Today I’m going to talk about fragile masculinity.

In case you were wondering, yes, I’m a feminist. No, I do not hate men. No, I do not believe men are lesser people than women. Glad we cleared that up. Now on to the important matters.
     

It all begins when they’re young. Children are taught by society to be a certain way, dress a certain way, even treat others a certain way, all because of their gender. Boys are taught to be “macho” and “manly.” Put a little girl in a shirt with a monster truck on it, and not many people will say a word. I mean, it’s just a truck, right? No harm done. But put a boy in a skirt or a dress? People who are otherwise complacent with strangers will suddenly find it in them to speak their opinions on how to raise children that aren’t even their own.
   

 “But girls and boys are so different from each other,” opposers might say. No; we’re different because we’ve been taught to be. Girls are associated with pink, and boys with blue, but little do most people know, those colors used to be switched; it was typical to find baby girls in blue, and baby boys in pink. This only changed when Hitler decided to put pink triangles on gay people during World War II to better identify and kill them. Suddenly, pink was the most unmanly color ever to exist. Everyone is different, regardless of gender; that’s called being human. But gender-wise? We’re different because we’ve been taught to be. “Taught by whom?” some might ask. “By society,” I reply.
   

 Our society is so set on binaries that we think cats and dogs are opposites. “Yes” and “no” are opposites; yes is the anti-no, no is the anti-yes. But cats and dogs are just animals, and nothing about them screams “We’re opposites!” Anti-dogs are not cats, and anti-cats are not dogs. This is much the same with gender; yes, physically there are two distinct sexes, but I’m not talking about sex, I’m talking about gender. Sex is how people are separated, by dictionary definition, “on the basis of their reproductive functions,” whereas gender is “typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.” Since gender has no clear reason for being so binary-based, the cats and dogs analogy works perfectly, and therefore, this rift we were taught to keep between male and female genders is not only unnecessary, it’s also absurd. And this absurdity is a large factor in why masculinity is so fragile.
     

Men who cry are labeled “sissies” and “cowards.” Men who act more feminine than others are “gay,” even if they aren’t. Men who don’t play sports are often socially excluded, as if not only are sports “not a girls thing,” but also “every guys thing.” Society has raised its male children the same--and wrong--way for a long, long time. According to the article “What Being Emotionally Unavailable Really Means and Why Men Do It” by Sile Walsh from The Good Men Project, “Generally, emotional availability in men is different than in woman [sic] both because of society’s conditioning and because most men experience interpersonal bonding differently than most women.” Emotional availability, as Walsh calls it, is cut out of most male diets before they even hit puberty, which makes for boys who don’t cry, but instead repress their emotions in unhealthy ways. Boys are scolded for crying by their parents, and then by their peers. It’s inescapable for these kids. They’re forced to hold in their tears, which means emotions come out in very different ways as compared to girls, who are expected to cry whenever they feel necessary.
   

 Don’t believe me, just ask Christia S. Brown from Psychology Today author of the article “Boys Who Cry Might Have It All Figured Out.” She says in response to the classic parenting phrase “boys don’t cry,” with “If boys don’t cry, then you shouldn’t have to tell your son that boys don’t cry. I never have to tell my dog that dogs don’t meow. She doesn’t meow, will never meow, and me telling her this tidbit is pretty irrelevant. Repeatedly telling a crying boy that boys don’t cry is ignoring the obvious: that boys do, in fact, cry.” Which, of course, brings us back to the cats and dogs analogy with a piece of information everyone knows, but most ignore: we all cry. Brown also says, “Boys are frequently reprimanded for crying and showing sadness. But the unavoidable kicker is that boys do sometimes feel sad… As parents, though, we often teach boys that sad emotions are something only girls are allowed to express. This shapes their emotion schemas, those ideas we hold about what emotions feel like, how they should be labeled, and how they should be expressed. We aren’t born with these schemas, we are taught them.” We are different because we’ve been taught to be. This repressed sadness often comes out as anger, and may also be a reason as to why suicide rates are so much higher in men than in women--3.53 times more often than women in 2016, to be exact. All because of a socially constructed idea that men have to be a certain way to be considered men. In truth, that’s just not the case.
   

 A “real man” is--wait for it--all men. If you’re a male, whether you’re a trans man, a gay man, or any sort of man that resides in this plane of existence, congratulations! You’re a man, and you’re real: you’re a real man! Welcome to the club that I am not in, but am sure is an actual, physical thing, somewhere.
     

All of these factors: crying, desire to be seen as “tough,” and emotional detachment, they’re all a part of fragile masculinity. Of men denying themselves of the full scope of human emotion, of excluding others who don’t, and of creating this image of some perfect man: a hyperbolical, overly-muscular, popular, unattainable, and emotionally distant figure of what every man supposedly should be. Now, I’m not a man, but honestly, I don’t buy it. Every man should be exactly how they are when they are being themselves.
   

 And, to bring the coal to Newcastle, so to speak, my final point: being gay does not mean being a feminine man, just as lesbians are not masculine women. Some are, yes. But the definition of homosexuality, according to one masculine gay man Johannus M. Steger in the article “Men, Your Fragile Masculinity Is A Cry For Help,” is having “sexual or romantic desires” for another person of the same gender. And therefore that must mean that one man hugging his best friend, whom is also male, is not explicitly homosexual. “No homo,” is unnecessary here, as it is in, quite literally, every other situation.
     

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s no such thing as a “real man,” at least, not in the vernacular in which it is implied. It’s a fake, weird, and unbelievable phrase that’s simply been concocted by society’s biggest and best fragile men. If you’re a man, you’re a man, no matter the circumstances. Pants don’t make the person, personality does. So just be yourself; cry or don’t, play sports or don’t, wear skirts and dresses or don’t, be trans, or gay, or as feminine or masculine as you’d like. Having the strength to be yourself, now that is a real man.