strong", and notice how masculine the traits it talks about are for the most part. Even "mentally vigorous" is not considered a classically feminine trait, even if only because of stereotyping. Awesome.

And I know you are talking about a more flexible meaning of strength, which is covered by the dictionary definition, but this is still the sort of inertia that needs to be overcome at this point.

I'd also argue that it also makes it harder to figure out how you identify as a non-binary individual. I still sit here and doubt myself at times, because I know how much harm assumed gender roles have done to my sense of identity. I ask myself, am I thinking I may be this way because I hate the roles my assigned gender represents, or because there is something else underlying it all in addition to it?

I'd argue it is, but that such a claim doesn't mean it is "just a social construct" either. Money and language are both socially constructed, but they both provide value to society as a whole beyond the sum of their parts. But in particular, language is a more interesting comparison because it actually shapes our thought processes to some extent. In this way, language is not only shaped by society, but shapes the individuals in the society. At least right now, I suspect much the same from gender. Society shapes it, and it in turn shapes individuals as an environmental factor (if you follow the nature vs nurture debates). Specifically, it sets up the framework in which we think about gender in that society, and what it means. I'm not saying your gender is environmental, but how you grasp at understanding it is, and how it is accepted by society.

It also does a pretty good job explaining why the concept of gender varies when you look at different cultures.