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Notes -
My own two cents:
I, like very many gay men, went through a period of expressed gender nonconforming behavior in childhood. I don't remember that clearly, but this may have included identifying with female characters, playing with clothes and 'girl toys', and at one point even asking people to call me by a girl's name (though I don't remember this my brother told me I did this a few times). All of which I had grown out of even by the age of 8 or 9. I wouldn't say I'm happy today, or that I've ever been meaningfully happy, but I don't really experience any gender dysphoria (if anything I would like to be more masculine).
So from my own perspective, the rush to label or corral children as young as five into transition seems totally crazy. And it makes me wonder if five-year old me might not have been led down such a path by an over-enthusiastic adult eager to reward me with attention.
Parents are being scared into doing this. They are being told that if they don't do everything in their power to encourage transition, they could end up with their kid committing suicide or being taken away from them.
Do you recall why you desisted the behavior?
Myself around that age, in the early to mid 80's attempting to imitate something I seen, an animated beaver, held my hands in front to mimic it's teeth. An older cousin asked me why I was holding my hands like a faggot. There was similarly themed teasing whenever he saw me. I eventually desisted, despite support from my mother.
In what dimensions would you like to be more masculine? Are you lifting?
What keeps you from being happy?
I had an unhappy decade ~16 - 26. Some was angst or ennui. Too much alcohol, and confused sexual identity didn't help. Also only child of single functional alcoholic lesbian.
I don't really recall being teased or singled out for 'sissy behavior' beyond the general background radiation of homophobia throughout the 90s and early aughts, and there were times when I took part in it. I guess it might have been social pressure. By the time I was at the age I realized I was gay, me and my peers were mature enough to accept it.
Well, I am pretty masculine already. I work a job that is 99% straight men, and few people realize that I'm gay until I tell them. I lift weights but I'm not terribly accomplished at it - I don't feel like I obviously look like I lift weights. But of course, I do feel like I've missed out on some things - interests in cars and sports and stuff like that. I think nearly all gay men have a bit of a chip on their shoulder about their masculinity - consider all the gay men who have written extensively on the nature of masculinity from all sorts of perspectives, Yukio Mishima, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Jack Donovan. We fetishise masculinity and covet it because we feel excluded from it.
I'm not happy for fairly straightforward reasons. No relationship/family/career/achievements and at 31 little prospect of having any of these things. My own fault, of course, for reasons that go beyond my sexuality, which I've never experienced any kind of confusion or anxiety over.
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Honestly, just making this point in isolation is likely to have much more of an effect than firing a manifesto at the guy.
It gives him an alternative that cannot easily be written off as (well-articulated) bigotry.
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