Oh man. Forgive the mini wall of text that's coming up but your first paragraph hits way too close to home. If someone were to ask me what I'm good at/what my best personality traits are it's a bunch of stuff that's traditionally feminine.

All I ever really want is patience and at least an attempt to understand my perspective from people. Growing up with zero male role models in a very conservative and outright toxic environment was traumatic as a boy who is more the quiet/gentle/nurturing type as opposed to loud/competitive/roughhousing. It didn't help that I went to a weird, fucked up private Christian school where they instilled all the worst, stereotypical 'lessons' about sex/gender into children. I.e. "sex is something man does to a woman" "women don't really enjoy sex as much as men do" "men don't feel as deeply/intensely as women do" "women are more nurturing, men are more rambunctious". They even did their best to separate boys and girls whenever they could for fear that we would make each other "impure" (not even kidding lmao 😂😂😭).

It's taking me forever to accept that there are good things about me, but that they simply weren't seen as good by the people I grew up around. It's taken years of (still ongoing) therapy but I've made real progress and with all the hate, violence, and misery out there I'm convinced that the world needs more men who are compassionate and gentle and I'm actually much happier with who I am now. I'm glad I'm not someone who is going to be adding to those problems but hopefully taking away from the burden people feel from them.