Hi everyone, I am attracted mainly (if not exclusively) to men. There, I said it. The conclusion most people would take from that statement would be that I'm gay but I've been struggling with that, mainly because I don't want to be gay. Anything else is preferable to life as a homosexual (internalized homophobia, I know. I'm dealing with it.). Anyway, I came out to my friends last week and I'm feeling this dull sense of dread. My entire identity is a farce, or so it feels, and now that I've come out, who knows what else is lurking under the surface? What if I have secretly been wanting to crossdress and have suppressed that? What if I want to do drag? These thoughts terrify me. I just want to be me, but who is me? I think I'm probably male, given my context and my knowledge of myself, but regardless of my insecurities regarding my gender identity I feel so confused about gender expression. There are so many different ways to express yourself as a man and I have no idea which one fits. I feel like the time of pretending is over, and I want to be me now (plus there's this guy... and I want to look my best). But me is uncertain. I feel at my most sexy wearing flannel and jeans. But is that me? I just don't know! And hair, it's ridiculous how much it bothers me, but it does. I have long (very shabby) hair and I want to look attractive. Cutting my hair seems like the best option, but I wonder if that would simply be conforming to social norms and I don't know if that is the right reason. Argh! I'm so confused! Any help would be much appreciated. I feel absolutely insane.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to look good. Wear whatever you feel comfortable in, and cut your hair the way you feel like. It can conform to society's norms, or not. Either way is fine! If wearing a flannel and jeans makes you feel sexy, wear them! If cutting your hair makes you feel sexy, do it! And you know yourself better than anyone. Ask yourself, do you want to crossdress? If the answer is no, you proooooobably don't want to. If the answer is yes, go for it! Wear whatever clothes you want! But it sounds like you only think you want to crossdress because you're gay, and that doesn't make any sense. Sexual orientation and gender identity/expression are two totally unrelated things. A straight man can feel sexy in a dress, and so can a gay man! But a straight woman can feel uncomfortable in a dress, and so can a gay woman. Gay men don't have to be feminine. Gay men don't have to like girly things. Gay men don't have to like women's clothes. They can, but they don't have to. Just be who you want to be. Being gay does not change who you are. You still have the same morals, same personality. YOU ARE THE SAME PERSON YOU WERE BEFORE YOU CAME OUT. All you have to do is be completely honest with yourself about who you are and who you want to be. I think another thing that will help you is thinking of sex and gender as two different things. Sex is your genitals, male, female, or intersex, while gender is how you feel, like a man, a woman, both, neither? Any of those are perfectly fine. Most people, including myself, identify as the same sex that they were born with. For example, I was born a female, and I identify as a girl. I hope this helped, but I think you should probably do a little soul-searching and a LOT of relaxing. There's no reason to stress about little things like this. We are all different, like different thing, and express ourselves in different ways. This doesn't make us any less "normal" (who's really normal, though?) or any less of people. I hope this helped a little.