When it comes to the style of clothing I wear (or do not wear) and physical appearance, I identify as a man. I wear suits and ties on special occasions or at work, I do not wear dresses or high heels or makeup. I have facial hair and keep the hair on my head short (although I did have hair almost down to the middle of my chest at one point). I also often identify as a stereotypical man in that I suppress emotions, particularly those that have to do with love, and am unwilling to share them with others at times—a trait I am actively trying to minimize. But when considering the types of activities I enjoy, I identify as a more androgynous person. I enjoy writing poetry, crocheting huge blankets in the winter, I am not particularly interested in sports; all things that can be attributed to a stereotypical feminine role. Acute social awareness, to the point of anxiety, is also a prominent and typically feminine trait I possess. As a believer in the idea that these roles we assume as humans are fluid, always changing with time, social context, our desires, and that such labels are more often than not used to negatively discriminate, I am reluctant to declare my allegiance to a named role in any sort of permanent way. My preference toward masculine clothing was shaped largely by my parents. As a child with no money or sense of fashion, what I wore was completely subject to what my parents bought for me. Although children's clothing is often unisex at young ages, there was an instance in which I wanted to wear something that girls wear. I had been Peter Pan for Halloween one year, wearing a costume that included green tights. I loved Peter Pan and the tights so much, I wore them for weeks after the holiday until they wore out. The pirate-vanquishing daredevil that is Peter Pan served as a model for my continual wearing of typically feminine clothing. However, once I wore out the two pairs that were bought for the costume, I asked for more, and my parents refused. This effectively punished my behavior in the most literal sense that I had no more tights to wear, but also in that it was implied that I should not be wearing tights on a regular basis, and thus I stopped trying to wear them. For a lot of contemporary social situations, there are few clothing styles that are generally attributed to just boys or men, so much of what defines masculine dress, as it pertains to identity, is by what they do not wear. The way I maintain my current physical appearance is due to social factors that I experience in public and amongst family members. As a teenager, I found out that my hair is extremely curly (think Shirley Temple) when long, just like my older brother's, whose hair was much longer than mine. As a prominent model in my life, I noticed the attention he received as a consequence of having such a unique hairstyle, largely from females, and so I followed in his hairsteps. What I found out was that the majority of the attention that I was to receive was not at all positive. Strangers often approached me, touching my hair without any sort of permission or explanation. I was called a girl and a faggot. My relatives would ask me “wouldn't you feel much better if you cut your hair short?”, or would outright tell me that I would look better without my long hair. As a consequence to such strong punishers, I shaved it all off. Even today, I am constantly smoothing and fixing my hair, despite the fact that it is only a half-inch long, because I feel that everyone is staring at it and wondering why it looks so bad. One of the largest factors that pushed the types of activities I participate in toward the androgynous was the constant presence of women and girls as models for behavior during my childhood. I still tend to spend more time around women to this day. I have three female cousins—two of whom babysat me often as a child, and another who is my age and has spent a lot of time with me. One typically feminine activity that I learned to enjoy from them was playing with Barbies. The girls would come over with their dolls and bags of little clothes and spend hours pretending to be all sorts of different people. Their obvious enjoyment, paired with my desire to be socially included, reinforced my behavior of playing with Barbies. A Ken doll was even given to me as a gift at one point, but that drew ridicule from my brothers who had no interest in dolls—a punisher that effectively ended my friendship with Ken. I also learned how to knit and crochet from a girlfriend. The gratefulness and social attention of the people to whom I gave the blankets I made greatly reinforced that behavior. I've also received surprisingly little harassment from my typical guy friends—a factor that probably reinforced it as well, if only subtly. The women throughout my life have played a large role in the development of who I am and the relative disregard I hold for gender stereotypes in terms of what I am allowed to do and what I am not. This is not to say there was or is a lack of masculine models in my life, as I have two brothers and a father and many masculine friends, but I found (and still find) my identity to be routinely challenged by men, whereas women tend to be more than happy to allow me to do whatever I please without ridicule. Thus I tend to model myself after people who do not shame me for wanting to do things that anyone has the right to do. Strangely, when I imagine myself declaring “I am not a man”, it does not sound quite right. If someone told me that I am not a man, I might be offended. But when I examine the set of traits that are associated with men in my culture, I have little interest in claiming the title. This apparent contradiction could simply be a fear of being misunderstood, a fear of lacking the positive traits that are associated with a particular gender. If I am not a man, then I am not brave or strong. If I am not a woman, then I am not nurturing. Of course these feelings are based on the assumptions about gender that I believe to be false, but it is a testament to the strength and the depth to which these ideas are rooted, despite our best efforts to reverse them. I believe there are certain traits that everyone should aspire to cultivate within themselves, regardless of their sex, identity, or orientation, and I am willing to discard anything that might interfere with attaining this goal, even if I am no longer considered a man.