The Quiet Violence of Being "Too Sensitive" as a Gay Man

How Queer Sensitivity Becomes a Superpower—After Surviving Masculinity

I was called "too sensitive" before anyone dared call me gay.

The playground verdict came down long before I understood what made me different. A confusing contradiction lived in my chest: being told I felt too much while simultaneously being forbidden from feeling at all. "Boys don't cry," they'd say, right after mocking me for flinching at their casual cruelty.

My crime wasn't sensitivity itself. It was being male and sensitive in a world that found the combination intolerable.

The Invisible Tax on Queer Existence

I developed a preternatural ability to read rooms by age seven. I could detect the slightest shift in a parent's voice, the almost imperceptible narrowing of eyes when my enthusiasm became "too much," the subtle repositioning of bodies when my gestures flowed too freely. This wasn't a gift. It was survival.

My nervous system cataloged dangers my conscious mind couldn't yet name. While other boys lived comfortably in their bodies, I observed mine from a distance—monitoring, adju…