On Masculinity

Monday April 6, 2026 — Lausanne

I’m a guy, unfortunately. That is my experience and I will be writing from that point of view. I don’t think I’m the most masculine man thankfully but I still feel part of my sex. Before speaking on the topic, I think it important to tell a bit about myself. to understand where I’m coming from.

I’ve grown up in a very open family, I wasn’t pressured to be tough and stoic but at the same time I almost never saw my dad cry. Everything was always surface level banter. With my friends, it was the usual guys friend group. Jokes, sarcasm and making fun of each other. I didn’t fight back as much so I got picked on the most. Then one day, the friend group told me they had never liked me and I was left alone. Moving up a class, we got to change schools so I had the chance to start anew. It got better and I met new friends but being the cliche basic “nice“ boy, I was anxious, insecure and desperate for approval. This all culminated in me being depressed. From my social relationships and other piled up things. I think what made it worse is that I didn’t allow myself to speak about it. Saying it made it real, and everyone around me seemed to be living fine, why couldn’t I? It all got too much till one day my mom discovered me crying. She had a suspicion I wasn’t doing well but now she decided that if I wasn’t going to say what was going through my head, then hopefully a therapist will get it out of me.

Therapy was a god-send. At first, it was the most terrifying experience. Half an hour before my appointment I would already be in front of the building shaking. I would sit in the tiny courtyard and look over my prepared notes in case I would be saying anything “wrong”. He told me with a laugh I was a hard one to pry open. Half the conversations were me asking questions like : Do I make you worry when you don’t see me? Am I a waste of time? Should I be doing better? Like an anxious partner asking for approval. I don’t think I resolved much in those sessions but one thing I did learn was talking about myself. That it was okay to be hurting and I shouldn’t be bottling it up.

When I finished school, with it ended my therapy sessions. I had nothing planned. Hadn’t signed up to university, hadn’t planned any trips, hadn’t looked for any jobs. I knew I needed a gap year and told my parents to kick me out f the house if I spent more than a month doing nothing. It was going to be a year of self-improvement. I ended up doing many different thing in what ended up being two gap years. I worked on Christmas markets, I spent a year in the army, I became a bartender in London, Traveled to Thailand and spent 3 months as a volunteer in the Philippines. Every time I was surrounded by new and unknown people. Mean people, nice people, interesting and boring people. People I hated and people I loved. Most of them older than me. It’s such a stereotype but those gap years changed me profoundly. I found myself. Being surrounded by new people each time meant that I could reinvent myself without anything holding me back, no reputation to uphold. Every new circle I found myself in meant that I had to introduce myself. It was terrifying and exciting. Most of them being older meant that I got to learn so much right at the start of my “adult“ life. I got to experiment and make mistakes that I wouldn’t have allowed myself to make in “real“ life. Each of those travels had a deadline where I would leave so I didn’t have much to lose.

Then I started university. Having experienced all that freedom, coming back to a structured schedule was nice. I could now predict what I was going to do in the coming months. I also had learned that I didn’t have to be friends with everyone. I could choose the people I wanted to call my friends. At welcoming parties I also had an easy time talking, I could bombard people with my amazing time in Thailand, like a million backpackers before me. I got to meet and become friends with the people I now see everyday. I’ll summarize it by saying that I now feel very much at where I want to be. I’m still anxious in some ways, I still have a bunch of things to learn. I’m still emotionally constipated and have a hard time trusting anyone but it doesn’t feel like I’m in a hole anymore.

Now I’m done with my introduction, let’s talk about men. It feels very appropriate that as a man myself, I just spent a couple hundred words talking about myself before getting to the point. I want to first talk about how boys grow up. As boys, you are not taught and not at all encouraged to equip yourself with any sort of emotional maturity. Talking about difficult topics, asking your friends for help, asking your friend if he’s doing all right and discussing your insecurities is not at all on the table. Every time anyone tries, it’s met with laughter, mockery or comments. Boys don’t cry, boys don’t act like “girls“. This goes on at least until the end of puberty and for some their whole lives. Being vulnerable and voicing my feelings did not feel natural and still doesn’t. I don’t blame anyone in particular. The parents are busy enough, norms get passed down. Now, in my daily life, I still have a hard time hanging out with straight men. I rarely can tell how they feel. Does he want to see me again? What does he do in his free time? Does he think about the crushing weight of reality as much as I do? Does He want to talk about it? This coupled to the fact that I do not feel “manly“ enough myself, which makes me feel insecure in the presence of any conventional man, results in me mostly having girl friends or queer friends. Secondly, surrounding myself with women and queers is just easier. Talking about my quirks is met with enthusiasm, I rarely feel judged and I don’t have to initiate hangouts all the time. Emotionally, I feel more understood and talking about my struggles doesn’t feel as daunting. Might this be internalized sexism towards men? Probably, and I have met men that I feel very comfortable with but it is rare. I never know what to expect with men so I don’t find myself investing a lot of time befriending them. Gender norms and the way boys and girls grow up have made it so that I expect a man to be nonchalant and emotionally unequipped, and a woman to be understanding and friendly.

The conversations happening around men these days puts me at an interesting position. I try to be aware my privileges, I try to apologize and make up for how my sex has treated everyone else for the past million years and I want to learn as much as possible how to be a better man for the generations to come. Today in the world and from what I see on social media, I feel like a lot of men are trying to be better like me. However, with the men that try to make up for the past, there is a huge movement that swings back. A very loud portion of men, who probably grew up insecure and anxious like me, turn those feelings into hatred and arrogance. Loneliness makes them barricade themselves behind excuses and destructive beliefs that are very hard to empathize with. In an age of polarization, the manosphere is reinforcing the very things that I’ve tried to fix in myself. I hate them for targeting young boys and using the very insecurities I’ve struggled with against them.

At the same time, I’ve noticed that “being one of the good ones“ (a running joke within my friends) comes with it’s own quirks. The last “performative male“ trend is a symptom of that. The men that try to be better, that get in touch with their feminine side, get labeled as gay passing, performative or straight up queer. Every time I do something “right“, it’s not because of me being myself, it’s me being gay or feminine. It makes sense that masculinity nowadays is associated with so much negativity that whenever a man does anything right, we associate it with anything else. In my experience, it does feel a little invalidating though. It almost feels like I’m not allowed to claim the progress I’ve made as a man. Of course, it is only natural that these generalizations and twists of terms are used the way they are. In conversations as broad as masculinity, it is natural to divide things between the evil masculinity on one side and everything else on the other. It is the same reason we now can say just Men and most people can already picture what men we are talking about. Not all men, but somehow always a man. Such conventions in conversation are normal. However, I wonder if long-term those conventions will only reinforce gender norms. The fact that masculinity continues to be associated with low emotional maturity, arrogance and ego and any progress is associated to femininity or being queer feels like it’s not breaking any walls.

An interesting conversation we had in the car with my friends was in reacting to Chanté Joseph’s article about “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?“. Being associated with a man is now embarrassing. It’s funny how the tables are turned. However, it almost seems like being associated with a man is embarrassing not because of the man, but because men just aren’t trending right now. Nowadays, being a woman and queer goes more viral. On one side, most will say “finally, men have had the spotlight for fucking forever“. Also, being trendy doesn’t resolve the structural issues still very much present in the world. However, it does make me feel like blaming men, talking about gender issues and pointing out what is bad about men and good about women is only done in search of attention. All for the eternal search for clicks and comments. Saying the most black and white generalization not to put a finger on the issue but to be a part of the ones in the “know“. So many conversations on the topic, including mine, almost feel obvious and are only said for approval. Is that a good thing? Is it really that destructive? I do not know. I do feel like it joins the whole “performative“ trend. That there is a lack of trust of genuine change and a feeling that people only act that way to weasel their way into someone’s life. I’m getting lost in the sauce a bit, but I do feel like social media has made us say things and act in ways not because it is the right thing to do but because that is what the algorithm is showing us to be the “right“ way to think. It is the same reason that insecure teen men spew the same sexist shit because that is what their circle seems to show like the “right“ way to think.

Therapy, my gap years and now my predominately female and queer entourage have given me a lot of tools that made me the man I am today. I didn’t become myself by hearing people pick at my gender because I like to think that I’m more than that. I am who I am because as a person I learned from others. Not by being in my box and trying to be in another, not by labeling myself and trying to get rid of some of them. Everyday I just try to learn things to be a better person, not just a better man.