This week’s prompt is: Do you feel pressured to be a useful man?

Thought I’d start off this weekly discussion thing with an old discussion post from when we were quite a bit smaller. Put another way: How does your understanding of utility inform your own and other folk’s perceptions of masculinity?

This post will stay pinned until next week’s discussion post.

  • valentinesmith
    4·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for starting off the discussion!

    I don’t feel pressured to be useful and it’s one of the adjectives I never felt comfortable applying to myself. I’d say it’s one of the adjectives as a gay man that has made me feel like I don’t belong in straight male spaces that I was an imposter who didn’t know how to behave in them and who was fundamentally an outsider.

    I’ve nowadays become very comfortable with accepting that I still wouldn’t use useful as an adjective or concept for myself and still feel happy with myself. That pressure in the past was crazy uncomfortable to me though as it just wasn’t a natural fit for me so I totally empathise with anyone struggling with it.