Ani Trueheart - What Is Masculinity

Image Description: Ani is sitting between two statues at the Empire State building. The statues are depictions of the steel workers who constructed the building. Ani is wearing a similar outfit as the workers: 20’s themed attire with suspenders, newsboy hat, and large, high waist, pleated pants. Ani pretends to be speaking to the worker on their left. Photographer: Erin Sage

What Is Masculinity

March 27, 2020

What is masculinity?

I imagine the answer is different for many, subjective, and defined by your race, culture, ethnicity, and locale. As a white kid growing up in the South, I saw versions of masculinity that looked like blue-collar, hard work. It looked like cowboy boots and denim, like shirtless football and soccer players. It smelled like Old Spice cologne and Ax sprays. It looked like firm muscles and strong pecs and deep voices. It looked like doctors and lawyers and family breadwinners. It also looked like an athletic woman with swagger, making moves and shooting a basketball. Or a lesbian with short hair and dapper as hell. But I didn’t see many of them where I was from.

For me, it is a feeling, an energy. I can’t pinpoint where it comes from, but I know it is a light that exposes my natural being. It is a way of carrying my body. It is a swinging, confident gate and assertive hand gestures. It is a force that sweeps over my body quickly when I make a decision and am ready to execute it. It is a way to speak—assertive and firm, or warm and deep. It is a way to navigate social space. It is an inner power that feels like adventure and exploration. It is intense resolve. It is the fight and the grit in the pit of my stomach.

Until puberty, most bodies look very similar in height, skin texture, and voice. So at an early age, my masculinity was based on my body just as it was and my personality, interests, talents, and temperament. I was an intense kid, and still am.

From kindergarten to around 3rd grade, I was very proud of my boyishness. But I learned that it was unwelcome when assigned female at birth. People didn’t understand why I moved and talked and acted like a ’boy’ if I was assigned female. They called me a ‘tomboy,’ which, upon reflection, feels like an insult. As if I was pretending to be like a boy, when I was just as good as any boy. I was a boy. I was fidgety, athletic, competitive, talkative, assertive, energetic, a leader.

As an adult, I understand now that these traits can be possessed by anyone, with any assigned sex. This way of existing is not exclusive to boys. But that’s what I was taught.

People may not use the term ‘masculine,’ but anyone can be assertive or energetic or athletic. These traits are not exclusive to people assigned male; they can be expressed through all types of bodies.

The definition of identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics that define you.

In relation to sex and gender, I have learned that these are separate concepts, the latter culturally shaped by definitions of the former, that they can be understood as spectrums in themselves. And that some humans, like me, do not identify with socially and culturally ubiquitous definitions of these concepts.

As for my sex, I exist and live through a body I was born in and assigned, developing latent sex traits through hormone treatment with testosterone, which naturally interacts with my body. As I reflect on my life in relation to my body assigned female, the genitalia and chromosomes I was born with did not elicit a personality and behaviors scientists and society have falsely hypothesized about the sex binary: that our sex is dimorphic and informs our brains, personalities and roles in society. My body did not prevent me from feeling energized by activities and behaviors traditionally defined as “masculine”: building, thinking, achieving, competing, etc. It did not prevent me from being attracted to women. It did not prevent me from having strong, intelligent opinions. It did not arouse a definitive desire to get married and make babies with my body. It did not prevent me from blowing out the candles on my 5th birthday in hopes of growing up to be a ‘boy.’ Having a vagina and relating to and embodying “masculinity” can and do co-exist together. I feel a connection with masculinity as it relates to the biological, psychological, social, and cultural definitions taught to me. Showing the world that I do connect with the cultural norms of masculinity as I understand them. And gender-affirming hormones naturally allow my body to move along the spectrum that our species exists on and express different traits, embodying the reality that maleness and femaleness are not really exclusive from one another within our organismic selves. Ultimately, sex cannot be understood as a binary code because it is not one. I like to use the word “trans” for my sex because it is ambiguous and explains that I do not identify with the sex assigned at birth (though to me it is more nuanced than that).

As far as gender, masc or butch presentation are a safe and comfortable root for my expression, mostly in the way I navigate physical space with my body: gate, mannerisms, gestures, etc. As for my roles and personality, I subjectify and intertwine the concepts that the Western world defines as masculine and feminine. I am like water; assertive, yet malleable, possessing the simultaneity to be a solid and a mist. I am more nuanced than the either|or of being a man or a woman. Does being protective make me a man? Does being nurturing make me a woman? My role in society is simply to be here. To exist. Not to follow roles that serve others in ways that do not serve me wholly.

I do know I love to make art. I love to connect with people. I love to learn. I yearn to see social change and growth. I am fiery and passionate and determined. I am competitive. I am thoughtful. I love to watch the sunset and I love to swim in the ocean, or just a pool. I feel more human and connect with describing myself in these ways than with gender terms.

This growing and changing in my skin is a novel journey. My past feels like a dream; memories with loved ones feel like a movie I was watching as I conformed to incongruent gender roles, creating a blurry, painful world inside. But I am awake now. I am here to be seen, proud, and queer—to keep the conversation flowing and moving towards justice, fairness, and acceptance for our communities as a whole.