How to Man Up

Every time I stand in front of a class full of high schoolers, I ask them to think of a time when they have been policed around their gender.

Each time, I find myself hoping that no one in the classroom will raise their hand. That maybe this will be the group where none of them have been told to “man up” or to “act like a lady.” Yet every time, their hands shoot up, almost automatically.

One girl shares that she’s never been allowed to cut her hair short, even though she’s 17 and it gets in the way when she competes.

A boy recounts the time his coach told him to “stop acting like a sissy” when he cried on the football field after— get this— he *broke his leg.*

I mean, if you were to make a list of the top 100 acceptable reasons to cry, breaking your freaking leg has to be like, number three. I never use the phrase “toxic masculinity” in my workshops, but if I did... that would be the textbook definition right there.

Then a young man tells us that this very morning his mom saw him putting a new notebook into his bag. It was cardboard grey with green leaves on it. “Are you sure you want to take that to school?” she asked. “It seems a tad... feminine.” He was perplexed. “It’s not even flowers! It’s leaves! How is that feminine?” Maybe she was just looking out for him so he didn’t get bullied.

But I could feel viscerally in the room how many stories were held behind that one.

Remember this: when we police the gender of others, we clip their wings. We inhibit their ability to fly. We take something precious from them, every time. Something that they may never get back.

There’s a reason that almost all of the transphobia I’ve ever faced is from men. It’s because they hold the most unresolved trauma around gender. They’ve been told over and over again that there is one way to do this man thing, that they have to be so careful all the time and never veer outside of the lines of masculinity. So when they see someone like me, they are reminded of what they’ve been forced to give up... and that hurts. But they are taught not to feel pain, so all we see is anger.

All we ever see is anger.