I work with men in therapy, mostly gay men. It's very common to find two kinds of wounds to a male's natural masculine identity when he feels same-sex attraction and/or exhibits significant gender-deviant behavior. First is the ridicule and exclusion, or worse, suffered in childhood and youth by many boys who grow up gay. A sense that they don't belong to the male gender and are defective. This comes from family and peers, etc. It cuts deep because the very object of your deep desire also represents your failure and rejection. Creates a love-hate dynamic with other men, with self and with the very idea of masculinity and manhood: resentment, defense, devaluing, along with idealizing and (often passive) aggression. You can see this in some of the comments. The other wound is self-inflicted. It comes from taking on the "gay" identity as a rejection of "conventional" masculinity. Having already felt excluded from the circle of men (which is sometimes
a therapist blogs about men and men's souls