Thread by @dring_harry, Well. 4pm? Must be time to write briefly about my own experiences [...]

Well.
4pm? Must be time to write briefly about my own experiences of gendered norms! Oh boy.

Tune on in twitter because this is a 1st!

We start with a question as we always must: Who is this adorable little floppy haired teenager?

#DayForGNC
#ToxicMasculinity
(1/13)

Oh thats right thats 17yr old me! What a little sweetie, hi Me from 2002, hows things? Actually, don't answer that. I remember. And i´m gonna tell these people some of it.

So i found life a bit bloody odd between 12 and 20. Secondary school was bruising and came with/ (2/13)

/a lot of bullying. The pecking order was palpable and i was at the bottom of it! Not that you´d ever actually *say* so of course. Thinking back on it now i wonder if many of the other boys also thought they occupied that spot? Who knows! (3/13)

I remember experiencing the faux alpha male boasting of my "peers" as not very pleasant at all. Not yet able to handle themselves, and without decent role models or supervision we made hell for the girls.

A huge part of this was the simple and oh so tedious over/ (4/13)

/expression of heterosexual attraction. The only acceptable way to feel was horny. The only acceptable way to describe women was with regards to their "fuckability", fitness, the size of their tits or something else equally laddish.

Failure to engage with this bollocks/ (5/13)

/would have you called gay. It was clear to all that that was not a good thing.

So I didn't like any of this. At all. I can´t really explain it other than i felt something to be deeply wrong with this cruel rendering of "sexuality". At the same time trying to connect/ (6/13)

/with my own confused adolescent coming of age feelings was complicated by quite a bit of experimenting with drugs and booze.

So not yet having developed the strength of character to call the world wrong, i thought perhaps i was different?

(7/13)

I wondered if i was gay, and searched my feelings for that but came back with nothing.

So obviously... i did what any nervous, unsure, geeky and kinda introverted 17yr old would do, and found my way onto an online message board for Asexuals.
(8/13)

Cue three years (17 to 20....ish) of identifying as asexual (...ish). I hung out on the boards and read, and smoked a lot of weed, and posted things like this...
(I ask your forgiveness re the 2nd paragraph, I was a wee thing!)
(9/13)

There were some unfortunate and rather cringy sexual experiences, i´d come to think of sex as something like a drug that i ought to try and might be able to get a taste for with practice.

Eventually, some stress later, all became clear when i fell for my first love. (10/13)

This... dates from around that period i think! Full disclosure, this experience may well have involved a certain amount of MDMA, but hey, i was figuring it all out!

(11/13)

This... dates from around that period i think! Full disclosure, this experience may well have involved a certain amount of MDMA, but hey, i was figuring it all out! (11/13)

So as a very late bloomer i wish i could give younger me all this advice:
* Its ok not to know.
* It might be a "world" problem not a "me" problem.
* When you´re ready, you´ll know.
* Its not a competition.
* We can be wrong about who we are.
* Relax! There´s time!
(12/13)

Yay! You made it to the end. 2002 me and 2020 me both thank you kindly.

Note: For me, identifying as asexual was a phase. I´m not saying that means its not a real thing for other people. YMMV.

#DayForGNC
#ToxicMasculinity
(13/13)

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