I (22M, American) was raised by a conservative family and taught traditional gender roles. I was told multiple times that that “gay” men (men who didn’t conform to traditional masculine gender expression) were ruining society and literally deserved to die, and that people out in the real world do the dirty work of disposing of them through stochastic violence.

Unfortunately, I turned out almost exactly how I wasn’t supposed to. I wanted to embody a cute and delicate masculinity, my true personality was caring, affectionate, and emotional, and I loved cute and pretty things. Ironically, I was so in love with feminine energy that I developed an emotionally intense heterosexual attraction to women, though in a way that was nothing like the typical straight model.

Long story short, I faced an entire childhood of ridicule and isolation and eventually developed an autoimmune disease with disabilities as a souvenir. I wanted to take my own life, but the Internet existed, so I numbed myself with endless slop content instead.

The progressive side of the Internet taught me that there are a lot of ways of being beyond the “conform or fucking die” model I was raised with. I learned that a minority of women actually could be attracted to me despite my utter disregard for the manliness rules, something I was blackpilled on before.

But I am still too scared to leave home. It is hard to motivate myself to do anything because the source of my fulfillment is to make people happy, but I can’t meet anyone because I’m frozen in fear. I still feel like everyone will hate me for being too feminine, and that the occasional stray vigilante will try to put a bullet in me. Even if I could defend myself, it feels too risky: I have to win every single time, while they only have to win once. On top of that, I am now visibly disabled, so I have to deal with ableism on top of everything else.

I can’t function this way. I’m not motivated to take care of myself or put effort into online college because I see no point to life if I can’t be social and authentic IRL. I literally just want to make people smile and feel cared for, but it feels like I’m too alien for people outside of a progressive echo chamber to accept me, and life will be full of constant gender policing, harassment, and threats of violence (especially because this is the U.S. we’re talking about). The most productive day of my life happened when I thought for a moment that I had a chance, but I fell back into my old habits once I started having doubts again.

It could be worth noting that I live in central Ohio, somewhat close to the city, so it’s not like I live in the middle of a rural hellscape. I also saw a non-binary androgynous person working at a clinic the other day, which seems like a good sign? I went to school in a more rural area, but of all of the people who seemed to like me, most of them were closer to the city.

If you have faced a similar situation, how did you make it through?

  • Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world
    111·
    18 hours ago

    I’ve always got on better with women than men. Always found more enjoyment in typically female pastimes. Decided not to show my power level. Never been happy with myself or my life as a result. I never enjoyed being something I’m not and all the friendships I made were based on a lie. Now at almost twice your age I figured out that maybe I was exposed to a wee bit much estrogen in utero. And that the reason I was infinitely more comfortable in the presence of women is because (at least mentally) I am one.

    People always misunderstand gender as something that is either solely biological sex or solely a societal construct. There are actually a ton of weird endocrine, genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors that contribute to the baseline state of the brain. All things considered it makes perfect sense that gender would be a spectrum of states with clusters around male and female. You should read a bit about it. Even if you aren’t some sort of atypical gender it’d still be interesting. And you might find that the LGBTQ community is more accepting of your unique brand of masculinity. Even before my revelation most of my friends were some flavour of queer, just because they’re largely nice people.

    Also I grew up rurally (I’m pretty sure more rural than 99.9% of people here) and the people back home are largely fine with queer folk if they know them personally. Like a family member came out as bisexual and didn’t loose any friends over it. And it’s a really small place so if one person knows, everyone knows. I’m not going to assume it’s like that everywhere though. One key difference is that my particular rural community is approx 70% atheist.

    But yeah make gay friends and look into the whole gender thing. It’s perfectly normal to question these things.