When I was nine a boy told me I looked like a ******* the playground. I cried and beat him until my knuckles turned white. At the time, anything like a girl was deserving of two things: disrespect and objectification. I write in the past-tense in the hope that this mentality is on its way out with corsets and Truck Nutz® .
The legalization of same-*** marriage has made it so that I'm given a [somewhat] equal level of rights to that of a heterosexual, and it created an air of safety on the streets in which saying things like “******” might now be on par with the word “******”. People might start to feel more socially obliged to say sorry to me for saying it-- but not because they actually are.
For that I'm grateful, but the integration of the homosexual identity in the media is being largely focused through the male lens, and that's a problem.
The 'coming out' sports stars and picket-fence gays in shows like Modern Family completely overshadow women-- in the same way that all aspects of our society do.
I still hear that insecure nine-year-old echoing in the byzantine recesses of my twenty-something brain, “you look like a girl” and I cringe. For society to make sense of my sexuality as a male attracted to other men, I was feminized and subsequently devalued. “If you like men, you must be like a girl” and conversely the same would be applied to a lesbian, “If you like women, you must be like a boy (but probably confused and you'll change your mind, because you're a woman)”.
The problem was, that at some point, I was expected to join the cheerleading squad or football team and play with Barbies or Army figurines. I was born into a gender straight-jacket that aimed to suffocate my expression as a male into singular shade of blue, and I'm rather fond of pink.
But everyone knows that pink is the weaker and more pathetic color.
The expectations of a woman to be barefoot preparing dinner for her drunk and abusive husband has been alleviated, but there is still a monster of an elephant lurking in the kitchen.
For a movement which parades a diverse banner of colors and proclaims acceptance, therein lies the patriarchal monster rearing its head once more. For example-- Grindr, the gay male social networking app that has been all the craze. Amidst the headless torsos looking for partnership among strangers (NSA ***), the unifying demand (literally almost every profile) is masculinity.
A demand that our partners appear more physically masculine as to avoid further social isolation. A request which directly results from the hurt of being feminized as gay men; it's a request that represents the patriarchal society which ostracized us in the first place for “being like a girl” (and I cringe once more).
Flashback to some age between nine and twenty asking myself, “What's wrong with being a girl?” Well, I suppose we could go the biological route and say that they are in fact smaller and less capable of lifting heavy things. Then we could also look at college graduation rates of females over males and scale the weight of each genders brain and figure out which is superior. (Did you know women exceed males in college education?) They do, and since they're aren't many sabertooth tigers to club over the head anymore-- men should probably pick up the pace.
Then I realized-- there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a girl, feminine or gay. There's something wrong with being a man.
not a poem