if we were peacocks,
i would blue-green iridescent burst beauty
all the other ***** would high five me for my excellent choice of eye shadow and  elaborate evening gowns
brightness would be bravery, screaming LOOKING THIS GOOD IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAFETY FROM PREDATORS
pretty would mean masculine and drab would mean feminine
feminine would still be an insult.

If we were leopard slugs,
we would all be one ***
maybe my dad would be your mom and my mom would be your dad
I would never worry if I was man enough
I would love all of my hermaphroditic glands equally
or, more realistically, I would be ashamed of all of them equally,
never sure if my gonopore was symmetric enough,
if my translucent blue-white ***** was beautiful enough to ever intertwine and bloom with another's
there would be no gay bars or marriage equality movements or swallowed-wink "no ****"s
no one would tap around your abdomen in search of the right organs before declaring your birthright aptitude in cooking or car repair
you and I, we would follow each other around all night, exchanging playful licks, before impregnating each other, circus-suspended from a tree branch
... I guess that part would be the same

if we were blanket octopuses or anglerfish
masculinity would mean smallness,
would mean quiet dependence,
would mean dissolution of self
i would search for you, my love
cling to you, give you my everything
you would be my big strong hunter, my provider
this is the only world i can imagine needing men's rights activitists
i would log in to chitter (like twitter, but, like, instead of birds tweeting, it's a sound dolphins make? it was the best i could come up with)
i would log onto chitter and try to tell of my deletion, but
some overly muscular two-meter-tall woman would write back,
"I've never had my body gradually absorbed into anyone else's. If it were a real problem, more octopeople would be talking about it."
they would threaten to eat me, to rip me apart and feed me to sharks, would laugh.

we're humans.
we're closer to slugs than octopuses
we aren't from mars or venus.
we don't act like it.

masculine and feminine aren't straightjackets. they're edges of a map.
on my continent, we take ballet and write poetry and cry in public
we love math and cooking and we don't really know how to fix cars but we can figure it out if it's in the user's manual
we want to be strong and graceful and warm and safe.
you don't have to live here, but don't tell me not to.

i don't know what it means to be a man
i know what it's like to be treated like a man
to be given deference i don't deserve
to be obnoxious or impulsive in conversations and not be called out for it

people with bodies like mine, with skin like mine, we take up too much space.
we can be smaller.
there's room for everyone.