Quote from: Nimetön on July 15, 2010, 09:30:15 PM
This would be why, I suspect. I cannot think of more than two who do these things, and both are unusually flamboyant homosexuals. Their behavior is considered abnormal by the rest of us, obviously. Cute, but also vaguely disturbing.
In my experience, the majority of transmen have far more feminine personalities, measured by traits and also by cognitive/emotional bias, than any but the most flamboyantly homosexual biological males. (The complementary observation holds for transwomen.) I wouldn't bother trying to apply normative statements to the fact; you are what you are, to reiterate the Berraesque tautology.
- N
Well, we're brought up to be OK with it (mostly...for some of us it doesn't take). Most little boys are brought up to be ashamed of it.
That being said, it's not true for all of us. My fashion sense consists largely of "Have I seen something kind of like this on another person my age, and does it fit right and hide all my fat lumps?" My decoration is "Hey, this is cool, let me put it on the wall." My personal care is "wash everything and cut hair/finger/toenails." I have 6 years of baseball, 4 years as a firefighter, and 5 years as an aircraft mechanic in the Navy, all of which I spent being socialized largely among blue-collar country boys whose idea of an acceptable level of femininity was scraping the dirt out from under our fingernails before we went out drinking. The only thing "feminine" about my behaviour before I came out was that I only drink sweet fruity mixed drinks (and even that I only started in the past couple years - in my foolish youth I was shooting straight vodka and chasing it with Bacardi 151.)
So...despite all that, I'm very gay. I
want to look nice (not that I have a terribly easy time achieving it), have a cute butt and a sixpack lovingly constructed through hours in the gym, walk with a swish, take my girlfriends shopping and dance to Lady Gaga. If I'd grown up in a male body I would have joined my friends who are exactly that type of guy. And since coming out I've been working on being myself a bit more in that respect. But since I spent so much time compensating for my lack of
maleness by being hyper
masculine, I find myself somewhat lost in that world - it's like learning a whole new language. I still walk like I just stepped off the farm, curse too much, respond to far too many situations with "I'd shoot that sonaofab*tch," and am completely lost in the moisturizer aisle.
I never really learned to be a gay guy. And I have to respect the guys who managed to hold on to that aspect of themselves instead of overcompensating...I spent a decade and a half behaving like your cliche self-hating closet case. So I say ->-bleeped-<- it - if you're able to hold on to your feminine interests, as far as I'm concerned, that's an indicator that you're more secure in your masculinity than I've ever been. And probably more secure than your average cis guy (it was obvious that a lot of my friends were putting on an act just as much as I was.)
