Author: rickstarrz

Where do I fit in?
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Where do I fit in?

It really is a blessing to be born having siblings. They can be a permanent lifelong friend to a person. Me having an older brother and younger sister growing up, I felt like I always had someone to entertain me whether my siblings liked it or not. I feel like being the second male child in the family, it was expected when I was growing up that my older brother was going to be a role model for me.  As a young child, I had actually developed a mindset where my older brother was supposed to initiate activity and I simply just followed in his footsteps. Living in different neighborhoods as a child growing up, I would rely on my brother to make new friends for me. At first I did not think this was a bad thing. I only cared about meeting people and calling them “friends”. I did not care about what type of person they were. I simply just thought that if a person will like my brother, that they should like me too. I thought that we were brothers and that people identified us as an inseparable pair. However, I was a very quiet and shy kid. And compared to my brother, he is sort of the more masculine type. He was also more sociable than me. He eventually got more involved in participating in more “masculine” hobbies like playing neighborhood football and basketball . I participated in these activities as well for conformity. Wanting to also portray my masculinity so that I could keep up with my brother and the other boys. I had this motive that I wanted people to see me more as just his little brother that follows him around and has no emotions. However, hanging out with him and his friends which I also called my friends, I realized that the masculine displayed by boys in hobbies like football and basketball was struggling to come out of me. I felt like these types of activities were not me at all. This feeling made me feel that my brother and I were different. That those were his friends that enjoyed those types of activities. From this situation, I had this feeling of loneliness because I feel I did not fit in anywhere. I could not really express my true self hanging out with other boys without bring judge about my more feminine nature which caused me to feel more isolated from society and I always struggled to make friends. My only outlet I had when I was growing up was playing video games. I would feel a sense of accomplishment when I were to complete a game or beat up a CPU in a multiplayer game. Video games is an activity that is portrayed as a more masculine hobby. I felt that this was one of the only hobbies that I was decent in to compete with my brother and and with his friends. I realized I could more easily prove myself to others in this hobby. I felt like I can express myself to others and feel more accepted by other boys in society in gaming. Throughout growing up and even today, I feel that playing video games really made me less shy and made connect with more people. For example, during the pandemic, I got involved with Twitch and discord due to the restricted social interaction. I also made tons of online friends that I am got pretty close and I have also hanged out with them in local gaming events. I am a very shy and introverted person in general but I feel like the gaming community is were I can feel a bit more comfortable and find people who are like me. I feel like in today’s society, people like to classify lots of things as either more masculine or more feminine. People should just do the things they love without caring about how “different” they might be and but it can be hard because society is filled with stigmas that can hold people back.

“Homosexuality is a Sin”
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“Homosexuality is a Sin”

Ever since when I was in Kindergarten, I would develop little crushes on boys. I would feel very weird about this feeling because I was a boy myself and I would think that boy who crush on other boys was not normal because the norm was opposite genders were suppose to crush on each other. I knew that I was different in terms of romantic interest when I was a young boy but I had no idea what was the specific term was for my attraction to the same sex and I did not what to identify as. When I was growing up, I had a lot of male friends that I would play with. I would participate in a lot of “male” activities where other boys would like to express their masculinity a lot. They would always tell other boys stuff like “That’s so gay.” or using the F word to call them out on something is not so masculine or weak. When I was little, I did not necessarily know what those terms meant at the time. It was not until people would question my sexuality asking me “Are you gay?” that I kind of interpreted what what my sexuality is and what it meant. I started to get the idea that homosexuality especially in males was looked down upon and not welcomed in society. I also remember one time when I was a pretty young kid, I was over my Uncle house and we had decided to go to church one morning. My Uncle had heard something on the radio while he was driving my siblings and I to church and the topic had something to do with homosexuality. My Uncle turns to us and basically tells that homosexuality is never ok and is not how God wants us to be like. Homosexuality back then was very frowned upon in society and I think sometimes Christianity can portray it as being a big no no which is sad because I am a Christian myself. Also, a lot of kids back in the day in grade school will torment and bully kids if they subjected any feminine traits in boys. I feel like because of this and the fact that homosexuality is not really talked about enough in society, growing up I always thought homosexuality had negative connotation so that’s why I ended being in closet about my sexuality until after High School when I was 18 (I am 23 years old now). One of the main reasons why myself lacked the knowledge other sexuality identities and sexual orientations other then my own is because grade school or society in general never really brought up LGBTQIA+ views at all because of the topic being very sensitive. I feel like it is not until more recently that TV Shows, movies, social media, news, and other sources have expressed and supported LGBTQIA+ more in society. Around the time when I was in High School, I would start to notice other boys who were like me as well girls who identified as Lesbian and transgendered individuals. I would see that some were very open about their sexuality and I started watching a lot coming out videos on YouTube across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Gaining more knowledge of the community encouraged me to finally came out of the closet to my family. I use to think homosexuality was like a crime in society, now seeing different sexual identities and sexual orientations and the support of LGBTQIA+ rights by straight people also, I feel that it is most important that people should be comfortable in their own skin at the end of day and never hide your true self. 

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Fake Smile

In class, we learned about different types of labor and how shapes are body and emotions to helps us navigate the world. Karl Marx makes a good a point about how we are so alienated to in doing labor without realizing we maybe suppressing our emotions just for working and making money. Emotional labor defined by Arlie Hochschild is the management of feelings and expressions to fulfill job requirements of a job. People find a job and work to support themselves financially, even if it means expressing their true emotions. Typically jobs where you interacted with a lot people to fulfill their needs like health care jobs and customer service. Occupations like nursing or caregiving need you to take care of numerous people and cope with sickness or death on a regular basis while maintaining your calm. These jobs also require you to be sensitive and pleasant to many clients throughout a day even when you are not treated nicely. It might be more difficult to control your own emotions when you are simultaneously struggling with other mental health problems. My current job is considered healthcare and I will say my experience with job has caused me to hide more true emotions quite a lot. I have been working at a Senior Living Home as a Dining Server for about over year now. The challenge of my job is that most residents there have onset dementia like Alzheimer’s Disease. Because of this, those residents can have a hard time remembering things, thinking, and making decisions that can interfere with everyday and can cause them to get easily frustrated or irritated. I have dealt with quite of few residents who get frustrated with me and have food thrown at me because them getting irritated about something. Of course, I have to stay composed because of the sake for the residents comfort and the reputation of the business I work because if I were to lash out I feel like it would show a lack empathy or feelings towards the residents needs. On top of this, residents have other issues like hearing and eye sight problems and have physical limitations. We have to always work around and cater to these things and requires a lot of patience to deal with the residents.

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Men should not act feminine

It is natural that society has expectations on how genders are supposed to act. Based on how the world portrays men and women in the media, women are expected to be seen as more reserved and act more feminine whereas men are seen as more forceful and masculine. These stereotypes are presented all the time in society and these traits in women and men is what most people would expect when meeting a man or woman. Gender Role expectations has become so prevalent in society that men and women who act outside of the norms would be viewed as more inferior and most likely face some sort of oppression. For example, if a man would be seen showing more feminine mannerisms, they are more likely to be seen as more inferior and not as “manly” like. People would also try to associate sexual orientation with masculine and feminine personality traits. If a woman were to be presenting more masculine mannerisms, people would most likely that she would be a lesbian. A couple years ago, I was trying to catch a bus ride home from my community college and I was just sitting down on a bench at the bus station. There was man who walked up to me trying to sell his mixtapes and played some of his music for me. I gave a listen, and we started talking about music and stuff. Later in the conversation, he suddenly stops talking and looks at the way I was sitting on the bench. I had my legs crossed sitting down and I he apparently viewed that as how a women would sit. He then asks me, “Why are you sitting like that?” and he also asks, “Do you really want to have that lifestyle?”. I told that this is just how I sit and he didn’t say anything afterwards. The fact that he had asked me those questions made me feel like I was different and that I should not be sitting the way I was because that’s not how men are supposed to sit. He was making the association of my feminine mannerism and my sexual orientation and make it seem like I’m choosing to have this lifestyle.