Monday Nov 15, 2004

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Ok I owe myself and everyone else a happy journal. As someone who is generally a happy person (65% silly child 35% gloomy doubt-ridden pain) the last week drained me and made me flick through a lot of negative emotions but I do feel a lot better today. When you are down you appreciate support from people and people on my friends list are really good to me.

For most of my life I have never really thought about what being a man means. The fact that im a man seemed pretty irrelevant to me as I've hardly betrayed much stereotypical laddish behaviour in my life:
Ive never been in a fight
I've never cheated on a girlfriend
Ive had sexual feelings for males
Ive slept with a handful of girls only
I like music like Juliana Hatfield, Fiona Apple
Im very non-aggressive and anti-confrontational

I dont think any of this makes me more or less of a man. I dont know, its not something I consider, I know who I am and my gender is just a side point, I view it the same way as I view my nationality..the fact that I'm English doesnt define me in any way, its not something I would ever feel particularly proud or shamed by. How can you be proud or shamed by something you have had no control over?

On my last journal there was a response sayng 'emo emo emo' and it was meant as a joke and I take it that way too. If you said define your personality within 5 words then emotional would be in there. But it still made me consider how weird it is that a buzzword even exists for it. If I had written the same journal word-for-word and been a female then I doubt the emo comment would have been there. Am I the only one who finds that weird?

Its still a man's world, I know that. Men are repressed emotionally, either stifling themselves or by society finding male emotion rather disturbing..but women are repressed in every other way. Its crap, I know but i didnt make them rules and I dont abide by them..never should you, whatever gender you are. I sometimes think i should have been born hundreds of years in the future cos I dream of a more liberal world where things like age, race, sex have become more redundant. It probably wont happen as history teaches us that there is always war, always conflict..Im a dreamer and a cynic and that why I identify with people like Juliana Hatfield, John Lennon, etc.

I dont want any of this to appear angry cos its really not, I was gonna just do a short entry about how i was happier and then i just got stuck into this gender thing

Ok rant over, feel free to post abuse.. tongue ..Im off to play on the playstation for a bit cos if there is one label that I can probably accept is that Im a geek. hehe

***
I love you Iggy
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
reacher:
Oh, cheer up sissy boy! tongue
tangledupinblue:
Sometimes I think I was born too early, sometimes too late -- occasionally, and more frequently right on time. I think we live in interesting times, where the "roads" -- and It's been an awfully late week, so I'm strung out on tab soda and not very coherent -- that a child of each gender in the same family is set out on -- the expectations of behaviors -- are likely a lot more similar a pair of paths than they have been in thousands of years. I wonder if we ever will move entirely beyond any sense of pre-determined gender roles, or if it's hard-wired. I don't know. I'm just glad that people can mix and match a lot more now. I'm glad I can take some tradtional things and yet be more expressive so I don't either blow my head off or self-medicate it into complete dullness. Anyway, sorry for the rambles. Just wanted to say thank you kindly for mentioning me in your excellent most in Iggy's journal. Awfully nice to be brought up in that context. Take it, easy.

Justin

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