Prescriptive gender is a prison. Rather than gender being a form of self-expression, gender is treated as a pass/fail test for how well you can conform to cultural expectations.
Since I was young, I remember feeling a great deal of pressure to conform to these expectations around what āmenā are meant to be. You like sports, cars, womanizing, aggression, and not having feelings. I felt so distant from this ideal. I was sensitive and shy, and I preferred spending my time being creative in some way
For a long time, I felt like I was failing at ābeing a man.ā In many ways I was! Because I didnāt need toĀ bea man. All I needed to be was myself.
Itās taken me a long time to separate myself from prescriptive gender, sharpening in on which aspects of masculine energy I identify with and which I donāt. Iām not done yet. Maybe I will never fully be. The self continues to evolve over time, and I suspect aspects of my gender will too.
