REDEFINDING BEING A MAN

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What is a man? This is a question that haunts all men—straight, gay, bi, and transsexual. We strive to answer it as best we can, given whatever role models we grew up with. Many years ago, when I was managing convenience stores, I had a handsome Latino vendor that came in one day and announced that his girlfriend was pregnant, and that he was now a man. One of society’s prejudices against gay men is that they do not procreate, and since they don’t, gay men are not really men.

You will have to decide what it means for yourself. I think that as a whole, we have moved beyond the "John Wayne, strong, tough, unfeeling" manhood stereotype, but each man must find his own way in life. Can you be a man and get anally penetrated, or perform oral sex on a man? To accept or come to terms with what it means to be a gay man, may, and probably will, mean grieving what you thought made a man. As we let go of our fantasies and ideas about who we are, then grief is a natural process that follows.

For most, being with another man emotionally, sexually, and physically means that you do not have the defined gender roles of a man and woman, either sexually or practically, in a relationship. Most men are, to some degree, sexually versatile, and who cooks, washes the dishes, cleans the house, or does the yard work has to all be negotiated. It is not just assumed, based upon gender, what each man’s role is going to be. So does trading roles make you a partial man? Personally, I think that being a man is about knowing and expressing all the parts of you, the masculine as well as the feminine, the top and the bottom, all defined as a fully integrated you and how you choose to express that. Being gay is an interesting journey, one with less societal rules, and thus more room for creative exploration.

SOURCE: MYOST