This is my problem when I was a teenager because I wouldn't turn the lies any negative feedback anybody gave me but it was only till later that I realized that was wrong because... Well people can be wrong.

This is the same reason why I don't believe in first impressions because on paper or first impression is going to be someone putting on their best. Or at least what they believe to be their best or at least to be perceived as their best which not authentic.

A lot of our socializing is just this. It's putting on the performance especially for men

I have a male friend who is straight up a gigolo who takes women out and gets paid for money and he even says that he has to literally put on an act

As a man who has done this in the past and can be successful at it I absolutely hate it because it's not genuine. It's easy to call someone but we can subjective especially when you hear someone's life story

Men are still expected to be traditional 1950s men and that slowly dying but nowhere near fast enough like it did for women. The greatest failure feminism is that it did not free of gender roles for men at all.

But both men and women are raised up to believe certain things about men and if a man isn't acting like XYZ he gets socially penalized

Both men and women do this and the most progressive of men and women even do this. I've gotten really good at spotting it because it comes out in certain phrases and behaviors but I have even had some of the greatest female friends of mine who are also feminist say or do something that contradicts their beliefs

I think a lot of people also forget that a lot of things that men do are looked at as horrible but if a woman does the same thing it's looked at as normal or it's waved away which kind of makes a lot of the things we consider bad behavior a little obsolete.

I was on a date recently and it dawned on me just how different the contrast is on how both men and women can act. I've been called a weirdo before and your toe constantly that girls don't like weirdos and obviously that's not true because it depends on your definition of weirdo but this day really did open my eyes even more to this type of double standard.

I go out on my date and my date is very attractive as she is a model. But because of that fact she can get away with being a complete weirdo XD. And even then after meeting here I still don't view her as weird but I imagine if she was a dude and had the same personality she probably would be clowned on and probably still be single

Like we're driving through the city out near the country and she's giving me an entire lecture on astrology and how clouds and stars work.

I didn't ask for it and I imagine if the gender for swapped a girl will probably be turned off or think a guy is weird if he started talking about stars and space out of nowhere.

But because she's an attractive woman she can get away with things that would be considered unattractive in men

Now maybe it's due to my upbringing and how empathetic I am because I can hang out with pretty much any group of people but having this drink also allows me to see just what the contrast is when it comes to different social groups

There's certain friends I can bring around certain girls because these girls will think they are weird or unmanly. And it doesn't matter how much I've been my friends because that girl will already have that view of them.

But once again I find it all crazy how we have crazy joking shove each other because as I get older and meet more people I find it everyone has their own version of weird or crazy

I'm going over a friend's house tonight and he watches a lot of Fox News. It's very biased but not all the time and as a politically open-minded black person I can deal with that and still enjoy myself. But if I was another black person who didn't find that thing funny or entertaining I could see them being turned off by it.

I have another friend who gets constantly flustered even though she isn't doing anything wrong and I can do with it but I can understand if someone else would think she's too much

At the same time the humanist and me really wants to bring this message forward because worrying about how you look and if you're being weird or not gets exhausting and it also gets crazy because almost everybody is insecure or weird in their own way. And is tragic how we judge each other so harshly based off things we have in ourselves as well

I think most advice is useless but something that did really help me was really nail into my own head that's girls were just as insecure and weird as I was but they get a pass because they're girls

After internalizing that fact the rest of high school and college became much better

Trying to navigate the dating world with this understanding is a little bit harder because of the aforementioned double standard. As a man I can take it but it does get a little old and a little disingenuous when so many girls reject you based off of the same things they honestly have with themselves.

Like a girl recently tried to shame me for working a $10 an hour job yet this girl gets child support money and only works two days out of the week. because I'm a man she can shame me for my job because I'm so expected to be a provider but this girl can literally work a dead end job and walk out in the world without fear of being judged for it because she's a girl and a single mother who already gets money so society won't play that judgment on her.