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?
I guess. There’s just too many sensory things going on during conversations for me to be able to focus enough on generating the words that I intend to come out of my mouth.
Most of the time I talk, I have to go on automatic, and people tend to get really pissed off because I tend to ignore the social rules mandated by neurotypicals. I don’t want to say I can’t improve it, it’s just something that hasn’t been impacted by anything I’ve tried with it.
The only real advantage I have now compared to any other point in my life is that I know I’m autistic.
Knowing is half the battle. The other half is believing you can improve and putting in the work.
What you said here reminds me of one of my favorite books - The Inner Game of Tennis. I don’t play tennis, but I still like the book. What you’re describing is the central problem of the book - how do you improve at a complex, fast paced skill like tennis (or conversations)? You don’t have time to think about the position of your elbow when the tennis ball is coming over the net, you just have to do it. It’s intuitive. But how do you improve at a skill that is intuitive?
The reality is, no one who is good at conversations is “trying” to say the right things in response to the other things they are seeing and hearing. They, just like you, simply act automatically.
Most likely what you need to do is to have more conversations where you just relax and go into automatic mode, and then notice how the conversation goes. And (as I mentioned before) work on loving yourself unconditionally.