Questioning

Last year, I found a word for the way I feel about myself: agender. For years I'd struggled with the feeling that I didn't really fit among men and felt a goodly amount of time feeling repulsed by masculinity - all while feeling like there are some men who are very attractive and who, although I've identified as straight, I wouldn't really mind having a long kiss with. Folks like Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings films (and I'm afraid that it is Aragorn, Viggo Mortensen isn't at all attractive to me, but I do appear to have a thing for beards and long hair... on a guy that is!). I've never enjoyed the trappings of masculinity, and the social aspects of the male world - cars, drinking, football etc, leave me cold. I don't like saying this, but at times it feels like if men ceased to exist the world would only get better. There are times when it feels like all men do is damage things, and fuck up the lives of women and children. 

At the same time, I've never found an explanation of what masculinity is that satisfies me, and I worry that our society is so busy making things for men or women in order to exploit more money from us via things like pinkification, that we've forgotten that we're 99.9% the same, and things can be gender neutral. Worse, the definitions seem to be pushing towards the borders, becoming more extreme with each passing generation. 

As far as I can tell, these things are just pictures we're supposed to conform to: cultural programming for the masses. Most of the things we associate with "men" or "women" are taught, from behaviour to beauty standards. What's normal in one culture is weird in another. Perhaps the odd thing is that through feminism more pictures have been created for women than for men. It may be entirely subjective on my part, but it feels like there are fewer acceptable routes to "be a man", whatever that means. 

And of course, I'm conscious that all these labels are now designed to make us fail. That we're meant to lose the game and feel guilty somehow, be it in not being manly enough or whatever. The idea of simply being content is one of the great taboos in Western society. 

To confess, I've never been particularly good at being a man, to the extent that my sister once told me that she was more of a man than I was. I don't think I can really blame her, I've never been one of those people who ran with the pack and the older I get the more I feel as if I'm on the outside looking in. At the same time I'm conscious that my brain is fucked up in many respects and that while I may be perfectly right to question my gender, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. I may just be being nuts (and that's not a comment on anyone else going through this, btw. I'm NOT saying that being Trans is a mental illness). 

All that stuff aside, this year has brought its own revelations. I hate my body, I particularly hate my penis. If it fell off and withered away it would be a relief. I can't say for sure that I should be a woman, only that I hate being a man, but I'm trying to work my way through the maze that the world presents in order to find out. I've crossdressed for years and it feels as if that's morphed from being something that's sexual to something that just feels nice and feels like it fits me. The feeling of wearing something that just makes me happy is a wonderful thing.