I’m out for dinner with a new friend. We met at the queer running group a couple weeks ago: he’s a cis gay man, partnered, new in town, roughly my own age. And despite having hung out together only a couple times, our conversations have had both breadth and depth, so there seems to be potential for a close platonic friendship and I have already shared with him some of my difficulties or impostor syndrome around my gender as it is perceived in the world.
“Since the medical steps of your gender journey, have you had anyone appreciate your masculinity?”
His question is sympathetic, considerate, within context; the choice of words (e.g. “your masculinity”) appropriate and validating. For me, though, there’s also something extremely piercing in his question. It’s a simple, direct question, clear in its meaning of “appreciation” as within sexual/romantic relationships. Yet the answer that comes out of me is long-winded. Probably because I had never really been asked such a question so simply and directly, and because that’s actually the question that has been nagging at me for at least the past month & a half.
Now, a couple of days after his simple question and my long-winded answer to him, I can actually reply very simply to myself: “No, not enough”.
Over the past four years, since my gender journey became a prevalent and explicit (even medically & visually/physically) part of my life, I have had some people openly, explicitly, clearly appreciate my masculinity in physical/sexual/romantic relationships, yes. But it’s been too few & too sparse, only a handful of persons over the course of 3-4 years compared to dozens of people who for decades showed (physical/sexual/romantic) appreciation for my femininity. And now it’s been over a year since anyone showed any physical/sexual appreciation for my masculinity, so even those few experiences I did have have dwindled and been lost from my memory.
I can still remember that I felt wonderfully happy and validated in deep, exhilarating ways both times that cis gay men showed physical appreciation and/or sexual attraction towards me. I can remember that I felt like I was on cloud #9 for days after hooking up with the cis gay guy from the chorus who said I was a “hot guy”. But those memories are far away in time, from over a year ago, and I haven’t had any other experiences like that since then, so I cannot recall those happy feelings of validation anymore, I can only remember at a rational/logical level that I had them (& that they’re gone now). And my more recent experiences have actually been of the opposite type, feeling like rejection or discounting of my masculinity.
So no, I have not had enough appreciation of my masculinity. And this is certainly part of the reason for the painful impostor syndrome I’m feeling around my masculinity.
I have had and still have wonderful, caring support and acceptance from my platonic friends who love me and accept me just as I am and make that clear to me. This has been an incredible source of strength and comfort in all my endeavors and difficulties. But it’s different from “appreciating (physically/sexually) my masculinity”. My friends accept and love me just as I am, regardless of my gender or looks or body parts. That is wonderful and extremely important, something that I lacked when I was younger and that I’m extremely grateful for now and wouldn’t trade in for anything in the world. But it’s not the same, it doesn’t provide the same type of validation as being appreciated physically/sexually as a man. And I need both types of validation or appreciation. But I’m not getting both types of appreciation so there’s a big part of me that still feels extremely insecure and hurt.
{NOTE: the validations I might get from strangers or the external world addressing me as “sir” or “man” really do very little, hardly anything, in the way of affirming my gender, at this point. While being misgendered is still terribly traumatic and painful for me, being addressed as “sir” or “man” washes off of me because rationally my mind realizes that people really are extremely superficial in their assessment of gender, they only have two boxes and they use very superficial, general indicators to choose one of the two “assigned boxes” on the fly, which most of the time doesn’t feel validating at all.}
The Little Prince and the Fox 