Dearests,

For this coming month of January 2026, I will be posting one article each day about whichever topic comes to mind for Dearest Goodlove, and the magazine THE 572 MAG.

Since the creation of DG, I feel deeply linked to it, as its author, as per the numerous experiences that shaped my existence, are currently shaping the brand to showcase more about myself.

Few months ago, during the evening of writing the About page of the Mag, I had to quickly pause on my tracks. Discovering the death of Jane Goodall left me shocked, I was such a big fan of her work, her efforts, her interpretation about the animal world. I feel so grateful that she lived among us. She’s what Jane Fonda is to Hollywood and to us. Besides the world, she will be greatly missed in her industry, for animal research, and for chimpanzees.

I would love to share more of her work on JLAG (Tag: Jardin des Lagunes), since it is the haven for animal and environmental discourse. In this space, I would share the result from my vegan path, including the Plant-Based diet. I know that I must share and express my gratitude, even if it comes from me. She represents morality, a kind-oriented animal research approach, curiosity and resilience for each environment she travelled to. Initially, her career beginnings weren’t in the jungle. It shows how great of an impact you can make, no matter the surrounding you find yourself in. In her case: a secretary role position in the UK. 

Today, I learned the death of another icon, a French actress by the signature of B.B., which is such a horrible news for the animals living conditions, precisely in France.  

While I am a perfectionist, and constantly restructure Dearest Goodlove so that you have an ease of reading, thanks to my cluttered mind, I will keep nonetheless in mind a double article regarding these two legends, stay attuned for JLAG.

Changing the cadence, here is where our conversation to a more intimate story about my personal experience shifts. This article is relating the personal story and its societal implications, from a gay “man” or feminine person that, I, am. 

We regularly love to voice our great disappointment on homophobic (incl. mysoginistic and transphobic) people, mainly men. 

May I suggest conveying our energy a bit less broad on men, to this time, encompass the lack of support, from supposedly “allies” (straight women)? 

As a reminder, it comes from a place of awareness: the privilege of having legislations that protect the integrity of anybody that identifies with the sexual orientation and/or gender expression that are not reflected in a heteronormative lens. 

Also, it does not pertain to demean, nor diminish real allies, whether it be men, women, enbies. We separate women, men and their less progressive counterparts, when it was deemed as necessary. The goal is to magnify few known issues to then suggesting advice for repair. Naturally, we are not psychologist, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Finding that many women protected, defended, and benefitted from industries, companies, and various dynamics all around the world, that actively restraint femininity or fluidity in unconventional form (that is a masculine woman, a feminine man, a transgender person, a two-spirited, or non-binary individual), leaves me disappointed, but not shocked. 

They value the system that actively seeks them for their bodies. Leaving them without self-agency in an authoritarian state. Which is why many of them resort to marrying close-minded husbands or partners, that benefits from their unpaid labor, whether it be house chords, or birthing mini future soldiers of the state, that is childcare.

Since secondary school, as a young boy, my friends were mainly girls of my age and older. I always have found a safe space with them, in which we could just be our normal selves with no or less judgment (in comparison to most boys), and we could develop our craft together. I recall few events about us crafting magic.

More than a decade ago, I was wearing for the very first-time makeup for Halloween. I decided to try some eyeshadow from my mom vanity bag. Left outside to the grocery store in my town and there they were, my “big sisters” from school. They took me under their wings since they were the oldest, the sweetest trio. They absolutely adored my look. I felt confident, valued, and pretty in my own way. They also loved my taste test concoction videos online. They were my very first fans.  As I grew up, I never felt that wearing makeup was a cage, and I am lucky for that perspective. 

For me, makeup will always be part of who I want to be. To this day it is as if gliding the potions on my face to complete my transformation. I am breathing anew.

Of course, stigmatization exist on non-women makeup wearers. Sometimes, I wish I could properly understand as to why women solely hold the beauty monopoly. Why it is expected from them to perform their gender, but not men, or unlabeled people. 

Why men must retain a gender appropriate black-grey-white-beige color rotation for clothes, but women don’t have to stay trapped in that limited color panel.

Well, I also don’t believe most of us should really listen to biased media. 
You don’t need to hide your sagging and aging skin, eat 3 Kcal per week to feel pretty. Grandmothers certainly don’t feel shame for living, and neither should we, or you. 

If you want to limit yourself to demeaning beauty standards, wherever you are (unless unsafe) then that is your choice. I don’t conscribe to that. Should I be punished for having style?

I remember reading about the opulence from monarchies, and how both men and women were in full glam all the time. 

Wearing high heels, intricate garments, wigs, makeup; those were few of the signs of wealth from queens, and kings.
After that famous revolution in France, wearing delicacy was code for wealth that most proletaries would be furious about. Kings had to back off from it more than anybody else to be more appropriate and less showy as the workers class is. 

Only women have retained that form of art for themselves. Which is why most men you see today are the carbon copies of each other. While for various reasons, they are still not allowed to showcase their personality ever since that class consciousness awakening.

Well anyway. During those long summer school holidays, my friend and I we would regularly see each other to bake recipes for our blog. She was such a comforting person to me. We would revisit old well-known recipes to add our je-ne-sais-quoi to our pastries, cookies, muffins, hot cocoa and many more. I first learned warmth from recipes that had become ours.

Another old friend of mine would paint my face as if I was her muse or the canvas for her creativity. She would be inspired by French content creators Halloween makeup videos. It would happen after the end of our school day, using tissues, liquid latex, fake blood, her recording camera, and a dream that we both secretly shared: to become exactly like these content creators. We wanted to create our own channel. To be our own people. 

FX makeup looked good on me, especially with good skin. If well taken care of. 
Oh, I wish I was allowed a skincare regimen back then.

She was a very aesthetically driven person. She knew about Fluff marshmallow, the Arizona tea, the Tumblr of it all, before most. One time, she insisted for me to watch the season of American Horror Story at the Hôtel. 
I never really recovered from that. One episode was enough for me to get scarred.

I always valued the opinion from women around me. I generally relate to them. If I might not, being a part of the conversation when they invited me in was just so lovely to me.

However, school was not where I felt the safest. Where would I feel safe really? 

I was very thankful that anyone would want to befriend me. 

No matter how different students feel towards each other.  In those instances, I felt valued, maybe not always understood, just generally content.

Let’s say even if one is different from you, you could certainly find a common ground with them. View what unite you with them, and not what contributes to more separation.

I don’t drink, so I experience the world in a sober (sadder?) way: no matter what I do, or don’t do, there are consequences to every action I co-create. 

Writing endless amounts of quotes on sticky notes, from these thoughts that come to me, I have found great difficulty connecting them all together.  

But one note was a bit more rigid, or sad, than the other. 

“Why do women always get the best of men, and we grow with their hatred instead?”

I am not talking about specific situations of domestic violence, and forms of narcissistic abusive tactics or dynamics. It is what look like truth on paper, but the practicality of it remains uncertain. 

However, I choose to delve into that phrase as something that can grow leaves from it, like a seed of a tree. Trust the process if not, take a mood stabilizer for this one!

Many people have experienced abuse from “straight” men. 
Men and women can both get abusive, if they don’t treat their unhealed wounds from old subconscious beliefs and from peer pressure.

This is from my point of view, my younger memories as testament. 

When growing up as boy, you will learn to share many interests as with other boys.
Me, I was leaning a bit towards fairies, dolls, and such, but I could still play with other boys using my goys and them with theirs.

They are so many outdated rules that boys must learn, such as:
You cannot beat a girl, because she is “weaker” even if she beats you.
You must be strong, play in video games, in soccer, play with cars or dinosaurs, with military army toys, and you are always perceived as a king.

Since it was an heteronormative era (still is), when we would play at this chasing game during break, I was so envious of the girls getting chased by boys and I wasn’t. 
I could not pinpoint reasons why boys did not care about chasing me, and what they saw in the girls that they didn’t see in me!

There are many outdated rules girls must follow as well to live an unproblematic life. 
Be girly, don’t be tomboyish, if a boy is rude to you, you must take it as a compliment (etc.).

Throughout my life, I never changed as a person. Only evolved. 

But most people did change. I started secondary school feeling confident, only to be absolutely in shambles by the end of it. It went from worse to worser, each year.

These old classmates, now tween boys, suddenly changed, and they rejected my being. 

Without talking about abuse throughout the years, to keep it concise: 
Most shared places were added pressures for me, I could feel layers to rooms, to dialogues, to any changes really. Showering? I felt naked around them, feeling so disconnected from my body and my hygiene. Naturally, I would not change around them at all, at a certain point, gym changing rooms and its judgement as second scent right after deodorant, exacerbated my anxiety. It was high, I could drown in it. 

I despised playing gendered sports. 
Those are just meant to move your body around, but the competition behind it is just anti-Montessori for me.  
I was picked last because I was a normal tween, growing up, and my simple presence was not deemed worthy enough for one sport game. Remember, we are not training for the Olympics games. Not that serious, but for them it seemed to be of high importance: I was not attractive, popular, and skinny enough like the others to be picked. But my dignity would have definitely flown first. The girls were a bit more lenient towards me.

I would ask to be in the girls’ team, and it would be so much fun. It’s mainly more about having fun and understanding the tasks step-by-step to get better at it. 

Unless it was a boys vs girls’ game. I am not a traitor, so I generally staid with them. 
I would regularly experience what the girls always have been accepting as behavior from the opposing team. 
That is, violently throwing balls and insults, jumping around carelessly, pushing you like there was a gold medal directly delivered to them right after their game. 

No matter how dangerous it gets, their behavior was left unchecked while under the supervision of gym teachers. So yes, their fair play was on vacation, and their attitude would not budge, but my glasses certainly did and so my style since I would have to purchase new pairs every few years at least. 

While I can recall these past series of events, I view them from a more grown up lens. 
If you know a thing of two from my fab book the DSM-5, you know that series of traumatic events might be correlated to comorbidities due to deep suffering of the psyche and lack of support and resources. 

Talking about it now, because they removed my vocal cords back then. 

I would narrate my childhood as if it was greatly unfair, that I had to accept abuse, and endured a lot from the status quo. Hurting us the daily STILL. Such behaviors might be dormant to some kids now but will appear once they are apart of a group. I do believe it comes possibly from dysfunctional family dynamics in their own households. 
I wasn’t invited for anyone’s birthday, so I cannot talk about one’s home. 

I felt it the most at school, since it was our shared place. The impact of unchecked behavior is like an invasive species of plants; it propagates outside of the school. Like from personal interactions to a macro level in society (workplace, relationship, community). 

I thought, after all that is left of me from school, that working for a company or learning at a higher school, professionalism would be at their forefront. I need safety.

Professionalism is like a greenwashing term: it is crucial to protect the assets of a company, you would want to pick a framework that is going to retain most of it, even if it comes to the workers’ health (thank you to the unions for protecting workers’ rights. I though government were paid to do that.). 

Extracting capital through the exploitation of their work, it is completely demanded to disregard peoples’ health states, even when they are being horribly managed, harassed/mobbed at work, and regularly discriminated against, if it keeps the system from running efficiently.  

Not even in the love scene it seems that I felt prepared enough. Who accepted and supported me? Who gave me tools and advice? Safety tips? Are you still resisting when most parts of your heart are given to people who won’t lend them back?

So, once a lover would come, I did what was asked of me, once more. 
Playing the role of the sweet innocent soul, just to get wounded for good by the creature that has catch its eyes first on me. What is love? If not merely another burden. 

If you can play the part well, you might get respect from your peers and your family, live in a mansion, and get average-to-respectable pension benefits in 30 years from now and that’s it. 

But most men are users, and their addictions are directly taught by their education. 

Femininity and masculinity are not always taught to people. Sometimes, it is birthed as aid to its future path. Especially when it is so scarce to show femininity as men or masculinity as women. I imagine most men stealing ideas from the femmes with the pearl’s necklaces. They will look revolutionary wearing it, and if I did that, I’d get fired. 

Should we get punished from the Gift that God added in the recipe’s mix, which He designed with such delicate perfection?

Anytime I would hear about traditional relationships, I would think to myself, will it last? Won’t there be any abuse woven into their love? The kind that was sold for St. Valentine’s Day, and various others fackery festivities. It’s like a Christmas Hallmark movie, everything’s overly produced.

Most men don’t want to perform love, just reap the clean clothes, the trophy wife, their kids, their perfect masculine job, that show how successful they are on the surface.

I have not experienced peace with another man, if not for me turning off my intuition and my set of boundaries and allowing them further control of me, their unhealed habits seeping through my now-tainted white clothes. 
Corrupted by their fake sense of self-awareness, I find amusing that they claim the throne of our world as if they solely hold access to it (hence, us) if not for our lack of commitment to verify their legitimacy, conducted through various standpoints, again that they created themselves!

Socially, they are recluse of adapting old habits to form new ones, in an ever-changing world. Have you seen how incompatible the individuals in most couples are?

They suppress the full range of manhood (crying, caring, loving, thinking), by accepting just a few that are (government or whichever dogmas)-worthy in this machine of society. 

They willingly enter the cage, hiding the color of their wings, just for a quick gain. Impacting communities around from the scapegoating they accept partaking in, as long as it’s not them. And they won’t be saved by other men. They are all enslaved.  

I have never seen a movie that depicts a man as a hero and that willingly wastes his time to stay caged once he got the key to open it. Is it because he is full of himself taking 2 hours of the screentime, or he’s filled to the brim with insecurities, put on him by his peers or environment, pressured to fit it in since there will be consequences to each wrongdoing he makes on his part? 

They are like the rich and wealthy, a simple part of this machine-system society. They are merely tool. This machine feeds on fear, hatred, vitriol, depression, exploitation. 
Our world is like us: we heal through positive intended actions, and it ripples.
Collectively we all share responsibility for any outcomes on this planet. 

Earlier, I mentioned women’s part of making an already difficult dynamic in this current world, more complicit and more complex.

How do you find the snake hiding in the grass? This is a perfect synergy for both entities. They benefit from each other: the snake might be the strongest, but the bigger he gets by eating all rodents, the more at risk he becomes to get eaten from the other predators. 

The grass can then grow without any pest festering them away, and it is a symbiotic relationship because of the small animals the snakes find since they are attracted to the plants they harbor. 

But don’t get it twisted, grass doesn’t care about the snake’s survival. Maybe the weather forecasts. 

Greenery being everywhere, it is very hard to know which one are home to snakes. 

Which women are allies? Which men won’t waste their energy negatively focusing on a “lesser-than-him”? 

My existence as a feminine person, I couldn’t count the abuse from men, but neither could I voice the several amounts of the bystander stances from women, including their own form of abuse, hidden and covert potentially.

Most men won’t ever accept my fluidity, and that is their choice. 

But I am keeping them fully accountable for each of their action, that they derived from hate. They don’t need a spokesperson to explain them why they are not the rulers here. And they don’t plan on apologizing anytime soon for their violence and hatred, sadly they will repeat it because they never get bored from your suffering. 

For the Masc X Masc gay men, remember that they will drown you out someday. Not an IF but a WHEN.

Who’s the more man-ly? There’s way more men’s inside of me, than there has ever been in you! 

Nonetheless, I must not stray too far from their Men’s Mental Health. They don’t care that they have a whole month for themselves, they will do nothing with that. 

But do you see what they want to do with our well-deserved awareness months?

Or maybe they will care about it too - until they realize it includes gay men’s mental health as well.

Will they finally choose to value theirs and loved one’s lives and let their government soldier puppet agenda down? 
Many women should revalue the system that rewards cowardice and pick better husbands. I always thought that it hurts more the hatred coming from a woman than a man. I thought they would’ve escaped from these old paradigms, I suppose not. 

But I cannot welcome vitriol from anyone, and neither should you. That is where I notice how a straight woman can only understand you so much. I always learned that the hard way. No escape from it, you just breathe in-breathe out and once they understand that they were acting from an uneducated state, should we build the next tower together. 
I guess the only way to grow is through learning lessons from mistakes, but why do I have to bleed to channel that message? 

In this young adulthood chapter, I realized I won’t get a Cinderella type of love, lots of loving friends, or a community that cares. 

The public desires my existence to be more fragmented. To them, it is never enough. 

I have to this day, never met a strong and actual caring man, a feminine man, a doll, a fluid person, a strong woman, just anyone that has broken the mold of the loop, that I don’t view them to be so strong. 

So beautiful, so real, so intelligent, and so caring. Why do I feel alive with them, even though they are just fragments of their own selves? Can’t the monsters just feel beautiful for once? I thought monsters were always born that way, but the world just shapes them this way out of convenience. The path of least resistance. If they really valued us, their systems would have crumbled by now. 

Society leading us to an authoritarian dystopian place, with even more rules, more restraint, less freedom of self-agency, genuinely terrifies me at my core. They are all on it, but why are they all so fickle. They don’t value human, animal, environmental lives. And they don’t intend on doing that anytime soon. But you do know that don’t you? So why are we alone at fending for ourselves, while the evil is recompensed, and we are punished for breathing just a bit more while in a burning forest?

Knowing that my body, my consciousness, my kindness are weapons against institutions, is not a beautiful imprint for my existence nor anyone’s adjacent to mine.

My life’s like a book. I would love to read the next chapter, hoping it holds a beautiful future. Or even read other books, but all the libraries are burning since people have elected presidents that are against reading or teaching. We are punished for thinking. How beautiful in our them-or-us-cracy.

In our day-to-day life, we hold a lot of power through our consumption of media, products, services, our choices of residency, our political compass, and our community.

For succeeding in this evil machine, one must comply to its regulations. Or create new ones! This is indeed why unions were organized by enraged and tired workers, transparent and fair NGOs by people that care. 

Architecting good-intended projects that are actively supporting various communities, sewn by broken people. Having tasted suffering through various metrics, they’ve had enough of the cycle loop. Maybe this is what should have broken apart instead.

Finally, I could say much more, but let’s just open carefully this jewelry box, and discover each pieces for what they are. Unique, as my articles. All making sense once the box is empty.

Division might meant to find us. Because we will reframe it, finding unity wherever we can, no matter how different we are to each other. Don’t we deserve some peace?

Signed Goodlove