"Your sexual identity should not define who you are.”
...
It is an expression that you are living for a moment in this lifetime.
but it shouldn’t be more or less than simply just that.
My previous blogs about 'femininity' (links below this blog) brought a lot of things out. I realized I cannot face the word 'feminine' without facing the word 'masculine'.
In this blog, I want to look at the word 'masculine'. When I look back, the one person that opened up this word for me was my dad.
Since I was a child, I looked at my dad as the symbol of masculinity.
Here are some of the characteristics I found I defined as masculinity as per what I saw my Dad as,
He had more defined muscles, and more money. He had authority to say 'something had to change' or 'something should not change'.
I defined my dad as masculine, I saw him as someone wearing pants and shirt, and someone wearing a male undergarment like a 'male brief'. This of course was influenced by the media ads i watched on tv giving messages on what a male wears. Mostly, this is motivated by money as most ads are made to make money.
If my dad wore a dress, will I judge him as gay?
Yes. But that was my limited perception of the word 'masculine' in the past.
Let us create a scenario here:
What if that is the only garment available because everything was lost in a fire?
The limited definition I gave to masculinity needs to expand. So I have to look at the definition that is commonsensical.
Dictionary:
A male is someone who produces sperm cells.
A male is not defined within what he wears according to this definition.
My dad contributed to my genes having given my mom his sperm to unite with her eggs. His spermatozoa helped create this female body I have now.
The body is hosting me - as the breath here in this body I am in.
Though my definition of the word 'male' is associated to some physical part of me, I also associated it to a mind definition of him and his moods - strict, conservative, reserved etc. - that constitutes some of his masculine personality traits which is part of my computation of what a masculine personality is.
This is of course unreal because who i am as that personality was created by me in an alternate reality - my mind - but let me open this up here so it can be opened for correction.
I saw him as a person who had the right to get angry and saw him as someone who had the right to punish 'wrongdoing'. This is my perception of him in my mind.
Both of us have equal rights as humans living this one life.
But my perception of him having more money than me in my mind lead to me defining myself as inferior to him which of course led to me suppressing my self-expression
I associated his rough skin, short hair, skinny but muscular thighs and low calm voice as part of his masculinity which I defined as exclusive to men.
He had very little hip movement when he walks which contributed to how i defined him also as having masculine body movements.
What if he had a situation in his life where he had hip bone problems or movement problems that make him sway his hips more?
Will he still be considered gay?
No. This is using commonsense - not ideas and beliefs I connected to what masculinity means.
Another idea that I had of him was that,
I believed that he was someone who had the right to tell us what to do, where to be and how to behave.
I know he did not know how to cook tasty meals, but meals are here to provide nutrition not pleasure.
Enjoyment for me is awareness of the physical sensations in my mouth when I am chewing food without judgment and experiencing it going inside my body. But we are usually not aware of these physical sensations because we are usually thinking about whether that food is tasty or not. that's the limit of our (mind )awareness.
I remembered one day my mom went to a convention and he was left to cook for us for 3 days. I must have it mixed up in my memory . It was not as if he did not cook us some food. He cooked us some food - something very easy to cook - he fried small dried fish and cooked us steamed rice for 3 days. That was all we ate.
I forgot that food is not about taste. It is about nutrition. Dried fish has nutrition too and so does rice.
One that i cannot deny is that he was the one who gave my mom money so she can buy what the family needs - food, pay for our education, etc.
Let's change the scenario for a moment,
What if we all have money coming our way every month just by virtue of being born in this world (let's just say for example, from corporations who profit from natural resources given to all of us by the earth) - for guaranteed survival, where we also get additional money if we work.
Will this change my perception of my dad? Yes for sure.
This paves the way for expanding my self-expression.
I do not have to ask money from my dad to spend in going to school.
Not only will this change my perception of my dad, but my perception of myself - from inferiority (asking money from my dad) to an equal and one relationship with him.
This will pave the way for my dad and me to walk as equals on earth.
This will also pave the way for me to stop defining him as having more money than me.
Finally, we both can see each other for who we really are - as equals.
Another benefit is that the equal amount of money coming every month will guarantee both our survival even if we work or not work for some 'valid reason.'
The fact remains - we are both here on earth living this one life to express and expand ourselves .
This is what living a meaningful life means to me.
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Links To My Previous Blogs
Femininity
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2
3
4
5
6
7
