Cishet dudes of Hexbear: Do feel that certain gender or sexuality norms are harmful to you personally? If so, what are they and how would you say they affect you?
Cishet dudes of Hexbear: Do feel that certain gender or sexuality norms are harmful to you personally? If so, what are they and how would you say they affect you?
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'.
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It's probably the 'tism but I never understood gender norms in general. They just seem like arbitrary rulesets with no real point behind what norm gets put into which bucket. Your question is sort of the type of thought that got me to make my post here yesterday about questioning gender.
With that said, I think a major aspect of cishet normativity that I would get dinged for is that I'm extremely emotional. I wear my emotions on my sleeve so to speak. I cry all the time and for random things that often don't even make much sense. I think if I had gone the traditional route for an autism diagnosis, there is a real chance I would have been diagnosed with "highly sensitive person syndrome" or whatever it's called.
That coupled with the fact that I don't really understand "man culture" is probably why I never really had many male friends growing up. And mostly all my firends all suffer from some mental disability anyway so they don't even fit that cishet normative role. But I never really could get into sports or cars or hunting or any of the stuff that men are supposed to do. I guess I did enjoy fishing for what it's worth.
My dad ingraining misogyny in me at a very young age and not realizing it was there until my 20s was a rough awakening and even now, I still catch some remnants of that coming out that I have to check. So that is probably the other big one. I'm still embarrassed about it. I'm not embarrassed about my emotions though. That's something I've accepted and grown to love about myself in a weird way. I have to mask it when I'm around others a lot though.
So that is probably the other big one. I'm still embarrassed about it. I'm not embarrassed about my emotions though. That's something I've accepted and grown to love about myself in a weird way.
That's a massive hurdle you were able to overcome, so congrats on doing that! I still have issues myself with expressing emotions related to depersonalization/derealization stuff, but I'm also working on it and have made huge strides towards fixing it. Also, like you though, I still have to mask most of the time. :/
It's probably the 'tism but I never understood gender norms in general. They just seem like arbitrary rulesets with no real point behind what norm gets put into which bucket.
Idk its the tism or not but 100%. It's so random, there's all these good values floating around that everyone can agree are good, but then for Reasons, certain good values are only for certain genders. Wtf