Like probably the rest of y'all, I am guilty of stupidly committing various acts of overcompensation in my life to keep the gender authorities and lynch mobs at bay and off my case.
Little did I know at the time, though, that lynch mobs were generally a creation of my own fear and imagination, which meant that the pressure to look, act, and even smell like a dude was on!!
And because I couldn't (at least in my own overly paranoid and fearful mind) take any chances that I might accidently slip and present to the world even the smallest little smidgeon of femaleness, I actively engaged in the deceptive art and science of gross overcompensation.
In so doing, I did basically all of the typical things that the rest of you MtFs have done - I talked like a man, I laughed at and made stupid jokes that I never really understood or cared about like a man with the fellas (because, well, they were the fellas, and that's what fellas were expected to do), I played sports overly-aggressive, and so on and so forth.
But there is one thing, one crazy thing, that I learned early on to do, that I did for the sole and exclusive purpose of proving to the world that I was a SUPER CRAZY ASS MANLY MAN OF STEEL who was so completely FREAKISH in "his" total jacked-up MANHOOD that even an army of ninjas would run to their mommies rather than take on my maleness. What is that one crazy thing I did to trick the world as if I were the amazing, great magician David Copperfield himself?
I ate hot peppers. Plain and simple. I ate lots and lots of hot peppers.
That's what I stupidly and insanely did. But I did not just eat hot peppers, mind you. What I'm talking about is eating truly hot peppers waaaay before it was "in" to do so. I'm also talking about consuming insane amounts of hot peppers throughout my 25 year or so career of eating hot peppers.
I mean, I was so determined to prove my manhood through pepper eating that I was always that one dude who would eat anything, and would not back down from any challenge. In fact, I was the fool at carnivals, fairs, and festivals that you would always see winning the hot pepper eating contests, as you gazed in curiosity and wondered aloud how it was even possible to do such a thing.
But not only did I join and compete in hot pepper eating contests, I actively trained for them. A couple of glasses of milk, 30 to 40 raw habaneros in one sitting, followed by more milk, and I was THE MAN!!! I have even "manned" up and taken the ghost challenge straight up without breaking a sweat. Ok, I did break a sweat on the ghost, but that shit was legitimately hot, but I digress.
Still, anywhere, anytime, I was ready for a throw down. And I would never, ever give in to an opponent no matter how bad it hurt, how bad it burned, or how much it made me sick afterwards. Because, you see, I was a man, and men don't back down from nothin'!! Especially "men" that are hiding a really, really big secret, and believe (however incorrectly so) they need to hide that secret at all costs.
Now that I am much more comfortable in my own skin, however, and more accepting of who I really am, my stomach lining is pleased to report that I have since recognized the insanity of my ways, and that I have retired from hot pepper eating contests and challenges.
So that's the craziest (and dumbest) example of overcompensation I have on my rather long list of manning-up behavior. What's your's?
Originally Posted by DebbieL
