The Little Black Book For Guys: Guys Talk About Sex

Tomboys and Pussies: Against Gender Norms

Tomboys and Pussies: Against Gender Norms 

by Myke Anderson

 What makes you a guy? I mean, mentally. Sure, you have a dick, you don’t have a vagina (right?), and all that stuff. But I want to know, inside your head, what makes you a guy? 

 Think about it: when you were born, you didn’t know any¬thing about what it meant to be a guy. You were just a baby. You didn’t even know what a penis was, so it sure didn’t matter what size it was. You didn’t know that you were supposed to like girls and cars and hockey… that was all just stuff. No mean¬ing. Just stuff. So how do you go from being a baby, with no beliefs, to having certain ideas about being a man, a real man? 

 We’re taught since we’re babies about which ideas are expected to go with each gender, so we don’t have a lot of control over it. Some parents ”help” a lot—“Don’t cry! Be a big boy,” or “Dolls are for girls,” and stuff like that. But it’s also in pictures, in books, and on TV. Think of a police officer. Who do you see? Probably a man. Think of a nurse. You see a woman, right? Why? Aren’t there female cops and male nurses? We immediately think of one gender as the “right” gender for that job. We often use these kinds of gender ideas to define some¬body else without knowing anything else about them. 

 We define other people this way, but we also define our¬selves. And what happens when those definitions we’ve been taught don’t fit? What about a boy who doesn’t like cars or sports? He gets shit for it. Pansy, pussy, woman, queer, fag…. What about a girl who doesn’t care about dresses or pink? She gets called dyke, frigid, or tomboy. What about transgendered people? They get harassed more than anyone. We need to ask ourselves why are people who don’t fit stereotypical definitions punished for it? 

 Like I said earlier, think about it. There are lots of people who don’t fit into the neat little boxes of what a “man” should be, so stop labeling people because they don’t act masculine or feminine enough for you. It’s unfair, it’s wrong, and you’re only showing how stupid you are when you do it.