I'll say this, I'm a hyper sensitive, hyper empathetic, total crybaby. And I'm happy I'm this way and I love this person. I spent the first 30+ years of my life trying to fit in with normy dudes who couldn't give a fuck about me. No offense to normy dudes, go watch sports and enjoy if that's your thing.

I'll lay my cards on the table and say what I'm thinking: there's no special presentation for being a man. It's totally cool for you to wonder, though. I'm not blaming you. Can I ask, and get you to explore, why you're struggling with this now? Is something happening? What are you feeling now?

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I'm not knowledgeable enough to answer your question, but I just wanted to share my experience with coming to terms with masculinity.

I'm a cis male who has struggled with being "manly". I'm super sensitive, empathetic, and have never been someone who needed to compete or exert dominance. I also like feeling cute, hugging my friends, smelling nice, and expressing my emotions.

Even though I'm straight, I've had at least a dozen people ask me if I'm gay over the course of my life. At first this really upset and confused me, and I tried changing behaviors that would give people that idea. I've had women and men both call me girly, or a "b*tch", or soft. It really sucked the few times I'd meet a girl who's interested in me, only to have her dip out after a couple hangouts because I wasn't "manly" enough.

After realizing that gender is a spectrum and a social construct, it helped me break free from all of that pain. When people label me as soft, gay, girly, overly-sensitive, etc - that's more of a reflection on them than it is me. After letting go of my preconceived notions of manliness, I have gained so much more comfort and confidence in myself. People who can't accept that I'm not a dude bro don't need to take up any space in my life, because there are plenty of people who accept me for who I am, and I love those people.

Cis dude here - I don't get it either. I've never read a definition of maleness or masculinity that wasn't total bullshit and that I don't reject outright. Not only do I think there is no such thing as "male/female qualities", I think efforts to define them are retrograde.

However, whether the feeling of being male is definable or not, it sounds like the ineffable feeling of a particular gender is strong enough in some people to cause immense distress. While I've accepted that I'll probably never understand what that feels like I fully support anyone who is working to resolve that distress.

These are all very good questions. I've thought about them some amount and discussed them with a few other people (both trans and cis) and I don't have satisfactory answers to any of them.

What I will do though is recommend a book: Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. Yes, it's written from the transfemme perspective and Julia makes no attempt to pretend to be anything other than a strongly binary trans woman, so you might worry (as I did before reading it) that it won't be relevant to you, or worse, that it will somehow say that your gender feelings are less valid than those of a strongly binary trans person. None of that is true. I love her analysis of transness, I feel very included (as a super masculine agender person), and really I just want more people to read this book because there are concepts and arguments in it that I'd never heard before and I don't understand why. It's a widely read and recommended book, so why the fuck have I never seen an internet discussion of the idea of subconscious sex? Or oppositional sexism and traditional sexism? Or the point that when we say a trans person "passes", it sounds like something the trans person does, not something society does to them, which is way more accurate? Or that our culture's hatred of femininity (especially in people assigned male at birth) is just straight up misogyny?

All in all, Serano's unwavering defense of femininity actually helped me embrace and understand my masculinity better. I no longer feel like I'm, well, "choosing the easy way". Masculinity isn't inherently better or easier or less contrived than femininity. It only looks that way because our culture is so deeply misogynistic, which is something we could conceivably change. Now you might (and actually I think you do) have slightly different issues than I do with regards to masculinity, but I would guess you'd still find something relevant to you in Whipping Girl.

Whatever I am or do is masculine, because I am a man. End of story.

If i want to walk around in heels and pink thigh socks, that is still manly as hell

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Edit: Look further down as I expand upon it and explain it better further down.

People are people. Gender is a mildly useful mental short hand for whats expected of people but in no way something you need to conform too. If you feel like you want to change your pronouns so people have different base assumptions about you that's cool. I identify as male because that's closest societal box I fit in but I give zero fucks about what people expect of me. You shouldn't feel the need to change your self just because you don't fit neatly into the box society has proscribed to you. In fact moving away from societal expectations is a good thing in a lot of ways, that's part of how you over come toxic masculinity.

I’ll beat the same drum that i always beat. Read the will to change by bell hooks.

Deprogramming toxic patriarchal masculinity is a life long project.

So, all of this is coming from another confused person, so idk if it helps at all, but its just my own thoughts after doing my own soul-searching (and therapy).

There's quite a few aspects to gender. There's the cultural aspect; obviously different depending on where you live. Part of that is the societal expectations, which for your personal introspection, aren't really relevant, but may (unfortunately) be a consideration for maintaining a livelihood.

And then adjacent to that is the feeling of being a man. You ask for definitions, but there isn't one. Genders aren't real, in the sense that its a discrete thing with a firm definition. Its more Platonic, a vague concept that doesn't really exist, but things in our world may lean toward or away from . However, I'd say unlike Plato, that there isn't really even one Platonic Male Ideal, but rather everyone has their own Ideal of Manhood and Womanhood, all subtly different from each others and also sometimes changing depending on influences.

If you're a person who is unaware of this, or do think about it, your idea of manhood is going to mostly be shaped just by your influences; it'll be probably cobbled together from your parents, your friends, your culture, and the media you consume.

However, if you are aware of it, it can be whatever you want, provided its something you can 'convince' yourself 'feels right'. If your ideal of manhood you shape yourself after is too different from those around you, you may be judged for it, and have people disagree, but like, fuck em.

For me personally, what feels right to me is to dig through both my cobbled mess of culture Manhood and Womanhood, pick out which aspects feel right to me, and incorporate those into my self, and say fuck it to picking a gender, even though for how I present and hold myself, society will generally treat me as male. Which for me is fine, its not something I feel strongly about either way.

So, for example, you can pick your Manliness to be: Physicallity, Stoicism, and Self-Reliance, and strive for that, and be a self actualized man. Or you could choose: Honor, Leadership, and Fatherhood. Or say: Intuitive, Caring, and quietly observant. And while I say choose, you probably can't convince yourself of something that feels wrong or unmanly to you, although it can be hard to tease out what feels wrong because it doesn't fit you, vs. what feels wrong because of internalized Toxic Masculinity.

And lastly of course is fitting these Platonic Ideals into your Self; your personality, self-perception, and presentation, as well as your daily life, in ways that are practical and healthy. There's not clear answers, beyond the obvious like "don't be an asshole", but it does require introspection to pick apart instincts and impressions vs reality.

I know personally, I struggle a lot with feeling 'emotionless', and thinking that was because I didn't feel the emotions, but it turned out when I say "I don't get angry", what it really was was me feeling and expressing anger differently from the people I saw around me. Which gave me a bad case of "Rationalist", where I convinced myself my decisions were made unemotionally, and therefore more objectively. I don't know if I buried my emotions because of learned toxic masculinity, or if its just how I am, or if I'm somewhat Schizoid (fwiw I am diagnosed on the Schizophrenia spectrum), but either way, my emotions are still there, just expressed less that it seems like most people, and I need to work harder to figure out my emotions on A Thing sometimes.

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As a cishet man I think that masculinity is kind of a goofy idea anyway, and I don't get wrapped around the axel trying to perform it. Although I would say that in my romantic relationships I play a more masculine role at least as I define it (I kind of like to dote on my partner, perform the "manly" tasks like fixing things, yard work, etc) but that's just what I feel comfortable doing. I think that anything another insecure "man" would try to make you feel guilty for doing/not doing isn't worth a second of thought anyway. Most of toxic masculinity is what we are conditioned to believe is necessary for us to do in order to thrive "as a man" by society, which is quite goofy and obviously a cargo-cult mentality.

I was taught a lot of bullshit about what it means to be a man, but I remember my father saying that it meant to "be a gentleman, make people feel comfortable and at ease when they're around you, be self-sacrificing" etc and I think I internalized that a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean that those things are purely masculine traits at all, but that's how I express my masculinity, if that makes sense... Idk.

TL;DR Just do what makes you comfortable, call it whatever you want it to be, make your own categories or ignore them entirely.

Thoughtful post with amazing comments.

49-year-old Gen X shitlib here. Being a normy cis-male to me is like the Bill & Ted ethos: be excellent to each other and party on dudes.

Carry on with your real conversation, I was just chiming in mostly non-seriously.