Men's Group

I had similar experiences with sports/macho, but from the big/fat man angle. I was beyond lucky that I had the ability to swim through all the playground/bully/sports crap from Junior High through High School. I didn't have to deal with hardly any of it at the college level, or in my working career, but 7-12th grades were a constant fight in terms of peer pressure, and dealing with machismo.

When I hit the 7th grade I was 6'2 and weighed over 230lbs, and I hated P.E., the instructor and kids were constantly pushing me, trying to, honestly...embarrass the shit out of me. In running, or sprinting I had to keep up with the pack, and if I was more than 10 seconds behind, the teacher would make the whole class do the running routine over again, and again. Which in turn would make everyone hate me for being so slow/fat.

It got worse until I came to the understanding that I had to put the hurt on people. What I mean by putting the hurt on people, was putting my best effort into Football(which I do admit, I was okay entering, anything to get out of my house), but I found out because of my size and apparent strength I could bury anyone into the field. When I was a freshman I was 6'3 and 330, and I hit every goddamn fucking guy on our team as hard as I could, like my life depended on it, because I was so sick and tired of being ran down by them and after a month of so of practice the heckling/making fun of me by my male peers ceased. I used very aggressive violence on the field to end my bullying/being run down.

In doing so, I realized that on a personal level I just wanted to be left alone, but because of my size I was constantly put into positions of proving my masculinity, by having guys want to fight me, or try to embarrass me, and I hated being pushed into those situations.

After my freshman year a majority of the bullying/peer pressure I experienced was from the female population of our school, which I don't really understand, other than I think they degraded me to make themselves feel better, or did so to impress their friends.

I didn't know what else to do during my HS years to rid myself of the machismo angle, and my tact with Football worked although I wish there was a different way to deal with it. At my personal core, the need for me to just be left alone is one of the building blocks that define who I am, both in spirit and in body.

I cannot imagine how other men had to deal with it, let alone being smaller, or weaker, or whatever issue they had at the time...I hated every minute of it.