I had a split family for the middle of my childhood, the age where I really began to question life as is, and thus very different perspectives.

In Both houses I was the eldest son. In my main home with my mother, we didn’t have a father figure in the later years, but she was all hippie dippie and gender roles only came into place in practice when i had to do grunt work or my older sister cleaned up. For the most part we never really had chores, we all severe ADHD and , I’m slightly embarrassed to say this word, trauma. But when shit goes down I’m the one who has go deal with stuff, and in that sense I’m considered masculine as I am seen as expendable. It does hurt when I have gripes with my mother, and only because shes the authority figure and - like most people- is a mixed bag of good and bad qualities, she puts my genuine issues with her in the box of “misogynistic hatred”. So I never had gender roles until it was productive to put at my expense. The other houses was pretty Nuclear, with my father and stepmom, (tho my Father and gender could be a chapter on its own) I was the kid who had to clean up poop and pee and mow the lawn, but respect was always an us and them with the step siblings with us being the underlings. I hated that house and was the middle child, they always had this cast of me being awkward introvert but really I tried to get away from them as much as possible lol. And thus I was sort of taunted for my lack of masculine aggression by my older sisters and stepmom.

I was a very… different child. I was wild, but as caring as I was crazy. The stereotypical spikey hair blonde ADHD boy, didn’t get an official diagnosis til covid as my dad didn’t want a label but im sire everyone knew. I sorta had a group of guy friends around elementary school, but I ended befriending the warrior Cats kids, not really held together by gender as more our autism. That was my main group up till highschool, not much about roles other than my friend making a bunch of incel comments, she later came out as trans so what do you do lol. She’ll come up later if I care to write the sexuality portion ;). I was defacto the only guy in the group but none of them were really gender presenting except for a cis girl. During all of this I was always that kid who would talk to anyone, but once highschool came I drifted from that friend group and into the new uncharted sea of hundreds of people I could meet, I was ecstatic.

I say I would talk to anyone but more and more my friends tended women rather than men, I always felt more comfortable with them, more emotional and mentally stimulating. In the beginning I was always teased by my friends for being their gay best friend or whatever, but as puberty completed during covid I became actually pretty masculine presenting, taller broader suddenly muscular, and became somewhat of a flirt. Never really dated or went on dates but I would dazzle with words so to say. Here I really felt cemented in a masculinity. Though boyfriends certainly weren’t shaking in their boots lol.

I also had to deal with girls, especially when we were younger, saying I was the one good man or something, made me uncomfortable being idealized like that.

Guys never made fun of me or anything strangely, I was very loud and never had that self consciousness in the teenage way. I do have a tendency to get giggly around men, take the role of a SpongeBob, and I find myself complementing guys because it never happens to us and I like giving a genuine compliment. And so I was never really self conscious about bro and dude stuff, but feminity isn’t something I ascribe to or even care about. Infact most of the people in my life who had gender roles on me were cis women but that could also be because most of the people in my life ARE women. I think I’m too extreme of an individual to get your average view point but it’s interesting none the less.

Being a cis boy raised lacking gender roles and having the world defaulting as masculine. I never really HAD to think about presenting my gender, it just was. I knew of those cartoonish Manospheres but they seemed so out of touch ideologically i never really ascribed to it. I knew of gender but I didn’t know them personally. So I don’t really care for the extremes but still sometimes think about feel uncomfortable with the idea of being a woman, but not in the girls have cuties way. Gender expression does make me wonder if young men trying to present masculine is toxic or is it the specific trends of those communities, I’m sure someone much smarter could answer.

I think it’s also interesting too, being raised immersed only in English, gender isn’t really something I think about, and I’m interested to see if dysphoria rates are higher in places where the language has stricter gender grammar.