Rejecting the Male Image

[brassieres]

Growing up, I've not had very many positive male role models at all, they were mostly female. While I am a a guy I tend to reject my male image and more in touch with my feminine side instead, I like the feel of it.

[Joanne f]

I expect for some there maybe some sort of rejection of one side of them for different reasons but personally i see it as not rejecting anything but embracing my other side that i seam to enjoy , that's assuming that there are different sides as the more i learn the less i understand about different sides, but (always that but):heehee: i am sure it is straight forward for some .

[Vickie_CDTV]

Growing up, I never had a positive male role model either. Mine were all women. Perhaps if I had, I think I might have turned out differently. Or, at least, I would have been able to more of an adequate man anyway.

[Jonianne]

Although the men in my mountain family were very good to me and I knew I was loved, very early as I watched them drinking, smoking and doing other things coal mining, Appalalachian mountain men do, I vowed to myself I would never be like them and chose as my role models my mother, grandmother and other good strong women to model my life after. Don't know why I chose that path, I just did.

[Jay Cee]

Definitely not many positive male role models while I was growing up (with the exception of my grandfather, bless his soul).

[Karren H]

I had a number of positive male role models so I don't reject my male image... I have reinvented it... Just yesterday, while chatting with the receptionist about what we did this weekend, she says. "Your wife doesn't know how lucky she is to have you as a husband... Guys just don't do what you do". You are who you are and you make life what you want it to be, life doesn't make you... imho.

[Leanne2]

I grew up with my parents, six brothers, and one sister so I had mostly male influence in my life. Our life on the farm was much like "The Waltons" TV show. So I know how men are supposed to act but it didn't prevent me from being a transgender woman.

[Crissy Kay]

My father was in the Army when I was growing up. He did not get out until I entered jr. high. So I really did not have a positive male role in my life while I was a kid. So I see my cding now as a form of revenge on him, as well as enjoyment for me.

[Pythos]

My father for the most part was a good man, but he permanently scared my image of him by only a few incidences which I and my mother still live with. His work schedule also damaged my being able to relate to him, he was at work till nearly 6 at night, and almost always in a bad mood afterword.

That being said, I had a male role model, he was more a mentor. He is how I got my foot in the hanger door so to say. He was an ex Czechoslovakian air force pilot that immigrated to the US, and served in this country after Czechoslovakia fell to communist rule. He ran an aviation related business where I got to work with and around biplanes. I was his groundcrew for a long time.

He was a very hard person to know, and yet I did. He was my Obi Wan Kenobi so to say. Unfortunately he had a temper with a bark worse than its bite, and it rubbed off on me. But he was a kind man, and respected most people in his gruff sort of way.

I have never liked how most men refer to women though, and that is one of the big problems I have with the image along with the propencity to get stupid drunk, and the watching of some damned sports event. The Soccer hooligans are a grand example of the kinds of fans I despise.

Like Karren, I would say I am reinventing "manly" though I won't call it that because I dislike the term.

[Kerrylee61]

I've heard the same thing from a lot of ladies over the years. My wife keeps hearing how lucky she is to have a hubby like me (blush). My wife readily agrees with them as she is a lady who loves the soft femme side of me.

Kerry

[BillieJoEllen]

Growing up I was surrounded by male influence. I was outwardly a very 'macho' boy but that didn't stop me from the feminine influence I was exposed to either. I always felt like I really was a girl despite all the male influence I was exposed to. Whereever and whenever I could I would latch on to anything feminine. I think my mother and my aunt saw this and tried to understand it. My aunt was a bit cruel though and I spent one of the worst afternoons of my life in her presence. Thinking about it I also spent the second worst day of my young life with her also.

[GaleWarning]

Unlike most so far, my male role models were great. A loving father who worked long and hard to make ends meet during difficult times (it was the fifties ... mums did not work), three brothers and a tomboy of a sister, playing rugby and cricket in the street, walking around the neighbourhood with a catapult in hand. But ... and I think this is important ... the girls also joined in.

Our primary school was the focus of our social lives. Our parents held cake sales and various other fund raising activities, so that a swimming pool could be built. Our parents did swimming duty on a roster basis and every kid would turn up for recreational swimming for at least an hour a day and several hours on a Saturday (the pool was closed on Sundays). We all played on huge rubber tractor tyre tubes in the pool, boys and girls together! In winter we would all play rounders and soccer at the school.

High school was different ... boys only ... but my teachers were human beings! Many male teachers had fought during world war two, and unlike so many others who had returned home feeling bitter and twisted, my male teachers were unanimously grateful to be alive and gracious to a fault because of this. Several of my teachers at this time were women. They provided balance and further images of grace and kindness.

My mother insisted that I go to dancing lessons during senior high school. This forced me to overcome my natural shyness, for I quickly learned that if I was to dance with the best female dancers, I had to get in and ask quickly. Also, although I was a boy scout, we had a close association with a girl guide group and would mentor the girls who came out to camp with us to do rowing or sailing.

In short, I grew up in a world where the distinction between boys and girls was blurred. We were all the same, rather than different. And we were all kind to each other.

As a teacher, I have worked mainly in environments where there were more women than men and one has tended to be judged according to one's talents rather than one's gender. There have been the odd occasions when things did not run smoothly, but the underlying reasons were political, rather than social.

Right now, at work on a short-term project, we are a team of about 14 people, five of whom are male. We tease each other mercilessly, but we respect one another, for we all have talents and weaknesses and we all help one another. I am very happy right now. And blessed, I realise, because I have known very little else apart from immense love and kindness!

[kimdl93]

I don't reject my male image... I have reinvented it... Just yesterday, while chatting with the receptionist about what we did this weekend, she says. "Your wife doesn't know how lucky she is to have you as a husband... Guys just don't do what you do". .

I'd have to say the same - I certainly had a lot of good male role models within my family - certainly imperfect people, and yet people I have admired all my life. That being said, I'm not bound to atraditonal male in many respects - and more than one of my female co-workers has commented that "she wished she could find a man like me".

[LilSissyStevie]

My childhood so-called male roll models were not too good. When I was three, I witnessed my father attempt to kill our babysitter by beating her with a claw-hammer. She lived but had a lot of damage to her head and face. My father went to the state hospital for the criminally insane for a few years. It was probably an attempted rape gone bad but neither of them remembered the incident. I do. He was what you would call a hebephilliac. Female roll models weren't much better. While my father was locked up, his mother came to live with us so my mother could work. She was a sadist who physically and emotionally abused me daily. My mother was very detached (still is) and never sees anything bad happening. My role models ended up being my older sister and her friends. They were the only people I felt comfortable around. I wished I was one of them.

I didn't reject masculinity. I idolized the manly types I saw in movies and on TV. I tried very hard to be like the other boys in school but I failed and ended up being picked on for being effeminate. In the fifth grade I had a male teacher. They put me in his class because they said I needed positive male role models. Also, I was "emotionally disturbed" and they thought he could handle me better than the female teachers could. He was a very nice man who seemed genuinely concerned about me but I was too far gone by then to respond. I did think that he was the kind of man I would like to be if I had to be one. I butched up a lot after puberty but still identified more with femininity.

I don't equate masculinity with machismo any more than I equate femininity with the flibertigibbet or the skank. I feel that all of us, male and female, have a combination of masculine and feminine traits. Men just tend to have a preponderence of the masculine traits and women tend to have a preponderence of the feminine traits but we all have both. So rejecting the "male image" or masculinity would be to reject some part of myself even if I was a GG. I've spent the greater part of my life suppressing and rejecting my feminine qualities and trying to fill the void with masculine qualities I didn't have. That hasn't worked out too well so I don't think rejecting any part of myself is the way to go. Instead, I'm allowing the feminine in me to bloom and we'll just have to see where it takes me.

[laurajade]

The male image for me was spoiled during my school years. I was the outcast of the boys in school, the last picked for any sport at recess or gym, always the one they sought to pick on and belittle (most definitely to lift themselves to a higher status in boyhood amongst their peers), the one bullied by those whose self-esteem was lacking and needed a superiority boost.

On the other hand, the girls in school treated me very well. I particularly remember playing a game called four-square with the girls in my 6th grade class, and the teacher Ms. Roger (bless her heart) let me join in. Such a joy to feel included when those of my own gender were rejecting me.

Even now, I find most varieties of the male image of today rather unattractive to me.