I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately: What does it mean to be a man? I’m not a man because I was born with XY chromosomes and a set of genitalia. That may predispose me toward being a man, in large part because of the social constructs that are associated with the biological aspects of myself, but that doesn’t make me a man. So what does it mean to BE a man?
I have taken my identity as a man for granted for most of my life, never really questioning it, and sometimes trying to run from it (but not knowing what I’m running toward). I ran from my identity as a man because my models for being a man weren’t healthy models. I never really thought about what healthy masculinity could look like or be, because I didn’t know if there was any such thing as a healthy masculinity.
What I am continuing to discover about masculinity and gender roles in general is how the embedded social constructs serve specific agendas that serve to disempower everyone involved. A person who identifies as a man has to navigate the complexities of patriarchal thinking and how that shapes his experience as a man, and the experiences of people in relationship to him. He has to juggle that awareness with also discovering what his identity is as a human being is, and what that can mean in relationship to other people. The two are not necessarily the same.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Magical Experiments to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.