Great....
I just typed a long, HOPEFULLY better thought out reply, and lost the whole thing.
Sigh!
The super short executive summary:
My oft repeated "thing" that the only differences between males and females THAT MATTER are biological. The rest is made up, and therefore is, in the ultimate analysis, artificial (Hi Aisha!
) . A bit still in my clipboard that references your (Tarik's) previous post:
Cleavage is biology. Slits are man made. Since I don't have cleavage, I don't worry about it! Slits on the other hand may (or may not) bear some thought!
Trying to reconstruct:
I have no problems with telling women to forget the makeup and lipstick, and wear crewcuts and pants. Indeed - THEY ALREADY DO! Which is fine - all these things are neither "Masculine" nor "Feminine", they're just THINGS. But Goddess help a man who wants to "go the other way" and have some beauty in his life for himself.
When I wear makeup and tons of glittering jewelry - I'm expressing my "Masculinity". I say it often, and I say it loudly, but I don't think I've said it here yet or recently:
I'm neither attempting to look like a woman, nor to be one, as I am not; yet at the same time I reserve the (Goddess given) RIGHT to define my OWN version of "Masculinity", not someone's preconceived version.
I seek the long forgotten ideal of "masculine" beauty - a concept long forgotten in the world. We have to go back several centuries, darned near half a millineum, to even find the very end of the concept.
This beauty is what draws me to this dance, I want to look and feel beautiful as this dance is beautiful.
Tarik - I apologize if I rubbed you the wrong way. Discussions like this are best done in person where we can make eye contact, wave our arms around, demonstrate a few moves, swirl some veils, and in general coummnicate both faster and better than we can here.
But...
Since this is what we have, let's take it slow and discuss one aspect at a time so we don't have a communications breakdown (read: I don't put my foot in my mouth trying to explain myself!).