Letting The Fuck Go
on releasing the toxic masculine ideals of manipulation and control to find balance with ourselves
There I sat. My least favorite place. Mr. Johnson’s 8th grade math class.
I was purely cheating my way through, having given up entirely from an effort standpoint, already quiet-quitting math as a subject.
Disgust of math being forced into my brain aside. Mr. Johnson also favored girls. He coddled them. They were first-class students. Boys were where all his ire went, projecting his flaws onto them, while idolizing the girls like his daughters and wife.
There I was. Closeted trans girl. Bitter as fuck. Frustrated with the toxic expectations of manhood being thrust upon me and the false perceptions which it caused me to be viewed with. Especially when it amounted to having to take on unfair expectations.
I’m also bitter because this girl I crushed on and liked me back in 6th grade, who I’d never made a move on because I was a chicken-shit—smartest and cutest girl in the school to me—is playing into Mr. Johnson’s bullshit. She’s playing dumb and having him work her through every problem. She’s quiet quitting in her own way. But the way that leads to an A, not a B-.
And it drives me crazy. In my head I’m like, you’re better than that, don’t lower yourself to that. But I’m mostly just jealous, in retrospect.
There was this false sense to me then. As someone being taught to abide by the toxic ideals of manhood in the 90’s. Which I cannot stress enough, were completely immersive. Enforced everywhere; my family, peers, all of the media. Everywhere except perhaps my grandfather—bless his heart—whom I moved away from when I was 5 years old and never saw.
These ideals taught me that it was my job to go do things in the world. That I was not to cry. That I was to be strong and brave. I was to build and support a family. I was to control and manipulate and conquer. And I was to ‘protect’ the feminine like a scared dog with rabies.
To be clear—gender roles are trash on all sides. Everyone gets a bad shake when we’re put into boxes.
But for a trans woman in the 90’s, to be closeted and take on the full weight of the toxic masculine coding of boys at that time… brutal.
I’m there in math class and I’m coming to accept it.
Literally internalizing this weight I don’t want. Feeling embittered because not only do I see the unfairness of it all. Everything about the woman ‘box’ calls to my whole body, heart especially. In the same way that everything about the one I’m being forced into repulses me, the other box feels like what I was made to fit into—despite its own toxic prejudices.
Still, I accept this fate I’ve been dealt as best I can. I’m afraid. I hate it. It’s toxic bullshit. But I take it on… I decide that I will learn to face the world the way I’m being taught.
To Control & Manipulate
In my opinion, everyone has the feminine and masculine within them to their own unique degrees, and we all suffer for the toxic ideas projected onto both ideals—along with the void of space for people who exist outside them entirely.
For bonus points, I also know that these are societally constructed understandings of gender, which are roughly drawn by the collective, and are a grossly distorted reflection of what our bodies and personalities truly offer.
Knowing that, all of us suffer from one particular burden of our time. We’ve been taught, every one of us, to value the masculine over the feminine. In others and ourselves.
It’s systematic of the patriarchal thinking which has built the structures of our civilization.
We take these ideas baked into our language and society and internalize them. Even when they’re wrong. Or we overreact the other way. Or we’re one of the few who transcends them.
The biggest one we get wrong, collectively, in my opinion. Is what healthy masculine ideals look like. That in fact, these energies we hold inside are here to support and uplift the creative and wise feminine energies within us all.
Instead, the toxic version we get is; control and protect. Masculine energies which dominate and suppress the feminine in a false effort to be strong and protective. A projection of insecurity and ignorance.
We do this to ourselves internally. Becoming over-serious and over-rational. Not allowing our emotions to flow and guide us.
And we do it externally. Like when, as a people, we fail to recognize the healthy leadership available to us in women.
Women have the capacity, by and large, to be the leaders this world needs. Rationality balanced with emotion is wholeness. Yet, our broken system teaches people that men are to lead the way.
It’s so painfully backwards. Instead of lifting up and allowing women to lead us to freedom. Men, with no idea what to even do, hold onto control just because they think it’s their job.
We shoot ourselves in the foot over and over and over with these failures to hold the masculine and feminine in balance.
I myself, have had so much trouble letting go of this burden I took on; that we all take on.
False efforts to earn and achieve, to procure and elicit. When that’s never what I wanted in the first place. It stresses me out. It’s not who I am.
I don’t want it. There’s something else which calls to my heart.
To Surrender and Receive
Letting the fuck go.
It’s what I’ve always wanted. In so many ways.
I want some space to play and create and flow. I want nature and family and good lovin. I don’t care for all this doing. I’m sorry.
I would like to let go and receive life. Surrender to my spiritual support and my own heart’s wisdoms. Becoming a channel for a higher spirit to pour through and impact the world in a better way.
I want to raise my daughter and see her grow into who she is. Or hell. Maybe they’re not a she. I never checked with them. Not to project, but to hold space. How would I know?
That’s the point. Without control. Accepting what I don’t know. Trusting what my heart tells me I do. And riding the ebbs and flows, taking care of my people, making all the love I can. Being present, truly, in the moment. Pursuing those things that bring me to that magic place.
Perhaps, from this space of creative flow, I can be more ‘productive’ than I ever could be from a rigid and regimented way of living. Some people thrive with order and structure. They thrive creating and holding it. They deserve to realize that control they seek. I do not. And I seek to find a way to live in the stream of life, unencumbered by the false rhythms of a civilization that has failed us.
I seek to find love with another at balance with their own unique expression of these energies, synchronistic with mine, together bringing others and the world around us into balance through our love.
Knowing, for every soul moved from one extreme into balance. Is a soul on the other side released from their prison of extremity.
The whole is always balanced.
Bringing each one of us back into harmony allows us all to play our parts to the fullest. And together we can make this world sing once again.
