If you don't do either one, other guys start calling you 'gay' and picking fights with you. Frankie said when he was bullied by other boys in middle school, some of the male teachers he told would just tell him to avoid the bullies. Or they wouldn't support him at all. That only got him in trouble at his school and led his parents to move to a new school district. High School counselors aren't trained for intervention.
Somebody has to.
Although he grew up in a different era, award-winning fiction author Robert Newton Peck has a compelling perspective on boys becoming men. In several of his books, the main character, a teen-age boy who is unsure of himself, endures adversity. Then, he overcomes it and establishes his manhood. Being so sure of yourself that you don't have to prove it to anyone else. When he was taunted by other children in school for wearing handmade clothes, Peck said he emulated his father to deal with it.