What is a man?

And why does it matter?

What is a man?

The only answer I really care about is “whatever you want it to be”. Like all men, I’ve spent my life in a context of weirdly reductive, gender essentialist expectations — a man is physically strong, competitive, aggressive, stoic — that I couldn’t live up to because, generally speaking, that’s not what I am. Am I less of a man because I’m not aggressive, and because I prefer collaboration to competition? I don’t think so, but there are certainly plenty of people who do.

The reason this matters for me now is not my own experience. I’ve found my way to a kind of self-acceptance, although my teenage years and most of my twenties were pretty rough: a mix of hating my body and receiving hate for not being what people expected me to be. I definitely have some pretty strong character flaws (non-confrontation and people-pleasing among them), which I’m trying to work on. But I feel some degree of pride about who I am, what I’ve managed to do, and the effect I have on the communities I’m a part of. Honestly? I’m glad I don’t adhere to the gender stereotype, even if it’s also true that I couldn’t if I wanted to.

But now I’m going to have a son (or at least, a baby who will be assigned male at birth), who will be subject to all of the same pressures and expectations, even in his first few years…