Quote from: stephaniec on April 22, 2015, 08:21:42 PMI never took the lead and it caused a lot of problems on my part with females. This was my problem dating as male. One of my girls friends came out and told me I should of been a girl.
I'm sorry that you had to go through that, I went through similar experiences in high school. Noone should feel "forced" to "take the lead" just because their gender is male, it's really dehumanizing. There's no shame in being shy or introverted... it's really cruel to force people into gender roles and not accept them as they are. Sometimes it really feels like the majority of straight women out there aren't really attracted to men for who they are as people, but rather to their ideal of what those men should be.
I think if I wasn't attracted to men, I'd actually force myself to like men; I've had so many putrid experiences when interacting with women as a male, that I've developed some sort of aversion to certain aspects of "femininity"... which isn't really femininity as much as it is self-entitlement, lack of compassion and narcissism. When I hear women say they like "being catered to" openly, I wonder if they even realize that feeling cared for and special is a human need, not a "female" need. It'd be nice to see more reciprocity in dates between heterosexual people, but sadly their exchanges seem to work with different currencies for each gender... Don't want to get too specific, but "access to your sex" isn't a way to give anything back, it can't be treated as a mere commodity (unless someone wants to be treated like one, then whine about how they can't find a guy to settle down with and call them all pigs), it should be a mutual consensual activity that's meaningful for both parties, not a reward.
I strive to be the opposite of that, I find gender roles to be abhorrent and fuel for gender dysphoria in transfolk. Society refuses to see people as people, it always sees in black and white, fitting them into "man" and "woman" boxes. It's biased and just promotes inequality. I outright refuse letting anyone pay for me on dates... with my boyfriend I occasionally let him if he insists, but it's more tied into the fact that I'm younger and don't have a job, whereas he does and understands my financial limitations, so offers to help; has nothing to do with gender.
Prior to him, when I started going on dates with guys, it was astonishing how all of them offered and insisted to pay for me... whereas in high school, women never extended the same courtesy (and they were still the ones inviting me, so there wasn't really a "whoever invites should have the initiative to pay" excuse in these scenarios). It's just unfair societal pressures on men, which sadly noone has time to talk about or acknowledge because everyone's too busy listening to whiney people, infected by the feminism virus, talk about how unfair it is that they have to shave their armpits...
OP: I think that if the role you're playing while interacting with that person makes you uncomfortable/dysphoric, then you shouldn't play it... No person in the world is worth going against our desires and beliefs for, much less made to feel like they're compromising their identity. If you need to feel like you play the more "feminine" part in a relationship, then you shouldn't settle for less... at least I wouldn't. I believe transpeople are way more analytical about this sort of thing, maybe the person you're with doesn't even see behaviours and categorize them as masculine or feminine, but I think transsexuals have a hard time distancing themselves from that kind of critical thought, and are more likely to have special needs when it comes to feeling "feminine" or "masculine"... and geez, they deserve to; after all, transpeople are mostly the ones who had to walk along a harsh road to conquer the right to be themselves, didn't just have their identity self-attributed like other folk... so it's only fair to be a bit more needy! =)
