25 years ago I had a coworker say that he was a lesbian whenever he could work it into the conversation. He dressed like a man, acted like a man, looked like a man, and was married to a woman. There was nothing feminine about him. His follow up would be that he “liked women so that made him a lesbian.”

Words change over time. When they get used in a certain way enough, they pick up that connotation which carries over to other uses. Eventually the meaning can change to be a way to mean that connotation. Eventually the dictionary definition is updated to include the new definition.

For example, moron was coined as a polite way to refer to someone with an intellectually disability. It got misused and turned into being an insult. So a new term was coined, retarded. It suffered the same fate. So now it’s special needs.

With so much bashing of “men”, man-hate, “toxic-masculinity”, is the same thing happening to the word “men”? If not yet, is it possible? Is that where things are heading?

With the LGBTQ+ community gaining more acceptance and being a protected minority class, at some point it may be feel less persecuted to pick a term other than “man” to identify as - maybe non-binary, or non-conformist.

Out of curiosity, I took one of those online gender identity quizzes and it suggested I may be a “non-conformist”. I laughed. I’m as masculine, conservative, and traditional as they come. But it does probably reflect the difference in my view between what a good man is and what society says men are.

So maybe the next time I’m filling out a form and it has a blank for gender, I’ll put in non-conformist. See if I get any puzzled faces.

Where are all the good men? Maybe they’ll get tired of all the negative connotations from identifying as a man and pick something else.