In today’s complex social culture, this simple question is actually full of complexity. If you haven’t REALLY looked at the issue your dating adventures will surely be a frustrating maze of hits and misses, mostly…misses…
There are more “masculine” women and “feminine” men in today’s world than ever before in the history of humankind, as a direct result of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and now what we have is well…a bit of a mess…and also some really wonderful opportunities for modern day single men and modern day single women to decide who they really want to be and the role they really want to play in their future romance.
You’re feminine if you are graceful, refined, compassionate, kind, sensitive, tender, soft and patient. Stylish and fashionable, vulnerable, submissive, flexible, adaptable, supportive, receptive, attentive, respectful, tactful, emotional, dependent, passive, quiet, accepting, sensual, vibrant, gentle, helpful and caring. If your focus is on love and sharing, if you’re a good listener, and you have soft, flowing energy – you’re feminine.
You’re masculine if you’re strong, aggressive, active, tough-skinned, independent, logical, competitive, tough, rebellious, controlling and protective. A masculine person is someone who’s single-minded, focused and who likes to take-charge and direct. Masculine people are disciplined, independent, stable, and practical, passionate but non-emotional.
The trouble starts when we have a masculine woman who thinks the right fit for her is a masculine man. When in reality that masculine man is naturally best suited to be with a feminine woman. The secret for today’s strong, capable, accomplished woman is for her to learn to shift back and forth between both modalities, so she can be effective in the workplace and ALSO have a chance at attracting a man who has the masculine qualities she respects and admires.
Opposites attract. A strong, powerful, successful woman is actually well suited for a man who has softer, more feminine energy. Thinking outside the gender-role box might just deliver Prince Charming…
Susan owns a successful law practice and her husband, Phil is a creative type – he’s a caterer and he loves cooking for the family and taking care of the household chores. George is a writer and yoga teacher and his wife, Sharon is a physician.
The message? Take a look to see if you demonstrate more feminine or masculine qualities and then be open to being with and partnering with someone who demonstrates the opposite. See what happens and report back. I love to hear your stories…
Julie Ferman
Founder, Cupid’s Coach
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I think I’m definitely an exception to a lot of rules. I’m generally masculine personality-wise (except for the fact that I’m very creative and eccentric but in an oddly masculine way, one type of my “art” consists of blowing things up in a microwave that could kill me if I’m not careful) and I’m built like a grizzly bear but I’m attracted to masculine women. Not just masculine, but enough so that if people saw us together, some might think we were a gay couple. I think I’m weird in that I like a girl that’s both a best friend and a lover. I like when a girl has a guyish personality and shares a lot of the same interests and hobbies that I do. As an example of a girl I think is hot, look up Erika Linder. I noticed I’m most attracted to females who identify as genderqueer. Unfortunately, of the ones interested in cisgender men, they prefer feminine men with docile personalities and delicate features. I’m more independent (to a fault), aggressive, protective, logical, I roll my eyes and laugh at overly sentimental glurge, and I look like I should be wearing chainmail and carrying a battleaxe. I would say in looks I’m 90% masculine and in personality about 75% (I don’t believe anyone is 100% either or). My ideal partner in looks is about 40-60% masculine (using the full scale, not just the accepted societal range of female appearance) and about 50-60% in personality. I know it makes me a weirdo to prefer that kind of dynamic, but such is life.
The issue with this article: A false premise. “Do You Want to be The Girl or The Guy In Your Future Relationship?”
This is heteronormativity 101. There is no need to have a masculine and feminine aspect to a successful romantic relationship. Relationships between feminine personalities and masculine personalities can be just as successful. Many relationships find balance in ways other than an inherent gender role. What you are perpetuating is a societally held myth that can actually be very damaging to the success of a relationship.
Unless the person themselves is attracted to the opposite, you do not need to place yourself in a box you don’t identify with. The commenter above is a perfect example of this.
Love advice is fine, but one needs to be careful not to provide guidance that can be damaging to a person’s identity.
I’m a 21 year old male, I have always been told I’m very feminine. I’m quiet at first but then become very outgoing and “flamboyant” as people put it. I would say I’m a very sensitive man. I have been asked if I’m gay since I was a freshman in high school. I have never had interests people would typically consider masculine. I’m a small town guy where the “masculine” men here love cars, nascar, sports, fishing, and so on. I love basketball, but my other interests include film, classical music, theatre, and things of that nature. I come from a “country” type of family too, so I’m sort of an odd ball, but I’m accepted. I’d say I’m attracted to feminine women but not too feminine, at least not what the term is defined as out here. Out here the really feminine women are the really preppy, ditzy, very unintelligent, cheerleader type of girls, I don’t like that. I love when a woman is intelligent and we can share the same interests, I don’t find many people with the same interests as me out here as you can imagine. Though I’m not attracted to masculine women at all.
Most people dont fit into binary boxes like this, masculinity and femininity are social constructs and its a myth there are more masculine women and feminine men in the world now, only the white middle classes had these rigid gender roles, working class women in england worked down the mines long before feminism and men in the middle ages who were upper class wore fancy clothes.
Masculinity and femininity is a poor and narrow reflection of the sexes which is based on ideas about males and females based on their reproductive ability, it was arrived at because the female body can produce a baby and the male body is on average stronger so it was decided it was more suitable to take instrumental roles. The personality traits coded as masculine and feminine exist in a range of combinations and are not opposite to each other, and are not present naturally in a grouped together way based on sex, what happens is people learn to over play or under play certain traits based on whats expected of them for either their gender identity or their sex depending on how they experience gender. People also modify their sex body to some degree to reflect the expected polarity, women play down their physical strength and men play theirs up creating more of a difference then what is natural. A greater gap between whats considered appropriate for a man or woman then whats occurs naturally results in those who are less polarized appearing androgynous or being seen as masculine women and feminine men, when really some people are just being more their honest selves.
People who transition from ftm tend to find that they go from been seen as masculine as a woman to feminine as a man, by personality alone due to there being a massive gap between whats considered a male form of expression and a female one by society. Some refer to this as a gender binary, but really its a gender role binary and it results from society being fixated on having two sexes which fit into the assigned sex roles of masculine and feminine.
Masculine and feminine are really instrumentality and expressiveness and when put like that its easy to separate them from sex, and it makes it easy for someone with a female gender identity to be able to except her instrumental traits without it causing her to measure her self and wonder how authentic she is as a woman. Some men also dont mind being called feminine but many do and it leads to them playing down their expressive personality traits by cutting themselves off from their emotions because being referred to as feminine impacts their core gender identity in a negative way. Sex stereotypes based around masculinity and femininity can lead to some who have lots of traits out of line with whats expected for their sex or even their own core gender identity getting gender identity related issues, and a constant need to prove themselves.
Sex role orientation is based on the idea that some people naturally are orientated towards masculine or feminine roles independent of sex, and sometimes in a variable way, its not the same thing as gender identity and it results from the coding of instrumental traits as masculine and expressive traits as feminine. The instrumental is focused on the task, of getting things done and includes leadership and proactivity. The expressive is focused around service, nurturing, people skills and creativity. Its the interactional dimension of life, its focused on subjective reality through the emotional lens. People who have lots of these traits will fit better into the roles traditionally done by women and if they have too many of these traits they will not understand people who have a lot of instrumental traits, they will view them as selfish, cold, distant and domineering. People with lots of the instrumental traits to an extreme degree will be viewed by the social lens as very masculine, and they may internalize that view of themselves, they will feel irritated and unfulfilled when pushed into the roles traditionally assigned to women, they will find all that interaction and complication, the finer detail of life to be clutter that gets in the way of them being effective and best left to someone else. Most people naturally have a mix of these traits so can do bits of both roles, sex role conditioning creates more people with polarized traits leaving many men having their expressive traits squashed down and many women forced to play down their instrumental ones. The expressive traits can be damaged more easy than the instrumental ones due to them being centred around emotion, the instrumental ones depend on access to the tools and tasks associated with them, we can all strengthen out instrumental traits at any time.
Society gets angry when it find a physically strong man with lots of expressive personality traits, because he is expected to be mentally willing to perform the roles which in society’s view put his body to good use, if he wants to be around people and if he is too emotion orientated he is gonna be less inclined to do things which require some degree of emotional detachment, going to war is one example.
Society does the same with women, it knows an action orientated woman is not gonna want to spend all her time doing less action packed tasks centred around the female sex role so it tries to socialize as much of these traits out of girls who show them as possible, almost as if society has already decided for her based on her sex what she will do with her life, its not just decided she will reproduce but its also decided she will be the primary carer.
Any changes today in how the sexes act is down to feminism being able to stop some of the more extreme forms of social conditioning, but it has yet to be replaced by a new system which would aim to teach everyone a balance between instrumental and expressive skill sets, this would in effect prepare everyone for a range of roles allowing one choice of which direction they go in and develop further, and without labeling these choices around sex or gender identity.
The reason why there is this idea that masculinity does not go with masculinity is because masculinity is the social definition of man, and men are trained to be competitive and diverse with each other and develop around that, also homophobic ideas that two real men can’t be together because real men cannot be gay and masculine is the code for real man. There is not the same aversion to two feminine types being together because feminine is code for real woman and there is some leverage there because historically women were not seen as able to do much together anyways so they were seen as friends who kiss, also women are not seen as developing in competition with each other, they are viewed cooperative and those who are not are viewed as masculine because competition is an instrumental trait.
Its quite possible to have two people who are high in instrumental traits, fit social definitions of masculine as a result but dont use it against each other so fit together, some men are attracted just to females and not so bothered about them fitting femininity definitions. It all depends on how well someone sees past the constructs and stereotypes.
Some people have fixed views of what men and women should be doing and these people are adverse to those who are clearly rejecting the roles, appearance does to some degree reflect ones relationship to sex roles because certain modes of dressing reflect an instrumentally based person, some clothes are more built for doing and an instrumentally based person will be less likely to want to wear things that comprises effectiveness or takes up too much time to put together. They will favour smartness in combination with function or function in combination with casual style as opposed to smart in combination with decorative/beauty and casual in combination with decorative. There are other options though, which appear more a combination, functional and decorative and smart, functional and decorative altogether which is harder to achieve but possible and when its done it appears to blend masculine and feminine.
Most instrumental ways of dressing are coded as masculine, anything functional and minimally decorated will be viewed masculine and anything impractical and highly decorated will be viewed as feminine with few exceptions. This reflects the sex roles and its why womens shoes are less good for walking in while mens shoes are less styled, its why womens clothes have fewer pockets and are made in different fabrics and its why they make womens sportswear in pastel colours, the functionality offset by ornament to make them appear less masculine. Often any functionally clothing made for women will have decoration to offset it and less functional clothing may be just plain because its already feminine by lacking instrumentality. With mens clothes functionality is rarely lost no matter how decorative or plain it is, when mens clothes get less functional and more decorative they start to take on an appearance people label as feminine, adding extra pockets take away from femininity and add to perceived masculinity as they add function. Clothes hanging off at one shoulder, hairstyles that are loose and look like they could not take much wind, all add to femininity because they imply less instrumentality and that they have been creatively thought about i.e expressive. When men get into fashions they get seen as feminine as they have used creative expressive traits over dressing for instrumentality. Its easy to see how this enforced way of dressing based on sex is oppressive, and why the ingrained social structure is damaging.
Society appears to have got to the point of allowing women to be instrumental and men to be expressive, but it still has not got over calling it masculine and feminine. Thats the next step and the one which will help people merge together that perception of a divided self based on it. Its easy to see how one can be both instrumental and expressive and fully a man or woman (or whatever else) its not so easy to see oneself as both masculine and feminine and fully a man or a woman without measuring oneself along a gradient or comparing oneself to others. This leads to people policing others. For those with gender identity issues it becomes hard to tell the difference between clashes with sex roles and actual gender identity issues, the idea of am i just a masculine woman or a feminine man or am i trans would not exist if it was a case of am i an instrumental or expressive person as that dimension of life would be totally unrelated to sex or gender.
I’m a masculine woman in a few ways. Physically: I hate make-up, dresses, skirts, push up bras and heels. I love suits, and lose fitting (often black) clothes. I like to be thin and cross-dress. I’m working on losing 30 lbs so I can be a healthy weight of 130 lbs. Mentally: I tend to avoid emotional outbursts and have difficulty relating to other women. I like to sing and enjoy mimicking the voices of male singers. I’m attracted to men who are feminine and I find gay men fascinating.
Here’s some feedback; masculine women (the one I’m with anyway) don’t actually want their opposite. I’ve been more in my feminine (composing music, taking time to wander the woods outside our house, writing creatively, running errands). Since I lost my place on top of the mountain (I ran a company and failed) she tries to order me around, and essentially doesn’t respect me. She doesn’t want to have sex, and generally (despite a kickin’ six pack and incredibly healthy, disciplined body) isn’t attracted to me. She biologically wants a masculine man, but she’s so goddamn masculine that when I make a masculine move-a decision for instance-she can’t help but question it and make a ‘better’ decision. Infuriating. So my experience is that even masculine women want a more masculine guy, its just that the masculine guy doesn’t want to compete with his counterpart-he wants to lead her. In my case, she’s not lead-able-or maybe just not by me-unfortunately.
I don’t believe in dividing individuals into masculine and feminine traits and find it quite annoying when logic and courage are deemed masculine. Are women expected to be ditzy and scatter brained ? I find this to be very sexist.
I’m a woman who never was overly concerned about how I appear to a man.
If he doesn’t like me for me, then he can leave , because I refuse to play the submissive game and bury my strong personalty to have a man.
Many men love strong women who don’t play helpless to win him over.
Jared, leave
Wow my time machine works! It’s the 50’s again!
This article is absolutely insane.
I’m going to give it a try, ahem:
Nancy is a scientist so doesn’t like hugs, but her husband Paul listens to Phil Collins and so loves brunching & cleaning in marigolds, Simon likes cars and so has never cried and his wife Mel has a collection of cardigans and is so delicate & effeminate that her farts are just pink confetti. Their friends Peter and Regina are both in advertising but because they are both so sensitive and gentle (and so good at listening) they just sit there listening and stroking each other until their ears start to bleed they are so goddamn emotionally in line with one another that they have to get divorced because of all the ear bleeding. Nancy, Paul, Simon, and Mel are not surprised at this outcome. Mel and Paul cry together, Nancy and Simon fist bump. The end.