All men have a masculine side and a feminine side. Otto Weininger called these two the Masculine Principle and the Feminine Principle and he argued that each one was probably present in every human.
Now personally, I like my masculine side, and it is actually super masculine. I feel as hypermasculine as any man who ever lived, be they Vikings or John Bunyan or John Wayne. But that’s just one side of me. What’s interesting is that most really masculine guys can see this part of me, and that is why they have always accepted me, even if in sort of a hesitant way.
The homophobic morons who gay bash, discriminate, abuse, taunt and gay bait men, typically straight men for God’s sake, are more likely to be “insecurely masculine.” They often act very masculine, but it seems to be based on something insecure and worrying; that is, it has a shaky foundation. Probably because it is insecure masculinity, they have to constantly state it over and over again all day long, and one of the best ways to do that is to accuse all the guys who don’t measure up in the hypermasculine department of being gay.
Truly masculine men generally do not give a damn about this sort of thing flying fuck and they don’t overthink things, so their attitude would be more like “straight until proven otherwise” or something along those lines. Plus, true, hard masculine men can always sense if another man has that component in him, and if he does, he automatically gets a least a certain amount of respect, even if he does seem a bit weird or dubious.
However, I also have a very strong feminine side, and this has been the source of a lot confusion, problems, and heartache in my life.
