Jason Y: That sounds about right. If you’re in the company of rednecks or hypermasculine douchebags, then obviously they’re not tolerating any androgyny.
Men are very good at seeing masculinity in other men. Women are just idiots about this stuff.
Just my experience. It’s been women who have been telling me that I am not masculine enough. Guys, generally speaking, don’t say that to me. Even rough, tough, macho, redneck guys seem to accept me on some weird level.
I finally figured out that they can see the masculine side in me, and that it is extremely strong, about as strong as theirs. So while there is this weird feminine stuff going on with me too, at the same time, I know all of the hypermasculine codes, behavioral mandates, ways of moving, walking, sitting, standing, expression, proper emotions, tone of voice, muscle tone, along with all the myriad masculine social codes, etc. For instance, my feelings are very, very controlled. They see the masculine side, and they think, “Ok, grudging acceptance.” They see the feminine stuff, and they figure that the masculine side pretty much cancels that out or makes it so it’s not so important.
The big lie is that hypermasculine men hate feminine behavior. They don’t. They think it’s weird, and they don’t understand it, but they don’t hate it. What they do hate though is a lack of masculine behavior. That’s what they really hate. If you can mirror their hypermasculinity well (and I can), you can get away with a lot of stuff on the feminine side too. Men don’t think that feminine behavior cancels out masculine behavior. They just want to see that macho stuff. As soon as they see that, you are part of their special Club or in crowd and they will always accept you, even on some weird, grudging level.
To be a member of the Masculine Men’s Club, you have to be:
+masculine
Acceptable:
+feminine
– feminine
As long as you are +masculine, it doesn’t really matter if you are +feminine or -feminine. You’re allowed to have feminine stuff as long as that masculine side is solid and observable.
To disallow membership in the club, you have to be:
-masculine
It really helps if you are obviously heterosexual too. Men don’t really care about male feminine behavior as long as the guy is straight and especially if he’s really good at getting women, especially hot women. If a guy can regularly screw hot women, they pretty much accept him fully just for that right there, and they could care less about how he acts because to masculine men, how you act is not that important. That’s sort of one of the tests – the pussy test. Men are very pragmatic.
Hypermasculine men are not as stupid as you think. Actually, they are extremely smart, especially about this masculinity – femininity – heterosexuality, etc. thing. Generally speaking, if it’s pretty obvious you like pussy and even better yet you can fuck hot women, they will just blow off everything else and just assume you are straight.
This type of man is very willing to compromise, and he wants you to be in his secret club. His bias is to see you as one of the members of his club. He’s not going to be biased towards seeing you as not cutting it. Men will give you a lot of breaks and give up a lot of ground just to see you are a member of their club. They would much rather have you as a member of the Masculine Men Club than not a member. They don’t like guys who are not club members, and they would much rather you join up with them than be one of those idiots who are outside of the club. They will literally search around for reasons to see how they can weasel you into the club. I think most of these men would be perfectly happy if 99% of the men in their world were Masculine Men’s Club members. They would like as few men as possible to not be in the Club.
If they are not sure about you, if they even see you reading a Playboy, for instance, they will walk up to you with a big smile and shake your hand and maybe give you a high five. Because that means you’re straight. They wanted you to be straight, but they were not sure that you were. Once they find out that you are, Yeehaw! You are one of the boys.
It’s a big myth that hypermasculine men are always going around trying to exclude other men from the Man’s Club on some flimsy grounds.
Some men do this of course, but they are typically very insecure. These are the ones who run around gay-baiting straight men, accusing straight men of being gay and even gay-bashing straight men. You would be amazed how many straight men get gay-bashed. No one ever talks about this, but it happens a lot.
I think that the whole reason behind the homophobes’ behavior is “policing masculinity.” These men are very insecure for some reason because the more secure men, as mentioned above, are always looking to give you a break and see some evidence that you are part of their Club. These other guys are running around trying to throw men out of the Club for not meeting some exacting expectations.
Homophobes are weird. One of the worst and most violent homophobes I have ever met – this guy literally beat up straight guys accusing them of being gay – some almost to the point of unconsciousness – was known to collect gay pornography. I know this because his roommate told me that he found gay porn in the gay-basher’s room.