So, back when I was "still cis tho", there were a lot of aspects of male gender norms that bothered me deeply and of course I totally understand why now. Even though these days I obviously have a clear reason for feeling that way, I'm still curious if cishet men also have issues with how norms or expectations around gender and sexuality impact them in a negative way.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how those norms impact you, whether good or bad.
Also, I should mention that since this is a bit of a sensitive subject we're talking about here, please be thoughtful and sensitive when discussing with others in this thread. Thanks! <3
EDIT: Much thanks for all the great responses here! I know it's a difficult topic of course, so I appreciate you sharing your thoughts/feelings like this.
Speaking of which... I just looked at /c/menby and some of the posts on the front page there are over 2 years old. I see a lot of the discussion here centered around not being able to share feelings and/or not having the spaces or support to do that in. /c/menby seems like the perfect place for that, just sayin'.
I have always been fairly emotionally intelligent and it’s something that my family and authority figures always tried to beat out of me. As a kid I didn’t hesitate to express my feelings or even cry when sad which apparently meant I was a sissy, the ‘emotional child’, wuss etc etc. I learned to suppress it to avoid the critiques, but as a teenager and young adult rekindled my ability to fully and freely express myself. And my god why is it normalized to try to force men to have no emotion. We’re human beings it’s ok to feel