Many dominant women like me rarely had other strong minded women to show us we can exist as we are in the world. The women around us more often that not hated themselves and wanted us to be quaint, delicate, good, pure, silent, meek, like they were conditioned to be. We grow up exiled from our own freedom, our anger, our passion, our imperfections; luxuries reserved for the privileged condition of manhood.
We emulate and model these qualities from them, we learn to express them divorced from our joy, our sensuality, our intentionality. We learn the codes of patriarchal men and become fluent in their dance moves, even if dominance itself surpasses gender, because we're not allowed to be strong women, or just women, or just human. We're left alone to varying degrees and respected because men are so constrained by their own performance that they appreciate we are not like the others, that we're not walking cunts like the others but Men, Jr. The outwardly expression is irrelevant: from the butchiest to the ultra femme, us strong women are always described and tolerated in terms of our closeness to manhood. Too much or too little, depending on the man.
Some of us, I like to think most of us, get to re integrate from rebellion and self hatred into self respect and assertiveness. As soon as we refuse to continue this disembodied living, we become two things: deliberately shameless and menacing. In social gatherings away from my alt circles, I can sense how traditional macho men are both confused, attracted and intimidated by me being me. They are incapable of expanding their concept of womanhood, to conceive women as their equal, to surrender to dominance when it doesn't come from another man, so instead of allowing themselves to enjoy me, they do this weird thing where they try to put me back in the woman box, trying to humble me by determining who is the performer of Truest Manhood™ and then clumsily trying to impress me. There's no display of misogyny, off remark or body language cue that I don't know or will make me blush: we both drank from the same corrupted fountain, you won't humiliate me back into performance and, if you push me, I can and will out smart you.
As this happened again last week at a party, I was again surprised by how unattracted I am at to the brute shallowness, the enthusiastic stupidity, the dangerous arrogance of "traditional" masculinity, that outside its comfortable bounds represents nothing but a profound admission of impotence. I think that's why I've never dated or fucked "traditional" men. I have no respect for them. I don't feel celebrated, cared for, safe or protected in their presence. I don't enjoy their company. Their intellect is of no interest to me. Their cruelty is a pale imitation of passion. They're nothing but empty shells that refuse to care for their own souls. Nothing more than broken little boys that insist on hurting the world and each other to prove to themselves they're worthy of something.
Although they also can't escape the most general constraints of sexism and/or the simple fact of being bad people sometimes, I very much prefer non traditional men, if only because they more often than not refuse to perform this mutilation of their souls by their own hands. Non traditional men cultivate, by stepping towards the other side of the spectrum, the strength and depth of character needed to embrace themselves and others in their rich complexity. They're not scared of their softness, their contradictions, their desires, their interests, their sensuality, their power, their pain. So they're not scared of mine. They welcome my messiness, my intensity, my hunger, my sorrow, my intelligence, my stubbornness, my fear. There's substance there. There's kindness. There's cunning. There's honesty. Straight or queer, I've been amazed again and again in their arms at how different human connection feels when both parties are willing to step out of these stupid games of control. For a man that bends to himself fearlessly, I'm willing to bend, too.
I've also, unfortunately, been with non traditional men that haven't done the internal work required to live authentically. That particular brand of self contempt breeds the most insidious and virulent misogyny, as in hurting my way of embodying womanhood, they yearn to eradicate what they see in themselves as a profound weakness. They've been unforgivable teachers of dignity and urgent reminders of my own tender responsibility towards myself.
I'm thankful for the woman I've grown into, even if sometimes I see other women that are truly forces of nature who make me look shy in comparison. Or even if sometimes I feel the temptation to shame myself into being a nice little good woman, soft voiced, tiny, invisible, for the sake of a world that still doesn't understand how to accommodate me. But everytime I get to uplift another kindred spirit, or I get to see non traditional people live long, expansive lifes, I am a bit less hard on myself, a lot more harder on stupid men, and a awful lot more hopeful that, maybe, someday, all adjectives around genders will be dropped.