Sunday, May 30, 2010

Karma's Great Big Ass-Whooping

My male-bashing started at the tender age of 9 years old. After careful reflection of what was going on around me and through mediums like television, I told myself, "Boys are stupid. All they ever do is break girls' hearts."

From there, I polished myself to be the gentleman that I only saw on tv or read in books. The kind that I thought didn't exist in real life. This was the beginning of my "knight in shining armor" era/mentality. This concept was further reinforced by the various King Arthur books and movies I absorbed and anything that I could find about the Middle Ages. Of course, I would later find out in a high school history class that the Crusades didn't start off as being a noble pursuit and that knights of that era were originally jobless thieves and mercenaries that eventually learned to clean up their act.

If you want to talk about someone defending women, I was one of them. For any guy that broke any of my female friends' hearts, I gave them the stink-eye. When girls wanted to cry and sob about their boy issues, I made sure I was their shoulder and listening ear. I even tried to stop one of my closest friends (and one of my biggest crushes in the 7th grade) from dating the guy she wanted. I tried to be everything that I thought the "perfect man" should be and despised the rest of the real-world men whom I saw as chauvinistic douchebags.

That era crashed and burned when one of my romantic relationships failed miserably and made me see just how far gone I was in my delusions. Not that I didn't have the right heart about it. Even now I still have a soft spot for protecting women and wishing that the men they try so hard to win over weren't such complete morons. (And I also have a horrible habit of cock-blocking when I'm drunk.) While I was once the knight riding off into the sunset on a white horse ready to rescue the next damsel-in-distress, I'm now a battle-tested veteran comfortable with keeping my sword and shield on the wall of memories.

And what made me put down my armaments? The realization that I was just like the boys I so loathed and despised. While I did break a few male hearts during my first stints at dating, most of the hearts I've broken belonged to women. I betrayed my first love when I was 14 years old by kissing one of my male classmates (who ironically turned out to be gay). Why did I do it? Because I was scared. Scared of being attracted to women and the backlash I would get from family and friends for that. Scared of committing to someone who lives half of the Pacific Ocean away and not ever knowing what physical intimacy would be like. Scared that it was "just a phase" that she and I were going through and that at any moment, one or both of us would decide that we made a huge mistake. In the end, my fears led to me becoming the very thing I hated: a heart-breaker.

More heartbreaks later brought me to understand why I male-bashed so much: I wanted to be them. I guess you can say that I'm the trans equivalent of the homophobe who goes around gay-bashing to hide his closeted gayness. I wanted to be the cute guy that the girls giggled and pointed at shyly huddled next to their lockers. I wanted girls to see me as the boy with the nice eyes and sexy smile. As a confused teenager, I listened to all the female gossip and chatter and took notes of who I could be if given the chance. When I came out as a lesbian? I played it up to the fullest! My best and worst relationships were with bisexual women because they could see my masculinity before I was even aware of it.

Things have now come full circle, but in many ways I feel like I'm at square one again. While I've accepted my male identity, I still have to learn the mannerisms and social protocols of men. Several nights ago I ran into two friends I haven't seen in awhile. After finishing up conversation and realizing I needed to go home to get some rest, I hugged my female friend without a problem. When it came time to bid my male friend farewell, it was an awkward shoulder-hug thing because neither of us knew how to really interact in that situation. Having been perceived as female for so long I only know what works from a female perspective.

While I look forward to living and growing as a man, I actually like looking back on my life to laugh at all the irony I see.

EDIT: In case people get confused about what I said, I know men and women break hearts all the time. Hopefully you got the message that I was calling myself out on my own childhood prejudices against cismen.

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