Ask Beastly: Too Femme to Be Masc, Too Masc to Be Femme

What if you’re not “enough” for either box—and want to be both?

Hi Beastly,

My pronouns are…probably He/They, but that’s for me and a therapist to unpack…with some internalized bullshit to deal with! I wish I were more masculine. I feel like my life would have been a lot easier if I had been…I kind of hate that it never came naturally to me. Probably never will. I feel like I’m not allowed certain interests or things in general, because I’m not “masculine” enough for them. Honestly, the same thing when it comes to “feminine” things, too. I feel like I’m not allowed to want them because I won’t fit in…should I just give up on them, or try to force it? I’m too fem to be masc and too masc to be fem…but like… I kind of want to be both. I guess my gender ideal is…a really masc body with some fem touches in style/clothes. I want to wear more fun things and get my nails done and dye my hair and have more piercings and be cute…but also go to the gym and get beefy as fuck and try to fill in this damn beard!

Given the fact that gay men can be so fixated on masculinity, I feel like a somewhat fem (and fat) guy like me will never be found attractive. It’s to the point where I can’t imagine myself having sex. I haven’t done anything, and I already feel like an impostor just for wanting to do certain things. I feel like I’m automatically not masculine/tall/fat (in the “right” way)/hung/hairy enough, etc., to warrant a place in spaces like the leather community or the bear community…or to do things like top or dom or be a slut in the way I’d like to be. What do I do?

My friend,

Everyone fails at fitting in. Your question can be distilled down to the ancient human predicaments: What kind of person am I? Where do I belong?

Humans are tribal. We rank, categorise, and classify each other. This impulse was useful in an ancient world when instant categorisation (“friend” or “foe”, “family” or “enemy”) helped us survive, as encountering another human in the wild was a life-or-death situation, but it has long outlived its usefulness. These days, this ancient impulse mainly reveals itself in racism, nationalism, and other ugly isms that make our species so cruel and destructive. One of those, on the slightly-less-ugly end, is the gay male impulse to define each other by tags like “bear” and “fem” and “jock.”

We no longer live in nomadic tribes (well, mostly). Yet our native desire to categorise each other remains and causes bloodshed, pain, and social isolation worldwide.

Humans do not fit categories. None of us does. I am a gay man born into a straight world—born, like you, misaligned with the life intended for me. Over time, that misalignment proved to be a great blessing: I failed at living that life, and in doing so, I learned to live the one I have. You’ve already overcome one inability to fit in and have grown from it. Now you just have to do it again. You jumped from one messy pit of strictures and expectations (straight) into another (gay). Now, to be happy, you must fail at both and reject both. Neither set of expectations reflects how we really live.

I don’t fit any gay tag. “Bear”, “muscle”, “masc”, and “fem” are silly labels with no bearing on my life. The most self-aware people I know slip into all these states at different times, in different moods—we all have masculine and feminine sides, and most of us have bodies that do not meet social ideals. People who live outside these margins are cool. There is just no other way to say it: they’re cool, self-possessed (in a good way), self-owning. I want to be like them.

If you judge yourself by image standards and behaviours you think are mandated by gay culture and the men in it you find hot, you will always come out a failure. No one meets those standards. On the other side of that failure, some people find an endless pit of unhappiness—they never move past it. But if you can move past it and see those standards as bullshit, you’ll be free. Don’t judge me for being a nerd here, but, to quote Thor’s mother, Frigga, in Avengers: Endgame, “Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be. The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.”

That line makes me cry. Because it’s fucking true, and it’s a beautiful line, a little nugget of wisdom, tucked into one of the best, splashiest superhero movies ever made. I love it because I am a nerd. I love superheroes. And I’ve failed all my life at being who I’m supposed to be, so maybe I’m ready to be a hero, too.

Be you. That is, in the end, all you can be. You can love yourself or hate yourself, and some people choose the latter. But please don’t. Life is better with self-compassion. Find people who like you as you are, because the dangling carrot of “hot homo” is eternally, miserably unreachable. Gay men die all the time from trying and failing to reach it. We are in a mental health crisis. So many men out there feel like they will never belong in their community because they’re not shredded and #masc.

You will find that life gets lighter after you stop chasing fictions and start enjoying yourself. People will be drawn to that energy. Self-love has the remarkable ability to radiate outward: others can sense it. It will give others around you permission to love themselves, too. You will attract the right community and the right energy. It all is about #vibes, as the kombucha girls say, but that vibe—what they’re really talking about—is something real and profound: a positive self-image, an active practice of self-love and self-compassion. These things exist in all of us, but sometimes we need help discovering them, and for that, meditation is profoundly effective.

I hope this helps and doesn’t sound too zen. However, the fact is that it is Zen. I answer questions based on my knowledge and experience, and my life has been significantly improved by mindfulness and meditation. This practice helps me with the same thoughts and feelings you are dealing with, feelings we all deal with—insecurity with my body, image, and sexual capital.

So, at the risk of sounding a little like a Kombucha girl or Coachella bimbo, I seriously recommend meditation. It helps with this.

Download a meditation app. Sit with your head a bit every day. Observe the mind. It likes to get preoccupied with insecurities; if left alone, it will magnify them until we see nothing else. That’s just the mind doing what it does, like a barking dog. Meditation helps us live with the dog. It will always bark—it is wounded by years of trauma, so it has to bark. Like any wounded animal, the mind needs space, care, and daily attention. That’s meditation.

Love, Beastly