Me going from “I’m fine as a man” to “please release me from this male prison!”
I’m a dude but i generally don’t like traditionally masculine things or hyper masculine people but I’ve never felt discontented with being a male.
not that there’s anything wrong if you do. just doing some self examination.
I’m just sick of toxic masculine behavior. It’s just so extremely common. I’ve gotten to the point of being unconformable calling myself a man for fear of association.
I sometimes assumed that was why I didn’t really consider myself a man for a while before I realized that it wasn’t. But I’ve also never felt comfortable with the label and there was a lot of other things I was also ignoring. Still, would be easier for people to explore gender if so many men were not so toxic that any decent person wouldn’t want to be associated with them and women didn’t have to deal with so much sexism that it wasn’t a natural thing to wish they could escape that.
It’s just so frustrating seeing it after learning. It’s like a defensive response against the inner experience of others so that you don’t need to challenge your own. Like FFS i don’t need advice from someone who doesn’t have their own stuff handled. I need empathy, and they can’t give it because they’ve never learned how to suspend disbelief and view the world from a challenged perspective. I used to be there too because i was raised in the same world. I understand the how; how could they know when they’ve been taught their whole life to fight against it? I just feel hopeless about it ig.
i agree completely, i thank my parents often for teaching me to identify with my emotions because it saved me a lot of trouble dodging toxic masculinity
Ok, I feel similarly, but I don’t feel feminine. I just feel like… myself.
I’ve slowly come to the idea that generally, gender is used to pigeon-hole people into roles, behaviour and style of dress. I can’t think of a single good thing that comes out of gender. So I’ve abandoned the concept entirely.
I feel similarly to that. I’ve always chafed under the “Man” label because it never felt like it fit despite my being generally masculine. So now I don’t bother with labelling myself unless pressed.
Discontented, good word for it. Id say i def feel that.
