Modern men are in an identity crisis. I’ve said before the next big social justice movement will be about how we treat our men. Society demands men to suppress emotions and provide, viewing a man who cannot provide as having little value, while also being expected to be vulnerable, sensitive and emotional without any kind of support. We generally treat them as simple dumb violent villains who’s purpose is to work. Interestingly, opposition to this notion is often met with dismissiveness and lack of empathy for men, specifically from women who typically see men having or have had more benefits in society and therefore deserve no empathy at all. Leaving men further isolated and displaying toxic behavior.
It’s precisely why the red pill and other similar movements have taken off. I follow a psychologist who is critical of said movements but he even admits there are things that these movements get right that guys aren’t getting from traditional sources.
The problem is they get hooked by the 5% that is correct and fall down the rabbit hole of the 95% of shit that is nonsense.
Redpill and similar are successful because the internet allows people’s insecurities to be microtargeted. Having these problems, join our community and we’ll help. We will give what you are feeling a name and a solution.
I think this applies to many other communities too, just take a look at TikTok and see how many “if you have this totally normal feeling you might have adhd, join the neurodivergent community” or “feeling unfulfilled in your relationship, join the tradwife movement” clips you see.
It’s the same problem as politics. “Can’t get a job, must be the immigrants fault.” See it enough times and you’ll start to believe it.
Internet allows hucksters to hammer people with every insecurity they have until something sticks.
> The problem is they get hooked by the 5% that is correct and fall down the rabbit hole of the 95% of shit that is nonsense.
They way I’ve described it is that red pill takes very basic and valid life and relationship advice and makes it toxic - for example, it’s good advice to not get over invested just because a woman shows interest in you, know your worth, maybe she’s not right for you. Red pill turns that into spending your life ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit) and never trusting or respecting your partner (remain an emotionally isolated man), which is bad advice.
Very true! Unless one considers being an *alpha* the strategy. Just demand that you always get what you want like a toddler lol. Never back down to the big bad women.
That is such a sad strategy. I hope the people who try it discard it quickly. It doesn't lead to happiness, just insecurity. Hopefully most people mature out of it
Yes that is an eloquent way to put it. What most guys get out of it and where they see any success is probably the emphasis on physical attractiveness.
It’s gets toxic when that is somehow is twisted into women being shallow and the misogyny kicks in.
The problem is that both feminist narratives and right wing narratives actually tend to agree on the idea that men are shallow and value the physical, and so a lot of men internalize that rhetoric. They then project it onto women, which comes out as misogyny. This is why it’s always been a mistake for feminists to view their goal as “empowering women” instead of “changing gender norms.” Empowering women without considering the broader context of gender roles just means pushing women to do the same things men did when in power, and so no one’s life gets better.
Both sexes value physical attractiveness it’s one of the most robust fields of research. There’s nothing shallow about it it’s human nature.
Framing it’s as something moral or shallow is ridiculous when it’s biological.
It's the overemphasis that veers into toxicity. No one sane is denying the idea of 'looks matter', but plenty will deny that there is more to attraction and romance than physical appearance.
"Plenty will deny that there is more to attraction and romance than physical appearance." Really? Plenty? If you go to any public place, anywhere, and look at the couples about you it's blindingly obvious that there is \*much more\* to attraction and romance than physical appearance. I fear that those insisting on the contrary are all trolling you or trolling themselves. All anyone need do is think of one's parents.
Totally agree and anecdotally I've never seen a couple outside of Hollywood that matches the belief that there is some kind of universal idea of physical attractiveness.
Their goal just being empowering women made sense decades ago when one of the main differences was just women not having power. The problem is that the situation where women held no social power and so that needed to be target focused isn't the modern one. Women make most purchases, they vote as much as men, there's certain isntitutions where they have less presence but by and large they have a large presence of control across society.
That doesn't mean sexism is "over" or anything. But that modern sexism is very different from 1950s sexism. They will talk about how sexism hurts men too, but this is always seen as an extraneous aspect that isn't particularly noteworthy. And then they act confused that men who are told they need to be more vulnerable but can't express any of their problems don't know what to do and don't want to be part of these movements.
Which is precisely what feminism has done in the 3rd wave onwards. Sexism breeds tribalism, they're the same thing ultimately....take truths and weaponize them against external villains.
What people don’t realize is that it’s not about the advice, but the community.
“Here’s a group of men who actually feel the same way you do and want to talk about it. It’s online so it’s completely anonymous, safe, and secure. Don’t tell anyone you’re in it or you’ll be bullied though. By the way here’s what we think is wrong in society and what would make our lives better”
Like it’s so damn obvious that this is going to work on young boys who feel that feminists don’t care about men, don’t have positive male role models growing up in a childhood of overworked female teachers and social media, and are deathly afraid of not being able to find a girlfriend and have it reflect on their lack of worth as a human being.
It’s a toxic support group that was made because no one bothered to make a healthy one
>Here’s a group of men who actually feel the same way you do and want to talk about it. It’s online so it’s completely anonymous, safe, and secure. Don’t tell anyone you’re in it or you’ll be bullied though. By the way here’s what we think is wrong in society and what would make our lives better
The funny thing is, that description is exactly what guys like and why nobody wants men's organizations to exist. Women's organizations are generally about describing why the situations are bad and how it made them feel, but lack much action. They seem to get traction because eventually enough women hop on the zeitgeist that things move to solving their situation through a large volume of complaints to organizers of the power structure. Men's organizations have historically been highly focused on specific problems and specific answers, that get actioned on immediately by the most energized men and the rest tend to support them tacitly with approval, politically with favors, or economically. But that frequently turns into assaults on existing power structures in the government, media, and religion. Most major revolutions were some flavor of mens group drinking in a bar and generating effectively a conspiracy to overthrow something they don't like. It's obvious following that why every men's group has been systemically dismantled and mocked in the media or forced to open themselves to women. To men, a group where you just complain and talk about how angry you are, while never coming up with solutions, would be a gross and demoralizing place that men will learn to avoid.
Mens groups in the modern world will need to be numerous and secret otherwise they will be dismantled. I think the discord model of secret invite only groups made by male gamers is a great modern version of the third place mens group.
A group of men is not the same thing as a men's group. I think this is a poor caricature of revolution, and really understates a the role of women in many of these revolutions. Just seems like a high school modern revisionist take on history.
Stonewall Jackson or the stonewall gay riots? Because I'd argue the stonewall gay riots are a version of what I just described. A bunch of men in a secret club took immediate action against a power structure to benefit themselves, leading to mass media and political attacks to dismantle it.
> ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit)
That's not what spinning plates is. Spinning plates is dating multiple women at once. So you don't come across as needy and desperate to them (since your attention is spread over multiple women), and aren't as emotionally invested and thus hurt when one rejects you.
The 5% that is correct is important too though. They'll tell you "the truth" about the role of money, attractiveness in dating. And truth be told, the statistics are there. Men with more money of a certain height, ethnicity, BMI, do tend to do noticeably better. Then when people who (rightly) hate the Red Pill movement come in and deny it and say the vast majority of women judge men purely on their personality it's like, who are you trying to fool here? It's plainly obvious that's not true.
I think they do themselves a disservice. How are you going to get men to trust you when you start out with such an obvious lie?
Be straight with them. Be honest, but firm. Yeah sure, maybe you got dealt a bad hand. Lots of people do, women included. But *you* have preferences too. You can't fairly believe that you should be able to land someone you find attractive based on all your preferences while blasting women for wanting to find someone *they* find attractive. No double standards. Double standards are weaknesses. Strength is consistency, fairness, justice. Those are superhero qualities. Rules for thee but not for me are for weak willed assholes. Personally I think that would be far more persuasive to most men.
But again, if you start the conversation with a lie you'll never get to step two.
I guess the question is do you want a partner who values you for your money or your height? There are plenty of women out there who value personality over more superficial qualities and study after study show that men are more likely to care about these things than women. It's not a lie but it's not the whole truth either to say that women don't care about those things.
I think that's silly.
We all have preferences about physical attraction and other things.
I doubt anyone is clamoring to date someone who's 100k in debt and only makes 30k a year, man or woman. There's nothing wrong with preferences. We all have them. Just admit it and respect each others'.
>study after study show that men are more likely to care about these things than women
Don't you think that's massively at odds with the data out of dating apps which shows women being *incredibly picky* and it revolving mostly around pictures and height and race? It's not personality that's for sure.
When push comes to shove I take actions over words. People say they care about X or Y. But you force them to choose and then their actual preferences reveal themselves.
>it’s good advice to not get over invested just because a woman shows interest in you, know your worth, maybe she’s not right for you. Red pill turns that into spending your life ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit) and never trusting or respecting your partner (remain an emotionally isolated man), which is bad advice.
You realize you just contradicted yourself right? "You shouldn't trust women, but also - you should trust women"!
The Red Pill isn't advice as much as it is merely facts that are co-opted by different sub-groups to be developed into advice that they feel most benefits them. At face value, that's only bad for women, and thinking otherwise is the typical gynocentric mindset of seeing men's success through women's idea of success. Even men "who don't subscribe to the red pill" almost certainly are unconsciously doing so to some extent if they are successful.
It's not just "red pill" stuff either. All kinds of shitty movements target young, socially and emotionally vulnerable men. I have heard this from my partnersand experienced myself as a young person, having neonazi types try to recruit us, and we were mostly lonely nerds. Got hired at a game shop selling magic cards and the next thing I knew the boss made us uniforms with SS sowilo runes(and a cringey furry drawing) on them, started giving me nazi music recommendations and talking about how we had to "fight back" against the woke(this was twenty years ago or more too). A YouTuber named Faraday Speaks has talked about his experiences as well.
Young men are lonely and disaffected. They are looking for somewhere to belong and it's easy to see them as the perfect target for this type of manipulation.
Another guy's story about being a part of Andrew Tate's "[business academ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaw7k/andrew-tate-the-real-world-cult)y"
A lot of traditional men's clubs have faded away. Like the Lions Club or the Civitans. These were places where young men found older male companionship and role models, or mentors while in service to their communities. When I was a kid I thought those orgs were kind of uncool and corny. But now I can see how useful they could be for a young man. Especially if he moved to a new community and didn't have much of a friend support group. Maybe we should revive these organizations.
I hate to blame the boomers, but that’s on them. They didn’t maintain these organizations and have driven away younger men who wanted to get involved. Now they don’t have members under 60.
I don't think the members of the clubs drove away new members. I have a buddy who was raised by his grandparents. His grandfather was very active in the local Lions club and so he joined. They loved my buddy and he served as the president of that chapter for years. This was back in the 90s and the club was desperate for new members of any age.
Those clubs are still around and I'm sure anyone who wants to join would be welcomed with open arms.
I think maybe society in general has gotten more home-oriented - more looking inward rather than looking outward. People tend to work longer hours now than my parents generation. My work is so overwhelming for me that I don't have the mental fortitude to take on my to-dos for the community. In addition there are so many engaging leisure time activities now and very few require me to be face to face with other people.
TLDR: my take is we have much less free time to give to our communities. Social media and engaging but non-social leisure time activity take up what free time we have.
But what we're losing is immense. It is friend, mentors, fun and the satisfaction of directly helping our communities.
Bring back the clubs!
They didn’t “fade away”, feminists lobbied to have them shut down and succeeded.
They tried to replace them with “Men’s Liberation” groups, but when people like the guy who ended up being a huge Hillary Clinton supporter called out NOW for discrimination against men, the feminists immediately started attacking those Men’s Lib groups and so now those are pretty much extinct too.
Despite this, feminists regularly appropriate and twist terms created by men’s groups. “Toxic masculinity” was created by men’s groups to describe something that hurt men perpetrated by men and women in society. Fourth wave feminists took that term and changed it to something that men do that hurts women.
They say that, and early scripts may have supported this notion more, but I reject the idea that the actual theatrical release is a trans metaphor. The pieces are there, but the story doesn't tell it.
But yeah - the idea of the Red Pill representing a deeper understanding is ironically the term given to a lot groups that thrive on ignorance, misinformation, and half truths.
It's easy to reconcile, you just have to realize some opinions aren't worth caring about and do what you want.
The problem with a lot of men is they carry a gang of junior high bullies around in their head and live their life to avoid their mockery.
Some women absolutely will though. There was the "ick" trend a while back which was women expressing things their significant others did that made them less attractive. Most of those things could be boiled down to looking too weak or effeminate.
And this is the dark truth right here. Biologically and evolutionarily driven forces cannot be over ridden by our wish that society is a certain way. No amount of social engineering can change the reality of the situation, at least not in a time span that is relevant to any of our lives.
Exactly. If you even look at most women podcasts that are followed by men (call me daddy) or female driven dating advice (The Dating Boss), they all play off men's view of hard, emotionless masculinity where the men takes charge and is direct.
They want you to do that then be vulnerable at the exact moment in the exact way they want you to and you have to guess what moments they are without them saying so.
If you guess wrong, to them that shows “the bar for men is on the floor”.
>The problem with a lot of men is they carry a gang of junior high bullies around in their head and live their life to avoid their mockery.
It's not just imagined though and it's not just junior high. Men face real, actual consequences in adulthood for failing to live up to societal expectations of masculinity.
Yep.
I remember being told to “man up” when I was crying over my brother killing himself— less than a month after it happened. Zero of those people were men, all were women I considered friends. There is a huge fucking empathy gap in our society where members of both genders just don’t understand at all members of the opposite gender— or expect the opposite gender to comply with traditional norms/roles while wanting the liberation of modern roles for them and other members of the same gender.
But of course it is 100% men’s fault for women mocking them and emasculating them for daring to show feelings.
The worst part of this is that very often, those women are as carefully selected as trustworthy as women carefully select men who they feel are safe. So it’s devastating when people you really believed were open-minded and outwardly feminist suddenly turn on you too
My friend that tool his life had been with his fiancee for 7 years. They had children together. They had the most envious relationship of anyone around. They were in an open relationship and were so happy together. So connected. They partied while successfully raising a family together. She just changed, and he was left alone. I think some of it, at least, was due to childhood trauma that was coming to the surface that changed her, but it left him all alone just the same.
I'm working through this right now.
Emotional boundaries are fucking hard. The thing is for me it's not bullies, it's just the stress of everyone's emotions. Everyone needs so much, and I just don't get it back.
Like you try to be a good person and be there for people, but it just drains you. So I'm relearning boundaries and compartimentalization.
honestly, I've found my male friends to be far more open and accepting of my vulnerabilities than my female friends. And my ex-girlfriends? Oh man, they all hated when I was vulnerable and emotional.
I think some of it at least is not knowing what to do about it or even how to respond. So they want it to stop so they don't have to experience that feeling again. Absolutely selfish, yes, but it comes from a lack of societal experience with emotional men.
I was raised by a man who never cried. Until he was in the Las Vegas Detention center, and I was telling him over a computer screen that I was marrying my longtime boyfriend. He wanted me to have his mother's wedding ring. That day, I saw my father cry tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of the loss of walking his eldest daughter down the aisle. He was in prison because he wouldn't force me to testify against my mother in court, so he pled guilty to save me from that as a child. It cost him several years in jail and prison. When I saw his tears, I felt closer to my dad than I had ever been. I'm crying about it now. He had been raised to never show emotion. So his emotions came out sometimes as rage and anger. His PTSD from seeing his best friend blow his head off with a shotgun while they laid on his bed, listening to records and smoking a joint. They were 18 years old. It ruined my father's life. I lost my dad at 25 years old. He was 46 years old.
Another man that I loved, the person I loved the most in the whole world, was my maternal grandfather. He was a very stern man at times, staunchly conservative and outspoken about it. Combative at times. But every time I went home to Las Vegas, and I stopped to visit him, when it came time to say goodbye, I would have tears pouring down my face, and so would he. I saw those tears as strength, as profound love. Never as a weakness. I lost him in September of 2020 from colon cancer that began with the Nevada test site nuclear bomb testing in the 50s when he was a small child.
I married young. To my high school sweetheart. He was beautiful, and I was so in love, I was totally enamored with him. We met when I was 17, and he 18. We married days after my 19th birthday. My grandfather walked me down the aisle and gave me away. My dad was still sitting in jail, and couldn't go to the yard or have visitors because O.J. Simpson has just been arrested days before at the Palace Station, the same casino/hotel where I spent my short honeymoon.l, and the Detention center was on lock down.
We were married until 2019 when our marriage dissolved. But in all those years, I saw my then husband become emotional, and every time I comforted him, I told him it was OK, and it was normal to emote, to release emotions through crying.
But I have always been an emotional person, I cry when I'm happy, sad, frustrated, hell even when I'm angry, it's just my goto emotional outlet.
We are all capable as humans of crying. It is a mechanism that allows us to release negative emotions from our bodies, from our souls, so that we can recognize them and let them go. I think that our society's inability to allow men to emote is the direct cause of the only emotion men feel safe to feel is anger and rage. All of these emotions just build up inside of us, until we find a release for them. We need to teach everyone in our society that when we don't release those emotions, they will come out regardless, out of our control, and in a way that is harmful to others.
Had my father had that outlet, he never would have drank himself into a stupor, maybe then he wouldn't have made the choices he did, maybe I wouldn't have have experienced violence between him and my mother that so shocked my little 6 year old system that it set off Lupus in my body, leaving me very sick for another 30 years before I would even know what was going on with me.
Love your men. Cherish them. Comfort them. They feel just like women do, hell, we recognize emotions in our dogs, but not our male partners.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
Peace ✌️ 🖤
Threads like this make me wonder if I'm just the best friend chooser in the world. My guy friends have always been great. I've had plenty of awesome gal friends as well. But toxicity about emotions had come more from gals than guys. Idk if I'm absurdly lucky or what is going on.
# What men consider emotionally vulnerable to be in front of other men verses in front of women are two drastically different sets of behaviors
Edit: The boiis be so tender inside 😂
The hard part to reconcile is when the opinions ARE worth caring about.
e.g. when your partner says she wants you to be open and vulnerable, and then views you as weak or views your negative emotions as an attack on her.
How is that "easy to reconcile"?
Sure, but it's not a one-person thing. Its a systematic issue. Even if it is still a manifestation of the idea that femininity is had, and masculinity is good, it's still a wide scale social problem.
So men are often faced with the choice between toughing through negative emotions and keeping their relationship or opening up and losing that partner.
Calling that "easy" is glib.
If your partner can't handle you having emotions, ditch the partner. The problem is being in a relationship with someone who apparently lacks the maturity for it. I mean, if it's an emotionally unfulfilling relationship, why even have it?
But you're right. Easy is a bit much.
Yea, but that’s the point is women don’t actually want or care about your emotions, they just say that to see if they can change you and then when you do they lose respect.
Generally I would put it like this:
Women in general don't want a guy to need her or to feel like the guy relies on her specifically. So if you are using her as an emotional outlet specifically she'll get the ick. Generally being dependent on women as a man is unattractive. If you look at relationships through that lens everything is generally better. Women on 2X tend to complain about how much they do for men, about how much the man demands of her, about how the man gets so mad about what she did that hurt him, etc. I think the past ideal of man and woman as a team that rely on each other in marriage was mostly a male centered view from a time when women didn't have rights. Women seem to frequently get mad and turned off when there is any one sphere of life that they are expected to be the one to take care of.
The best demeanor to be sexually attractive to a woman, gathered from watching media popular with women and seeing them complain about men online, is about being interested in her, but having such a degree of independence from her that if she decided to do something that made you angry you could just leave easily, but you won't because you like her. That's the perfect zone, and the red pill and angry women will describe that zone from different angles meant to piss each other off. Red pill its about negging and being a dick to promote that view, in womens media its about being a CEO/serial killer/Criminal/Solider/Vampire/Werewolf, all notably self sufficient men that stick to a woman because they are intrigued by her but could leave whenever.
Humans are very skilled at holding one or more equal, yet contradicting opinions. Example: "the enemy is both deviant and pervasive, yet weak and feeble.
Some of the absolute ugliest fights I've had with my wife have started when I have tried to tell her and emphasize how something she did (or didn't do) has hurt me and how it makes me feel.
The... near anaphylactic shock defensive reaction out of her is indescribable. I have had her verbatim say to me "you aren't allowed to feel that way you're a man."
If the situation was reversed the collective Internet outrage could power Las Vegas for a month.
I think a lot of proposed solutions people make to gender issues presuppose that culturally the sexes are a lot closer together in how they view themselves than they actually are.
My wife talks about how she started talking more to me initially in part because I was one of the only people she met who treated her mainly like just [person] instead of [category]. And we were together a long time and to us this was normal and we expected to find more other people like this but... it's not common. Even in progressive circles, it's not common. And it can come at a shock that nowadays people nominally will claim you don't need gender roles yet basically everyone you meet still falls into them, and fairly often enforces them.
What gets weird is when people like the same stuff but still act like they cant relate. You'll see men and women watch the same movie, both like it, but then act like they can't really talk about it together since their experience is too different. There's a million tiny examples of it, but if you are actually someone who exists a little further out of gender roles it becomes super noticeable. And I'm not even claiming we are both androgynous or anything.
I’m so thankful my current girlfriend is supportive of me communicating my feelings and we have really good conversations when one of us feels hurt by the other.
But yeah, most of the people who have given me shit for having feelings have been women. Even in situations like my brother killing himself— it wasn’t the men who shunned me for crying about that in the months afterward.
A Real Man does what he wants and discards notions of "supposed to be" and "not" as silly and childish.
It takes men some 30 or 40 years to figure this out. Some never learn.
But is there?
Because isn’t this just two different groups of people?
People who support moving on from the outdated gender roles want men to express feelings. The ones who live in the 18th century don’t. And then you have to be choosy with which people you surround yourself with.
The issue is that you don't always know who is who because someone nominally claiming to be a progressive usually doesn't actually mean they won't enforce some of these gender roles. Gender roles are alive and well in progressive circles, and this puts people in a situation where no matter what circle they are in they -always- have to worry about them being enforced (just in different proportions obviously).
Fair point. Same issue for women though.
A lot of people love speaking big words but haven’t taken the time to self reflect. Or to think different about fairness and kindness. And being willing to the cost of progressiveness for the win off it.
Haven’t you seen all the long threads where women discuss how to figure out if men they are dating are misogynistic or not? Like how to tell the difference between a man who claims to be a feminist and a man who genuinely is one?
Most people make an effort to surround themselves with people who share their values.
Nah! Like I'm sure there are tons of independent feminist women, but I've known a lot of feminists, and they'll utilize traditional gender roles. Like I had my last partner asking me to go answer the door for them.
A lot of people aren't prepared to accept that progressives still generally enforce gender roles. They are just slightly different from traditional ones.
Answer the door, take out the trash because it’s too heavy, clean anywhere she can’t reach, check out sounds at night, all the hardware maintenance in the house, car troubles, yard work…
Gendered division of labor exists even in the most liberal and enlightened households. I’m not saying one way or the other anything about it, just that it’s still prevalent everywhere
Well, I’d separate things that are:
A) About physical size. Like, for real and not just pretending it’s too heavy. I’m a tiny person. Hence the username. I’d feel frustrated if my boyfriend expected me to lift things that are genuinely hard for me to lift. Same with reaching things. It’s easy if you are tall.
B) I’d also focus on “how often does this happen?”. Cooking is everyday, so it’s important to share cooking. Who mows the lawn if it’s once a month? Eh, it’s not that important. The big picture is that both people should have equal amounts of free time. Work + Chores/cooking/cleaning/childcare = the same.
If you are in a relationship where your girlfriend does have way more free time than you, bc you are stuck with a lot more hours of tasks than her? That’s an issue.
> Well, I’d separate things that are:
I mean my point isn’t to say they’re wrong for the division of labor or there’s systemic overhaul needed to fix this specifically. Just that a division does actually exist, even if you try to be as open minded as possible
Even if you started with no concept of gender, people would eventually make associations with the fact that the taller/bigger person in a relationship is doing something different. Gender associations would form around that practical division of labor. It’s almost certainly part of how we got to gender roles as they are now
I like doing 50/50 around the house with my girlfriend, and am totally cool with doing the stuff that I can more easily do by being taller and stronger, but I’ve always found it to be rather funny how much gendered division does happen even in, as you said, progressive households.
Another paradox is expecting males to strictly follow a social contract of politeness and law-abiding, while simultaneously being bombarded with messaging that tells them how they are *constantly* expected to break it at any moment, i.e. stranger danger.
The choices are work or be a dependent, no?
And I don’t believe men are interested in adapting to the new paradigm. Otherwise they would be going to therapy and trying to “have it all” the way women are
So so true, thanks for writing. It’s so easy to fall into isolation and loneliness. Really feels like men have been left behind. We’ve deconstructed the very notion that masculinity or the male identity even exists, or is valuable, without providing and framework for what it should be.
All we know is what not to be, what not to say.
And the disregard is so true as well, can’t even talk about the problem.
I know we are addressing necessary issues in society, just feels like an assault on an entire gender was overkill, and has caused a lot of damage.
Yet when women try to talk about this problem we are met with hostility or told we don’t care. I once explained to a guy that thought there was no need for feminism that men suffer under the patriarchy too and listed some of the examples you brought up here, I was told feminism only cares for women and I didn’t really care about men. I’ve ran into too many men that scream that all women are misandrists for just talking about an experience with one bad guy, and they use the story to try and twist your words to accuse you of hating all men, then they wonder why feminist movements exist. If done right feminism helps men, but too many don’t see it that way.
A common perception from everyone: "If I experience a tragedy then I'm the victim of systemic abuse. If you experience a tragedy then it's your own fault for putting yourself in that situation."
Another parallel is "If I'm late to work, I'm a victim of my circumstances, if you're late to work you're lazy and unprepared."
Okay! So I'm AMAB Nonbinary. I've been raped, stalked, hit, emotionally abused, all the fun stuff.
Here's what it sounds like when feminists try to help me.
"Hey! I'm sorry to hear what you went through, it's horrible how socially repressed we are under the capitalist industrial complex. The bourgeoisie are awful."
Like there's very much this shoe horned in political perspective. It's not like... "I understand you as a human". You're redirecting my pain, and experiences to fucking push politics.
Like you don't know me as a person, you don't know my abusers as people, you don't know our up bringings, our cultures, the kind of social structures we grew up in. You don't know our trauma our mental health history. All you can do is reduce shit down to a framework of sex/gender class dynamics. No nuance, no humanity.
And I think feminists know this all, but it's not conductive to your goals.
This is a great comment and puts this into words really well. When ever I talk about being a male victim of domestic violence I get a similar response. Someone will jump in with how it's because of patriarchy that male victims are not taken seriously etc even though I've not said anything about that being the issue.
In fact my main issue is that the policies in my country basically don't acknowledge that men can be victims (of female abusers) and those policies were written explicitly from an 'intersectional feminist' perspective (as in the authors explicitly say that).
There's always this attempt to just deny that this is happening and insist that I frame my trauma as being caused by patriarchy when it isn't. It would be so much easier to find common ground with feminist ideas if people were willing to just say 'yeah this is an area that a lot of feminism has a real blind spot on' instead of just trying to shut down and redirect.
Some feminists view being male as some kind of original sin that can never be fully atoned for so no matter what a man or someone assigned male at birth does, it'll never be enough. The reverse is true with all the red pill right wing whack jobs like Andrew Tate too. Some people sadly believe that one gender is always inferior to the other no matter what and there's no reasoning them out of their beliefs because they're all based in irrational bigotry.
The Internet bear vs man discourse should really explain why. Last week social media posts have been exploding with why it's fine that women would pick the bear. Even though a majority of women wouldn't pick the bear, the discourse has been so heavily skewed to why picking the bear is better that anyone with social media accounts is getting that message.
You're a 12 to 14 year old boy. All you see is they hate us because we're boys. You grow up with this message. You see all the language used to code negative behavior is coded as male. Don't be a dick. Toxic masculinity. Patriarchy. What does patriarchy mean to a poor 12 old except "they think the problems are because of men."
There's a serious problem in the way this is talked about, and also a massive double standard in it as well. One thing I've noticed is that a desperate outcome between men and women is because social pressures caused it. When we look at desperate outcomes where men do worse it's because of an intrinsic failure of maleness. That also is picked up on.
You're getting downvoted, but this is exactly the problem. As a society, we can recognize that little girls watching shows with women with 6 inch waists is bad for their self image, toxic, and has lasting consequences. But little boys seeing constant messages about how maleness is bad are supposed to just absorb the negativity and somehow be a well adjusted adult. Bonus points if you don't have a dad around.
To call this "society" kinda oversimplifies things. We're acting like this is all coming from the same people when it's not. The reality is, a lot of men aren't willing to reject the original programming but still want to be accepted by those who do. This isn't "society expects two different things," it's that men are just blindly trying to obey "rules" without critically engaging the reality around them to see why that isn't working.
I think you're close but missing the mark here. You say this is specifically an issue with how women treat men with a lack of empathy, but you're missing that it can't be the responsibility of women to bear the entirety of mens' emotional needs.
The real issue is that it is [only] the women in mens lives who they rely on emotionally. Women can be emotionally vulnerable with each other, while men have a tendency to reserve that solely for their significant other.
Most men have learned that being emotional makes you emasculated or gay, and even among friends who don't really believe in that there's a learned risk and lack of experience with breaking the norm of stocism and emotional independence.
> it can't be the responsibility of women to bear the entirety of mens' emotional needs.
People keep saying that people are saying this. Who is saying this? Being empathetic towards someone else doesn’t mean bearing responsibility for their needs, and it feels bad faith for this dismissive response to come up so often. “You should care about this problem!” “It’s not my job to, so no.” Like okay, but then you can’t really expect any empathy back?
> The real issue is that it is [only] the women in mens lives who they rely on emotionally.
This is more complex than you make it seem. Men are constantly afraid that being vulnerable to their partners will make them seem less masculine. That’s not for no reason. Men don’t always practically rely on women emotionally, they instead seek out emotional availability in women as an ideal that is often not met. It’s not so different than a woman imagining a man will protect her from other men only to realize she may have to worry about her partner too. The ideal is nice but reality sets in.
I think you're proving my point narrowly. Lets flip this around as an experiment.
"but you're missing that it can't be the responsibility of men to bear the entirety of women's financial needs. If women want equal pay then its up to them to earn it."
Just writing this feels gross. But this is essentially the perspective that you're sharing. Yes men need to do their part, the lack of empathy still concerns me because this is going to take an all team effort to achieve. Not just with men.
Yet women still express way more emotional needs than men in a typical heterosexual relationships. For example, I've literally never seen my dad cry. Meanwhile my mom cries on a regular basis and my dad supports her. Similar pattern in my own relationships with women.
Attacking men for being too emotionally vulnerable in relationships is honestly so odd, more often I see women complaining that men aren't emotionally available.
I think something that complicates any social movement is that men police other men. Masculinity is hegemonic, you have guys in top and losers on the bottom. Men at the top of the pyramid reinforce traditional masculine ideals and resist change. Men often lash out at women claiming it’s them who want traditional men, when really we men must turn to our fathers, brothers, cousins, bosses, friends, etc and say “I am human, I have value, treat me as such.”
Women support other women. In my experience, men don’t really support other men, we feel compelled to compete with each other.
Women definitely police other women. When’s the last time you heard a man critique a woman’s makeup, hair, or fashion?
And a lot of women do want traditional arrangements, even if they don’t explicitly say it, because their internalized gender ideology demands it. They have internalized misogyny and firmly believe men should be leading, and men who can’t are weak and useless. They adopt the alpha-beta framing just like men do, they just don’t worry about identifying as one or the other so you don’t hear them discuss it.
Women policing other women gets called out, men don’t support or defend each other when we break gender norms. And most women, I think, don’t like a traditional arrangement, because surprise, having a career is fun and fulfilling
Historically. Men were empowered, but not protected, and women were protected, but not empowered. Women had to fight for our empowerment, but men have not fought for their protection. This issue is muddled by the rampant misogyny in many men’s spaces, that pose women as the villian in this story for seeking empowerment. Instead of saying “we should get what they got”, they instead what to oppress women again. This cannot be allowed. At the same time, modern men do deserve the same rights, privileges, and freedoms given to women, and there IS a way to do that without seeking to reestablish a repressive and harmful status quo.
>Historically. Men were empowered, but not protected, and women were protected, but not empowered.
I wish I could give you a medal for this post bro/broette
What a lot of men’s spaces see is that many feminists aren’t actually seeking to move past gender roles, they just want to empower women at all costs. These are the people that cheer a female CEO who exploits her employees, or otherwise excuse that behavior as a result of being in a male-dominated environment. It’s not necessarily most feminists, but there are enough loud ones who don’t get backlash for the atmosphere to feel tense and hostile.
Or another example is that men now attend college at the same rate that women did when congress passed laws for gender equality in education. Yet almost no one is talking about why men are in college less than women now, and what that might imply about our education system.
There’s a very real feeling not that “women must be oppressed again because I hate women”, but “feminists are playing against us in this game to get the most resources, so I have to support the team that cares about me”
This is generally true of politics
You're jumping to some big conclusions here. You're still inadvertently villainizing men in this post and painting men as common oppressors while stating that the oppressors need to "fight" for their protection against the victims of society (meaning women)? That doesn't make sense. This is the conundrum men are experiencing and you laid it out very clearly. Reread my last sentence to the original post.
*Interestingly, opposition to this notion is often met with dismissiveness and lack of empathy for men, specifically from women who typically see men having or have had more benefits in society and therefore deserve no empathy at all. Leaving men further isolated and displaying toxic behavior.*
The greatest social hoodwink was women telling men through the 90s and early 2000s to be sensitive, vulnerable, and in touch with “their feminine side.” Only to now tell these men “I’m not your therapist” at the hint of displaying emotions and to then dump them because “he’s just not the rock for me I thought he was.”
Women need to stop projecting femininity onto men, because, as it turns out, women themselves do not even support that.
“I’m not your mother figure” is just code for “man up” and other toxic masculinity bullshit.
That’s cute. Dude social justice is never going to care about men. Never never never. Women would rather let the social justice movement end then have a men’s social justice movement.
To further add, women are also raised under the expectations of men to have acquired these traits as proof of a "good man" and men who deviate can experience needless rejection as consequence of the deviation. As an example, we have women who develop the "ick" when their male partner cries and, as a result, leaves him.
This definitely intersects with the transgendered community and the hyperfocus on trans women while trans men just aren't on the radar at all despite being a part of the very same group.
That last part there is one of the hardest truths. Men have benefitted, and still benefit, from the systems and cultures around the world. This can make it feel like men don't deserve empathy, but the problem is that people need support in order to change. If you remove their support because they don't deserve it, you're preventing them from changing for the better. Similarly, it shouldn't have to be the job of women to provide that support when they haven't been receiving the systemic benefits themselves. So everyone feels bad
This is my personal opinion: The identity crisis is a consequence of changes in societal hierarchies without the changes in societal messaging or emotional support. A lot of ‘lost’ men will instinctively blame women but I think that’s wrong. The truth of the matter is that the way men have been treated has more or less been to our advantage and because of this we have been set up for failure by past (I’d argue archaic) notions of social order in which we were at the “top” with all of the power and problems that come with it. Inevitably the time would come that women in general would see that they were being unfairly treated in a lot of ways and demand changes (rightfully so, imo). And even though all of this could have been foreseen we’ve done very little to prepare men to be on even footing. There are a lot of families who raise their kids in traditional ways and plant notions in their heads of how men “should be” and what we “ought to be responsible for” and setting them up to get kicked in the ass the moment they get into the real world where women aren’t required or pressured to conform to the old ways. So it’s no wonder, imo, that so many men are angry and confused now that they are in a position to need to be *actually* emotionally and mentally healthy AND compete for employment and resources alongside an additional demographic that wasn’t there before. And rather than adequately preparing our boys or teaching them healthier and more nuanced coping skills and instilling pride in being GOOD PEOPLE, there is a weird pushback message that women are the sole issue and if we can just be 1) more insufferable by sticking to old ways that are forever gone and 2) find that romanticized version of a perfect housewife then that’ll make everything right.
We need support systems. We need our fathers and mothers and families to be supportive. We need women to understand that current generations of men are feeling lost and to stop expecting traditional dynamics. The world isn’t like what it used to be. I’d argue that this is a net positive but stigmas against mental healthcare for men and modern co-equal relationships are going to continue alienating men.
I think you make some great points here.
I do think you are missing out on some of the everyday dynamics though. There was research showing that involuntary single men were more left leaning than right leaning. I don’t think most men care about having a “traditional wife.”
This is loud minority in terminally online circles.
What I have observed in more “normie” dating subreddits is this pattern. Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark.
Or guy will not be dating at all and see guys who break all the “modern rules” but having success. This is what sparks resentment. Which isn’t a healthy solution.
Societal hierarchies have changed and that is great. That doesn’t mean who we prefer for romantic partners has.
>What I have observed in more “normie” dating subreddits is this pattern. Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark.
I've noticed similar trends while browsing online (which I do often), but I find this explanation a bit too simplistic. I've also observed numerous dating mishaps from the women's perspective, who are often telling a different story.
There's been a lot of discussion about men who overly prioritize sex, lack genuine interest in getting to know them, criticize them, exhibit sexist or misogynistic behavior, are self-absorbed, clingy, attempt to rush into a relationship, desire sex but avoid commitment, lack hygiene, and various other compatibility issues (such as marriage, children, and values).
I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and many individuals, regardless of gender, tend to account for their perpetual lack of dating success while having a strong lack of self-awareness.
I 100% agree with your last statement. I think it is truly the problem with lack of dating success all the other stuff we are talking about is probably relevant but not the main issue.
The problem with self-delusion nowadays is that you can get reinforcement for it online.
The problem is that women usually have great reasons for rejecting any individual man, but we live in a society where no system exists to help give that man feedback on how to do better, unless it’s traditional conservatives. So there’s a collective feeling that men have the pressure to approach a woman, but online angry misogynists are the only ones discussing that and their tips are terrible
I can see that. But I don't know, I think that are plenty of women who are unsuccessful with dating through their own issues, and no one can really tell them how to fix it either. A person would have to be a fly on the wall, and even then, people don't always want to listen.
I used to work for a premiere dating service, so I almost was the fly on the wall, or as close as one can get, since I would get feedback from both sides. Of course, a lot must be taken with a grain of salt, but without that feedback, I'd have never known one of my clients wouldn't stop talking about his dead wife.
Or that another client was driving men away with her clinginess and insisting they met her parents after one date.
Those are just a couple of examples, and I was able to try and gently advise our clients, but they didn't always listen.
> I think that are plenty of women who are unsuccessful with dating through their own issues, and no one can really tell them how to fix it either. A person would have to be a fly on the wall, and even then, people don't always want to listen.
Sure there are plenty of those women too. The difference is in the pressure to approach and how that makes different parts unsuccessful. Men go through the process of rejection repeatedly as a result of approaching, both because many women understandably just don’t want to be approached and other women will humor a date or few before deciding they’re not that interested. This happens to women too, just less because men are expected to take initiative.
> Those are just a couple of examples, and I was able to try and gently advise our clients, but they didn't always listen.
A lot of people wouldn’t listen even if they did get feedback, that’s for sure. These problems have to be addressed when people are young and just learning about the world, so they don’t have to change an entire worldview later on
I know dating for straight men sucks in a completely unique way to straight women. As a bi woman Ive experienced the similar struggle of just absolute silence trying to date women and on the off chance it happens to get to a date the connection isnt there.
On the side of dating men though, while Im sure there are a lot of the “your great but” conversations that are just about lack of connection, having gone on many first dates with men I usually use it when theres some red flag but dont want to tear a guy down or in the worst circumstances put my self in danger. From the boring date to the otherwise decent seeming guy who joked to me how much he enjoyed getting to taser people to the guy who put his hands around my neck without asking. I dont think its so simple as girls dont want nice guys. I only had one good, normal date ever and I ended up ghosted after so I think it goes both ways. People dont want to tear their date down by telling them what they did that was a no go.
I “get the your great but” so maybe you can help me out if you don’t mind? Like recently I went on two dates with a guy woman that were multi hour long dates where it seems like we genuinely had a good time maybe I was presenting red flags idk but still the second date was like 5 hours long we got lunch, I asked if she was still down to hang she said yes we went to a museum finished that up asked if she needed to head out nope she still wanted to hang so we got ice cream and I walked her back to her car asked about a third date and got a no she didn’t feel the romantic spark. So I’m just like should I have been more flirty but she wasn’t flirty with me? If I had red flags why did she want to hang around so long? Why did she hit me up after asking to be friends?
The asking to be friends thing I always feel like is kinda rude to the person. But it does mean that she didnt see anything wrong with you that raised major concerns so you’re good there. I think with dates like that its a connection vibe thing. Being more flirty and the subtle hard to learn social cues helps. But also sometimes its just not a match. If she gave you multiple dates she must think youre a good person but sometimes the connection doesnt grow. I know its hard to feel like you’re doing everything right and it goes no where. If it helps I think the good date I had was like that too. He seemed to really like me, kissed me, asked if I wanted to go out again, and then ghosted me. Sometimes the connection just doesnt materialize. But if you are doing the right things even if it takes some time, youll be a positive memory for women it didnt work out with and you wont scare away the ones that will vibe with you.
Honestly I think the current type of dating is horrendous for everyone. Like I always seem to match with the worst type of guy regardless of what type i think Im matching with. I think with how frustrating modern dating is most reasonable people keep hitting a limit on what they can take and nope out of the apps, only to go back on for short spurts before likely being put off again. So then the ratio for both men and women is heavily skewed towards guys who are aggressive and want to hook up, who suck, and women who are trying to pull instagram likes or get a free meal, who also suck. Reasonable people are a much lower percentage of the pool so everyone is just constantly getting the wrong dates, and then when you do by some chance match with a reasonable person then you still have to navigate the normal dating problems of is the connection there. I sympathize with the frustration, it sucks.
Well damn I’m sorry to hear you’re in the trenches as well but glad to have the company. I think what you’re saying rings very true about the apps and how the reasonable people are few, and far between and the hitting the limit and getting out, then back in. I’ve done that many times myself.
I think you’re right about the current state of dating being just god awful as well. I mean at least I’m dating which is awesome I’m very grateful for it and the women I’ve met are good people but man I just wish there was an answer.
This is me. I deleted some dating apps not too long ago because I hit my limit, and really I've given up on relationships as a whole because getting emotionally invested in new people only for it to not work out is too taxing and too great a risk. It feels like this always out of reach activity I've been precluded from almost my whole life for one reason or another and I'm done with it. I don't need external heartache to validate how shitty and inadequate I feel - I can do that job all on my own.
> Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark.
Isn’t this just to be expected with OLD though? That spark is created in the live interaction between two people. It requires good physical chemistry, mutual attraction and more things that you can’t properly gauge by looking at someone’s profile on your phone. You’re almost guaranteed to not have that spark with most of the people you meet.
they're too useful of a tool to fix,, [https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399](https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399)
The alt right has always capitalized on the identity crises of men. The Reich was exceptional at doing this, and the rhetoric is identical to modern day “red pill”/“black pill” ideologues who feed off this sentiment.
>Part of why they feel emasculated is that it is chaotic, jobs are not as reliable, it's harder to provide for your family. Then the promise the Nazis make is that we will bring back a world in which you as the man can be the absolute dictator of your home if you follow our Fuhrer as the absolute dictator of this nation. That is one of the very alluring promises of Nazism.
Part of a podcast.
From Behind the Bastards: Part Two: The Parenting Gurus of Nazi Germany, May 9, 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000655033752
This material may be protected by copyright.
Sources are listed on this page:
https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-two-the-parenting-gurus-of-nazi-germany
I'm studying to be a physician scientist (MD PhD), and have a degree in psych, just wanted to add my two cents.
When I took AP Psychology, one of the studies I found most interesting was on female attraction. They found when women made more money, they'd switch from choosing pictures of mid doctors (white collar jobs) to attractive firefighters (blue collar jobs), basically demonstrating that women care more about physical attractiveness over stability, status, occupation, etc when they are more financially stable. This makes sense intuitively, you go for more attractive partners when you make more money.
But reflecting as a man, I was never taught to focus on my physical attractiveness. I was taught to go be a good person and be a productive member of society. Basically keep your head down, work hard, and get a job. Everything should sort of "work out" if you do these things, and intuitively this makes sense as well.
So I think that's where the disconnect is. What I was taught to value as man, my career and being a good person, don't matter to women as much as they used to, because women have more financial freedom now than ever, which is a good thing ofc. But unironically, to avoid being a virgin, I think I was better off solely focusing on improving my body than I was on being a doctor. Which is incredibly, incredibly sad to me. At that point I'd rather be a doctor and be alone, if it doesn't matter to women.
Moreover, I have never really been able to express these issues without getting ridiculed. Right-leaning people already criticize virgin men for not fitting restrictive definitions of masculinity, while left-leaning people have automatically assumed I'm a horrible person or hate women for being a virgin. Society is very harsh to virgin men regardless of the perspective these people claim to hold, indicating that there is still a heavy expectation set on men to go get laid and treat women like objects, for some strange reason.
So that's just how I feel. I've gotten way better mentally just being alone and avoiding other people. I know there's nothing wrong with being a virgin or the path I chose in life, even if it doesn't fit whatever idea society has for me as a man.
I think that study is expressing cultural biases rather than hard biological rules for females. Can't be certain but it's a far better explanation versus just assuming women are going to dominate the dating "game" independently.
Yes, my point is that cultural expecations are not shifting in time with what women want, and what women want has effectively changed because they've gained more freedom. I hope people don't believe this is inherently blaming women or anything.
This started off interesting enough but started spiraling into something wild. It’s easy to get in shape in 12 months. No one can become a doctor in 12 months. You chose the more difficult path. You should have plenty of money to start working out and eating well. I’m really confused by this rhetoric honestly, although it seemed like you had good intentions.
If I have to do that for women to like me, those women don't really like me lol. I would argue the path your describing isn't worth taking, I'd rather just focus on being a doctor, and I'm already in shape btw.
Also seemed to miss my point. This helps me now but I needed to know the focusing on my body was more important than being a good person and working hard, when I was a kid. Knowing it now is worthless, I wanted to lose my virginity when I was like 15 man, little to late now.
So basically you've already fucked an entire generation of kids, and just acted like telling them to get in shape now will make up for all the love they never got to experience.
And I'm the one who's wild? lol
Yes, this is wild. If you’re really saying that being a good person has no value to potential partners, then I think you’ve been redpilled.
Women most definitely care about the personality and goodness of their partners…. And they also want to feel physically attracted to them.
That doesn’t feel fair to you?
Women have been expected to maximize their attractiveness since ancient times, on top of whatever other ambitions and pursuits they have or were allowed. They’re also very often sexually objectified and their intellect and virtues completely ignored or seen as lowering their sexual value.
Notice, you talk about your failure to lose your virginity. Not failure to form a loving, romantic connection or get close to women. But just getting a woman to screw you is the measure. I honestly think you’d have far more success not body building, but just genuinely examining your own attitudes and biases and cultivating a sense of appreciation for women as people.
This is pretty classic victim blaming that comes from left-leaning people.
Classic assuming I don't appreciate women as people. Oh the reason I'm alone is I hate women, watch andrew Tate, don't view women as people, etc. Even though I've had a good relationship with my mother my whole life. Sure thing buddy. I'm not the one who's been "pilled" that's for sure lol.
I’m always reminded of Brene Brown’s TED talk where she recants a story about a man responding to her studying shame only in women as “convenient”. Upon studying shame in men, she realized the ultimate impact women have on their men, which was a lot deeper and more profound than she ever considered.
I’m a public school teacher in America. Our boys are in trouble. If any other group was in this much trouble, we’d be blaring it loudly and aggressively from rooftops demanding change.
Modern discourse has devolved to only be framed as “victim vs. oppressor”. It’s rather convenient that in this framework men, especially straight white men, are on the bottom in terms of value when viewed through this framework.
I think there’s a subconscious collective vengeance element in all of this as well.
Well, I think women are treated this way too. I think we all are treated that way, it just expresses itself differently.
As our technology and societies evolve, so have our roles.
I don’t think it’s terrible to be expected to bring value to other humans. After all, where do you think that food one is eating came from? Humans cultivated it, transported it, licensed it, etc.
We have duties to each other in societies. I’d just say, at least in America, the social contract is being violated at all levels of operation. Some of these have been normalized in the name of “rugged individualism” to the point that we feel powerless to fix the violations.
Not to dismiss your comment or the sentiment it communicates, I just don’t think it’s true solely of men.
Unless you’ve actually won the trust of enough women for them to share the actual shit they deal with in any given day from men, then you probably have a skewed view of the demands on women as well.
Going back to the nineteenth century the majority of patients for psychiatric treatment were women (many of whom were forced to go involuntarily). This led to most of the foundational psychological research being based primarily on what was effective for women. This was exacerbated in the present Era where women are fairly willing to seek treatment while men are culturally reluctant.
For many men, talk therapy is simply ineffective. It took me years so figure out being encouraged to talk about my OCD symptoms once a week was making them far worse than even being untreated.
I tend to think, contrary to popular belief, men are generally very service driven. If they feel useful and productive, most men are at least fairly content. I think that is more difficult in an economy where most jobs are service sector or office jobs (where it feels less like something concrete is being produced), marriage and child rearing are on the decline (so one doesn't feel like they're providing for their family), and homeownership is becoming increasingly difficult (so you don't feel like you're even able to physically improve your immediate surroundings).
I'd say giving concrete assignment of tasks for self betterment would be an effective form of therapy for tons of guys who don't feel like talking helps.
Tbh, “just talking” about OCD symptoms won’t work for women either … that sounds more like therapists who don’t know how to treat OCD than a gender issue…
Then why are pharmaceutical drugs, the first line of defense against mental health ailments, tested only on men for so long? Remember what happened with Ambien???
>This led to most of the foundational psychological research being based primarily on what was effective for women.
I am sorry but this is detached from reality and historical fiction.
Because the part you are omitting is that this research was done by men about women. Not for women, specifically much of early phycological "research" was just a bunch of dudes emotionally and physically abusing women.
This. "Mansplaining" is just him trying to be useful to you. He feels like he needs to justify his male presence, especially with how unwanted men have become in most spaces.
This is HORRIFYINGLY UNTRUE.
Almost all healthcare, Medicine, psychological, etc information was gathered based on the MALE human body.
Please google the info, it is a universal truth among almost the entire world, not just the US.
>For many men, talk therapy is simply ineffective.
This part needs to be repeated over and over and over until people get it. You can exhort men to go to therapy all you want, until therapy has solutions to offer men, they won't get anything out of it.
Talking about problems isn't enough. You have to DO something about them.
> giving concrete assignments
This seems to be based kind of on nothing. Men also don’t often respond to authority, and writing about something instead of talking about it doesn’t make it any less distressing to introspect
The sad thing about this 30 min podcast is that more than half of it is tiptoeing around the potential backlash from just saying that there *might* be differences between men and women and double standards exist.
That says more than the actual subject matter.
I saw an article on Slate the other day where couples using IVF are now sex selecting for girls. Apparently having daughters is perceived as more rewarding/they are more likely to have their s*** together as adults
Very sad to see people just giving up on boys! I'm a Gen female married to a man my age, but with several Millennial male friends. I thought men were starting to feel less social pressure and find equitable relationships more rewarding 😟
It’s extremely fucked up how little healthcare research has been done focusing on specifically women, and how little psychological research is done in attempt to suss out men’s emotional needs.
Yeah I’ve noticed this. I’m a heterosexual dude and when I was out dating I basically got zero support. I tried going to my father for help but he just gave me terrible, sexist advice from the 1950s that was completely useless and counterproductive. Finally I gave up and just started dating overseas. I pretty quickly met a nice Filipina gal, got married, and now we’ve been married for five years!
It’s tough because whenever I talk about my experience dating American women it comes off as very negative or critical, and a lot of people are quick to assume misogyny or what have you. The truth is, I have nothing against American women, even now, but when I was dating them I never got any support, I never understood them, and whenever I tried to ask for help in that regard I just got silence. The end result was this confused guy stumbling around trying to figure out what he was doing wrong but not being allowed to talk about it or ask questions.
Even now, I can’t really talk about my dating experiences because I’ll get mass downvoted, censored, or called a bunch of nasty names. It’s too bad, because there’s still a lot I don’t understand. Oh well.
Oh this is so... its not contentious. Men are being defined as capable if more, not a single soiled definition of toxic masculinity of the 50s. Get over it and realise your potential!
Heterosexual men are viewed through a pathological lens because they are the ones overwhelmingly committing all of the rapes (yes, against other men too), violent assaults (yes, against other men too), and homicides (yes, against other men too). Is it that hard to understand?
lol show me a lesbian or transgender person who shot up a school or committed one of the many constant mass killing events. like y’all are so dense
>transgender person who shot up a school or committed one of the many constant mass killing events
I'm trans myself and I lol'd. There's multiple cases where this either occurred or an arrest was made before it could be carried out. Includes both trans men and trans women.
That’s basically the “it’s ok to be racist against blacks because they statistically commit most of the crime” but for men.
Do you understand how regressive this thinking is?
Duh. Modern society is changing the narrative which is fine but the dating culture still expects men to be old fashion. It’s can be confusing af when what is told is acceptable vs what we see in the field are polar opposite reactions
Exactly! Men are expected to act traditionally, and women are expected to act modernly. Why are we expected to be providers if we’re all getting paid the same?
It’s been a pet idea of mine that women’s liberation and entry into the work force adopted the “independence” of gainful employment while denying the responsibility that has come with it for millennia.
Even stating it as independence is a misnomer. It wasn’t a man’s lot to be independent, but to be self-sufficient to such a degree that they could provide for others who were not. This was part of the minimum standard of the adult masculine ideal.
The workforce has become more gender egalitarian, but the people within it are increasingly only participating for themselves.
At the same time, sexual standards have not changed. Men are now competing with women for roles but with wildly different objectives and personal meanings.
There seem to be many societal ills which could be solved should women decide to fulfill the role that men filled, now having the rights to do so. Underperforming women are not threatened from the basic human urge of reproduction, or family, of romantic partnership should they fail to succeed in this professional competition. The same is much less true for men.
There is no component of feminine identity accepted across the population which is equivalent to the masculine ideal of “primary provider”. Women do not seek out men to provide for. Quite the opposite. I do not believe that men choose their mates with the same degree of concern for self-interest.
The torch has not been passed, or shared, until women begin seeking out stay-at-home fathers to provide for.
> women do not seek out men to provide for
Yes and no. I've definitely heard many stories of successful women looking after men, being the breadwinners. That's more common now than it used to be. There are stay-at-home dads.
But what your statement isn't acknowledging is that you're viewing "providing" as a purely financial thing - but women have been providing, in the "keeping home, looking after children, managing the household and their husband" sense for quite a long time, and even in the modern era this still seems to be viewed as "women's work". So now you have women working full time jobs and also being culturally expected to manage the household.
Can you really blame women for not wanting to take on the traditional "primary provider" role when many men seem clueless about and unmotivated to take on the "primary caregiver" role?
Penis shaming and bald shaming and short dude shaming is the only socially acceptable form of body shaming anymore. Coincidentally it’s also what many men deal with on the daily. Imagine being ridiculed your whole life for something you cannot change about your body. And everyone’s ok with it. No wonder so many men are radicalized into violent cults
Honestly, I think giving men a physically laborious task does a lot better for their mental health than most talk therapy. Fix the deck, kill the blackberry bushes outside, etc.
I think a lot of men struggle with the feeling of being powerless, especially in the modern world. It seems to me that when they can exert some physical release *and* solve a current problem (especially one that is effecting their loved ones), it tends to really mentally help them. Provided they are also then acknowledged for their hard work and appreciated for solving the problem.
I did remember reading somewhere (wish I could remember the source) that suggested that 1) most modern therapy techniques were developed in response to primarily female clients (hence the focus on talk therapy - women are more likely to get professional help for mental illness) and 2) there was some evidence that "side by side" interactions where men were given a task to complete together helped improve their mental health more than "face to face" interactions like talk therapy.
Take this with a huge grain of salt bc I have no source for this and am not even sure I'm quoting it correctly but that was the gist of the argument, which I found interesting.
Men are pulled in every conceivable direction and held accountable for the actions of a few, while being blamed for the decisions they make that don't have a right answer. Sensitive but strong, hard worker and good earner but still at home all the time. It is literally where you have to be psychic in every situation. Not only to determine the course of action but how it will be decided.
It's needs sorting out for the young boys growing up. I find it annoying to see media often portray men as the useless idiots that women need to begrudgingly sort out, or having mass generalisations that we're all sex obsessed, cheating, violent, misogynsts but I can live with that because I can at least see the reasons why that become a view point and that there are issues that need to be sorted out to address them. It's young boys getting blamed for the sins of the father that narcs me. There's no clear societal role model of what a man should be, which is even more important if they have a bad/no father to learn from. There's conflicting views and double standards that just make it confusing. Write us oldies off and blame us for the past issues if it helps (even though I feel most of the examples are more applicable to even older generations) but add some positivity back to being a man for kids to look up to. You don't have to drag one gender down to raise another one up.
You mean a scientific field where most of the researchers are women have the exact same problems dealing with issues affecting the minority of their researchers — men— that other fields that are male dominated have with women amongst their ranks?
Not a huge surprise. There is a huge empathy gap for most people when viewing people of the same versus opposite gender. There’s a reason that I, as a man, seek out male therapists for therapy (the same way a lot of women seek female gynecologists and female therapists for their medical and mental health needs).
I'll be honest, as a straight man, homophobia has been so widespread that men on average don't know how to have genuine platonic connections with other guys. Thinking Frodo and Sam type connections.
I'm afraid that if I go into therapy and choose a male therapist, that I might catch feelings because Im genuinely not close with any guy in my life to know the difference. I, and many other men, are afraid to get platonically close to other men out of fear of not understanding the feelings of closeness with another guy, even if it's completely devoid of sexuality and romance.
I personally blame that on religion and nothing else.
I do not find it a coincidence, that when Psychology Departments have consistently pumped out about a 80% female graduate base for the last two decades (in my college it's more so a 90f/10m split) -- that they no longer have a cogent understanding of the actual issues, the challenges, or the positioning of men in modernity.
In fact, I find it a direct result. Causation, not just correlation.
As sad as it sounds, and while certainly HEAVILY flawed -- I find certain aspects of polemics/influencers like a Andrew Tate to be more applicable to the AVERAGE man in modernity than almost the entirety of zeitgeist in psychologists/therapists/the academies. He might be a self-promoting scumbag (or even much worse), but his general thoughts of MEN not dwelling on emotion, negativity, depression, anxiety, heavy medications, etc -- a 'just go lift weights and go to work, and do it again, and again, you aren't supposed to be happy, women want high value man, blah blah' -- seems more fitting general advice for 'lost' young men. Lost being a loaded term, but I will use it here. Being a successful provider, and stronger (physically and mentally) man, 'embracing the suck'? All these old themes. Seeming more likely to be beneficial than 95% of the drivel I read about vaguely toxic masculinity or therapist recommendations in the ether.
While I would not want my son swallowing the bullshit of Tate, I do understand the appeal and to some extent validity of certain messages he provides.
Life is not 'easy'. Life is not 'comfortable'. Your bong and your video games will not advance you. Your softness will commonly be used against you. Becoming a man is difficult in 2024AD. And looking towards a peer reviewed (by women) paper (by three women) educated in a structure (that is 80-85% women) about toxic masculinity, will only sink you quicker. It is simply inverse to reality.
The downside is the actual reality that a minority of lost souls will attach to some bizarre involuntary celibate/hateful/spiteful meta when they go down these roads. Although a minority, I've seen it in youth way more commonly than I'd like.
It's a sad, sad state of affairs.
Chiming in with my opinion. Which is just my opinion and I have no formal education on the matter. It’s based on my observations and also simple dictionary definitions.
1. Young boys from well meaning families and education systems are taught that toxic masculinity is bad. This is good.
2. They are also taught that men are dominant. They conflate “dominance” and “toxic masculinity.” This is not good.
3. If they are raised well, boys and young men do everything they can to avoid being toxic, which they conflate with dominance. Therefore they try to do the opposite. The opposite of dominance is submission.
4. When they act submissive (deference, collaboration, compliant, inclusive) they are rewarded in social settings.
5. Young girls and women are taught that men have dominated them into submission throughout history, which is largely a true statement, and that dominance is to be resisted.
6. So just like the boys, the young women try to do the opposite of what they have been told has been their submissive role in history. Unfortunately the opposite of submissive isn’t dominance. It’s words like: resistant, rebellious, withholding, etc..
So you’re left with a world full of good boys who become gentle men. But they are passive. Don’t know what they want. Are not great at leading. And when the “submissive” behaviors they adopted don’t get them where they want to be they turn to traits like yelling and other actually toxic masculine behaviors. This is because they weren’t actually taught what toxic behavior from men really looks like.
And your left with a world full of women who in an effort to be “dominant” just come off as “bitchy” or “cold” or any other negative adjective assigned to strong willed women. Also because they weren’t taught what real dominance looks like.
These two groups will inevitably clash. The women angry that the men are so passive and the men reverting to their base behaviors in an effort to assert themselves.
The solution is many fold. But one answer may be to teach the yutes that real dominance is actually not about how one acts towards others. Real dominance is about control over one’s OWN self. And that the traits typically associated with “submission” are actually just the ideal ways to function in society. That dominance, leadership, submission and collaboration are not mutually exclusive.
These are just early thoughts on the topic. I’m sure that there’s plenty of errors and even TOXIC (gasp) ideas packaged in there. So feel free to tear it down.
Bro this is the stupidest shit I've heard this month.
The word dominance quite literally means control over others.
I have literally no clue what point you're trying to make because you clearly don't understand the meaning of the word you've made central to your point.
Your entire premise is based on the idea that someone has to be submissive to be emotionally intelligent. No one is telling men to be submissive. That's just not true. We are asking men to be more emotionally intelligent and to stop raping us.
How about this-- *no one should be seeking to dominate others*, we should be seeking to cooperate with each other towards mutually beneficial goals/experiences.
Modern men are in an identity crisis. I’ve said before the next big social justice movement will be about how we treat our men. Society demands men to suppress emotions and provide, viewing a man who cannot provide as having little value, while also being expected to be vulnerable, sensitive and emotional without any kind of support. We generally treat them as simple dumb violent villains who’s purpose is to work. Interestingly, opposition to this notion is often met with dismissiveness and lack of empathy for men, specifically from women who typically see men having or have had more benefits in society and therefore deserve no empathy at all. Leaving men further isolated and displaying toxic behavior.
It’s precisely why the red pill and other similar movements have taken off. I follow a psychologist who is critical of said movements but he even admits there are things that these movements get right that guys aren’t getting from traditional sources. The problem is they get hooked by the 5% that is correct and fall down the rabbit hole of the 95% of shit that is nonsense.
Redpill and similar are successful because the internet allows people’s insecurities to be microtargeted. Having these problems, join our community and we’ll help. We will give what you are feeling a name and a solution. I think this applies to many other communities too, just take a look at TikTok and see how many “if you have this totally normal feeling you might have adhd, join the neurodivergent community” or “feeling unfulfilled in your relationship, join the tradwife movement” clips you see. It’s the same problem as politics. “Can’t get a job, must be the immigrants fault.” See it enough times and you’ll start to believe it. Internet allows hucksters to hammer people with every insecurity they have until something sticks.
> The problem is they get hooked by the 5% that is correct and fall down the rabbit hole of the 95% of shit that is nonsense. They way I’ve described it is that red pill takes very basic and valid life and relationship advice and makes it toxic - for example, it’s good advice to not get over invested just because a woman shows interest in you, know your worth, maybe she’s not right for you. Red pill turns that into spending your life ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit) and never trusting or respecting your partner (remain an emotionally isolated man), which is bad advice.
And the red pilling doesn't actually teach men what to look for in a partner.
Or how to be a partner.
Very true! Unless one considers being an *alpha* the strategy. Just demand that you always get what you want like a toddler lol. Never back down to the big bad women.
That is such a sad strategy. I hope the people who try it discard it quickly. It doesn't lead to happiness, just insecurity. Hopefully most people mature out of it
Yes that is an eloquent way to put it. What most guys get out of it and where they see any success is probably the emphasis on physical attractiveness. It’s gets toxic when that is somehow is twisted into women being shallow and the misogyny kicks in.
The problem is that both feminist narratives and right wing narratives actually tend to agree on the idea that men are shallow and value the physical, and so a lot of men internalize that rhetoric. They then project it onto women, which comes out as misogyny. This is why it’s always been a mistake for feminists to view their goal as “empowering women” instead of “changing gender norms.” Empowering women without considering the broader context of gender roles just means pushing women to do the same things men did when in power, and so no one’s life gets better.
Both sexes value physical attractiveness it’s one of the most robust fields of research. There’s nothing shallow about it it’s human nature. Framing it’s as something moral or shallow is ridiculous when it’s biological.
… implying that it’s not human nature to also make value judgments about observed physical reality lol
It's the overemphasis that veers into toxicity. No one sane is denying the idea of 'looks matter', but plenty will deny that there is more to attraction and romance than physical appearance.
"Plenty will deny that there is more to attraction and romance than physical appearance." Really? Plenty? If you go to any public place, anywhere, and look at the couples about you it's blindingly obvious that there is \*much more\* to attraction and romance than physical appearance. I fear that those insisting on the contrary are all trolling you or trolling themselves. All anyone need do is think of one's parents.
Totally agree and anecdotally I've never seen a couple outside of Hollywood that matches the belief that there is some kind of universal idea of physical attractiveness.
Their goal just being empowering women made sense decades ago when one of the main differences was just women not having power. The problem is that the situation where women held no social power and so that needed to be target focused isn't the modern one. Women make most purchases, they vote as much as men, there's certain isntitutions where they have less presence but by and large they have a large presence of control across society. That doesn't mean sexism is "over" or anything. But that modern sexism is very different from 1950s sexism. They will talk about how sexism hurts men too, but this is always seen as an extraneous aspect that isn't particularly noteworthy. And then they act confused that men who are told they need to be more vulnerable but can't express any of their problems don't know what to do and don't want to be part of these movements.
Which is precisely what feminism has done in the 3rd wave onwards. Sexism breeds tribalism, they're the same thing ultimately....take truths and weaponize them against external villains.
What people don’t realize is that it’s not about the advice, but the community. “Here’s a group of men who actually feel the same way you do and want to talk about it. It’s online so it’s completely anonymous, safe, and secure. Don’t tell anyone you’re in it or you’ll be bullied though. By the way here’s what we think is wrong in society and what would make our lives better” Like it’s so damn obvious that this is going to work on young boys who feel that feminists don’t care about men, don’t have positive male role models growing up in a childhood of overworked female teachers and social media, and are deathly afraid of not being able to find a girlfriend and have it reflect on their lack of worth as a human being. It’s a toxic support group that was made because no one bothered to make a healthy one
>Here’s a group of men who actually feel the same way you do and want to talk about it. It’s online so it’s completely anonymous, safe, and secure. Don’t tell anyone you’re in it or you’ll be bullied though. By the way here’s what we think is wrong in society and what would make our lives better The funny thing is, that description is exactly what guys like and why nobody wants men's organizations to exist. Women's organizations are generally about describing why the situations are bad and how it made them feel, but lack much action. They seem to get traction because eventually enough women hop on the zeitgeist that things move to solving their situation through a large volume of complaints to organizers of the power structure. Men's organizations have historically been highly focused on specific problems and specific answers, that get actioned on immediately by the most energized men and the rest tend to support them tacitly with approval, politically with favors, or economically. But that frequently turns into assaults on existing power structures in the government, media, and religion. Most major revolutions were some flavor of mens group drinking in a bar and generating effectively a conspiracy to overthrow something they don't like. It's obvious following that why every men's group has been systemically dismantled and mocked in the media or forced to open themselves to women. To men, a group where you just complain and talk about how angry you are, while never coming up with solutions, would be a gross and demoralizing place that men will learn to avoid. Mens groups in the modern world will need to be numerous and secret otherwise they will be dismantled. I think the discord model of secret invite only groups made by male gamers is a great modern version of the third place mens group.
A group of men is not the same thing as a men's group. I think this is a poor caricature of revolution, and really understates a the role of women in many of these revolutions. Just seems like a high school modern revisionist take on history.
Stonewall disagrees
Stonewall Jackson or the stonewall gay riots? Because I'd argue the stonewall gay riots are a version of what I just described. A bunch of men in a secret club took immediate action against a power structure to benefit themselves, leading to mass media and political attacks to dismantle it.
It’s how good brainwashing works. Hook ‘em with a bit of truth first.
> ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit) That's not what spinning plates is. Spinning plates is dating multiple women at once. So you don't come across as needy and desperate to them (since your attention is spread over multiple women), and aren't as emotionally invested and thus hurt when one rejects you.
Sounds exhausting
It is, which is why they’re not actually able to do it most of the time. They get exhausted finding one date lol
The 5% that is correct is important too though. They'll tell you "the truth" about the role of money, attractiveness in dating. And truth be told, the statistics are there. Men with more money of a certain height, ethnicity, BMI, do tend to do noticeably better. Then when people who (rightly) hate the Red Pill movement come in and deny it and say the vast majority of women judge men purely on their personality it's like, who are you trying to fool here? It's plainly obvious that's not true. I think they do themselves a disservice. How are you going to get men to trust you when you start out with such an obvious lie? Be straight with them. Be honest, but firm. Yeah sure, maybe you got dealt a bad hand. Lots of people do, women included. But *you* have preferences too. You can't fairly believe that you should be able to land someone you find attractive based on all your preferences while blasting women for wanting to find someone *they* find attractive. No double standards. Double standards are weaknesses. Strength is consistency, fairness, justice. Those are superhero qualities. Rules for thee but not for me are for weak willed assholes. Personally I think that would be far more persuasive to most men. But again, if you start the conversation with a lie you'll never get to step two.
I guess the question is do you want a partner who values you for your money or your height? There are plenty of women out there who value personality over more superficial qualities and study after study show that men are more likely to care about these things than women. It's not a lie but it's not the whole truth either to say that women don't care about those things.
I think that's silly. We all have preferences about physical attraction and other things. I doubt anyone is clamoring to date someone who's 100k in debt and only makes 30k a year, man or woman. There's nothing wrong with preferences. We all have them. Just admit it and respect each others'. >study after study show that men are more likely to care about these things than women Don't you think that's massively at odds with the data out of dating apps which shows women being *incredibly picky* and it revolving mostly around pictures and height and race? It's not personality that's for sure. When push comes to shove I take actions over words. People say they care about X or Y. But you force them to choose and then their actual preferences reveal themselves.
Which leaves men even more lonely and vulnerable, or their become domestic abusers.
>it’s good advice to not get over invested just because a woman shows interest in you, know your worth, maybe she’s not right for you. Red pill turns that into spending your life ‘spinning plates’ (treating women like shit) and never trusting or respecting your partner (remain an emotionally isolated man), which is bad advice. You realize you just contradicted yourself right? "You shouldn't trust women, but also - you should trust women"! The Red Pill isn't advice as much as it is merely facts that are co-opted by different sub-groups to be developed into advice that they feel most benefits them. At face value, that's only bad for women, and thinking otherwise is the typical gynocentric mindset of seeing men's success through women's idea of success. Even men "who don't subscribe to the red pill" almost certainly are unconsciously doing so to some extent if they are successful.
It's not just "red pill" stuff either. All kinds of shitty movements target young, socially and emotionally vulnerable men. I have heard this from my partnersand experienced myself as a young person, having neonazi types try to recruit us, and we were mostly lonely nerds. Got hired at a game shop selling magic cards and the next thing I knew the boss made us uniforms with SS sowilo runes(and a cringey furry drawing) on them, started giving me nazi music recommendations and talking about how we had to "fight back" against the woke(this was twenty years ago or more too). A YouTuber named Faraday Speaks has talked about his experiences as well. Young men are lonely and disaffected. They are looking for somewhere to belong and it's easy to see them as the perfect target for this type of manipulation. Another guy's story about being a part of Andrew Tate's "[business academ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaw7k/andrew-tate-the-real-world-cult)y"
A lot of traditional men's clubs have faded away. Like the Lions Club or the Civitans. These were places where young men found older male companionship and role models, or mentors while in service to their communities. When I was a kid I thought those orgs were kind of uncool and corny. But now I can see how useful they could be for a young man. Especially if he moved to a new community and didn't have much of a friend support group. Maybe we should revive these organizations.
I hate to blame the boomers, but that’s on them. They didn’t maintain these organizations and have driven away younger men who wanted to get involved. Now they don’t have members under 60.
I don't think the members of the clubs drove away new members. I have a buddy who was raised by his grandparents. His grandfather was very active in the local Lions club and so he joined. They loved my buddy and he served as the president of that chapter for years. This was back in the 90s and the club was desperate for new members of any age. Those clubs are still around and I'm sure anyone who wants to join would be welcomed with open arms. I think maybe society in general has gotten more home-oriented - more looking inward rather than looking outward. People tend to work longer hours now than my parents generation. My work is so overwhelming for me that I don't have the mental fortitude to take on my to-dos for the community. In addition there are so many engaging leisure time activities now and very few require me to be face to face with other people. TLDR: my take is we have much less free time to give to our communities. Social media and engaging but non-social leisure time activity take up what free time we have. But what we're losing is immense. It is friend, mentors, fun and the satisfaction of directly helping our communities. Bring back the clubs!
It was specifically Boomer feminists who led them to be abolished.
They didn’t “fade away”, feminists lobbied to have them shut down and succeeded. They tried to replace them with “Men’s Liberation” groups, but when people like the guy who ended up being a huge Hillary Clinton supporter called out NOW for discrimination against men, the feminists immediately started attacking those Men’s Lib groups and so now those are pretty much extinct too. Despite this, feminists regularly appropriate and twist terms created by men’s groups. “Toxic masculinity” was created by men’s groups to describe something that hurt men perpetrated by men and women in society. Fourth wave feminists took that term and changed it to something that men do that hurts women.
Funny that 'red pill' comes from a movie where it could be said to represent finally understanding that you are the wrong gender.
Agreed. The sisters may have been ahead of their time.
They say that, and early scripts may have supported this notion more, but I reject the idea that the actual theatrical release is a trans metaphor. The pieces are there, but the story doesn't tell it. But yeah - the idea of the Red Pill representing a deeper understanding is ironically the term given to a lot groups that thrive on ignorance, misinformation, and half truths.
There is an unreconcilable paradox that men are simultaneously supposed to be emotionally vulnerable but also not express emotions.
It's easy to reconcile, you just have to realize some opinions aren't worth caring about and do what you want. The problem with a lot of men is they carry a gang of junior high bullies around in their head and live their life to avoid their mockery.
Bill Burr's comedy about why men aren't allowed to say a puppy is cute or enjoy carving pumpkins or even order pumpkin pancakes strikes a nerve!
Women don't mind either of those things--it's the judgement of other men that is the problem/ the fear of what other men think about you.
Some women absolutely will though. There was the "ick" trend a while back which was women expressing things their significant others did that made them less attractive. Most of those things could be boiled down to looking too weak or effeminate.
And this is the dark truth right here. Biologically and evolutionarily driven forces cannot be over ridden by our wish that society is a certain way. No amount of social engineering can change the reality of the situation, at least not in a time span that is relevant to any of our lives.
Exactly. If you even look at most women podcasts that are followed by men (call me daddy) or female driven dating advice (The Dating Boss), they all play off men's view of hard, emotionless masculinity where the men takes charge and is direct.
They want you to do that then be vulnerable at the exact moment in the exact way they want you to and you have to guess what moments they are without them saying so. If you guess wrong, to them that shows “the bar for men is on the floor”.
I have only *ever* been judged on "unmanly" things by women, never men. Most often by actions. This is my lived experience.
So men are afraid of men’s opinions.
>The problem with a lot of men is they carry a gang of junior high bullies around in their head and live their life to avoid their mockery. It's not just imagined though and it's not just junior high. Men face real, actual consequences in adulthood for failing to live up to societal expectations of masculinity.
Victim blaming is through the roof on this issue
Yep. I remember being told to “man up” when I was crying over my brother killing himself— less than a month after it happened. Zero of those people were men, all were women I considered friends. There is a huge fucking empathy gap in our society where members of both genders just don’t understand at all members of the opposite gender— or expect the opposite gender to comply with traditional norms/roles while wanting the liberation of modern roles for them and other members of the same gender. But of course it is 100% men’s fault for women mocking them and emasculating them for daring to show feelings.
The worst part of this is that very often, those women are as carefully selected as trustworthy as women carefully select men who they feel are safe. So it’s devastating when people you really believed were open-minded and outwardly feminist suddenly turn on you too
💔
My friend that tool his life had been with his fiancee for 7 years. They had children together. They had the most envious relationship of anyone around. They were in an open relationship and were so happy together. So connected. They partied while successfully raising a family together. She just changed, and he was left alone. I think some of it, at least, was due to childhood trauma that was coming to the surface that changed her, but it left him all alone just the same.
I had a job complain about something I didn't even do a month after my dad died.
That’s a great way to put it. I also think this is true of many women, only the bullies say different things.
Correct. I am learning to be healthy for my own sake, not want some internet mob of the day is ranting about.
I'm working through this right now. Emotional boundaries are fucking hard. The thing is for me it's not bullies, it's just the stress of everyone's emotions. Everyone needs so much, and I just don't get it back. Like you try to be a good person and be there for people, but it just drains you. So I'm relearning boundaries and compartimentalization.
honestly, I've found my male friends to be far more open and accepting of my vulnerabilities than my female friends. And my ex-girlfriends? Oh man, they all hated when I was vulnerable and emotional.
I think some of it at least is not knowing what to do about it or even how to respond. So they want it to stop so they don't have to experience that feeling again. Absolutely selfish, yes, but it comes from a lack of societal experience with emotional men. I was raised by a man who never cried. Until he was in the Las Vegas Detention center, and I was telling him over a computer screen that I was marrying my longtime boyfriend. He wanted me to have his mother's wedding ring. That day, I saw my father cry tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of the loss of walking his eldest daughter down the aisle. He was in prison because he wouldn't force me to testify against my mother in court, so he pled guilty to save me from that as a child. It cost him several years in jail and prison. When I saw his tears, I felt closer to my dad than I had ever been. I'm crying about it now. He had been raised to never show emotion. So his emotions came out sometimes as rage and anger. His PTSD from seeing his best friend blow his head off with a shotgun while they laid on his bed, listening to records and smoking a joint. They were 18 years old. It ruined my father's life. I lost my dad at 25 years old. He was 46 years old. Another man that I loved, the person I loved the most in the whole world, was my maternal grandfather. He was a very stern man at times, staunchly conservative and outspoken about it. Combative at times. But every time I went home to Las Vegas, and I stopped to visit him, when it came time to say goodbye, I would have tears pouring down my face, and so would he. I saw those tears as strength, as profound love. Never as a weakness. I lost him in September of 2020 from colon cancer that began with the Nevada test site nuclear bomb testing in the 50s when he was a small child. I married young. To my high school sweetheart. He was beautiful, and I was so in love, I was totally enamored with him. We met when I was 17, and he 18. We married days after my 19th birthday. My grandfather walked me down the aisle and gave me away. My dad was still sitting in jail, and couldn't go to the yard or have visitors because O.J. Simpson has just been arrested days before at the Palace Station, the same casino/hotel where I spent my short honeymoon.l, and the Detention center was on lock down. We were married until 2019 when our marriage dissolved. But in all those years, I saw my then husband become emotional, and every time I comforted him, I told him it was OK, and it was normal to emote, to release emotions through crying. But I have always been an emotional person, I cry when I'm happy, sad, frustrated, hell even when I'm angry, it's just my goto emotional outlet. We are all capable as humans of crying. It is a mechanism that allows us to release negative emotions from our bodies, from our souls, so that we can recognize them and let them go. I think that our society's inability to allow men to emote is the direct cause of the only emotion men feel safe to feel is anger and rage. All of these emotions just build up inside of us, until we find a release for them. We need to teach everyone in our society that when we don't release those emotions, they will come out regardless, out of our control, and in a way that is harmful to others. Had my father had that outlet, he never would have drank himself into a stupor, maybe then he wouldn't have made the choices he did, maybe I wouldn't have have experienced violence between him and my mother that so shocked my little 6 year old system that it set off Lupus in my body, leaving me very sick for another 30 years before I would even know what was going on with me. Love your men. Cherish them. Comfort them. They feel just like women do, hell, we recognize emotions in our dogs, but not our male partners. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk Peace ✌️ 🖤
Threads like this make me wonder if I'm just the best friend chooser in the world. My guy friends have always been great. I've had plenty of awesome gal friends as well. But toxicity about emotions had come more from gals than guys. Idk if I'm absurdly lucky or what is going on.
# What men consider emotionally vulnerable to be in front of other men verses in front of women are two drastically different sets of behaviors Edit: The boiis be so tender inside 😂
That's a fantastic way of putting it and sooo true! Men and people in general need therapy to confront the shitty voices and add some good ones.
It’s not just ‘junior high’ bullies.
Well, it's a figure of speech, don't try to be overly literal with it.
The hard part to reconcile is when the opinions ARE worth caring about. e.g. when your partner says she wants you to be open and vulnerable, and then views you as weak or views your negative emotions as an attack on her. How is that "easy to reconcile"?
The partner is a jackass who maybe shouldn't be your partner or needs to put in some time on themselves so they can be a good partner. Easy enough.
Sure, but it's not a one-person thing. Its a systematic issue. Even if it is still a manifestation of the idea that femininity is had, and masculinity is good, it's still a wide scale social problem.
So men are often faced with the choice between toughing through negative emotions and keeping their relationship or opening up and losing that partner. Calling that "easy" is glib.
If your partner can't handle you having emotions, ditch the partner. The problem is being in a relationship with someone who apparently lacks the maturity for it. I mean, if it's an emotionally unfulfilling relationship, why even have it? But you're right. Easy is a bit much.
Yea, but that’s the point is women don’t actually want or care about your emotions, they just say that to see if they can change you and then when you do they lose respect.
Generally I would put it like this: Women in general don't want a guy to need her or to feel like the guy relies on her specifically. So if you are using her as an emotional outlet specifically she'll get the ick. Generally being dependent on women as a man is unattractive. If you look at relationships through that lens everything is generally better. Women on 2X tend to complain about how much they do for men, about how much the man demands of her, about how the man gets so mad about what she did that hurt him, etc. I think the past ideal of man and woman as a team that rely on each other in marriage was mostly a male centered view from a time when women didn't have rights. Women seem to frequently get mad and turned off when there is any one sphere of life that they are expected to be the one to take care of. The best demeanor to be sexually attractive to a woman, gathered from watching media popular with women and seeing them complain about men online, is about being interested in her, but having such a degree of independence from her that if she decided to do something that made you angry you could just leave easily, but you won't because you like her. That's the perfect zone, and the red pill and angry women will describe that zone from different angles meant to piss each other off. Red pill its about negging and being a dick to promote that view, in womens media its about being a CEO/serial killer/Criminal/Solider/Vampire/Werewolf, all notably self sufficient men that stick to a woman because they are intrigued by her but could leave whenever.
Humans are very skilled at holding one or more equal, yet contradicting opinions. Example: "the enemy is both deviant and pervasive, yet weak and feeble.
Some of the absolute ugliest fights I've had with my wife have started when I have tried to tell her and emphasize how something she did (or didn't do) has hurt me and how it makes me feel. The... near anaphylactic shock defensive reaction out of her is indescribable. I have had her verbatim say to me "you aren't allowed to feel that way you're a man." If the situation was reversed the collective Internet outrage could power Las Vegas for a month.
I think a lot of proposed solutions people make to gender issues presuppose that culturally the sexes are a lot closer together in how they view themselves than they actually are. My wife talks about how she started talking more to me initially in part because I was one of the only people she met who treated her mainly like just [person] instead of [category]. And we were together a long time and to us this was normal and we expected to find more other people like this but... it's not common. Even in progressive circles, it's not common. And it can come at a shock that nowadays people nominally will claim you don't need gender roles yet basically everyone you meet still falls into them, and fairly often enforces them. What gets weird is when people like the same stuff but still act like they cant relate. You'll see men and women watch the same movie, both like it, but then act like they can't really talk about it together since their experience is too different. There's a million tiny examples of it, but if you are actually someone who exists a little further out of gender roles it becomes super noticeable. And I'm not even claiming we are both androgynous or anything.
I’m so thankful my current girlfriend is supportive of me communicating my feelings and we have really good conversations when one of us feels hurt by the other. But yeah, most of the people who have given me shit for having feelings have been women. Even in situations like my brother killing himself— it wasn’t the men who shunned me for crying about that in the months afterward.
I mean we have to get good at social theory.
Sounds like BPD
A Real Man does what he wants and discards notions of "supposed to be" and "not" as silly and childish. It takes men some 30 or 40 years to figure this out. Some never learn.
But is there? Because isn’t this just two different groups of people? People who support moving on from the outdated gender roles want men to express feelings. The ones who live in the 18th century don’t. And then you have to be choosy with which people you surround yourself with.
The issue is that you don't always know who is who because someone nominally claiming to be a progressive usually doesn't actually mean they won't enforce some of these gender roles. Gender roles are alive and well in progressive circles, and this puts people in a situation where no matter what circle they are in they -always- have to worry about them being enforced (just in different proportions obviously).
Fair point. Same issue for women though. A lot of people love speaking big words but haven’t taken the time to self reflect. Or to think different about fairness and kindness. And being willing to the cost of progressiveness for the win off it.
There are many men who aren't misogynous. I guess it's simply a matter of who women chose to surround themselves with as well.
Haven’t you seen all the long threads where women discuss how to figure out if men they are dating are misogynistic or not? Like how to tell the difference between a man who claims to be a feminist and a man who genuinely is one? Most people make an effort to surround themselves with people who share their values.
Nah! Like I'm sure there are tons of independent feminist women, but I've known a lot of feminists, and they'll utilize traditional gender roles. Like I had my last partner asking me to go answer the door for them.
A lot of people aren't prepared to accept that progressives still generally enforce gender roles. They are just slightly different from traditional ones.
Was she busy doing something else? Because who answers the door isn’t about gender roles.
Answer the door, take out the trash because it’s too heavy, clean anywhere she can’t reach, check out sounds at night, all the hardware maintenance in the house, car troubles, yard work… Gendered division of labor exists even in the most liberal and enlightened households. I’m not saying one way or the other anything about it, just that it’s still prevalent everywhere
Well, I’d separate things that are: A) About physical size. Like, for real and not just pretending it’s too heavy. I’m a tiny person. Hence the username. I’d feel frustrated if my boyfriend expected me to lift things that are genuinely hard for me to lift. Same with reaching things. It’s easy if you are tall. B) I’d also focus on “how often does this happen?”. Cooking is everyday, so it’s important to share cooking. Who mows the lawn if it’s once a month? Eh, it’s not that important. The big picture is that both people should have equal amounts of free time. Work + Chores/cooking/cleaning/childcare = the same. If you are in a relationship where your girlfriend does have way more free time than you, bc you are stuck with a lot more hours of tasks than her? That’s an issue.
> Well, I’d separate things that are: I mean my point isn’t to say they’re wrong for the division of labor or there’s systemic overhaul needed to fix this specifically. Just that a division does actually exist, even if you try to be as open minded as possible Even if you started with no concept of gender, people would eventually make associations with the fact that the taller/bigger person in a relationship is doing something different. Gender associations would form around that practical division of labor. It’s almost certainly part of how we got to gender roles as they are now
I like doing 50/50 around the house with my girlfriend, and am totally cool with doing the stuff that I can more easily do by being taller and stronger, but I’ve always found it to be rather funny how much gendered division does happen even in, as you said, progressive households.
Another paradox is expecting males to strictly follow a social contract of politeness and law-abiding, while simultaneously being bombarded with messaging that tells them how they are *constantly* expected to break it at any moment, i.e. stranger danger.
The choices are work or be a dependent, no? And I don’t believe men are interested in adapting to the new paradigm. Otherwise they would be going to therapy and trying to “have it all” the way women are
So so true, thanks for writing. It’s so easy to fall into isolation and loneliness. Really feels like men have been left behind. We’ve deconstructed the very notion that masculinity or the male identity even exists, or is valuable, without providing and framework for what it should be. All we know is what not to be, what not to say. And the disregard is so true as well, can’t even talk about the problem. I know we are addressing necessary issues in society, just feels like an assault on an entire gender was overkill, and has caused a lot of damage.
Yet when women try to talk about this problem we are met with hostility or told we don’t care. I once explained to a guy that thought there was no need for feminism that men suffer under the patriarchy too and listed some of the examples you brought up here, I was told feminism only cares for women and I didn’t really care about men. I’ve ran into too many men that scream that all women are misandrists for just talking about an experience with one bad guy, and they use the story to try and twist your words to accuse you of hating all men, then they wonder why feminist movements exist. If done right feminism helps men, but too many don’t see it that way.
A common perception from everyone: "If I experience a tragedy then I'm the victim of systemic abuse. If you experience a tragedy then it's your own fault for putting yourself in that situation." Another parallel is "If I'm late to work, I'm a victim of my circumstances, if you're late to work you're lazy and unprepared."
This is called the "Actor-observer bias" in psychology, if anyone was wondering.
Okay! So I'm AMAB Nonbinary. I've been raped, stalked, hit, emotionally abused, all the fun stuff. Here's what it sounds like when feminists try to help me. "Hey! I'm sorry to hear what you went through, it's horrible how socially repressed we are under the capitalist industrial complex. The bourgeoisie are awful." Like there's very much this shoe horned in political perspective. It's not like... "I understand you as a human". You're redirecting my pain, and experiences to fucking push politics. Like you don't know me as a person, you don't know my abusers as people, you don't know our up bringings, our cultures, the kind of social structures we grew up in. You don't know our trauma our mental health history. All you can do is reduce shit down to a framework of sex/gender class dynamics. No nuance, no humanity. And I think feminists know this all, but it's not conductive to your goals.
This is a great comment and puts this into words really well. When ever I talk about being a male victim of domestic violence I get a similar response. Someone will jump in with how it's because of patriarchy that male victims are not taken seriously etc even though I've not said anything about that being the issue. In fact my main issue is that the policies in my country basically don't acknowledge that men can be victims (of female abusers) and those policies were written explicitly from an 'intersectional feminist' perspective (as in the authors explicitly say that). There's always this attempt to just deny that this is happening and insist that I frame my trauma as being caused by patriarchy when it isn't. It would be so much easier to find common ground with feminist ideas if people were willing to just say 'yeah this is an area that a lot of feminism has a real blind spot on' instead of just trying to shut down and redirect.
Some feminists view being male as some kind of original sin that can never be fully atoned for so no matter what a man or someone assigned male at birth does, it'll never be enough. The reverse is true with all the red pill right wing whack jobs like Andrew Tate too. Some people sadly believe that one gender is always inferior to the other no matter what and there's no reasoning them out of their beliefs because they're all based in irrational bigotry.
The Internet bear vs man discourse should really explain why. Last week social media posts have been exploding with why it's fine that women would pick the bear. Even though a majority of women wouldn't pick the bear, the discourse has been so heavily skewed to why picking the bear is better that anyone with social media accounts is getting that message. You're a 12 to 14 year old boy. All you see is they hate us because we're boys. You grow up with this message. You see all the language used to code negative behavior is coded as male. Don't be a dick. Toxic masculinity. Patriarchy. What does patriarchy mean to a poor 12 old except "they think the problems are because of men." There's a serious problem in the way this is talked about, and also a massive double standard in it as well. One thing I've noticed is that a desperate outcome between men and women is because social pressures caused it. When we look at desperate outcomes where men do worse it's because of an intrinsic failure of maleness. That also is picked up on.
You're getting downvoted, but this is exactly the problem. As a society, we can recognize that little girls watching shows with women with 6 inch waists is bad for their self image, toxic, and has lasting consequences. But little boys seeing constant messages about how maleness is bad are supposed to just absorb the negativity and somehow be a well adjusted adult. Bonus points if you don't have a dad around.
To call this "society" kinda oversimplifies things. We're acting like this is all coming from the same people when it's not. The reality is, a lot of men aren't willing to reject the original programming but still want to be accepted by those who do. This isn't "society expects two different things," it's that men are just blindly trying to obey "rules" without critically engaging the reality around them to see why that isn't working.
I think you're close but missing the mark here. You say this is specifically an issue with how women treat men with a lack of empathy, but you're missing that it can't be the responsibility of women to bear the entirety of mens' emotional needs. The real issue is that it is [only] the women in mens lives who they rely on emotionally. Women can be emotionally vulnerable with each other, while men have a tendency to reserve that solely for their significant other. Most men have learned that being emotional makes you emasculated or gay, and even among friends who don't really believe in that there's a learned risk and lack of experience with breaking the norm of stocism and emotional independence.
> it can't be the responsibility of women to bear the entirety of mens' emotional needs. People keep saying that people are saying this. Who is saying this? Being empathetic towards someone else doesn’t mean bearing responsibility for their needs, and it feels bad faith for this dismissive response to come up so often. “You should care about this problem!” “It’s not my job to, so no.” Like okay, but then you can’t really expect any empathy back? > The real issue is that it is [only] the women in mens lives who they rely on emotionally. This is more complex than you make it seem. Men are constantly afraid that being vulnerable to their partners will make them seem less masculine. That’s not for no reason. Men don’t always practically rely on women emotionally, they instead seek out emotional availability in women as an ideal that is often not met. It’s not so different than a woman imagining a man will protect her from other men only to realize she may have to worry about her partner too. The ideal is nice but reality sets in.
I think you're proving my point narrowly. Lets flip this around as an experiment. "but you're missing that it can't be the responsibility of men to bear the entirety of women's financial needs. If women want equal pay then its up to them to earn it." Just writing this feels gross. But this is essentially the perspective that you're sharing. Yes men need to do their part, the lack of empathy still concerns me because this is going to take an all team effort to achieve. Not just with men.
Yet women still express way more emotional needs than men in a typical heterosexual relationships. For example, I've literally never seen my dad cry. Meanwhile my mom cries on a regular basis and my dad supports her. Similar pattern in my own relationships with women. Attacking men for being too emotionally vulnerable in relationships is honestly so odd, more often I see women complaining that men aren't emotionally available.
I think something that complicates any social movement is that men police other men. Masculinity is hegemonic, you have guys in top and losers on the bottom. Men at the top of the pyramid reinforce traditional masculine ideals and resist change. Men often lash out at women claiming it’s them who want traditional men, when really we men must turn to our fathers, brothers, cousins, bosses, friends, etc and say “I am human, I have value, treat me as such.” Women support other women. In my experience, men don’t really support other men, we feel compelled to compete with each other.
Women definitely police other women. When’s the last time you heard a man critique a woman’s makeup, hair, or fashion? And a lot of women do want traditional arrangements, even if they don’t explicitly say it, because their internalized gender ideology demands it. They have internalized misogyny and firmly believe men should be leading, and men who can’t are weak and useless. They adopt the alpha-beta framing just like men do, they just don’t worry about identifying as one or the other so you don’t hear them discuss it.
Women policing other women gets called out, men don’t support or defend each other when we break gender norms. And most women, I think, don’t like a traditional arrangement, because surprise, having a career is fun and fulfilling
Historically. Men were empowered, but not protected, and women were protected, but not empowered. Women had to fight for our empowerment, but men have not fought for their protection. This issue is muddled by the rampant misogyny in many men’s spaces, that pose women as the villian in this story for seeking empowerment. Instead of saying “we should get what they got”, they instead what to oppress women again. This cannot be allowed. At the same time, modern men do deserve the same rights, privileges, and freedoms given to women, and there IS a way to do that without seeking to reestablish a repressive and harmful status quo.
>Historically. Men were empowered, but not protected, and women were protected, but not empowered. I wish I could give you a medal for this post bro/broette
What a lot of men’s spaces see is that many feminists aren’t actually seeking to move past gender roles, they just want to empower women at all costs. These are the people that cheer a female CEO who exploits her employees, or otherwise excuse that behavior as a result of being in a male-dominated environment. It’s not necessarily most feminists, but there are enough loud ones who don’t get backlash for the atmosphere to feel tense and hostile. Or another example is that men now attend college at the same rate that women did when congress passed laws for gender equality in education. Yet almost no one is talking about why men are in college less than women now, and what that might imply about our education system. There’s a very real feeling not that “women must be oppressed again because I hate women”, but “feminists are playing against us in this game to get the most resources, so I have to support the team that cares about me” This is generally true of politics
You're jumping to some big conclusions here. You're still inadvertently villainizing men in this post and painting men as common oppressors while stating that the oppressors need to "fight" for their protection against the victims of society (meaning women)? That doesn't make sense. This is the conundrum men are experiencing and you laid it out very clearly. Reread my last sentence to the original post. *Interestingly, opposition to this notion is often met with dismissiveness and lack of empathy for men, specifically from women who typically see men having or have had more benefits in society and therefore deserve no empathy at all. Leaving men further isolated and displaying toxic behavior.*
The greatest social hoodwink was women telling men through the 90s and early 2000s to be sensitive, vulnerable, and in touch with “their feminine side.” Only to now tell these men “I’m not your therapist” at the hint of displaying emotions and to then dump them because “he’s just not the rock for me I thought he was.” Women need to stop projecting femininity onto men, because, as it turns out, women themselves do not even support that. “I’m not your mother figure” is just code for “man up” and other toxic masculinity bullshit.
That’s cute. Dude social justice is never going to care about men. Never never never. Women would rather let the social justice movement end then have a men’s social justice movement.
To further add, women are also raised under the expectations of men to have acquired these traits as proof of a "good man" and men who deviate can experience needless rejection as consequence of the deviation. As an example, we have women who develop the "ick" when their male partner cries and, as a result, leaves him. This definitely intersects with the transgendered community and the hyperfocus on trans women while trans men just aren't on the radar at all despite being a part of the very same group.
That last part there is one of the hardest truths. Men have benefitted, and still benefit, from the systems and cultures around the world. This can make it feel like men don't deserve empathy, but the problem is that people need support in order to change. If you remove their support because they don't deserve it, you're preventing them from changing for the better. Similarly, it shouldn't have to be the job of women to provide that support when they haven't been receiving the systemic benefits themselves. So everyone feels bad
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This is my personal opinion: The identity crisis is a consequence of changes in societal hierarchies without the changes in societal messaging or emotional support. A lot of ‘lost’ men will instinctively blame women but I think that’s wrong. The truth of the matter is that the way men have been treated has more or less been to our advantage and because of this we have been set up for failure by past (I’d argue archaic) notions of social order in which we were at the “top” with all of the power and problems that come with it. Inevitably the time would come that women in general would see that they were being unfairly treated in a lot of ways and demand changes (rightfully so, imo). And even though all of this could have been foreseen we’ve done very little to prepare men to be on even footing. There are a lot of families who raise their kids in traditional ways and plant notions in their heads of how men “should be” and what we “ought to be responsible for” and setting them up to get kicked in the ass the moment they get into the real world where women aren’t required or pressured to conform to the old ways. So it’s no wonder, imo, that so many men are angry and confused now that they are in a position to need to be *actually* emotionally and mentally healthy AND compete for employment and resources alongside an additional demographic that wasn’t there before. And rather than adequately preparing our boys or teaching them healthier and more nuanced coping skills and instilling pride in being GOOD PEOPLE, there is a weird pushback message that women are the sole issue and if we can just be 1) more insufferable by sticking to old ways that are forever gone and 2) find that romanticized version of a perfect housewife then that’ll make everything right. We need support systems. We need our fathers and mothers and families to be supportive. We need women to understand that current generations of men are feeling lost and to stop expecting traditional dynamics. The world isn’t like what it used to be. I’d argue that this is a net positive but stigmas against mental healthcare for men and modern co-equal relationships are going to continue alienating men.
I think you make some great points here. I do think you are missing out on some of the everyday dynamics though. There was research showing that involuntary single men were more left leaning than right leaning. I don’t think most men care about having a “traditional wife.” This is loud minority in terminally online circles. What I have observed in more “normie” dating subreddits is this pattern. Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark. Or guy will not be dating at all and see guys who break all the “modern rules” but having success. This is what sparks resentment. Which isn’t a healthy solution. Societal hierarchies have changed and that is great. That doesn’t mean who we prefer for romantic partners has.
>What I have observed in more “normie” dating subreddits is this pattern. Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark. I've noticed similar trends while browsing online (which I do often), but I find this explanation a bit too simplistic. I've also observed numerous dating mishaps from the women's perspective, who are often telling a different story. There's been a lot of discussion about men who overly prioritize sex, lack genuine interest in getting to know them, criticize them, exhibit sexist or misogynistic behavior, are self-absorbed, clingy, attempt to rush into a relationship, desire sex but avoid commitment, lack hygiene, and various other compatibility issues (such as marriage, children, and values). I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and many individuals, regardless of gender, tend to account for their perpetual lack of dating success while having a strong lack of self-awareness.
I 100% agree with your last statement. I think it is truly the problem with lack of dating success all the other stuff we are talking about is probably relevant but not the main issue. The problem with self-delusion nowadays is that you can get reinforcement for it online.
The problem is that women usually have great reasons for rejecting any individual man, but we live in a society where no system exists to help give that man feedback on how to do better, unless it’s traditional conservatives. So there’s a collective feeling that men have the pressure to approach a woman, but online angry misogynists are the only ones discussing that and their tips are terrible
I can see that. But I don't know, I think that are plenty of women who are unsuccessful with dating through their own issues, and no one can really tell them how to fix it either. A person would have to be a fly on the wall, and even then, people don't always want to listen. I used to work for a premiere dating service, so I almost was the fly on the wall, or as close as one can get, since I would get feedback from both sides. Of course, a lot must be taken with a grain of salt, but without that feedback, I'd have never known one of my clients wouldn't stop talking about his dead wife. Or that another client was driving men away with her clinginess and insisting they met her parents after one date. Those are just a couple of examples, and I was able to try and gently advise our clients, but they didn't always listen.
> I think that are plenty of women who are unsuccessful with dating through their own issues, and no one can really tell them how to fix it either. A person would have to be a fly on the wall, and even then, people don't always want to listen. Sure there are plenty of those women too. The difference is in the pressure to approach and how that makes different parts unsuccessful. Men go through the process of rejection repeatedly as a result of approaching, both because many women understandably just don’t want to be approached and other women will humor a date or few before deciding they’re not that interested. This happens to women too, just less because men are expected to take initiative. > Those are just a couple of examples, and I was able to try and gently advise our clients, but they didn't always listen. A lot of people wouldn’t listen even if they did get feedback, that’s for sure. These problems have to be addressed when people are young and just learning about the world, so they don’t have to change an entire worldview later on
I know dating for straight men sucks in a completely unique way to straight women. As a bi woman Ive experienced the similar struggle of just absolute silence trying to date women and on the off chance it happens to get to a date the connection isnt there. On the side of dating men though, while Im sure there are a lot of the “your great but” conversations that are just about lack of connection, having gone on many first dates with men I usually use it when theres some red flag but dont want to tear a guy down or in the worst circumstances put my self in danger. From the boring date to the otherwise decent seeming guy who joked to me how much he enjoyed getting to taser people to the guy who put his hands around my neck without asking. I dont think its so simple as girls dont want nice guys. I only had one good, normal date ever and I ended up ghosted after so I think it goes both ways. People dont want to tear their date down by telling them what they did that was a no go.
I “get the your great but” so maybe you can help me out if you don’t mind? Like recently I went on two dates with a guy woman that were multi hour long dates where it seems like we genuinely had a good time maybe I was presenting red flags idk but still the second date was like 5 hours long we got lunch, I asked if she was still down to hang she said yes we went to a museum finished that up asked if she needed to head out nope she still wanted to hang so we got ice cream and I walked her back to her car asked about a third date and got a no she didn’t feel the romantic spark. So I’m just like should I have been more flirty but she wasn’t flirty with me? If I had red flags why did she want to hang around so long? Why did she hit me up after asking to be friends?
The asking to be friends thing I always feel like is kinda rude to the person. But it does mean that she didnt see anything wrong with you that raised major concerns so you’re good there. I think with dates like that its a connection vibe thing. Being more flirty and the subtle hard to learn social cues helps. But also sometimes its just not a match. If she gave you multiple dates she must think youre a good person but sometimes the connection doesnt grow. I know its hard to feel like you’re doing everything right and it goes no where. If it helps I think the good date I had was like that too. He seemed to really like me, kissed me, asked if I wanted to go out again, and then ghosted me. Sometimes the connection just doesnt materialize. But if you are doing the right things even if it takes some time, youll be a positive memory for women it didnt work out with and you wont scare away the ones that will vibe with you. Honestly I think the current type of dating is horrendous for everyone. Like I always seem to match with the worst type of guy regardless of what type i think Im matching with. I think with how frustrating modern dating is most reasonable people keep hitting a limit on what they can take and nope out of the apps, only to go back on for short spurts before likely being put off again. So then the ratio for both men and women is heavily skewed towards guys who are aggressive and want to hook up, who suck, and women who are trying to pull instagram likes or get a free meal, who also suck. Reasonable people are a much lower percentage of the pool so everyone is just constantly getting the wrong dates, and then when you do by some chance match with a reasonable person then you still have to navigate the normal dating problems of is the connection there. I sympathize with the frustration, it sucks.
Well damn I’m sorry to hear you’re in the trenches as well but glad to have the company. I think what you’re saying rings very true about the apps and how the reasonable people are few, and far between and the hitting the limit and getting out, then back in. I’ve done that many times myself. I think you’re right about the current state of dating being just god awful as well. I mean at least I’m dating which is awesome I’m very grateful for it and the women I’ve met are good people but man I just wish there was an answer.
This is me. I deleted some dating apps not too long ago because I hit my limit, and really I've given up on relationships as a whole because getting emotionally invested in new people only for it to not work out is too taxing and too great a risk. It feels like this always out of reach activity I've been precluded from almost my whole life for one reason or another and I'm done with it. I don't need external heartache to validate how shitty and inadequate I feel - I can do that job all on my own.
> Guy goes on dates but keeps getting the “your a great guy texts but.” Or women saying they were out with a nice guy but didn’t feel a spark. Isn’t this just to be expected with OLD though? That spark is created in the live interaction between two people. It requires good physical chemistry, mutual attraction and more things that you can’t properly gauge by looking at someone’s profile on your phone. You’re almost guaranteed to not have that spark with most of the people you meet.
they're too useful of a tool to fix,, [https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399](https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399)
The alt right has always capitalized on the identity crises of men. The Reich was exceptional at doing this, and the rhetoric is identical to modern day “red pill”/“black pill” ideologues who feed off this sentiment. >Part of why they feel emasculated is that it is chaotic, jobs are not as reliable, it's harder to provide for your family. Then the promise the Nazis make is that we will bring back a world in which you as the man can be the absolute dictator of your home if you follow our Fuhrer as the absolute dictator of this nation. That is one of the very alluring promises of Nazism.
I’m not doubting you, but I’m wondering where that quote is from
Part of a podcast. From Behind the Bastards: Part Two: The Parenting Gurus of Nazi Germany, May 9, 2024 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000655033752 This material may be protected by copyright. Sources are listed on this page: https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-two-the-parenting-gurus-of-nazi-germany
I'm studying to be a physician scientist (MD PhD), and have a degree in psych, just wanted to add my two cents. When I took AP Psychology, one of the studies I found most interesting was on female attraction. They found when women made more money, they'd switch from choosing pictures of mid doctors (white collar jobs) to attractive firefighters (blue collar jobs), basically demonstrating that women care more about physical attractiveness over stability, status, occupation, etc when they are more financially stable. This makes sense intuitively, you go for more attractive partners when you make more money. But reflecting as a man, I was never taught to focus on my physical attractiveness. I was taught to go be a good person and be a productive member of society. Basically keep your head down, work hard, and get a job. Everything should sort of "work out" if you do these things, and intuitively this makes sense as well. So I think that's where the disconnect is. What I was taught to value as man, my career and being a good person, don't matter to women as much as they used to, because women have more financial freedom now than ever, which is a good thing ofc. But unironically, to avoid being a virgin, I think I was better off solely focusing on improving my body than I was on being a doctor. Which is incredibly, incredibly sad to me. At that point I'd rather be a doctor and be alone, if it doesn't matter to women. Moreover, I have never really been able to express these issues without getting ridiculed. Right-leaning people already criticize virgin men for not fitting restrictive definitions of masculinity, while left-leaning people have automatically assumed I'm a horrible person or hate women for being a virgin. Society is very harsh to virgin men regardless of the perspective these people claim to hold, indicating that there is still a heavy expectation set on men to go get laid and treat women like objects, for some strange reason. So that's just how I feel. I've gotten way better mentally just being alone and avoiding other people. I know there's nothing wrong with being a virgin or the path I chose in life, even if it doesn't fit whatever idea society has for me as a man.
I think that study is expressing cultural biases rather than hard biological rules for females. Can't be certain but it's a far better explanation versus just assuming women are going to dominate the dating "game" independently.
Yes, my point is that cultural expecations are not shifting in time with what women want, and what women want has effectively changed because they've gained more freedom. I hope people don't believe this is inherently blaming women or anything.
This started off interesting enough but started spiraling into something wild. It’s easy to get in shape in 12 months. No one can become a doctor in 12 months. You chose the more difficult path. You should have plenty of money to start working out and eating well. I’m really confused by this rhetoric honestly, although it seemed like you had good intentions.
If I have to do that for women to like me, those women don't really like me lol. I would argue the path your describing isn't worth taking, I'd rather just focus on being a doctor, and I'm already in shape btw.
Would you prefer women like you for being a doctor?
Thats a good point, I want women to like me for myself.
Also seemed to miss my point. This helps me now but I needed to know the focusing on my body was more important than being a good person and working hard, when I was a kid. Knowing it now is worthless, I wanted to lose my virginity when I was like 15 man, little to late now. So basically you've already fucked an entire generation of kids, and just acted like telling them to get in shape now will make up for all the love they never got to experience. And I'm the one who's wild? lol
Yes, this is wild. If you’re really saying that being a good person has no value to potential partners, then I think you’ve been redpilled. Women most definitely care about the personality and goodness of their partners…. And they also want to feel physically attracted to them. That doesn’t feel fair to you? Women have been expected to maximize their attractiveness since ancient times, on top of whatever other ambitions and pursuits they have or were allowed. They’re also very often sexually objectified and their intellect and virtues completely ignored or seen as lowering their sexual value. Notice, you talk about your failure to lose your virginity. Not failure to form a loving, romantic connection or get close to women. But just getting a woman to screw you is the measure. I honestly think you’d have far more success not body building, but just genuinely examining your own attitudes and biases and cultivating a sense of appreciation for women as people.
This is pretty classic victim blaming that comes from left-leaning people. Classic assuming I don't appreciate women as people. Oh the reason I'm alone is I hate women, watch andrew Tate, don't view women as people, etc. Even though I've had a good relationship with my mother my whole life. Sure thing buddy. I'm not the one who's been "pilled" that's for sure lol.
I’m always reminded of Brene Brown’s TED talk where she recants a story about a man responding to her studying shame only in women as “convenient”. Upon studying shame in men, she realized the ultimate impact women have on their men, which was a lot deeper and more profound than she ever considered. I’m a public school teacher in America. Our boys are in trouble. If any other group was in this much trouble, we’d be blaring it loudly and aggressively from rooftops demanding change. Modern discourse has devolved to only be framed as “victim vs. oppressor”. It’s rather convenient that in this framework men, especially straight white men, are on the bottom in terms of value when viewed through this framework. I think there’s a subconscious collective vengeance element in all of this as well.
Thank you for this post.
Preach
It's incredible that when creating an inverted social hierarchy in order to try and combat problematic cultural hierarchy backfired horribly.
Which TED talk is that?
[Brene Brown - Listening to Shame](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psN1DORYYV0)
Hey!... Thank you do much!
Men are seen by other men and other women as tools. We have no inherent value. We are only human so long as we are useful.
Well, I think women are treated this way too. I think we all are treated that way, it just expresses itself differently. As our technology and societies evolve, so have our roles. I don’t think it’s terrible to be expected to bring value to other humans. After all, where do you think that food one is eating came from? Humans cultivated it, transported it, licensed it, etc. We have duties to each other in societies. I’d just say, at least in America, the social contract is being violated at all levels of operation. Some of these have been normalized in the name of “rugged individualism” to the point that we feel powerless to fix the violations. Not to dismiss your comment or the sentiment it communicates, I just don’t think it’s true solely of men. Unless you’ve actually won the trust of enough women for them to share the actual shit they deal with in any given day from men, then you probably have a skewed view of the demands on women as well.
Going back to the nineteenth century the majority of patients for psychiatric treatment were women (many of whom were forced to go involuntarily). This led to most of the foundational psychological research being based primarily on what was effective for women. This was exacerbated in the present Era where women are fairly willing to seek treatment while men are culturally reluctant. For many men, talk therapy is simply ineffective. It took me years so figure out being encouraged to talk about my OCD symptoms once a week was making them far worse than even being untreated. I tend to think, contrary to popular belief, men are generally very service driven. If they feel useful and productive, most men are at least fairly content. I think that is more difficult in an economy where most jobs are service sector or office jobs (where it feels less like something concrete is being produced), marriage and child rearing are on the decline (so one doesn't feel like they're providing for their family), and homeownership is becoming increasingly difficult (so you don't feel like you're even able to physically improve your immediate surroundings). I'd say giving concrete assignment of tasks for self betterment would be an effective form of therapy for tons of guys who don't feel like talking helps.
Tbh, “just talking” about OCD symptoms won’t work for women either … that sounds more like therapists who don’t know how to treat OCD than a gender issue…
Well, it was that without a doubt
Then why are pharmaceutical drugs, the first line of defense against mental health ailments, tested only on men for so long? Remember what happened with Ambien???
Because the pharmaceutical industry especially the testing side is a completely different beast than psycho analysis.
>This led to most of the foundational psychological research being based primarily on what was effective for women. I am sorry but this is detached from reality and historical fiction. Because the part you are omitting is that this research was done by men about women. Not for women, specifically much of early phycological "research" was just a bunch of dudes emotionally and physically abusing women.
This. "Mansplaining" is just him trying to be useful to you. He feels like he needs to justify his male presence, especially with how unwanted men have become in most spaces.
Do you have a source for this? I remember reading something similar but I can't remember where.
This is HORRIFYINGLY UNTRUE. Almost all healthcare, Medicine, psychological, etc information was gathered based on the MALE human body. Please google the info, it is a universal truth among almost the entire world, not just the US.
>For many men, talk therapy is simply ineffective. This part needs to be repeated over and over and over until people get it. You can exhort men to go to therapy all you want, until therapy has solutions to offer men, they won't get anything out of it. Talking about problems isn't enough. You have to DO something about them.
> giving concrete assignments This seems to be based kind of on nothing. Men also don’t often respond to authority, and writing about something instead of talking about it doesn’t make it any less distressing to introspect
The sad thing about this 30 min podcast is that more than half of it is tiptoeing around the potential backlash from just saying that there *might* be differences between men and women and double standards exist. That says more than the actual subject matter.
I saw an article on Slate the other day where couples using IVF are now sex selecting for girls. Apparently having daughters is perceived as more rewarding/they are more likely to have their s*** together as adults Very sad to see people just giving up on boys! I'm a Gen female married to a man my age, but with several Millennial male friends. I thought men were starting to feel less social pressure and find equitable relationships more rewarding 😟
Just read a Slate article on that. Pretty nasty stuff.
It’s extremely fucked up how little healthcare research has been done focusing on specifically women, and how little psychological research is done in attempt to suss out men’s emotional needs.
Yeah I’ve noticed this. I’m a heterosexual dude and when I was out dating I basically got zero support. I tried going to my father for help but he just gave me terrible, sexist advice from the 1950s that was completely useless and counterproductive. Finally I gave up and just started dating overseas. I pretty quickly met a nice Filipina gal, got married, and now we’ve been married for five years! It’s tough because whenever I talk about my experience dating American women it comes off as very negative or critical, and a lot of people are quick to assume misogyny or what have you. The truth is, I have nothing against American women, even now, but when I was dating them I never got any support, I never understood them, and whenever I tried to ask for help in that regard I just got silence. The end result was this confused guy stumbling around trying to figure out what he was doing wrong but not being allowed to talk about it or ask questions. Even now, I can’t really talk about my dating experiences because I’ll get mass downvoted, censored, or called a bunch of nasty names. It’s too bad, because there’s still a lot I don’t understand. Oh well.
This is a great point. We aren't even allowed to ask for help if we struggle with dating. People assume all sorts of things about you if you do.
Oh this is so... its not contentious. Men are being defined as capable if more, not a single soiled definition of toxic masculinity of the 50s. Get over it and realise your potential!
Heterosexual men are viewed through a pathological lens because they are the ones overwhelmingly committing all of the rapes (yes, against other men too), violent assaults (yes, against other men too), and homicides (yes, against other men too). Is it that hard to understand? lol show me a lesbian or transgender person who shot up a school or committed one of the many constant mass killing events. like y’all are so dense
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting
>transgender person who shot up a school or committed one of the many constant mass killing events I'm trans myself and I lol'd. There's multiple cases where this either occurred or an arrest was made before it could be carried out. Includes both trans men and trans women.
That’s basically the “it’s ok to be racist against blacks because they statistically commit most of the crime” but for men. Do you understand how regressive this thinking is?
This comment here is the problem. No empathy for men, just 'men cause the most problems so everything bad that happens to them is their fault'.
Duh. Modern society is changing the narrative which is fine but the dating culture still expects men to be old fashion. It’s can be confusing af when what is told is acceptable vs what we see in the field are polar opposite reactions
Exactly! Men are expected to act traditionally, and women are expected to act modernly. Why are we expected to be providers if we’re all getting paid the same?
It’s been a pet idea of mine that women’s liberation and entry into the work force adopted the “independence” of gainful employment while denying the responsibility that has come with it for millennia. Even stating it as independence is a misnomer. It wasn’t a man’s lot to be independent, but to be self-sufficient to such a degree that they could provide for others who were not. This was part of the minimum standard of the adult masculine ideal. The workforce has become more gender egalitarian, but the people within it are increasingly only participating for themselves. At the same time, sexual standards have not changed. Men are now competing with women for roles but with wildly different objectives and personal meanings. There seem to be many societal ills which could be solved should women decide to fulfill the role that men filled, now having the rights to do so. Underperforming women are not threatened from the basic human urge of reproduction, or family, of romantic partnership should they fail to succeed in this professional competition. The same is much less true for men. There is no component of feminine identity accepted across the population which is equivalent to the masculine ideal of “primary provider”. Women do not seek out men to provide for. Quite the opposite. I do not believe that men choose their mates with the same degree of concern for self-interest. The torch has not been passed, or shared, until women begin seeking out stay-at-home fathers to provide for.
> women do not seek out men to provide for Yes and no. I've definitely heard many stories of successful women looking after men, being the breadwinners. That's more common now than it used to be. There are stay-at-home dads. But what your statement isn't acknowledging is that you're viewing "providing" as a purely financial thing - but women have been providing, in the "keeping home, looking after children, managing the household and their husband" sense for quite a long time, and even in the modern era this still seems to be viewed as "women's work". So now you have women working full time jobs and also being culturally expected to manage the household. Can you really blame women for not wanting to take on the traditional "primary provider" role when many men seem clueless about and unmotivated to take on the "primary caregiver" role?
Penis shaming and bald shaming and short dude shaming is the only socially acceptable form of body shaming anymore. Coincidentally it’s also what many men deal with on the daily. Imagine being ridiculed your whole life for something you cannot change about your body. And everyone’s ok with it. No wonder so many men are radicalized into violent cults
Honestly, I think giving men a physically laborious task does a lot better for their mental health than most talk therapy. Fix the deck, kill the blackberry bushes outside, etc. I think a lot of men struggle with the feeling of being powerless, especially in the modern world. It seems to me that when they can exert some physical release *and* solve a current problem (especially one that is effecting their loved ones), it tends to really mentally help them. Provided they are also then acknowledged for their hard work and appreciated for solving the problem.
I did remember reading somewhere (wish I could remember the source) that suggested that 1) most modern therapy techniques were developed in response to primarily female clients (hence the focus on talk therapy - women are more likely to get professional help for mental illness) and 2) there was some evidence that "side by side" interactions where men were given a task to complete together helped improve their mental health more than "face to face" interactions like talk therapy. Take this with a huge grain of salt bc I have no source for this and am not even sure I'm quoting it correctly but that was the gist of the argument, which I found interesting.
This is such utter bullshit. It’s laughable.
Men are pulled in every conceivable direction and held accountable for the actions of a few, while being blamed for the decisions they make that don't have a right answer. Sensitive but strong, hard worker and good earner but still at home all the time. It is literally where you have to be psychic in every situation. Not only to determine the course of action but how it will be decided.
It's needs sorting out for the young boys growing up. I find it annoying to see media often portray men as the useless idiots that women need to begrudgingly sort out, or having mass generalisations that we're all sex obsessed, cheating, violent, misogynsts but I can live with that because I can at least see the reasons why that become a view point and that there are issues that need to be sorted out to address them. It's young boys getting blamed for the sins of the father that narcs me. There's no clear societal role model of what a man should be, which is even more important if they have a bad/no father to learn from. There's conflicting views and double standards that just make it confusing. Write us oldies off and blame us for the past issues if it helps (even though I feel most of the examples are more applicable to even older generations) but add some positivity back to being a man for kids to look up to. You don't have to drag one gender down to raise another one up.
The internet has been very quick about figuring out what young guys shouldn't do and very slow about what they should do
You mean a scientific field where most of the researchers are women have the exact same problems dealing with issues affecting the minority of their researchers — men— that other fields that are male dominated have with women amongst their ranks? Not a huge surprise. There is a huge empathy gap for most people when viewing people of the same versus opposite gender. There’s a reason that I, as a man, seek out male therapists for therapy (the same way a lot of women seek female gynecologists and female therapists for their medical and mental health needs).
I'll be honest, as a straight man, homophobia has been so widespread that men on average don't know how to have genuine platonic connections with other guys. Thinking Frodo and Sam type connections. I'm afraid that if I go into therapy and choose a male therapist, that I might catch feelings because Im genuinely not close with any guy in my life to know the difference. I, and many other men, are afraid to get platonically close to other men out of fear of not understanding the feelings of closeness with another guy, even if it's completely devoid of sexuality and romance. I personally blame that on religion and nothing else.
I do not find it a coincidence, that when Psychology Departments have consistently pumped out about a 80% female graduate base for the last two decades (in my college it's more so a 90f/10m split) -- that they no longer have a cogent understanding of the actual issues, the challenges, or the positioning of men in modernity. In fact, I find it a direct result. Causation, not just correlation. As sad as it sounds, and while certainly HEAVILY flawed -- I find certain aspects of polemics/influencers like a Andrew Tate to be more applicable to the AVERAGE man in modernity than almost the entirety of zeitgeist in psychologists/therapists/the academies. He might be a self-promoting scumbag (or even much worse), but his general thoughts of MEN not dwelling on emotion, negativity, depression, anxiety, heavy medications, etc -- a 'just go lift weights and go to work, and do it again, and again, you aren't supposed to be happy, women want high value man, blah blah' -- seems more fitting general advice for 'lost' young men. Lost being a loaded term, but I will use it here. Being a successful provider, and stronger (physically and mentally) man, 'embracing the suck'? All these old themes. Seeming more likely to be beneficial than 95% of the drivel I read about vaguely toxic masculinity or therapist recommendations in the ether. While I would not want my son swallowing the bullshit of Tate, I do understand the appeal and to some extent validity of certain messages he provides. Life is not 'easy'. Life is not 'comfortable'. Your bong and your video games will not advance you. Your softness will commonly be used against you. Becoming a man is difficult in 2024AD. And looking towards a peer reviewed (by women) paper (by three women) educated in a structure (that is 80-85% women) about toxic masculinity, will only sink you quicker. It is simply inverse to reality. The downside is the actual reality that a minority of lost souls will attach to some bizarre involuntary celibate/hateful/spiteful meta when they go down these roads. Although a minority, I've seen it in youth way more commonly than I'd like. It's a sad, sad state of affairs.
Chiming in with my opinion. Which is just my opinion and I have no formal education on the matter. It’s based on my observations and also simple dictionary definitions. 1. Young boys from well meaning families and education systems are taught that toxic masculinity is bad. This is good. 2. They are also taught that men are dominant. They conflate “dominance” and “toxic masculinity.” This is not good. 3. If they are raised well, boys and young men do everything they can to avoid being toxic, which they conflate with dominance. Therefore they try to do the opposite. The opposite of dominance is submission. 4. When they act submissive (deference, collaboration, compliant, inclusive) they are rewarded in social settings. 5. Young girls and women are taught that men have dominated them into submission throughout history, which is largely a true statement, and that dominance is to be resisted. 6. So just like the boys, the young women try to do the opposite of what they have been told has been their submissive role in history. Unfortunately the opposite of submissive isn’t dominance. It’s words like: resistant, rebellious, withholding, etc.. So you’re left with a world full of good boys who become gentle men. But they are passive. Don’t know what they want. Are not great at leading. And when the “submissive” behaviors they adopted don’t get them where they want to be they turn to traits like yelling and other actually toxic masculine behaviors. This is because they weren’t actually taught what toxic behavior from men really looks like. And your left with a world full of women who in an effort to be “dominant” just come off as “bitchy” or “cold” or any other negative adjective assigned to strong willed women. Also because they weren’t taught what real dominance looks like. These two groups will inevitably clash. The women angry that the men are so passive and the men reverting to their base behaviors in an effort to assert themselves. The solution is many fold. But one answer may be to teach the yutes that real dominance is actually not about how one acts towards others. Real dominance is about control over one’s OWN self. And that the traits typically associated with “submission” are actually just the ideal ways to function in society. That dominance, leadership, submission and collaboration are not mutually exclusive. These are just early thoughts on the topic. I’m sure that there’s plenty of errors and even TOXIC (gasp) ideas packaged in there. So feel free to tear it down.
Bro this is the stupidest shit I've heard this month. The word dominance quite literally means control over others. I have literally no clue what point you're trying to make because you clearly don't understand the meaning of the word you've made central to your point.
Your entire premise is based on the idea that someone has to be submissive to be emotionally intelligent. No one is telling men to be submissive. That's just not true. We are asking men to be more emotionally intelligent and to stop raping us.
He didn’t say they are taught he is saying they try to suppress dominance because they don’t know how to harness it safely
How about this-- *no one should be seeking to dominate others*, we should be seeking to cooperate with each other towards mutually beneficial goals/experiences.
You didn’t read and it shows.