The expectations of society killed the boy child, but the man has the hopeful heart of a newborn.
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Nobody ever told me I was being born into a man’s world. When I was a little child, I only wanted to be … a little child, nothing more. Not a boy, not a man, not a gay, not a priest, not an engineer.
When I was a boy child, I used to suffer for something common in the place I live: adults forcing a child to transform into a man. And there goes a lot of “walk like a man, talk like a man, be a man” thing, until I couldn’t make it anymore, and then there was more.
I couldn’t “just say no” because they forgot to teach me that part, the saying no. Or they forgot on purpose.
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The consequences? Until I was eight or nine, I couldn’t talk to many people, except for very few, and my imaginary friend, who was a girl. Thinking about the speaking difficulty, maybe I am, or I was an Aspie, but I think I’ll never know. In the late seventies and early eighties, in a small town in Southern Brazil, nobody ever heard about it. So I was never diagnosed. Speaking is not a problem anymore, but I prefer ten thousand times to write my words.
Not just in my country, being a Alpha male, a womanizer, is something quite overrated. Here, beer advertisments are on TV and everywhere all the time, showing submissive and half-naked women with worthless fellows without any respect for them. And what we see in advertising is played out on the streets all the time.
Eventually, as a teenager and young man, I played this part too, as they told me to do. I couldn’t “just say no” because they forgot to teach me that part, the saying no. Or they forgot on purpose.
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But I had only “played this part” as an actor. I simply couldn’t do it. My first girlfriend, I was twenty-one years old. First sexual experience, the same age.
Not only that. People of the town where I lived in, they used to press every man to drive and get a car. And I never could drive, even now. One more reason for not being a “man”.
Since then, I haven’t been too afraid or anxious anymore about living in a man’s world.
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As if it was not enough, I’m an introvert feeler according to Carl Jung’s psychological types. Susan Cain once told us: “Introverts living under the extroversion ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are”. That sentence was a revelation to me.
I never knew who I am until I was thirty or so. White man? Yes, but also an afrodescendant one. Straight man? Yes, but also gay friendly. “Normal”? I don’t know. I know I’m not a neurotypical, sure enough.
One day, lately, I decided that minority people were my people. Or I might say: I realized it. Since then, I haven’t been too afraid or anxious anymore about living in a man’s world. Surely I still get stressed by the way things happen and the way people act in this world of ours. But now I have another reason to live, and a very good reason to fight.
Did I say fight? Yes, but not fighting as they told me I must when I was that little child. Unfortunately, that little child was killed by a mean, ugly society. However, another child has born, born to fight with the hurt body and mind of an adult, but also with a hopeful heart of a newborn.
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Photo: Getty Images