“I’ve had many clients up and tell me that their friends, their family members, even their partners criticized them or mocked them for recognizing out loud that they were struggling. Of course we’re gonna be scared of being judged or seen as weak if we admit they’re struggling emotionally or mentally, if we know that’s happened before to others or even to us.”
I actually think that we’re all better off without normative gender roles. To that end, I think that any attempt to define an alternative masculinity leaves you with something that is just as restrictive.
What is gender if we don’t have a societal idea of gender? Is it nothing? The existence of trans people suggests that many, probably most of us, have an innate yearning for at least a loose idea of gender identity.
So I’m not necessarily advocating for a world without individual gender expression. The key difference here is external vs internal pressures.