#he's genderless and also every gender at once and also a girl but never fully a man due to everything mentioned above. imo

[hooved]

i'm not gonna like tell ppl they can't have whatever trans headcanons they want because that'd be shitty and also it literally doesn't matter so like don't kill me for saying this but i just cannot view odo as a trans man given the fact that he was quite literally coercively assigned male by dr. mora (and one of the DS9 books even goes into how much he was scolded all the time for always getting men and women confused, mixing up their pronouns, not understanding the differences between them, etc., which he still had trouble with for a long time). and as i've said before, he even says in the comics that he has no gender. he's canonically genderless. like it just doesn't feel right to me personally to assume he ever actually intended to be a man just because he based his humanoid form on his shitty "dad" who abused him, all while he was still barely even gaining cognition

[pilgrimbenham]

Be A Man

Who comes to mind when you think of a “true man”? Maybe Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, or Clint Eastwood come to mind.

Some people think a man is someone who can woo a woman while replacing an engine while disciplining his children while programming a computer, all before he smokes some ribs and deadlifts 800 pounds!

We all tend to see guys who like poetry or music or who are more of an ‘indoor guy’ as somehow less of a man.

Today we live in a day when our culture is blurring the gender lines and trying to erase manhood and womanhood. Gender equality has become gender neutrality. Young men are encouraged to be ‘genderless’: neutered men who don't know what it truly means to be a man. Some have responded to this by visiting the other extreme and think we have to have grease on our face to be a guy. But what does the Bible say?

Let's start in the book of Job.

Prepare Yourself, Like a Man

We all know what happens to Job, but as he was suffering, Job didn't know what was happening! We had the advantage of reading Job chapter 1, where we see that God was allowing Satan to test Job. Job never got to read Job chapter 1 during the trial! So in the thick of it, Job has lost his home, his children, his health, basically his wife, and his friends have offered awful counsel. And in Job 40, he's about to be taken behind the woodshed by the Lord:

Job 40:6-7 6 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: 7 “Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me:

Did you catch what God said to Job? Prepare yourself like a man. What does that mean? The King James version renders this as: "Gird up thy loins."

What does that mean: ‘gird up thy loins’? We don't typically use that phrase with each other. "Hey Brian, I heard you have a new supervisor. You better gird up your loins, bro!" "Oh my wife is really being naggy. Pray that I can gird up my loins..."

That phrase in Job, found in the Septuagint Greek is the same word found in 1 Peter 1:13:

13Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

This was exactly the way in which the Israelites ate the Passover meal with their loose outer robe girded up about the waist with a girdle, being ready for a journey. Workmen, travelers, runners, wrestlers, and warriors all wore their robes tucked in so that they would be able to move more freely and without the risk of falling.

When Peter says "gird up the loins of your mind", we might use the phrase today "roll up your sleeves!"

Peter is saying you and I need to pull up the loose-hanging areas of our minds that may cause us to get tripped up. For some of us, that means thinking clearly, not with fear or doubt. For others, it is not allowing lust or inappropriate thoughts to drape around unchecked. For others still, it may be jealousy or rage or selfishness that drive their minds. Whatever thoughts you entertain, the loins of our minds need to be girded up.

When God tells Job to gird up thy loins, He's saying you need to be ready. You're going to have some work that only a man can do. In other words, God has an expectation for men.

Men and Women are Different

Men and women are incredibly different—as much as the court of popular opinion wants to blur gender. And we should celebrate the beauty of diversity in gender.

In a Harvard study of several hundred preschoolers, researchers discovered an interesting phenomenon. As they taped the children's playground conversation, they realized that all the sounds coming from little girls' mouths were recognizable words. However, only 60 percent of the sounds coming from little boys were recognizable. The other 40 percent were yells and sound effects like "Vrrrooooom!" "Aaaaagh!" "Toot toot!" This difference persists into adulthood.

Communication experts say that the average woman speaks over 25,000 words a day while the average man speaks only a little over 10,000. What does this mean in marital terms? . . . On average a wife will say she needs to spend 45 minutes to an hour each day in meaningful conversation with her husband. What does her husband sitting next to her say is enough time for meaningful conversation? Fifteen to twenty minutes--once or twice a week!

Men and women are different! We need to, like Job, understand that God has created men uniquely so that we would step up and lead!

4 Ways to Act Like Men

The church in Corinth was a very carnal church. There were arguments, factions, sexual immorality that they were proud of, people getting drunk during communion (on the wine itself) and a lot of confusion around spiritual gifts. Corinth as a city would be worse than Vegas today. To "corinthianize" meant to be someone who was a sexual deviant. Sadly, the corruption of the city meant the abuse of women: women who had lived in Corinth would probably all have #metoo on their social media statuses today. You could say “What happens in Corinth stays in Corinth!” And yet knowing this, the apostle Paul doesn't try to be soft on these men. He closes the book of 1 Corinthians challenging them with 5 exhortations:

13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.

Did you catch that phrase: act like men? Let's use that as an overall blanket idea and then look at these other four challenges under that umbrella:

1. BE WATCHFUL.

Jesus admonished His disciples in the Garden, as well as all of His followers in several of His teachings, to watch. It means to be awake as opposed to being asleep. It is the Greek word gregereo, used twenty-two times in the New Testament. If your name is Gregory, this is what your name means: “watchful”.  The Corinthians were always in a stupor, if they were anything, it was not watchful nor awake.

Biblically, we are to watch for the Lord's return. We are to watch and pray so that we do not fall into temptation. We are to watch out for apathy. We are to watch out for false teachers. We are to be watchful in prayer.

Many men are not sober-minded so like a drunk and passed-out watchman on the wall of the city, they have no clue that the enemy is invading. We need to be watchful over our families, if God has stewarded a family to us. We must be watchful dads who know who our children are friends with, and what they are listening to and watching. We must be watchful over what we are listening to and watching! Guard our hearts and guard our eyes. Be watchful. But secondly, Paul says:

2. STAND FIRM IN THE FAITH

More literally that should be translated "stand FAST". Paul warned Christians to stand fast:

In their liberty in Jesus (Galatians 5:1)

In Christian unity (Philippians 1:27)

In the Lord Himself (Philippians 4:1)

In the teaching of the apostles (2 Thessalonians 2:15)

Are you someone who is known as a "solid" guy? You are standing firm in these areas. You are standing firm in your freedom in Christ, not legalism. Standing firm in your relationship with other believers, in your walk with Jesus, and in the Word. You are solid because you are standing fast. You aren't blown around by every wind of doctrine, or legalistic notions, or being offended by your brothers, or shallow in your walk. Oh how the Corinthian church needed to simply stand firm! Notice what they are to stand firm in? THE FAITH. Not in 'faith', but THE faith. The bedrock of the Gospel. When we stand on the Gospel we won't fall for anything.

3. BE STRONG

We are admonished 33x in Scripture to 'be strong'. A more accurate translation here would read "be strengthened." We may feel strong physically, or mentally, but the reality is we are all weak. We need to be strengthened. We are told in Ephesians 6:10 to be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. In 2 Timothy 2:1 Paul exhorted the young man Timothy to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Clarke points out: “The terms in this verse are all military: Watch ye, watch, and be continually on your guard, lest you be surprised by your enemies . . . Stand fast in the faith – Keep in your ranks; do not be disorderly; be determined to keep your ranks unbroken; keep close together . . . Quit yourselves like men – When you are attacked, do not flinch; maintain your ground; resist; press forward; strike home; keep compact; conquer . . . Be strong – If one company or division be opposed by too great a force of the enemy, strengthen that division, and maintain your position . . . summon up all your courage, sustain each other; fear not, for fear will enervate you.” 

4. LET ALL YOU DO BE DONE IN LOVE

Imagine if the Corinthian church truly followed this command. They wouldn't be taking communion in a selfish way. They wouldn't allow sin to hang out in the church. They wouldn't be preferring themselves and being divisive, but would prefer others.

One pastor points out how love balances the other commands Paul just gave:

(1)  Without Love you won’t be Watching with alertness, you’ll be Examining with suspicion (2)  Without Love you won’t be Standing Fast, you’ll be Running Fast. (3)  Without Love you won’t be Strong, you’ll be Weak. (4)  Without Love you won’t be a Man, you’ll be a coward.

John Macarthur says this about love: “Love is something that admonishes and rebukes when sin is visible.  In fact I just would call your attention to the fact that if you take the 16 chapters of 1 Corinthians and you take the 13 chapters of 2 Corinthians that totals 29 chapters written to straighten out one church.  Now in terms of chapters that makes it the longest book in the New Testament.  There’s no other book that has 29 chapters.  The closest is Matthew and Acts but this one had 29 chapters because there was so much to say, because there was such a mess in Corinth.  I don’t know about you but I’d rather not have 29 chapters written about me to try to straighten me out but that’s what happened in Corinth. The book is loaded with rebuke but it’s also loaded with love because, you see, it’s love that calls to righteousness, isn’t it?”

We need to act like men, to gird up our loins as men. Stop making excuses for your lack of involvement in the church. Stop playing video games and start expanding the kingdom. Stop looking at pornography and start reaching lost people for Christ.

Be watchful, stand firm, be strong, and be loving.

Is there an area of your life in this post where you are lacking? If we will do this--act like men--we will see our families transformed. We will be the husbands our wives delight in. We will be the fathers our children respect and want to submit to. We will be the employees that glorify and please God, and who earn a reputation of honest and godly. And a church of godly men will ultimately be a church that makes a difference in a corrupt and perverse generation.

Are you ready to gird up your loins like a man?