Monday, March 14, 2011

My Poll

I put a poll up on what makes a man a man.  So far, I have one answer of cock and balls.  Yes, that is the physical sex part.  That is the reason, that when I was born, and the doctor saw what genitalia I had that society then put the expectations on me to act like a boy.  That was why when I wanted a doll or dollhouse I was told that boys don't play with those.  That was I couldn't have one of those ovens that you could bake a real cake.  I was forced to play with cars, planes, toy guns and balls, because the doctor made a mistake and called my male because of what was between my legs and not what was in my head.  Your brain gets wired by hormones into either a male brain or a female brain.  Female hormones were more dominant in utero for the first 8 to 10 weeks of my gestation.  The evidence of this is that my ring and index fingers are the same length.  If the male hormones were more dominant my index finger would be shorter than my ring finger.  Somehow during the period when male hormones wash over the brain and masculinize it that did not occur and my brain developed along the default which in humans is female.  Well whatever reason my brain developed along female patterns, so I see myself as a female and not male irregardless of my genitalia.  So clearly a cock and balls don't make a man, but a male wired brain does.

UPDATE:  Well so far there are three votes for cock and balls.  The majority says that this is what makes a man?  Please comment if you agree or disagree with this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this question --- which you've been exploring in past posts, as well --- is very complex because we're dealing with more than one axis. Since you are exploring the transgender divide, your focus is necessarily on the frontier between male and female.

However, the Dominant/submissive axis, although traditionally aligned with Male/female doesn't actually match up with it (nor should it!) Gender roles and physical gender attributes are themes I explore in my picture stories. For example, I portray "masculinized" females in my Ampligyn stories and "feminized" males in my Andredux stories. Also, in my "role reversal" stories that take place without physical changes, I explore traditional gender roles.

I do this first and foremost because these stories are erotic. But my additional agenda is not to feminize all males or to masculinized all females. Rather, it's to have us look at gender roles and attributes as the arbitrary traditions they are. We are free to dispense with them as we see fit.

This background shows why it's hard for your poll to provide a simple, easy answer. To answer the question, "what makes a man?" we have to decide what kind of "man" are we talking about? Regarding the answers "cock and balls" and "greater strength," the ponyboys in my latest story are hung like horses and the "trainers" (with their huge cocks that they use to train role-reversed feminized boys) are similarly endowed and muscular. But both are in subordinate positions that run counter to the definition of "man" that I think you're using.

Intelligence likewise isn't a determiner because many of the totally subordinated boys and girls in my stories are incredibly intelligent. That obviously can't be the quality that divides them from the "man."

That leaves your final option as the only choice, but until you define out more what the "way" might be, this option really remains "other."

Lesley Charles said...

Thank you for your insight. I did not realize those ramifications. You are quite right about Dominance and Submission, yes you can have very submissive males and dominant women, and dominant men and submissive women. I think we as humans do try to make things either black and white and ignore all the shades of gray. Even in the terms of male and female biological sex, there are a lot of kids born intersexed, hard to tell whether male or female. My feeling in this case is wait until the child expresses what gender they are. Actually, with the poll, I just wanted to experiment with it and see what happens. I am not disappointed with it. Again thank you for your comments.