An “effeminate” man is worried be might be “too effeminate,” so he’s seeking a second opinion from his local advice columnist.
“I’m an extremely effeminate (not to the point of transgenderism) homosexual man,” the letter begins, “and I was wondering: What are your thoughts on males who behave like females (wearing makeup, into fashion, etc.)?”
The man continues by saying that sometimes “I feel that God does not like the way I am.”
He wonders: “So would you say I should change, even though this comes naturally for me?”
In his response, advice guru N. John Shore, Jr tells the man to “screw changing [himself] to please others.”
“The world needs men who predominantly exhibit stereotypically feminine behavior, and women who predominantly exhibit stereotypical male behavior,” he writes. “People like you … are showing all of us how we, too, might live into the joyfully expansive totality of who we really are.”
He continues: “People such as yourself are the heroes of our society. You’re leading us to a fuller, richer understanding of what it means to be human.”
But it doesn’t stop there.
Shore applauds the man for being “part of the movement of people who are evolving us past those kinds of ruinous, cruel, long-held stereotypes.”
“Simply by virtue of having the courage to be yourself, you are teaching us that no behavior, thought process, or natural inclination is exclusively ‘male’ or ‘female’–that everything always contains elements of both,” he writes.
He concludes by saying, “And you don’t have to worry about whether or not God is OK with your being and living exactly as you were created. … If you painted a beautiful picture in the most vibrantly wonderful colors, would you then want that picture rendered in black and white? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d want that baby to shine, just the way you made it.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
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Original article appeared at Queerty. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Getty Images
What a great outlook. In the last 2 years I’ve worked on being a human first, and a human male as an adjective. In being human I’m allowed to myself to have expressions that those constrained by stereotypes might judge feminine. As a human I don’t have the feelings of masculine and feminine. When I go to being described as a male some of those come back. But not as strongly as before. I think that’s a good thing. I have a wider form of experience and experiences.