I think it is good that you realize that certain action , even if they are done just o fit in, would end up cheapening you and what you believe. I have a little story for you about the theory of weaknessand strength.
My grandfather was probably the most soft spoken, gentle person that I have ever met. He was the type of guy who loved kittens and babies and would cry (yep, cry) at weddings and funerals. He was a carpenter, and grew up as the eldest and only son of six children. His father dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 48. My grandfather therefore never finished school.
Yet II never ran into a person who challenged, even in blue collar areas, my grandfather for being a bit of a sop, and a quite, polite self effacing man. After he died, I found out why.
My grandfather had been a bare knuckles boxer in his teens, and untill WWI he had been climbing the ladder in that vicious sport. Then he was one of five men out of his company of 150 who survived a bombardment in the battle of the Argonne, and they actually managed to take themselves alone behind enemy lines until the front broke. In short, the man was a war hero. Then, he became a union organizeer and president of the carpenters union in Oregon until that union was nationalized, and so on....
The sad thing is that my grandfather only really looked fro trouble in the first case, as a boxer. After the war, he really wanted nothing to do with violence. He lived his life the best he could and tried to make it a better place, even if it didn't always keep him out of hotspots. In short, he hardly fit the model of what most of the tough guys would have called a man after the war. But he was worth twenty of them, and they knew it. They were afraid of him, even when he was an old man.
The really stupid thing was they missed the point. What made him a man was really not the tough guy stuff, it was the fact that he unashamedly loved his family, worked hard to support them and his community, was willing to fight and possibly die to protect them, and didn't care what other men thought if they saw him playing with a young cat on the buidling site. What others can see as a weakness is often a sign of strength. Tough guys are usually afraid all the time of what others think.
So. end of the homily, hope you enjoyed it. Huggs, and keep your head up, CK. I think you probably alred out-man most of the losers who would make fun of you for saying please and thank you.