I know you probably didn’t mean it like this, but I’m one of those people who “realized” I didn’t need to conform to being traditionally masculine, and this is definitely not something the average person can or should do. If you don’t try your best at “being a man,” When you’re younger other men will bully you, most women will either think there’s something wrong with you or not want to talk to you, and your parents will wonder what they’re doing wrong. Even people with super accepting parents end up feeling weirded out by “non manly” people because it’s not the norm. When you get older a lot of these issues get easier because you can choose who you associate with, but I still get people either commenting or treating me worse because I’m not “manly” enough, almost never the opposite.

I have no idea what to do about this, I’m just saying living as a not traditionally “manly” will have the general population treating you worse for your whole life, and you’re either strong enough to deal with that and stick with only the people who don’t care about it, or you go back to being “manly”