Michelle Taylor

I did a photoshoot for the local LGBT charity a few years ago when they were looking for disabled people to photograph. And the other day, while I was in the car somewhere between Ullapool and Avimore, I got an e-mail with what looks like a similar photoshoot, this time for LGBT+ men (and non-binary people "and their allies"). And it's today and I forgot about it, but Thursday night I did try to look at the form they asked us to fill in. I could do the page of demographics stuff: age, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. But I stopped at the next page which asks

What does being a man (or being seen as a man) mean to you, and how do you express that in your own way?

What changes would you like to see in how society understands masculinity, and how do you think men can better support each other and their communities?

I had no idea what to do with these. I wandered away from the computer and promptly forgot about it until now. The photoshoot is today, it's going on now, so obviously that's not happening. And I never thought it was likely because of that timing; we're all about as exhausted and low on spoons as I thought we'd be. And that's a shame; with a cis man, a trans man, and a non-binary person who had femininity forced upon them and has only recently been able to reject that, I feel like my little family potentially is a great example of different relationships to manhood/masculinity.

Reminded of it now when I opened Firefox to look at something else, I see there's a couple more questions on the page that I didn't even get as far as reading the other day:

What message would you give to someone exploring their gender or identity — at any age — who might be looking for a role model?

What do you see as the biggest challenges or issues facing men in 2025, and what support or resources do you think men — and their loved ones — need to navigate these challenges and thrive?

Interesting questions. On the way home from the gym, D gave our local pal, another D, home and we got talking about driving and the behavior of strangers in their own cars. We talked about how toxic masculinity extends its tentacles even there, with young men on a speed awareness course talking about being overtaken as a personal insult, and me sharing a couple of quotes I've seen from blind people talking about the appeal of self-driving cars for them being about feeling like a man because they can be the family taxi again.

Last night I brushed my teeth, flossed and had another try at trimming my beard. I felt so good, clean and ready for bed.

In one way I'm like man I've added another body-maintenance chore?! but it's totally worth it because the feeling of my neck being smooth because I just shaved it is so so much nicer than it being smooth because hair never grew there in the first place. Somehow this is about being a man (even though facial hair is not necessary or sufficient to be one).

I laid awake a long time after I went to bed, but I spent some of that time smelling the remnant of shaving cream my brain still associates with D, and grinning. As I lay there and thought about it more, about how negatively I'm used to hearing shaving being talked about because almost everyone I know who talks about it is transfem, has skin or other attributes which are particularly sensitive to the physical necessities of shaving, or both. And just the sentence that society expects men not to care/try/whatever when it comes to appearance or grooming (that's why a whole word had to be invented for metrosexuals!) But it only now occurs to me that I was actually much more likely to be scruffy/smelly/whatever as a girl or woman, because I was so uncomfortable in my body, mentally detaching myself from it as much as possible, and extremely put off by all of the options for appearance or grooming that were available to me in that gender role. Now I feel like I'm more successful at being well-groomed just because it's more fun or appealing, more satisfying or soothing. Somehow this is about being a man too.

Recently D sent me the link to a 2019 Dreamwidth entry of his about an outing to Anderton Boat Lift that stands out in our minds for two reasons: one is that it's the day before we ended up dating and we had no idea but the other is that he mentions that we, he and I, had been on about going to Anderton Boat Lift for ages by that point.

And the other feat of canal engineering we always talked about wanting to visit is the Falkirk Wheel.

But unlike the Anderton Boat Lift which I could rush my work day to finish a bit early and be picked up in time to get there for a late lunch, or the Barton Swing Bridge which is so close we biked to it last summer (or maybe two summers ago), Falkirk is very far away so we'd never found an excuse to be in the vicinity.

Until this Stornoway trip. D has a complicated spreadsheet with all the moving parts for such a trip and realized that if we stayed at the further of their two usual spots after the ferry back to the mainland, it would leave us with little enough driving to do on the second day that we could spend some time in Falkirk.

We saw the Kelpies first, which I'd heard about as motorway landmarks from haggis but never thought about as a destination. We had so much fun there though that we stayed past the time D had expected our visit there to last and got home at 8pm instead of 7pm. The weather was beautiful, there were good dogs everywhere, the visitor centre had a very good video explaining the history of Falkirk and was full of excellent tactile models: the kelpies made of Legos, little models of them to scale with world landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil...

Then it was on to the main event. First we had lunch at the kind of place where we'd have wanted to sit outside even if we weren't always doing that now anyway, we ate in the literal shadow of the wheel. I was sitting across from D who when the wheel was moving was just smiling at it in a way that reminded me of icons of saints gazing upon some heavenly scene, full of proper awe and joy. So I got to see the Falkirk Wheel and I got to see how happy it made him, and I can't decide which I enjoyed more.

We finished eating just in time for D and I to take the next tour, where you get in a boat, go up to the aqueduct and along the canal a little while you listen to a local do their spiel (ours was called Gary! and he complimented my #TeamGary t-shirt which I happened to be wearing that day).

Sadly V wasn't feeling up to it: this was Day 9 of traveling and being so much busier than usual was already catching up with them. But they made the right decision; they know so much about narrowboats and canals anyway and the tour was very audio-based and they'd have struggled to get much out of it. They had a nice time in the sunshine watching ducks and moorhens and more good dogs, and buying the cutest fridge magnet in the gift shop, a little abstract model of the wheel that you can spin like a fidget toy, which is delightful.

For a few years now I've been desperate to show him the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth, and this has only deepened my desire to make this happen. It doesn't seem overly likely any time soon, but then the Falkirk Wheel has only existed for 23 years and we must have spent at least half of that talking about wanting to go see it, so I'm okay to wait a while.

"There's a wee step here," D told me as we made our way out of the cemetery where we'd gone looking for the pyramid monument that he'd been alerted to on Pokémon Go.

He's often warning me of little things, potential hazards, like this as we're walking around so that wasn't remarkable at all.

What I remarked upon was the language. "Do we all get to say 'wee' now that we're in Scotland?" I asked. "I noticed V saying it earlier but didn't know if it applied to us too."

D had a ready answer. "Yes." It sounded very authoritative!

Stirling has been great. The trip here took an hour and a half longer than it should've thanks to spending that time at a standstill on the M6, thirteen miles back from something that'd happened near Tebay. So by the time we got here, checked in, and found some food, it was 8:30 and I was thinning about going to bed soon when D asked if I wanted to join him for a walk. We could walk down to the lively studenty area or uphill to the "Old Town," with things like the castle, a bunch of statues of old dudes with extravagantly Scottish names, and other touristy landmarks that were all closed and in the dark. But I've still enjoyed it a lot, I was introduced to the concept of a paneer burrito which I'm sad I can't have again in a hurry, and we did find a pub (a hotel bar actually) near the castle -- so close to it that it's called The Portcullis, because it was in the castle's portcullis.

And now I can use Scottish words for things, apparently! So that's nice.