Boys.

I don't think I have any particularly "masculine" friends. I never have. Or, at least, I've never had a male friend who doesn't defy some sort of gender norm. I imagine I wouldn't get on very well with a man who felt he had to cling desperately onto his masculinity. I'd feel too sorry for him.

It's funny though, despite their brilliance, my most sensitive male friends are still sheepish. There's the self-consciousness of having mostly female friends, or of enjoying "feminine" things, conversations, feelings. I don't think they're ashamed as such, just aware that they are on the outside of a very small box.

I don't think femininity is as emotionally and mentally harmful as masculinity. Not in the way that these opposites are drummed into boys and girls. It scares me, really terrifies me, to think that boys are still taught to suppress feelings, to not cry, to keep things on the inside. As a great believer in the power of crying, of the release it can bring, I can't bear to imagine what it must feel like for a man who must not cry.

I'm not sure how to go about it. How to go about encouraging my male friends, encouraging any identifying male that I know, to carry on being human rather than masculine. I want to make sure that they bring boys into the world who are not afraid of crying, of expressing, of being. I always find it funny, funny sad, that to be a man is to suppress feeling, and therefore to suppress being.

I want to always make sure that my friends who are guys know that they can be entirely expressive in my presence. They can always cry, they can always talk. They can always just be.