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?
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Sorry to hear it’s been so hard for you. If you ever decide to get out of dodge, I’ll speak for all San Franciscans when I say, we’d be happy to have you join our city. I have a very similar personality to what you’re describing and while this area is definitely a bubble, it feels very safe to be yourself and doesn’t have all the macho bullshit I left behind.
I want you to know that there are probably more of us women than you think, who find feminine straight men to be incredibly attractive and sexy. We are out there and we see you, even though you might not see us. We’re still a small minority, but we are everywhere.
Society by and large doesn’t accept feminine straight men as being valid or real, and the amount of shaming is heartbreaking, but if you can find people who accept you and become part of that community, you can gain the confidence and strength to tell the rest of society to go fuck off while you live your best life.
I know you mean well and you aren’t contradicting OP, but this is very cold comfort.
If a woman came to me and said she was threatened and harassed by men to the point of being unable to leave the house and I told her “don’t worry, there’s a minority of men who won’t do that. You just need to pick better men” you would think I was a monster.
You’re totally fine how you are, the stigma you feel is 100% from your dumb ass family.
Effeminate men like us are inevitable.
Glam rockers of the 80s weren’t “manly”
I can’t give advice, sorry.
Do you have autism by any chance?
If people hate you for this, they’d have REALLY hated Jesus
“Dad I want to grow my hair out long”
“No, men must have short hair. Long hair is the sign of the devil”
“But all these pictures of Jesus have long hair”
“go to your room!!!”
Not trying to dismiss you here at all, but my genuine advice is to get some therapy and not take advice about serious stuff like this from strangers online.
You have a good heart and are stronger than you think.
Some of your instincts are exactly right, while some are a little off. You’re right about finding better opportunities to meet like minded people in the city. Parts of Ohio are pretty progressive and open minded.
There are women who would love to get to know you, and that will only improve over time. As people get older and wiser, the stereotypical roles become less and less important, and what ends up mattering is having a caring partner who is capable of growth. That’s you.
Last, yes, there are some people who might wish to do violence to anyone who is different. However, they tend to be cowards and opportunists and there are not that many of them. The point of terrorism is to make people afraid, because even though it’s unlikely for any one person to be a victim, everyone feels like they could potentially be a victim.
It is extremely unlikely that you will personally be targeted with deadly violence just for who you are. It’s even more unlikely to happen multiple times. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to have situational awareness.
What city are you close to? Can you look for work in Columbus? It’s much more liberal and there are more people who are like minded. You might feel safer being yourself, while still being close to home. It would be a smaller move, if you have to move.
If you have the ability to, please seek help from a professional. It sounds like you are really struggling. Once you are in a better place mentally it will be easier to tackle these life things you don’t have the motivation to do. You have been surviving so far, following what was expected of you. Now that there isn’t a definite next step it’s harder. I would recommend putting whatever energy you have into finding a therapist.
You can do this! You have reached out for help already, which is really hard. Honestly you are amazing to have survived with who you are intact. I can’t imagine the strength it would take to live with people who believe you should be killed. To constantly be afraid of being found and hurt. You grew up being enemy lines when it should have been a safe haven.
We’re similar in personality/sexuality and the hostile environment we grew up and live in, but diverge with health, age (I’m 35), and how we dealt with or reacted to said environment. Masking is what I did and still do depending who I’m dealing with. I noticed growing up that so long as I put in just bare minimal effort, and I mean barely even tried to pretend and play along, people wouldn’t dig any deeper.
Most humans are entirely incurious and intellectually lazy as fuck following their shallow life scripts, so if I didn’t stir the pot their delusions weren’t disillusioned and they’d leave me alone. My mother co-founded a Baptist church for example and I just barely played my part despite never at any point believing in a god. Yet nobody ever called me out on it because I went through the motions every Sunday. I didn’t sing and regularly stared at the ceiling yet because I showed up and didn’t outwardly resent my parents being outwardly an obedient child towing the line, nobody cared. Not even suspicious, they were friendly with me instead. They wanted conformity so badly that they were willfully blinded by the thin act. That extended to all areas of my life even in grade school where many children are vicious cunts. To this day nobody has ever attacked my mask. They don’t see it.
I slowly built a friend group of liked minded people and I guess got lucky with the lack of betrayal? Or not, I seem to be skilled at vetting people before deciding to take the mask off or not.
I want to say I think you’re right in that your fear response is unreasonably high and it is hindering you. I don’t know how much harder masking is when disabled though :( I don’t know how externally obvious it is to others in your case. I’m sorry I have no advice for that wrench in the gears of life. Conservatives truly would prefer you to die unaided in the streets even if they usually won’t say it that directly in polite company.
I will say this still stunted me sexually, it took until my mid 20’s before I found a woman worth revealing my true self to and I was initially insecure about lack of experience but she didn’t care about that so it was easy to overcome once I had a chance to. To let those hyper vigilant guards down for romance is sadly still a great effort and slow to trust process for me. It’s on another level to get romantically involved. A cold start date at a restaurant a non-starter for me, aleays ends in uncomfortable disaster. It’s my localized bubbles of friendly environment in this shithole hostile province that freed me really. During post-secondary I rented a house with my closest friends and the house became the defacto party house with all our like minded friend groups converging and our friend’s friends etc. That really fast tracked my socialization.
My friends and lovers now in my 30’s after my partying days are long in the rearview mirror I meet through volunteer work and dance classes. I love to dance and there’s always way more women then men who show up to such things. The other men who do show up are obviously more likely to be like-minded. Go to places where the helpers and/or expressive peoples congregate is my advice. I wager being around people like this will build up your confidence and subsequently alleviate some fear.
Working towards moving away to better places when you can is another potential option. I didn’t myself, couldn’t seem to bring myself leave everyone I already knew behind personally.
Hopefully something I said is helpful to combat your fear, but if not I wish you all the luck, OP.
I can’t say I related to your specific situation but the world you describe doesn’t look like the world I live in at all.
Definitely seek therapy and learn how to accept and love yourself. It reads like you have some self-loathing based off your upbringing that you are projecting onto others when it’s really not the reality
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.
Decided not to show my power level.
Are you a Z fighter ?
Kinda. But instead of a kamehameha, I just sleep with my opponents mother.
I’m a somewhat feminine man myself, and man I hear where you’re coming from. And truth be told, you’ve managed to accept yourself the way you are earlier than I did. It took me a while to accept myself.
I also get the impression, though, that you have a traumatic response to the whole situation due to your upbringing. And it seems to me that that is something that you’ve accepted on the surface, but deep down, you’re still fighting with it. Which, by the way, is OK and normal. This shit takes time and work. If you have access in any way to mental healthcare, use it. You need to work through what you’ve experienced and learn how to deal with it better.
And I’m not sure I quite understood the situation completely - but if you’re still living with your parents, pull out all the stops to move out. As soon as possible. Otherwise, it will only keep dragging you down. As you’ve alluded to, despite all the shit happening today, there’s still a brighter world out there than what you’re experiencing with your family. It will be worth it, I promise.
Being closer to the city will definitely help
Find people who value your expression. People like you. People who love people like you.
Real talk, no one out in public cares what you do or how you act until you inconvenience them. If you mind your manners, you’re just an NPC to everyone else. You’re an adult now in an adult world where everyone else has their own stuff going on. Can you remember the personality of the 2nd to last random person that held a door open for you?
Our insignificance gives you permission to be who you want to be and the freedom to do whatever you want. No one thinks more about you than you do. Your experience with your family left a strong impression on you about the world you’re in, but that’s their experiences not yours. It’s now your time to have your own & build a worldview on your terms as you. No one has the authority to tell you to act a certain way. You are who you are & everyone else will have to just deal with it if they have a problem. It sounds like the only person attacking you right now is you.
Learn how to make small talk. Read How to Win Friends & Influence People and pick out the tricks you think would work.
Real talk, no one out in public cares what you do or how you act until you inconvenience them. If you mind your manners, you’re just an NPC to everyone else.
True until you’re visibly disabled. People can’t handle being reminded life isn’t fair, and they take it out on you.
