The 'Manly' World

Situation 1, Friend 1: I have not have sex yet but my friends think I have. That makes me manly. 

Me: Why does your ‘manliness’ needs to be defined by sexual intercourse? You are just twenty.

Friend 1: I don’t define it. They do. A twenty year old virgin girl is cute; a twenty year old virgin boy is gay.

Situation 2, Friend 2: I love dressing up as a woman. I want to feel like a woman. But people judge.

Me: There are many cross dressers out there. I am sure your confidence will build up eventually and someday you won’t have to hide anymore.

Friend 2: No, I do not want to reveal my true identity. After all, I am born a man who loves dressing up as a woman. It’s not very manly you see.

Situation 3, Friend 3: I wore a bright purple shirt and my colleague told me that it must be a present from my girlfriend. Why does the colour need to be gender defined? I like purple.

Me: It doesn’t need to be. It’s just a strategy to sell products which has engraved itself in the minds of people.

Secrets. We all have secrets. We want to share them. But more than that, we want to fit in the crowd. We are scared of being different. We are scared of standing up for that difference. Hence, we survive in the society the way it wants us to live. The societal distinction of masculinity and femininity is deeply engraved in our minds during our childhood. We do not question it. But we question ourselves if we do not fit into those set norms. And then, when we realize that we are a part of the unacknowledged blurred region between the two, we start hiding. Generation after generation we remain silent and let our children go through the exact same process knowing that they will learn to hide too. But what if they don't?

If one begins to question the set ‘manliness’ then many “if not this, then what?” will definitely follow. And in defining the term by freeing it from the already set norms, we provide the world with another set of norms which might end up being equally problematic. For instance, we stand up against “Men don’t cry.” But at the same time we say, “Men don’t make women cry.” Yes in the former case, we are breaking the masculinity by saying that crying isn’t a form of weakness. But in the latter case, we are again setting a norm of who a man should be. Irrespective of the situations, we tend to generalize it.

So, what then is my take on ‘manliness’? I would say we should do away with the idea of it. We have always lived on the distinctly divided lines. For once, maybe we should take a step towards a chaos, a blur under the umbrella of the entire gender spectrum. For once, maybe we should deconstruct the societal norms of masculinity and femininity and accept people for who they are. Of course we need to draw a line, a line for being human without compromising with our individual identities, something we are born with rather than something we are brought up with.