[monadgonad]

> If you there is a community of nonbinary/gender nonconforming/genderqueer organizers near you, that can be a good place to start looking.

I think this is completely the wrong advice for who you're talking to. From the sounds of it he's complely, unquestionably a man who wants to present as completely, unquestionably a man too, but doesn't for whatever reasons.

It seems like you're saying "yeah you're a girly man, that's what you are now, better learn to embrace it" rather than "learn to express yourself how you want".

[metamicah]

> It seems like you're saying "yeah you're a girly man, that's what you are now, better learn to embrace it" rather than "learn to express yourself how you want".

It's true, I am saying that. I think the root problem is how the parent comment author is being treated, rather than how he is acting, since his main motivation for changing how he acts is to be treated differently.

He's free to reject my advice, but I know that when I was a younger person going through the same thing, it was exactly this advice that helped me survive after many years of only being ineffectively told that I needed to "man up."

[monadgonad]

Same, to some extent. It helped that I have a lot of queer friends and did when I was a teenager too. Some things I don't like about my expression but can't (easily) change, I've learnt to accept. Qualities which I once thought of as feminine, such as emotional expressiveness, I now see as gender-neutral and they fit a lot more comfortably into my masculinity... but I have also cultivated a lot of traits that are seen as traditionally masculine as I've grown into my 20s.

I did "man up", just in a very positive way aided by having a lot of female and queer friends, rather than the regressive 4chan way I was told to when I was a teenager. Your comment read not as encouraging that, but as, "you might as well accept your fate now and start wearing a dress."