Meditations on Masculinity: The Beauty of Roughness
When I was a senior in high school, there were two other students in one of my classes probably named Jake and Kristen. I lived in a large town and had almost 400 kids in my graduating class, so this was the first time I had ever met either of them. While Jake was very much a typical teenaged boy, there was something younger by how he would sit in the desk behind Kristen, grab at her long hair, and go, "Haha! Blondey!" Kristen wouldn't even respond, she would just keep her eyes on the teacher as he lectured or take notes in her spiral-bound notebook.
When standing up after class, they would sometimes help gather each other's books and bags and hold hands. I asked Kristen one day as class let out early, "Have you and Jake known each other a long time?"
"Oh yeah," she said with the same serene demeanor in which she seemed to say everything. "Our families have been friends since we were 5."
In a town so sizable in such close proximity to NYC, it was not guaranteed that you married your high school partner. But I suspect Jake and Kristen did.
Sometimes I say to Grace, "It's really weird how familiar you feel." I was born and raised near that town in New Jersey, she was born and raised somewhere much smaller in Michigan. We never crossed paths as kids. But it's like I have a quasi memory of being a teenager, sitting in a den with a group of other teenagers including Grace, and we are all nostalgically recalling the first Pokemon movies.
Other times, I say to Grace, "Haha! You're a girl. A girly, girly GIRL!"
"Yeah, so?" She frowns a little and shakes her head in that way that so many women do so that their hair moves femininely.
"...I like it. You're cute." And then I do something like smack her butt and trot off proudly.
There is this annoying idea pervasive in our culture that masculinity is violent. Or that any roughness expressed by masculinity, even healthy and happy masculinity, is inherently bad. I don't really understand that.*
There is nothing wrong with a little teasing, a little bugging, a little playful tugging. There is nothing to pontificate about nor pathologize. Jake was expressing his love to Kristen the way he had nearly his entire life. She leaned into it.
As I continue on my transition, I have lost friends from changing. My masculinity is hyper in its high energy and overall less interested in nurturing others' feelings in conversation the way I was when I was performing as a cis woman. There's a correlation as well to how I am finally unmasking as an neurodivergent person. I no longer want to act the way others expect of me. I want to have room as a person who has a little bite to zem without sacrificing any of the strong ethics I have cultivated my whole life.
Which is to say, there is nothing wrong with being masculine. Even an annoying masculine person. Even a slightly mean masculine person. Masculinity can be imagined outside of toxicity without losing all of its edges. I hope that is the type of masculine person I express out in the world.
*Grace suggests that it's less about masculinity and more about the roles, tasks, and attitudes assigned to being a man that can be toxic. Are those the same as masculinity? That's up for debate, though I am going to opine "no."
