“There’s no specific definition of what a man or a woman is supposed to be. There are all different spectrums of people. We’re all people with different personalities and different minds.”
“It’s fine to be who you are and just being yourself allows for different types of mindsets, personalities, or sexual orientations.
A man is pretty much whatever you make it to be. Being a man isn’t specifically a trait, it’s just being yourself as the male sex. A man can be strong and tough, so can a female be strong and tough. Like they say a female can do what a man can do but that’s not always true in our society. There’s also the stereotype that men can’t be socially vulnerable, cry, do female jobs or female things, like painting their nails. That just doesn’t feel right to me. To me, men can pretty much do whatever they feel like that they want to do. We’re all human so having those stereotypes isn’t actually right.
I learned what it is to be a man mostly from my male family members like my cousins, my dad, my grandfather. I have one male cousin, who teaches me his definition of a man, which is being strong and tough and not crying. And then my grandfather always teaches me to be strong and to just be exactly who I am as a person. I actually really like that about him.
I feel that everybody should know that men can show their emotions.
What isn’t being talked about enough is how men can’t show their emotions or how men pretty much can’t do anything women can. When women cry, people will be like “oh how are you? I hope you’re fine.” But when a man is crying, or feels down, depressed, in his feelings or wrapped up in emotional damage, society is just no about that. People don’t think that men should be able to show their emotions. They just think that men should be all strong, tough, and not crying. The stereotype of men not being able to cry just doesn’t make much sense.
It’s fine to be who you are.
I also don’t agree with society and people that think men can’t show their sexual orientations or gender identity — like being non-binary, being bi-sexual, being gay, being pansexual — to other men. That just doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m not gay myself but I do have friends who are gay and they’re cool people. I don’t get why people don’t like or get angry at other people for being gay and just being themselves. Let’s say, if I was like bi-sexual or something, nothing would change. I would still be me, but just my sexual orientation would change. It doesn’t make much sense to me how you can be mad about someone just finding their true self. They could spend years being trapped in this figurative cocoon and finally they let themselves out. I just don’t see how people object to that. I think it’s pretty fine that people have different worldviews and are different in general. Surrounding yourself with the same type of person is actually kind of boring, so having people with different opinions, different thoughts, different mindsets actually helps in developing a person.
Being a man is just really really tough when all that stuff is pressured on to you.
What I’ve learned about being a man is to be tough and catch whatever the world has to throw at you and protect the women that you love, protect the family that you love, and just grow stronger physically and mentally. Typical definitions of masculinity make me feel like I should be stronger and change my body, my language, how I talk to people – pretty much my entire worldview. Going to high school with people that are different has changed me a bit. Not in a bad way per se, but it made me tougher in the skin, you know what I mean? It made me take more hits than I can normally take. When I was younger I couldn’t take a single hit but now I can take multiple hits and still just keep going.
It gets really daunting after a while, and for me I just want to relax in my life and not have any pressures of just being a guy. I just really want those pressures to be gone. I also want people to be ready for when men they know and love just kinda crumble. Because it happens. Personally I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen it happen many times actually. Just be ready when that happens because you don’t know when it’s going to happen, it could be at any time. You don’t really know what they’re going through. So when it does happen, you’ll be ready for it.
It’s important for us to know about these social pressures, but remember, you don’t have to be a specific thing in other people’s eyes. People have different views of what a man can be. A man can be tough, a man can be strong, a man can be hairy, a man can be protective, a man can be depended on. But sometimes what people think of being a man is just really really twisted in my opinion. I’ll go on the internet and see people berate men for just being men. I really don’t see what the issue is. When it comes to being a man, it doesn’t seem like something people would be ridiculed about. You weren’t asked to be born a man, you were just brought into this world and now you just have to deal with the gender that you were born with.
At the end of the day, you can pretty much be anything that you want.
Just protect everyone in your life that you love and be yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, if you’re straight, if you’re a coward or weak, or if you’re really strong. It just matters that you be you in your own life. When people make fun of you for being you, don’t mind them, they’re just mad that they’re not you. Just love yourself for who you are.”