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A year into our relationship, my boyfriend confided in me about his desire to wear clothes traditionally associated with women, such as a dress. After trying it out, he looked at me with visible anxiety, fearing that I might stop liking him because his behaviour didn’t align with conventional notions of masculinity. The fear lingered, and made me deeply reflect on the powerful influence of societal gender norms on mental health.
Just as my boyfriend felt anxious about displaying gender non-conformity, research has shown that people who view themselves as gender non-conforming have worse psychological adjustment and lower levels of mental health than their peers do (Egan & Perry, 2001; Perry et al., 2019). Those who…