I’m AMAB and now trans-NB but I used to be a CIS man struggling with insecure masculinity. I first discovered gender bending when I was cross-dressed by the leatherdykes I was living with. They’d put me into skirts and blouses and I feel an immediate transformation — I’d become quieter, more passive, and I’d spend most of my time cleaning after them and washing the dishes.
They complained at first about my behavior. “We think it’s problematic that your idea of a women is cleaning and washing dishes.” Which is true, that’s problematic. But they let is slide, they said, because they were getting free cleaning and dish washing.
It took me a lot of reflection to realized that my inner woman, because she was never expressed, had also never had a chance to develop through the discovery of feminism. It took me many years and a lot of feminist study to raise that part of my consciousness. It took another two decades for me to then start to deconstruct gender entirely and transition. It was a wild ride.
In short, it’s perfectly understandable to have an underdeveloped, under-socialized gender identity when first transitioning. And being aware of it puts you way ahead of most men who never question their toxicity. It will take patience and study to undo a lifetime of gender indoctrination and find your own expression.
In my work to be a better, more ethical man, I got into the New Age Man movement. This was decades ago and included work like Iron John by Robert Bly. This is some old-school shit and I don’t think it was very useful. I’ve had some contact with modern men’s movement (not MRA!) folks that lead me to believe it hasn’t improved much. I found it mostly a sort of “kinder, gentler” toxicity.
Honestly the book that I feel liberated me most was bell hook’s Feminism is for Everybody. hooks spends considerable thought on the impact of patriarchy on men. I no longer identify as male, but if you do and want to untoxify it, I highly recommend hooks.
“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”
“To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being.”
“Masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving,” hooks writes. “To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death."
I’m AMAB and now trans-NB but I used to be a CIS man struggling with insecure masculinity. I first discovered gender bending when I was cross-dressed by the leatherdykes I was living with. They’d put me into skirts and blouses and I feel an immediate transformation — I’d become quieter, more passive, and I’d spend most of my time cleaning after them and washing the dishes.
They complained at first about my behavior. “We think it’s problematic that your idea of a women is cleaning and washing dishes.” Which is true, that’s problematic. But they let is slide, they said, because they were getting free cleaning and dish washing.
It took me a lot of reflection to realized that my inner woman, because she was never expressed, had also never had a chance to develop through the discovery of feminism. It took me many years and a lot of feminist study to raise that part of my consciousness. It took another two decades for me to then start to deconstruct gender entirely and transition. It was a wild ride.
In short, it’s perfectly understandable to have an underdeveloped, under-socialized gender identity when first transitioning. And being aware of it puts you way ahead of most men who never question their toxicity. It will take patience and study to undo a lifetime of gender indoctrination and find your own expression.
In my work to be a better, more ethical man, I got into the New Age Man movement. This was decades ago and included work like Iron John by Robert Bly. This is some old-school shit and I don’t think it was very useful. I’ve had some contact with modern men’s movement (not MRA!) folks that lead me to believe it hasn’t improved much. I found it mostly a sort of “kinder, gentler” toxicity.
Honestly the book that I feel liberated me most was bell hook’s Feminism is for Everybody. hooks spends considerable thought on the impact of patriarchy on men. I no longer identify as male, but if you do and want to untoxify it, I highly recommend hooks.