Man is not an identity - that's preposterous! There's nearly infinite variety of manhood. I can assure you that RuPaul's conception of his manhood is not remotely like Baryishnikov's, or my husband's, or my son's, or that of Mosuo man. And none of those are like yours.
This is a huge part of the point of the Man Box - that trying to shoehorn all that variety of manhood into just a few acceptable norms is highly destructive to men and to the culture at large. Man is only an identity if you accept the constraints and limitations of what patriarchy has approved for you in that regard - an idealized and largely unattainable identity that nobody ever quite achieves perfectly. Hegemonic masculinity is a performance, it's not a thing of any actual substance, so it has to constantly be acted out, dancing on the marionette strings pulled by others.
http://new.charlieglickman.com/the-performance-of-masculinty/
"One of the primary reasons that boys and men gay bash and bully queers is that they need to perform masculinity in order to show the world that they’re in the Box. And since very few guys can always be in the Box for their entire lives, the trick is to act like you are in order to cover for any lapses. In effect, the performance of masculinity requires constant vigilance to make sure that nobody sees any missteps. Since the logic of the box is an either/or, you’re either all the way in or you’re all the way out.
On the other hand, all of the words on the outside fit into one of three groups: gay, female, loser. I think that says pretty interesting things about homophobia and sexism. The way I think of it, those are the bricks that make up the Box and shame is the mortar that holds it together.
The Box is one of main reasons why men harass women on the street and why catcalling and violence tends to escalate when men are in groups. Since the Box is hierarchical as well as performative, the guy at the bottom of the heap is at risk of being cast out. So each guy has to compete with the others in order to not be the one who’s outside the Box. And as each one’s performance becomes more vigorous, it forces the others to do the same."
