How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He had his notions of what a "real" boy should look like, and this kid somehow offended them. He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned; each of his features was shaped with a sensitive accuracy, and a girlish tenderness softened his eyes, which were brown and very large. (1.1.5)
Sam Radclif is showing us that he's aware, self-conscious of the fact that he is imposing his own ideas onto other people, but he also doesn't really care. He even puts the word "real" in quotation marks, as though it were a doubtful choice of vocabulary. And it is—there is no one "real" way to be a boy.
Quote #2
There were two things about this letter that bothered him; first of all, the handwriting: penned in ink the rusty color of dried blood, it was a maze of curlicues and dainty i's dotted with daintier o's. What the hell kind of man would write like that? (1.1.26)
Radclif is suspicious that the man who wrote the letter to Joel's aunt is not manly enough. But what's really interesting is that this gender suspicion also links up to a true deception: Joel's father, we'll find out later, didn't write the letter at all; Randolph did. And Randolph is, as we know, not confined to the manly-man gender expression.
Quote #3
Well, it wasn't no revelation to me cause I always knew she was a freak, no ma'am, never saw that Idabel Thompkins in a dress yet. (1.1.67)
The barber's wife, who doesn't appear in the novel, we just get fragments of her conversation, is a hateful woman with a really judgmental assessment of Idabel. Calling the girl a "freak" is downright mean, but her evidence for Idabel's freakiness boils down to one thing: she doesn't wear dresses. Gender-specific clothing is a stand-in for all sorts of societal norms regarding how each gender should behave.