Hi! I (23M) am recovering from complex childhood developmental trauma. I've considered myself an outside observer to human society because I was unable to bond with or relate much to other people until this year.
I grew up in an environment with abusive parents where any kind of softness or vulnerability in men was considered "gay". Subsequently, I encountered a lot of male peers in school who had the same attitude. It seemed like the entire world had the same message: wanting to be vulnerable as a man represents a sexual perversion because it is a "feminine" trait. I was bullied for the bits of vulnerability that I showed, echoing my abusive parents punishing my vulnerability. This sent me into a suicidal spiral that I thankfully made it out of.
I had this inexplicable desire to be vulnerable that I couldn't suppress. It made me believe that I was somehow "gay" despite only being attracted to women, and that women who like men could never find me attractive because they were only attracted to "straight" masculinity -- invulnerable, competitive, and dominating -- consigning me to a permanent ontological friendzone. Ultimately, I decided to take the Faustian bargain of trading my sexual potential for the freedom to be soft, releasing me from the internal pressure to conform to patriarchy.
(To clarify, I was confused in a specific way where I thought "straight" = patriarchy and "gay" = anything that challenges patriarchy. I concluded that the latter was morally superior and adopted softness and progressive beliefs on purpose even though I falsely believed at the time that this would lead to my celibacy based on the right-wing echo chamber I grew up in.)
Through healing from my trauma and talking to friends years later, I'm starting to think that this belief was kinda bullshit? How can you avoid being vulnerable when merely existing in the presence of your partner opens you up to their potential judgement? How can you avoid being vulnerable when you ask someone out, knowing they can reject you? It's almost like I actually didn't want to be vulnerable despite thinking otherwise, and refusing to even appear in front of people actually made me the most invulnerable and therefore manliest man who ever manned, or something. Also, accepting my fate of being in the perma-friendzone led to me making a female friend who emphatically told me that I actually could find a girlfriend because I have this adorable charm and clumsiness that seems to make her instinctively want to baby me, which I always thought was the exact opposite of desirable. I'm slowly coming around to believing her after 6 years.
Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can't love women, only objectify them? Wouldn't this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude? So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings? If men didn't cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest, shouldn't we see a kind of generational trauma so severe that violent crime is rampant and secure attachment is very scarce?
I think part of the issue is hypermasculinity and the focus on zero weakness is a relatively new thing. I'm not saying the idea that men are tough and that people being ostracized for not fitting the mold is new, but in recent years there is certainly a higher importance placed by conservatives on staying in your lane in political and online discourse that can trap young people into thinking there's no wiggle room. But go back to the years they see as the golden years (good luck getting them to pin that down or why they were golden btw). I don't know. 40s maybe? Nazis love ww2 stuff. Watch movies or listen to songs from then. It's all about how women make men feel light and gay (happy back then). They feel twitterpated. They swoon. Those are all words for feeling soft and fuzzy. Cishet men put themselves out there to women they felt lovey about and got rejected sometimes. The letters they wrote in wars are about how they miss the tenderness of their partners. Relationships are the respite from the horrirs of war. Not the other way around. Modern conservatives are lying that men were pimps and that women are only attracted to power. Some women are, but a good lot of them were probably raised in that mess too and think they have to do it that way.