Reddit reviews Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport

Ok, Sociology, Feminism and constructed nature of gender, you finally come in handy. Apologies in advance for a massive post.

First Point:

Gender ≠ sex ≠ sexuality

First, the simplest one, sex. Sex is what parts you have. people are born either male or female. It is extremely rare for people to be in between unless they are undergoing gender re-alignment.

Sexuality, this one's a bit harder, but you're still probably familiar with it. This is who you are attracted to. There is no correlation between what sex you are, and who you are attracted to. you can be gay, straight or somewhere in between. to some extent The Jury is still out on whether sexuality is innate, but really it shouldn't matter.

Last, and most difficult is gender. the first thing to get your head around is that gender is constructed by society. Society determines what it means to be masculine or feminine, and it can change over time. (heroes in the Illiad cry a lot, for instance, and in fact they can't be a hero without crying). We act out masculine and feminine traits that we see in the world to construct an identity. very few people, if any, perform just masculine traits or just feminine traits. The shades of grey between hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity are one of the things that give us personality.

It is very rare for anyone to perfectly live up to the "model of a straight man" because it's just that, an ideal. Those that do tend to only exist in media such as movies and video games, who don't face the compromises associated with the real world. Characters who meet the ideal are also very boring, like Sir Galahad in the Arthur cycles, Conan the Barbarian or Marcus Fenix, because there's no complexity to them.

The problem comes because masculine qualities tend to be privileged or valued over feminine traits. This pressures men to think that by adopting feminine traits they are 'diminishing themselves'. consider traditional masculine traits such as dominance, strength, honour, physical toughness. These can be contrasted with traditional feminine traits such as submissiveness, innocence, prettiness, delicateness or squeamishness. Men are made to feel that by being feminine they are somehow 'less of a man', or that women are 'less than men'. Yay, Feminism, Patriarchy. I'm sure you can think of examples of women who embody the masculine traits (female soldiers, athletes etc.) and men who embody the feminine traits (artists, actors 'sensitive types' etc).

For some cool reading on alternative masculinities I've just read a really interesting book Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport: Male Identity and Rock Climbing which looks at how extreme sports reject a lot of the hyper-masculinity of contact team sports.

You might also like to look into some feminist theory focused on Masculinity (yes that's a thing), and deffinitely read this article, especially this section.

Tl:DR It takes all kinds to make the world. Just don't make the mistake that your gender, sexuality and sex have to be linked, or that they are all that is important about you.