Gender roles. We have to deal with them.
Although my parents shared the responsibilities of raising their children and running a household, I was still somehow raised with a strong sense of gender roles.
I helped my step-father work on the family vehicles and I helped my mother do the cooking. I helped my father wash the dishes and do the laundry, and I helped my mother in the wood shop.
Maybe it was the small, country church we attended, or maybe it was the pervasiveness of the Disney films I watched as a child. Maybe it was just from every interaction with society on whole. Wherever it came from I grew up with a solid understanding that I was supposed to be a man, and that being a woman was… less than my potential.
To be honest, I idolized the concepts of manliness. I idolized the man my father was, and I wanted to BE Pa Wilder from the Little House books. I didn’t do a good job of living up to those idols, however. My voice was squeaky and high-pitched even after puberty. I was skinny. I didn’t fill out like most of the other boys did. I wasn’t good at sports. And worst of all, I wasn’t aggressive.
Aggression seems to be the official measure of manhood, especially to middle school aged boys. One recess while out playing soccer the manliest boy in our class, Brad, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his, crisp, white, button-up Christian school uniform shirt. “Ah-hah!” something clicked in my head. “All the manliest men show off their chests by leaving the top buttons open! I should do that too, then I’ll be manly like them!” So I followed suit, took off my clip-on tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons.
Brad stopped and laughed at me. “You’ve got nothing to show off.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” I genuinely had no idea what he meant. It didn’t dawn on me WHY the manliest men in the media always had their shirts open, just that they did.
Luckily, Brad was there to explain it to me. “You don’t have anything to show off, Dobe. You’ve got no muscles and no chest hair. Button your shirt back up.”
I understood the message. Manly is not something I can do, it’s something I have to innately be, and that wasn’t something that I was.
Although I was still too young at that point to really understand what gay or straight meant, I did understand that I was more feminine than masculine, and I embraced it. If the guys didn’t want to be friends with me because I was too girly, that was okay, I’d be friends with the girls. See, I also idolized my mother.
The girls, I discovered, were far more accepting than the guys were, at least until we hit dating age. Then once again my lack of masculinity made me “just one of the girls”, and most definitely not boyfriend material. I got bitter, but I also got a girlfriend. Asking her out wasn’t easy, it was stressful. I was terrified of rejection and I didn’t want to do that very often. But as most childhood and teenage relationships do, it drew to an end and I got another girlfriend. Years later I got married.
She left me because I wasn’t the man she wanted. My life could have gone several directions at that point. I think it would have been normal and understandable if I’d gotten more bitter and launched into a self-destructive spiral. What I did instead was begin some very deep thinking about what it meant to be a man, what it meant to be a woman, and what I wanted.
I wanted to be a man. And I wanted to be a woman.
To be a man, it seemed, I needed to work on my confidence so that I would give off the air that said I was strong, I was competent, and I was in control of my situation. That didn’t seem so bad.
To be a woman, it seemed, I just needed to learn to make men feel more manly. That seemed like it would be easier. I’d always preferred playing a supporting role.
I worked on these things for a few years before I had my epiphany. Being manly wasn’t a good goal, and being womanly wasn’t a good goal. Being relationship material was a good goal. This epiphany came when I realized that no matter what stereotype a person takes in a relationship, what that person needs to do is the same, always. Whether I’m the man, or whether I’m the woman… whether I’m with a man, or with a woman, my job was to pay attention to what they want from themselves, for themselves, and for our relationship, and to give them a strong base of loving support for them to stand on while they reach for their goals. Furthermore, I shouldn’t give myself away to being this support unless the person I was with was going to do the same for me.
When I finally internalized that my role was not to be manly or womanly, but to be loving… well, it all just fell into place. I became man enough to be the man, and man enough to be the woman.
Dobian Bosse 