THIS IS WHY THIS FORUM IS AWESOME!!!
I hope we all helped, Tropicfishman. I do some pretty non-girly things (drive a truck, sail, went to school to learn how to design boats - 1 year with me a 53 other students, all male), and while I have been hassled a little about it, unfortunately there is a much bigger stigma on men being supposedly "girly" than on women being "manly". My boyfriend gets mistaken for a woman on the phone all the time (and hates it, but what can he do??). He is also equally at home mending his jeans or re-covering a chair as he is rewiring the trailer hitch on my truck. As far as I'm concerned, gender stereotypes in this day and age should be out the window, but unfortunately they aren't, yet.
Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences in this post. I hope they help tropicfishman and many other people dealing with the same issues. And again, we all know that if we have a problem, our good buddies here at AA will help us out!
Oh, and between myself and the 4 other people here at school with me that have fishtanks, we have 4 planted tanks (2, 5.5, 35 and 55 gallons), 2 african cichlid tanks (both 55), 2 SW reefs (1 12 gal nano-reef, and a 30), and a turtle. 3 of the planted tanks are mine, the rest belong to 4 "manly" but very sweet guys. We all went up to Boston for a fish show and had a blast. Tell me that didn't get some weird looks from our non-fish friends!