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This is another interview in my series of interviews on masculinity. Peter draws specific attention to how his heterosexual relationships with women emphasized his masculinity. In the world of dating and relationships, this is the angle that we are often most interested in. I am grateful that he chose to share this insight with us.

When was the first time you remember being aware of masculinity? How old were you? What was the cultural climate or influence?

I suspect that it was a few months before I turned 18. Sure, I’d spent my share of time ogling girls and watching porn and wanking like a savage 17-year-old, but it was never something I did with an awareness of maleness attached. But it was during my last year of high school, right after Christmas, that a long-term friend became a girlfriend. And then I discovered that she was an emotional wreck. And then I discovered that I really got off on being a knight* in shining armor, on being Atlas — on holding up her sky. That was my awakening into masculinity.

It was also a long-distance thing. She and I had gone to school together, but then I moved. By the time we became a couple, I lived some 400 miles away. It took around three months for us to get a chance to see each other for the first time since getting “together,” and even that was only for a week or two. So my knighthood developed primarily along emotional and intellectual (rather than physical) lines.

So when the time came to start sleeping together, it was complicated. I’d never even held a girl’s hand before her, and she’d had a bit of experience, most of it bad. She, like so many women, had been a victim of violent sexual abuse as a child. I knew only that I wanted to protect her, to make her feel safe, to see her really smile now and again. She wanted me to slap her around, call her names, and facefuck her. At first, I was repulsed — mostly by the cognitive dissonance caused by wanting to give her what she wanted, and having based most of my personality around the role of guardian. I’ll get back to this in answering the other questions.

*I’ve seen a lot of discourse about the mixed messages sent to women, the social imperative to be the “virgin whore,” etc. I’ve seen almost no mention of the analogue that men often face — the social imperative to be both a knight and an ogre.

Do you think of yourself as masculine? Why or why not?

The simple answer is “Yes.” The complicated answer is “Yes, but not to the exclusion of all else.” Physically, I’m a fairly big guy — 5-foot-11, 230 pounds, stronger than one might expect from a guy who exercises as little as I do. Intellectually and socially, I’m very alpha-male, most of the time. I’m also a dom, thanks in large part to the aforementioned first girlfriend, and it’s not a part of me that belongs exclusively to my sexuality. It’s also something that is a feature of my character and not just of my behavior. (I remember one time in college, some friends were hanging out at our apartment. Girl A asked Girl B about what exactly a “dom” is. Girl B struggled for a while to explain, then threw her hands in the air exasperatedly, saying “You know, like Peter!”)

Thinking about it now, it’s interesting (though not entirely surprising) that I answer the question “Are you masculine?” with “Yes, I’m dominant.” But there are a lot of ways to play the dom game, just like there are a lot of ways to play the man game, and some of those ways are preferable to others. At first, I was repulsed and confused by the things my ex wanted me to do to her. I was repulsed and confused by the idea of treating her as an object and taking from her whatever I wanted. Then I thought about it a bit and realized that when I was slapping her and calling her a whore, it wasn’t about me — it was about her. So I discovered that dominance must be tempered by love, empathy, and affection.

So those are the things I use to temper my masculinity. I can’t say for sure that I’m more of a knight than an ogre. But I play up the atmosphere of the knight, so when I act like an ogre, most people are either amused or forgiving. Everyone who knows me knows that they are rarely safer than when they’re with me, so no one takes issue when I heap insults and derision on those I love.

It’s a game of spectrums and opposites, but the trick, at least in my experience, has been to play both sides. A piano will always sound like a piano, but the effect it has on the listener depends on the skill of the player and the type of composition. I will always be a man, but the way I interact with the world, with others, and with myself will always depend on the last good book I read, the alignment of the stars, and how long it’s been since I last got laid.

So it goes.

How does your masculinity relate to your sexuality (be it your orientation, preferences, or expressions)?

I haven’t really left myself a lot of room to answer this question, I think. I’m feeling the strong impulse to talk about being a dom instead of talking about being a man. Let’s see.

I don’t think I could have sex with or be in a relationship with a woman who was taller than me. But is that a consequence of masculinity, or dominance?

I enjoy the feeling of self-mastery, and the feeling I get when others accept my authority. But is that a consequence of masculinity, or dominance?

I like being stronger than people and being smarter than people, but I also like people who are stronger than me and smarter than me. But is that a consequence of masculinity, or dominance?

I don’t know. I think that in my case, at least, the two are too interwoven to reasonably differentiate. So my masculinity is my sexuality, but that’s a masculinity rooted in Nietzsche’s Übermensch, in Kierkegaard’s “self-making man,” in hardcore pornography, in hugs and savage affection, in sunsets and oceans and the wind in the trees and leather on skin.