#by the way I've always thought it was odd that naruto could get drunk I thought he was immune to poison

[naturecalls111]

don't interrupt the kage meeting

[dontstartnoshit]

Huge gender vent below the text.

I feel like I need a really solid group of friends more than I need a relationship, that's definitely something I learned and came to terms with towards the end of last year.

Since I transitioned I feel like I've kinda subconsciously been gravitating toward befriending women, even though there hasn't really been any reason to do this. Since I was a kid I've always had evenly mixed and diverse friend groups, I've never not been thought of as one of the guys, and I'm straight, so it's not like I've ever been overly concerned with how a lot of male spaces don't let you express yourself (debatable) and seek refuge with predominantly female friend groups to cope, or anything. I think the weight of a lot of "lol misandry" posting + this incessant need to prove I was still romantically and sexually viable despite being trans was taking it's toll on me by that time and I just...wanted to be "one of the good ones", I guess, to the point of deprioritizing my own comfort and happiness.

I was reading this study the other day about how women tend to have more in group bias than men. Not all women, and not even all the time, but women more often than not do prioritize female friends and family members over male friends and family, due to how intimidating they think men to be. The women are wonderful effect is a very real thing.

This explained why, for the last few years, I've always felt like second fiddle to my female friends. I've constantly had to prove myself as nonthreatening, if I didn't agree with them about something related to relationships or something it was always "ofc you as a man would say that", I almost never got the benefit of the doubt, I was always on a large scheme to "get" something, their judgment towards me was harsher than it was with their female friends, even if the behaviors of their female friends were just as bad, if not worse than mine, and I always felt I was kept at arms length in a way that the women in their lives weren't. It got to the point were I was deliberately self sabotaging mentally and socially just to cope with the stress and the alienation of it all.

Now. Tbf. The women are wonderful effect has dwindled on me, it's much easier for me now to just accept women are just people and sometimes people suck. And a lot of those girls fucking sucked. I have female friends now who don't act that way and don't think that way, and I appreciate them, but the study and my experiences lead my to feel that I think it would still be healthier for me to make more male friends. Sure, you can do a lot of the stuff you can do with guys with a girl, and genderfluidity is a thing and whatnot, but fundamentally the dynamic is still not the same. There's a camaraderie that just isn't there and a social barrier that follows you in all of those relationships. Even the most "the gender binary is arbitrary feminism is for everyone society is fucked" person will tell you this. Every time my female friends put up their "girls only" signs on their metaphorical clubhouse, it just makes me hyperaware of being the odd one out.

I'm always thinking about that big group of dudes that came into Ishkabibbles in a variety of Hardcore and Metal hoodies and how I wish I could have had a crew like that. Once I was out with a friend and this drunk guy came up on his skateboard and was just yapping away to us without a care in the world at like 2 in the morning. Sometimes I think about my childhood friend Michael and how we would pretend to be Naruto and Sasuke on the playground and how exciting and validating those times were.

That's kinda what I need, more dudebro guy activities with other guys, that sense of camaraderie where I can be unapologetically myself and vent freely and we can just do whatever the fuck without thinking too hard about what other people think. I haven't had that sort of thing since high school (since my fishmonger gig, if we're really stretching it) and I think it's a big part of the reason I'm so lost and miserable now.