“Sí vos no pisas majé, sos marica! Así pensamos nosotros,” said a friend of Ben Anson’s during his stay on Honduras’ northern Caribbean coast. Which translates to, “If you don’t f*** man, you’re a faggot. That’s how we think.”

This, and many other incidents experienced by the young and girlfriend-less Brit, drove Anson to write up his thoughts on masculinity, and publish them this week in Honduras’ digital English ‘Honduras News’.

Anson, who has lived in Honduras for over a year, says in his article “Crisis of Masculinity,” the beautiful nation like any place has its share of faults. Anson has a particular bone to pick with the country’s young men, whose “attitudes towards women and visions of ‘manliness’ are rather shocking – at times comical.”

In Tela, a small coastal city in the Caribbean department of Atlantída, Anson says he is “quite fed up with being called and asked whether or not I am ‘gay’.” He reflects on young men’s needs to demonstrate their masculinity through a variety of denigrating and offensive behaviors.

Saying he respects “those of an alternative sexual persuasion,” and is very clear that “I am by no means homosexual,” Anson has found his time in Tela plagued by rumors, gossip and online harassment due to such seemingly commonplace behaviors as wearing a floral shirt and not having a steady girlfriend.

His friends confronted him one day about his having work a Hawaiian shirt saying, “Majé, unas chicas me preguntaron de vos. Piensan que sos gay,” which basically means, “Dude, some chicks were asking about you. They think you’re gay.”

When Anson out of curiosity asked why all the men use a ‘street style’ hand exchange which involves slapping the other fellow’s hand before touching fists, saying “Why not just shake hands?” The response was: “Too much touching; we’re not gay”– “no somos maricas.”

What has been even more intolerable for Anson is, “men who boast of being with 15-year-old girls… and who pay amounts of money to the mothers of struggling families to be with their underage daughter/s.”

When Anson asked about Whatsapp numbers of girls he doesn’t know being sent to his phone,  his friends replied “pa’ que te la coges loco,” “So that you f*** her crazy, guy.”

Anson said, “Elegant. I passed up on those ‘opportunities’. My mother taught me some respect.”

It seems that being without a girlfriend momentarily is what got all his friends suspicious. But Anson noted even that wouldn’t have sufficed, as his friends have said to him on different occasions:  “Tenés que estar con varias – no solo una,” “You need to have several – not just one.”

The final straw, which got Anson’s street Spanish flowing, was when his housemate starting taking videos of him and posting them without his consent on Facebook to poke fun at him and insinuate he was gay.

Anson asks in frustration at the men’s behaviors, “What do their fathers teach them?”

In the view of Tela’s young men, a man who dances in his bedroom, wears a shirt with flowers, enjoys reading, and waits to find a girlfriend he wants to date all add up to having a problem with one’s sexuality.

Anson said, “It has been a while since I have encountered such stupidity. Obviously a lot of education has been missed. I have personally no idea of how to begin changing the mentalities here. I do however, wish to bring this to people’s attention. I for one, do not suffer fools gladly. I feel that there is a lot vacant in the minds of these young Honduran men.”

In his article, Anson subtly questions the notions that to be a ‘real man’ you need to sleep with a lot of women, cheat on your girlfriend, and have sex with minors.

Sometimes travel to another country can bring a lot more than you bargained for.