Why do I feel pressured to hide parts of myself to be seen as a real man?

Because the systems that teach us about manhood are often built on scarcity—the idea that there's one right way, and anything outside it makes you less. Sor Juana understood this intimately. She was brilliant, she asked uncomfortable questions, she claimed intellectual authority—and people spent her whole life trying to make her smaller because those things didn't fit their idea of what a woman should be. You're experiencing something parallel. When you hide parts of yourself—your gentleness, your curiosity, your fear, your care for other people—you're not protecting your masculinity. You're protecting yourself from judgment. But here's what matters: The people worth keeping in your life will respect you *more* when you're whole, not less. And the permission you're waiting for? You already have it. The pressure you feel isn't coming from your actual self—it's a voice you inherited. You can question it. You can keep what serves you and release what doesn't. That's not weakness. That's exactly what it means to grow into yourself.