A while ago, I was visiting a homeless couple in Los Angeles for an interview when the man—let's call him "Bill"—began to mock another man for being "feminine." I didn't know this other man well, so I couldn't judge his apparent femininity, but I knew Bill.
Bill is 40-something years old and likes to wear hats, A-shirts, low-riding baggy pants, and tattoos down his arms. He knows all the street lingo, lights his joint with an experienced whiff, and walks with the swagger of a rapper, which he fancies himself to be. By all appearances, he's the definition of a "manly man" or a "lady's man," according to certain pop culture, and he's got eight kids with eight different women to prove it.
Other facts about Bill that people might not see through his swagger: He had been sleeping on the streets with his girlfriend for months before someone helped them find temporary sober housing, which the couple lost within five months because they were caught drinking and smoking pot in their room. Bill later found housing again when his girlfriend got pregnant and was bumped up the priority list for subsidized housing. He has been with this girlfriend for years but hasn't made any attempts to marry her. He's also unemployed: He landed minimum-wage jobs and lost them soon after because, according to him, his co-workers didn't respect him. The last time I saw him, he was selling hard drugs on the streets while his girlfriend waited with their newborn baby in the car she bought.
So that afternoon, when I heard Bill make fun of another man for not being "manly enough," I wanted to smack him. "Grow up," I wanted to shout. "You think you're a real man? You're over 40 but you're still a wannabe gangster who can barely provide for your own girlfriend." It took some effort to keep my mouth shut.
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