Just a girly dude, I guess

I laugh sometimes at how much I care about being seen as a “girly” man.

Luckily, we live in a time now where more and more people are understanding that the concept of gender is a social construct. Gender is framed by society's understanding of masculinity and femininity. It is a way for people to categorize and explain the world around them.

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The duality of gender as I was taught growing up is still something I am actively learning to rewire in my brain. I’ll be honest, I had to write and rewrite this post because a lot of my initial sentences were heavily gendered and limited to the binary. Like I said, I’m a work in progress.

But if you think about it, nothing is inherently masculine or feminine, girly or manly, etc. Humans are just so much more complex than to be stuffed into boxes like that.

And yet, I still worry about how I am perceived on a day-to-day basis.

Sometimes, I care too much

As much as we have progressed as a society to see that gender is an abstract, cultural construct, there are still many people in the world who abide by these roles as if they are universal truths.

I am still hyper aware of this fact and, some days, I still overthink how I might be observed in public.

I guess I have some “girly” interests. You might catch me cross stitching when I’m waiting to board at the airport. Or spot me jamming to “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan while I’m driving in my car. You might even catch me crying watching movies like The Notebook or A Walk to Remember. (I’m a sucker for Nicholas Sparks stories, okay?)

I’m soft, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I take great care of my appearance and how I present myself. I like being clean and smelling good and grooming myself (which is wild that cis men think that’s a girly trait). I let myself be vulnerable and say how I feel.

And as crazy as it seems, these are things that some men these days might call me derogatory names for (such as “pussy”, “bitch”, or… well, you get it).

But I have to keep asking myself, Dude, who the fuck cares? I like what I like and I am who I am. None of that changes whether or not I am “man enough”.

Other days, I don’t give a fuck

It doesn’t really matter what I do, no one can make the call and say that I’m more or less a man.

Whether I present within the perceived gender binary, or out of the norm. Whether I have stereotypical feminine interests or stereotypical masculine interests. Whether other people think I look like a dude or not.

At the end of the day, I’m a man. Period. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say or thinks about that.

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no one can define who I am but myself.

I know who I am. And that’s enough.

Fuck what everyone else thinks.