Not so macho

[WaSwimmer]

Boy, stereotypes shot to hell once again!

I'm glad you started this thread. Like you, I sometimes feel like I really don't fit in.

I'm a gay dude and while I really don't like group sports (I guess as gay guy thats kind of expected), I really do like biking, running, hiking and that sort of stuff. I'm about as far from 'nelly' as a guy can be and quite frankly I'm much more 'macho' than most of my straight friends who gel their hair, talk about lots of movies and couldn't work on a car if the instructions were printed under the hood.

I can fix danged near anything, build anything, don't talk with a lisp and well, you get the picture.

Good to see that stereotypes are just that: Stereotypes. Be comfortable with who you are and enjoy all your friends, no matter what category they fit into.

 

[D_Leotols Toy]

I'm glad I brought this up to alleviate my mind and some others as I see. I just wish stereotypes would be brought down by the media who are the ones who bring it up.

I find it funny when dudes who only hang out with dudes call a dude who hangs out girls "gay". Seems quite the contradiction, but people are silly

 

[BirdinMo]

I quilt, crochet, cook, clean, read all the time and cry over the stupidest things. I might as well be a girl.

 

[nudepierced]

I am like Waswimmer, do most repairs and lawn work myself, I am gay but being born in the late 50s and early 60s we were to get married and have a family with white picket fence and spend all the time with the wife and family, now at 50 I really do not have any friends, dont golf, bowl or anything like that.

 

[nubian]

welcome to my life.

 

[the_reverend]

i used to be this way. growing up, i was way more sensitive and artistic and not into sports or cars or any of the typical guy stuff. and i've always kind of related to girls better and starting around 8th grade (when i kind of came into my own and started realizing who i was and who i wanted to be) and all through high school, i had way more girl friends than guy friends. was into reading and theatre and music...the joke in my family is that it was such a surprise when my sister turned out to be the gay one. so i never felt like a manly man or uber-macho or anything. and i think that perception of myself kind of became a self fulfilling prophecy and i molded myself to that image a bit. but as i progressed through college and once again had occasion to inspect my identity a bit, i realized that i did enjoy watching sports as much as watching Shakespeare. i did like flirting and playing the field and hooking up as much as being in relationships. i liked action films as much as period dramas and romantic comedies. i looked around and saw that while i had a lot of female friends i was super close to, i also had a lot of amazing guy friends as well. and i'd always been into geeky nominally "guy" stuff like comic books and science fiction...so while i'd been trying to fit this one very narrow vision of myself, i realized that there was plenty about me already that was "masculine." and i opened my mind to both those sides of my personality and have felt a lot better ever since.

i think the politics of gender identity are as much a personal issue of perception as they are social pressures. honestly, just be who you want to be...not who anyone else thinks you should be or, just as important, who YOU think you should be. do and be what makes you happy (as long as you're not hurting anyone else in the process) and the rest be damned. our personalities aren't fixed constructs, set in stone. we're creatures of flame, water and spirit. we can change, or not, as we see fit.

 

[dolfette]

you guys are great!
i find packs of football cheering, beer swigging, cat calling men a bit off putting. i much prefer the company of men who relate to women as people and are willing to enter an art gallery.

 

[plumbr]

Masculinity is a subjective concept. Interest is interest. The two shouldn't go together. Doing 'manly' things doesn't necessarily make you manly.

Food for thought, "Thinking about what is manly or unmanly actually requires a emotional realization and questioning of oneself, a woman trait, perhaps?"

 

[D_Leotols Toy]

Haha touche plumbr.

That's how I've always thought that an interest could never determine one's true "manliness", but guys I've come in contact with and chill with always seem to make this assumption because I don't give a shit about who's team is going to the super bowl.

Super bowl's bring about only one good thing and that's a shit ton of food

 

[nubian]

Haha touche plumbr.

That's how I've always thought that an interest could never determine one's true "manliness", but guys I've come in contact with and chill with always seem to make this assumption because I don't give a shit about who's team is going to the super bowl.

Super bowl's bring about only one good thing and that's a shit ton of food

Two (or three) things. They also bring about great commercials and occasionally someone cool to sing the National Anthem.

 

[D_Leotols Toy]

Very true, I guess I'm a fatty and focused on the food more than the commercials lol

 

[stlbigman]

i don't know how old u r but i think you're in your teens or 20s based on the friends you talk about. the reason i bring it up because young men think being "manly" means you can talk sports (few men can REALLY talk sports), love chicks and dig cars. your true friends will not judge u based on such trivial things. be yourself. DON'T FEEL YOU HAVE TO CHANGE FOR ANY DUDE!!!

 

[sounder1]

Because of a vision problem, I never was good at any sport (except swimming) and to this day I don't even care to watch games. I still feel "manly" though.

 

[luvinlife83]

I know exactly how you feel. I've felt that way since grade school. While all the other boys were playing football, I was hanging out with the girls. Even at work now, my closest friend is a women. For me to watch football, it has to be a really good game. I don't know athletes or some teams for that matter. I am not a big beer drinker. I will have one every so often. So I know just how you feel my advice would be not to try and be super dude because you will end up looking foolish. Just continue to be yourself and if they are truly your friends, then they won't give a shit if you know who the starting pitcher for the Cubs is, or how many women you've slept with. Be yourself.

 

[bigguy4u]

i can relate, and when i do try and "man-up" it comes across as fake.
i wasnt brought up with a sports freindly father or older brother, it wasnt their fault.
I hate it sometimes, but, there are things I am good at that the "other" boys
arent so good at.
and its ok, if everyone was the same,,,,

Same here. I sometimes avoid parties foucused around sports such as football games because I feel out of place while all my guy friends are jumping around and yellling at the TV while I'm sitting there like what the hell is their problem. Like the guy above me, I just wasn't raised around sports. Actually we werent raised around lots of things. Our cars were always taken to the dealers when they needed be serviced, I have never opened the hood of my car unless someone ask to see it, we had gardners and to this day I think I've used a lawn mower like twice at a friends place, as children we were not allowed to get dirty and probably the major reason, my dad was flying all over the place for meetings and when we did spend time together it was on vacation somewhere.

The only thing I'm really good at is cooking which I guess explains the few extra pounds, Decoupage and shopping. My friends have been around since elementry so they know me by know however, I still feel awkward at times. I do find it very easy to get a long with chicks but eventually get accused of having an affair with them by their BF and Husbands whom I was friends with before their girlfriends were ever in the picture. My Uncle once accused me of sleeping with his wife.

Well. I'm feeling depressed now...I'm going to bed.

 

[nubian]

Very true, I guess I'm a fatty and focused on the food more than the commercials lol

It's all good, dude. I'm a total fatty, too!

 

[Fleur]

There are times when I feel emasculated compared to my other dude friends.
I don't watch sports or particularly like them other than poker and skateboarding, not into the whole womanizing thing, or other manly things like working on cars.

All my group of friends are basically girls and it's always been like that and was raised by a single mum, although I occasionally saw my father.

Anyways, anyone else ever feel like that? I'm quite comfortable in myself, it's just I feel the few dudes I do chill with don't necessarily see me as super dude bro like or something. Can anyone relate?

You don't sound emasculating to me and if anyone makes you feel bad about yourself, then time to get a new friend if they don't understand differences in people. You sound like the type of guy I would date. I'm not into the womanizing, sports obsessed guys...maybe that makes me less of a woman...not sure. It honestly wouldn't bother me if I dated a guy who was trustworthy (wouldn't date someone who wasn't) and had a lot of girl friends. :smile:

 

[chuckiedude]

Thanks for posting this thread! I can totally relate. I come from a large extended family. At any family gathering, I always wanted to hang out with my female cousins and aunts rather than the male cousins and uncles. The female conversations were always way more interesting.

When I bought my car a few years ago, I had to make a mental note to remember the engine size. But when a guy friend asked me what size the engine was, my brain took a short holiday and I couldn't remember... sigh, lol.

And yeah, as for the Super Bowl, once the national anthem is over, I turn off the tv.

 

[Ed69]

I've never had much intrest in sports either.But I never thought knowing how to change out a blown water pump on my truck,kill a deer for food or how to knap my own knife to dress that deer was macho?Something my father never understood while watching his ball game with a beer in his hand.There is macho and there is basic survival when you don't have the money to cover all the bills.I've never been macho and feel awkward about it at times,but I can survive!

And my wife loves my cooking tips!

 

[D_Beau Nerr]

Just hang around with your buds... whatever your liking is, guys want to hang around with a man who's sure of himself.

There are times when I feel emasculated compared to my other dude friends.
I don't watch sports or particularly like them other than poker and skateboarding, not into the whole womanizing thing, or other manly things like working on cars.

All my group of friends are basically girls and it's always been like that and was raised by a single mum, although I occasionally saw my father.

Anyways, anyone else ever feel like that? I'm quite comfortable in myself, it's just I feel the few dudes I do chill with don't necessarily see me as super dude bro like or something. Can anyone relate?