I (22M, American) was raised by a conservative family and taught traditional gender roles. I was told multiple times that that "gay" men (men who didn't conform to traditional masculine gender expression) were ruining society and literally deserved to die, and that people out in the real world do the dirty work of disposing of them through stochastic violence.
Unfortunately, I turned out almost exactly how I wasn't supposed to. I wanted to embody a cute and delicate masculinity, my true personality was caring, affectionate, and emotional, and I loved cute and pretty things. Ironically, I was so in love with feminine energy that I developed an emotionally intense heterosexual attraction to women, though in a way that was nothing like the typical straight model.
Long story short, I faced an entire childhood of ridicule and isolation and eventually developed an autoimmune disease with disabilities as a souvenir. I wanted to take my own life, but the Internet existed, so I numbed myself with endless slop content instead.
The progressive side of the Internet taught me that there are a lot of ways of being beyond the "conform or fucking die" model I was raised with. I learned that a minority of women actually could be attracted to me despite my utter disregard for the manliness rules, something I was blackpilled on before.
But I am still too scared to leave home. It is hard to motivate myself to do anything because the source of my fulfillment is to make people happy, but I can't meet anyone because I'm frozen in fear. I still feel like everyone will hate me for being too feminine, and that the occasional stray vigilante will try to put a bullet in me. Even if I could defend myself, it feels too risky: I have to win every single time, while they only have to win once. On top of that, I am now visibly disabled, so I have to deal with ableism on top of everything else.
I can't function this way. I'm not motivated to take care of myself or put effort into online college because I see no point to life if I can't be social and authentic IRL. I literally just want to make people smile and feel cared for, but it feels like I'm too alien for people outside of a progressive echo chamber to accept me, and life will be full of constant gender policing, harassment, and threats of violence (especially because this is the U.S. we're talking about). The most productive day of my life happened when I thought for a moment that I had a chance, but I fell back into my old habits once I started having doubts again.
It could be worth noting that I live in central Ohio, somewhat close to the city, so it's not like I live in the middle of a rural hellscape. I also saw a non-binary androgynous person working at a clinic the other day, which seems like a good sign? I went to school in a more rural area, but of all of the people who seemed to like me, most of them were closer to the city.
If you have faced a similar situation, how did you make it through?
We're similar in personality/sexuality and the hostile environment we grew up and live in, but diverge with health, age (I'm 35), and how we dealt with or reacted to said environment. Masking is what I did and still do depending who I'm dealing with. I noticed growing up that so long as I put in just bare minimal effort, and I mean barely even tried to pretend and play along, people wouldn't dig any deeper.
Most humans are entirely incurious and intellectually lazy as fuck following their shallow life scripts, so if I didn't stir the pot their delusions weren't disillusioned and they'd leave me alone. My mother co-founded a Baptist church for example and I just barely played my part despite never at any point believing in a god. Yet nobody ever called me out on it because I went through the motions every Sunday. I didn't sing and regularly stared at the ceiling yet because I showed up and didn't outwardly resent my parents being outwardly an obedient child towing the line, nobody cared. Not even suspicious, they were friendly with me instead. They wanted conformity so badly that they were willfully blinded by the thin act. That extended to all areas of my life even in grade school where many children are vicious cunts. To this day nobody has ever attacked my mask. They don't see it.
I slowly built a friend group of liked minded people and I guess got lucky with the lack of betrayal? Or not, I seem to be skilled at vetting people before deciding to take the mask off or not.
I want to say I think you're right in that your fear response is unreasonably high and it is hindering you. I don't know how much harder masking is when disabled though :( I don't know how externally obvious it is to others in your case. I'm sorry I have no advice for that wrench in the gears of life. Conservatives truly would prefer you to die unaided in the streets even if they usually won't say it that directly in polite company.
I will say this still stunted me sexually, it took until my mid 20's before I found a woman worth revealing my true self to and I was initially insecure about lack of experience but she didn't care about that so it was easy to overcome once I had a chance to. To let those hyper vigilant guards down for romance is sadly still a great effort and slow to trust process for me. It's on another level to get romantically involved. A cold start date at a restaurant a non-starter for me, aleays ends in uncomfortable disaster. It's my localized bubbles of friendly environment in this shithole hostile province that freed me really. During post-secondary I rented a house with my closest friends and the house became the defacto party house with all our like minded friend groups converging and our friend's friends etc. That really fast tracked my socialization.
My friends and lovers now in my 30's after my partying days are long in the rearview mirror I meet through volunteer work and dance classes. I love to dance and there's always way more women then men who show up to such things. The other men who do show up are obviously more likely to be like-minded. Go to places where the helpers and/or expressive peoples congregate is my advice. I wager being around people like this will build up your confidence and subsequently alleviate some fear.
Working towards moving away to better places when you can is another potential option. I didn't myself, couldn't seem to bring myself leave everyone I already knew behind personally.
Hopefully something I said is helpful to combat your fear, but if not I wish you all the luck, OP.