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I’d say the game was definitely rigged from the start, but perhaps not just in the way men are raised and socialised.
If you make a joke about the inadequacy of men, you’re a bold and insightful person. If you make a joke about the inadequacy of women, you’re a misogynistic pig.
Also, remember gents, you should be ok with automatically being considered a threat, because everyone knows men only think about one thing (this is technically true, normally it’s “how the feck do I pay my rent this month, I just spent all my money on <insert hobby keeping you sane here>”).
I’d agree that men are definitely not raised and socialised for that kind of system, but then again who wants to be?
I’d agree that men are definitely not raised and socialised for that kind of system, but then again who wants to be?
nobody wants to be here here, we were all born without the input of our own opinion. You can either do something to change society to improve it for the better generally, or you can sit there and go “well idk guys society is hard to do”
we quite literally just have to build a society that builds men up throughout their lives, we need to give them something to care about socially. Currently, they have nothing.
You’re definitely right that society needs to do a better job with this. Calling men toxic and joking about their inadequacy might make the person speaking feel better about themselves but it’s not going to help society at all because that kind of talk is what pushes more and more boys into the arms of the Tate’s of the world.
i think even this line of discussion is partially reductive on a fundamental level. It’s an important one to have so i don’t want to discount it here, but i think it’s probably more important that we focus on the issue specifically rather than how what we’re currently doing is bad and how it could possibly be negatively influential. Is pretty redundant when we all know that it’s just not going to do what we need it to be doing.
Granted some people won’t know that, and that’s why we’re talking about it now, but i feel like it’s just such an easy conversation to have comparatively to this one. I’m surprised that this isn’t a more regular topic of discussion, though i guess people probably dont think very hard about it.
Hrm, I’m not sure there. I’d say it’s closer to just not knocking them down so often. Most of the time, men and women can build themselves up.
A lot of the issues we currently have are based on women being taught to knock men down, and men being taught to knock women down. Oddly enough, which side has it worse depends on where you’re from, but the motivation for it is always the same - power and the maintenance of.
Hrm, I’m not sure there. I’d say it’s closer to just not knocking them down so often. Most of the time, men and women can build themselves up.
when they have a proper conceptualization and understanding of the world, absolutely, the problem is that we don’t exactly raise them with one. This is the reason the manosphere is so prominent.
The problem is not individuals being assholes and raping people for no reason, the problem is a lack of instilling a good social culture in boys as they grow leading them to be primed to be a good person in society. Like i said currently we just kinda shit them out of hs and into college or not, and that’s literally it. There’s nothing to be interested in or excited about. If you’re a woman growing up in modern society there’s a lot to be interested in, college enrollments are up, more women are getting educated, more women are going into large businesses and managerial rolls, there’s a lot of perceived social progress there.
the problem is men don’t really have anything of the sort to care about. Everything they previously had to care about was removed and reinstated with something counter intuitive to what it proposed. We haven’t replaced what no longer exists, there is just a void here, and it’s no surprise that men enroll in college less, pursue higher education less, and are generally worse off in life (higher rates of suicide etc)
I think you’ve touched on the problem at hand here, i think the part you don’t quite realize is that this is a secondary knock on effect of the prior (what i just mentioned) this is all to be expected as a result from something of this caliber.
i think right now one of the best strategies that we have is to build up the capability of being a good role model, and in general being a good person in boys/young men, it’s a little bit reminiscent of previous norms, but we don’t really have many options here. One thing that is bound to be pretty effective here is utilizing them to be a social group leader of their domain (mostly other men)
You raise some excellent points here, however I’m not entirely swayed.
Your point about raising men with a good social culture is a good one, however it has its roots in the fallacy which really lies at the heart of the matter - that only men need fixing.
As a man, I’ve sat through a work conversation where a group of women (including my direct senior) have openly denigrated men in humour (I found it edgily funny). If it had been the other way around, the men involved would be talking to HR the next day, no laughs involved. The standards to which both parties are held need to be the same, though what those standards are is anybody’s guess.
Equality, equity, justice: that lovely ladder graphic. If you give students extra resources, their outcomes are better. “Women in stem”, “women’s networking day”, all aimed in one place at one group. In our drive to redress imbalance against women, we have created one against men. It isn’t the fact that young men feel isolated and need socialising that’s stopping them, it’s the fact that the deck is rigged against them and we celebrate that rigging.
What you see with the “manosphere” (never heard it called that before, I like the name), is the froth and bubbles. The boys who are angry, but who can’t do anything about it, are the ones who tumble in there and become monsters instead.
The solution isn’t simple, and while socialisation will help a little, there needs to be fundamental changes to the social world before we can move forward. If your argument were to be, say, socialising both men and women to be kinder to one another, I’d be with you.
If you make a joke about the inadequacy of men, you’re a bold and insightful person. If you make a joke about the inadequacy of women, you’re a misogynistic pig.
I agree to some degree, but there’s also the fact that the socialization of men is the more dire problem in our current society by a significant degree.
Also, remember gents, you should be ok with automatically being considered a threat, because everyone knows men only think about one thing
That’s not why women often consider men a threat.
I think this is an agree to disagree point - my view is that the need to socialise men is only half the solution, and that tackling the rampant socially acceptable iniquity would be a more urgent one (as the longer it goes on, the more disruptive the eventual correction).
Maybe we should try both, surely one dies not preclude the other? That way we’ll be sure to fix the issue!
But joking about and insulting them isn’t going to make anything better, it’s going to drive more impressionable young boys towards people like Tate.
women don’t want to view men as threats. yes, this problem cuts both ways. it ultimately still boils down to how men are socialized. what we see from women is just a response to that.
I think it boils down a lot further than just the socialisation of men. It boils down to how people see one another.
At the moment, the idea that men must be “defused” in some way, as if they might just “go off” is repugnantly offensive. It’s a line of thought that harks back to racist ideas of “uncultured savages” who could “regress” at any moment.
Similarly, the idea that everything is ok for women even now is bucolicly stupid. This is beyond simple socialisation to solve, and requires a solid bit of activisim.
The really sad thing is we all want the same thing - for people to care about us, and accept who we are. For people not to hurt us, and to feel like we’re part of the wider world about us beyond token consumption.
harks back to racist ideas of “uncultured savages”
Does it? Does it really?
There’s definitely a relationship between the marginalization of dark skinned people (men and women) and the view of dark skinned people as more masculine (therefore more dangerous.)
I’m not sure I agree, but I’m also not sure what you’re talking about.
Is there a view that dark skinned people are more masculine? I might accept less feminine; such a view would serve the purpose of making the violence against them easier for people to stomach.
A question for you to meditate on, as my position is quite clear.
It’s clear.
Out of curiosity, how did you feel about man vs bear?
I mean, yeah, no shit?
Oh, you’re right, I forgot about the 100 years of uncultured, savage men being conscripted into slave labor to build rail roads or whatever.
The persecution complex with you people is astounding.
[rant (with memes!)]
This is a particularly sore spot for me. I was an incel in the 1980s, long before the term incel was coined, and I was odd and a misfit, and fit nicely in this pile…
alleged link << I’m still new to Lemmy-linking.… and my inability to manage my own teenage libido figured into my suicidality then. Society’s failure to do better after another thirty-five years figures into my suicidality now.
To be fair, I suffer from major depression, largely tied into a childhood of neglect (I was a stereotypical latchkey kid) but then since the eighties, US society has required all adults to work full time, and everyone’s parents were exhausted and didn’t have much time or inclination to parent… and it’s only getting progressively worse. So I’m thinking this is intergenerational dysfunction and mental illness. Madness takes its toll.
One of the things that kept me going in my twenties was the hope things would get better for future generations, but instead the US opted for abstinence-only sex ed, which is still (in 2024) mandated in twenty six states, and pushes some really hard Christian stereotypes, e.g. that sex is transactional, men are obligate providers and women have no value other than their virginity and capacity to bear kids (in case you want to know what J. D. Vance’ rhetoric is all about.)
In contrast, only three states (the west coast) mandate comprehensive sex ed, which talks about contraception in a positive way, but it doesn’t (officially) talk about consent, boundaries, the patriarchy, the slut-shaming epidemic and so on. If you’re a teen, an incel, or know one, or otherwise want some serious sex and relating to other humans in a functional way info, check out Planned Parenthood, who has materials (and I believe they’re free). Despite what Jon Kyl said – #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement – Planned Parenthood spends more on their educational materials than they do on abortions, so go get some!
For me, I got lucky. At twenty five, I figured I might be able to recover my way into society, and joined a random AA meeting which had pamphlets about local meetings for other recovery and 12-step meetings. I found my way to CoDependents Anonymous and through a coincidence segued my way into the kink community. In Choke Chuck Palahniuk gets into a slightly different path which is getting into the Sex and Love Addicts community, where peers are slightly too eager to fall off the wagon with each other. This is as dysfunctional as hate-fucking, but hey, we are already truly gone fishing crazy in a society that is also dysfunctional.
Even in the early 1990s, when we were still just trading copypasta on Usenet and Wikipedia was still a WiP, it was clear then it was a bad idea to leave all our young men sexually frustrated, pretend like it’s not a problem and then try to teach them integral calculus. It wasn’t the era of suicide terrorists (lonely, angry young men in the Middle East) and it wasn’t yet the age of rampage shooters (lonely, angry young men in the US). But we did have a run of spree killers, and Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Lonely and sexually frustrated to the last.
To be fair, the US Armed Forces really likes lonely, angry sexually frustrated young men. This is their primary tap for recruits, and until recently, we’ve been fighting the International War on Terror.
And an awful lot of them, especially those who never figure out how to relate to
womenanyone trickle their way into the many alt-right factions, not just incels but the alpha male community, the seduction community, gamergaters, MGTOW, the manosphere, militias, 4Chan/b and so on. Piles and piles of guys (and some gals) who are losers, and they know it. In a shit world that dealt them a shit hand, and do a sine-wave dance between wanting to fade out and wanting to watch the world burn. I know the steps to this jig.Connected ones go into law enforcement.
Essentially, US culture has created this giant pool of Immorten Joe’s war boys, all looking to be witnessed all shiny and chrome into Valhalla. And they are all voting for Trump in 2024 and are eager to join Röhm’s Sturmabteilung as soon as a recruiter tells them to stand back and stand by.
I don’t know what the solution is, and I’ve put a lot of thought into it. The US hates its teens. It seems to be a fixed action pattern (an instinct) to lock our adolescent women up and to evict our adolescent men, once they respectively start showing signs of puberty. I wonder if it’s related to those gorilla species that evict their adolescent females during their first estrus, but then welcome strange females.
Regardless, it’s much the way our administrators side with bullies over their victims when they can (an affect of dominance hierarchy, the thing that drives us to worship athletes and sports stars). In my old age, I wonder if we’re just driven to rationalize obeying instincts rather than recognizing that an advance society sometimes requires non-intuitive solutions.
We need to find a way to actually respect our teens while they’re still in that threshold between cute kid and responsible adult. Just as we need to find a way to actually respect folks that are not simultaneously white, Christian, male and rich enough to have a stock portfolio. If we don’t, it’ll kill us.
In the meantime, Millennials are having few kids, and Zoomers, fewer still. After the anti-abortion thing, they’re just not even bothering to date, and feel undriven to do so since there’s little to no hope for the future.
During the German Reich, when the population rate imploded, they just rounded up pretty young German women who fit the master race mold and required them to serve in the Leibensborn program, as breeding slaves for the Schutzstaffel what inspired Margaret Atwood’s handmaid program in A Handmaid’s Tale. And considering J. D. Vance’s obsession about childless women whether teachers or cat-ladies, this sounds like a thing he’d be happy to spearhead once the Project 2025 agenda sends the US into one-party autocracy.
I suspect there is some undiscovered sociological magic we might be able to use to change the way we interact with power hierarchy and in the meantime give our teens more guidance and less constraint. But if we don’t, it’s a problem that will resolve itself within the next century (more or less). In the meantime, when see Eleanor Rigby or Father McKensie lost and forgotten in their solitude, a check in and a friendly pint (or ice cream cone) might be in order.
[/rant]
Oh man, good rant! My comprehension lost track about 1/3 of the way down just past the Choke reference, but I identified with a lot of it and I frequently think of the mentally ill koala comic in my daily life.
The sad truth I’ve found though is that the mentally ill koala comics context is what is used to automatically dismiss that final Twitter reference. -and that’s why mental illness has a stigma. People use it as an excuse to invalidate other people.
I can’t, so I asked Gee Pee Tea to. Howd it do?
Society’s failure to support teens, especially those struggling with loneliness and sexual frustration, has only made things worse over the decades. Abstinence-only sex ed and a culture that neglects young people have contributed to this mess, creating a cycle where exhausted parents can’t provide the guidance teens desperately need.
Lonely, angry young men are often funneled into harmful ideologies or destructive paths. The future looks bleak, with fewer people having kids and growing fears that political movements could exploit this desperation. It’s crucial to find better ways to respect and guide youth before things spiral even further.
It’s pressure on the workforce to over exert that has cost us parents. It’s right-wing ideology that gives us AO education programs, and allow them to focus on teaching that ideology, rather than informing about sex, love and intimacy.
I’m not a psychologist or sociologist, so I am guessing (hypothesizing) that authorities over pubescent adolescents responding to incidents of sexual expression (including flirting, courting, sexting, not just making out † ) has more to do with instincts than what would best serve the teens or the community. But this is consistent with dominance hierarchy and the behavior of other social primates.
Ass I said, I don’t have a societal solution, but we can act locally by acknowledging that everyone, from our disregarded teens to untrained adults are all commonly products of a dysfunctional system that raised dysfunctional kids who are now dysfunctional adults. So yes, cut everyone some slack, including yourself.
† or K-to-9 kids for that matter, who are prone to interest and experimentation, which parents and guardians respond to by freaking out and punishing those kids who are involved.
Quite an oversimplification, but it hit some of the high points. It’s a good little opinion piece, and worth the time, I think.
Every man is the son of a woman.
Yes and no. There are plenty of people raised by same sex adoptive parents
As a bisexual guy, this is exactly why I mostly dated women.
Hey! Bi cis male here, the few men I seem to go on dates with always seem to have some hangup. I’m not gay enough, I’m married to a women, hates vegans, hates trans people. It’s really exhausting to the point that first dates feel like I’m interviewing them.
You’re married, go on dates, then complain people are mad that you’re married… How many times were you dropped on your head as a kid exactly?
It’s really exhausting to the point that first dates feel like I’m interviewing them.
If it’s a first date, you are interviewing them. I’m sorry it feels exhausting for you though.
I get what you mean but it shouldn’t feel like that. I shouldn’t be searching for something they might hate me over.
I agree, it shouldn’t feel like that. As someone who is bi and queer though, on top of all the normal trials and tribulations of dating there’s also a long list of people who don’t think I have the right to exist. I’d rather find out they’re a hate filled asshole as soon as possible so I can move on with my life. At this stage I won’t meet someone face to face unless we’ve chatted extensively online already. Even though I’m dooming hard I do still hope you find someone 😊
Yeah, when I met my wife the first time it was the opposite of exhausting. I felt like I could keep talking all night.
Dude same. It was really easy to date before 2016. First date with my wife we kept talking until the bar closed.
Now you have to look into your meeting spot make sure nothing problematic happened there. I was lucky that my enbyfriend friend was in the music scene when I was because I already knew a lot about them before our relationship started.
Now if someone is interested in me. I’m always skeptical. I recently got asked to help this straight lady cheat on her husband because she wanted to create strife for a divorce. Like who TF what’s to be involved with that stress?
you mean to tell me that most people don’t believe the majority of the things you do? That’s weird.
As a straight man I could say similar things about most of the women I’ve dated. It’s not a men problem or a women problem, it’s just how dating is. Nobody’s perfect and it’s hard to find someone that fits with you.
Men are hot, but I’m more pessimistic about finding a guy I’d want a relationship with than finding a girl. As a transfem, I’d have an easier time finding a guy, but a majority would probably be abusive or chasers. There might be fewer women, but it’d be safer(women are more likely to be progressive) and they’d be more into me as a person. It’d be harder to hookup, but easier to find a gf than bf.
Even transmascs would be better than cis dudes because they’re almost certainly not bigoted chasers that were raised to see women as goals instead of people.
My wife would agree I suspect. She’s transfem, and basically considered herself a lesbian until she met me.
Wow! Sample size: 1. Sure showed them, buddy.
Clearly not bi, btw, you’re a misandrist. Congratulations 🎉!
I’ve never seen someone so pissed off and offended over not getting any bussy lmao
As a bisexual guy, this is not at all my experience with non-straight men. They seem to be mostly cool and well socialized.
I’m not gonna be the “not all men” guy because this person does have a point,
But I will say, if all you look for is negatives, that’s all you’re gonna find.
Not being desirable can also solely be a lack of positives.
Ah yes, you look at the entirety of the male population, say “there’s no positives”, and still think you have a point 😂😂😂.
It’s like you can’t even wrap your own head around the sheer amount of misandry oozing from your mouth.
That wasn’t my point. Good job failing at reading comprehension.
i’m wondering how long it’s going to be before society realizes it has to do something about this unless it wants people like tate raising their children.
This has been a problem in the making for a long time and it’s even worse now with the internet so accessible.
Idk if it’s getting worse, most gen z boys seem to have been taught to clean much better than those before and are expected to be able to cook. That’s not to say all movements to equality happen in the right direction, it seems young boys have much more body issues than before (e.g mogging mewing etc) and that sucks.
yeah but that’s equivalent to shit like showering and brushing your teeth. If you don’t know how to do that shit you quite literally are a dependent.
it seems young boys have much more body issues than before (e.g mogging mewing etc) and that sucks.
this is more of a shitpost than anything to be fair.
It’s much easier for people to mock and ridicule than to educate and correct.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t call out poor behavior but the way we do so should be constructive as to not breed further resentment. This goes for most everything too, not just for the issue in the OP.
This is just a small part of creating a world that you want to live in. We can’t shut out the world or those we disapprove of, but we can contribute to the betterment of others, making the world a place we’re more more comfortable with sharing.
It’s much easier for people to mock and ridicule than to educate and correct.
yes, and this is why i think we should be completely ignoring this aspect. It’s not really primed to do anything productive.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t call out poor behavior but the way we do so should be constructive as to not breed further resentment. This goes for most everything too, not just for the issue in the OP.
it’s not that we need to call it out, we shouldn’t allow it. Everybody called out the bad behavior of hitler, it’s not like he up and stopped doing that shit.
the best way to do this is to instill it in the minds of children as they grow up. Which it seems we aren’t doing at much of any rate.
This is just a small part of creating a world that you want to live in. We can’t shut out the world or those we disapprove of, but we can contribute to the betterment of others, making the world a place we’re more more comfortable with sharing.
exactly.
“… in a way that makes them
desirable asactual adults.”FTFY.
So… ok, look… I know this comment may be nuked into oblivion, but I’m just a guy (closer to agender in terms of how I identify, but try explaining that to my fellow countrypeople… ) attracted to women, who’s had to deal with a Standard Eastern European male-focused upbringing and am now open and willing to undo that damage.
To get to my point, from the perspective I’ve detailed above, this is too vague to offer any clarity related to the specific problem and/or any ideal solutions.
In my opinion, while I do agree that keeping a finger pointed at the problem is a must in order to avoid it slipping from the list of things to solve moving forward, just pointing the finger and letting others figure it out is not. This is part of the very problem we’re trying to address, we all (yes, all, including myself) want people who identify as and own “man” as a part of their identity to grow and become healthier as members of this species, yet most material just says “men are toxic” and that’s it. There is no example offered, there is no list of things to be addressed, and, to be very honest, these feel like they’re coming from a place of hurt and not with an intent to teach, fix or help fix.
TRIGGER WARNING: the paragraph below contains a trauma joke, said joke exists solely to establish ownership of my trauma and neuter it of its power. I do not mean to offend anyone or minimise any traumatic experiences.
Personal anecdote, I could say the exact same thing as the OC about every one of my exes, all women, were I to allow myself to fall into the trap of resentment. Hell, I’m literally missing SA to get the Abuse Bingo.
The OC means nothing to me (no offence intended, I’m referring strictly to what message I can gleam from it), as I’m sure it would mean nothing to the many people I know who identify as men and are actively trying to redefine what that means for the benefit of themselves and those around them. At best, it reinforces the idea that “The Right tries to sell me misogyny and brain pills, The Left calls me an asshole,” at worst it actively pushes people away from the threshold of change, and, in my opinion, neither option is of any benefit. Why not offer some clarifying details alongside it? Or even learning material if you know of any?
Again, mean no offence to anyone, shit’s as confusing as can be to me and I’m honestly coming from a place of openness and willingness to do better. And, yeah, I know I’m essentially talking to a screenshot from Twitter, but, like… you get it.
All right, let me give it a shot…
Masculinity is good
Toxic masculinity is not good.
Toxic masculinity includes things like couching nice comments in mean comments. Saying things like toughen up instead of listening to feelings and concerns. Not doing a good job with personal hygiene because it’s “gay”. There is probably more, but it’s 7:00 a.m. and my brain is not thinking good.
Being a man means that you’re a human. And like all humans you have feelings. No, you did not use your willpower and/or big brain to remove feelings from your system. No one can do that. All you’ve done is removed the ability for you to detect your feelings. Others can see them clearly, because you have lost the ability to identify your own feelings and are not able to tell when you are having them. Hint: A lot of times feelings will transform themselves into anger if you don’t have a good understanding of what’s going on inside you. Even feelings like sadness, if not understood can come out as anger.
“I don’t know” is a valid response to a question.
Not everything you do has to be “rational” we are humans not computers.
Figure out, create, and enforce personal boundaries. Likewise respect the personal boundaries of others.
As a human being, you have intrinsic value. This is not tied to the work you do or the money you make. It is only tied to the fact that you exist. Because of this, you deserve to live and enjoy life implicitly.
Assuming you’re straight and you want sex with women. Sex is good. Straight women love sex with men just like straight men love sex with women. There is an unfortunate history between men and women where men are the aggressors, and have caused lots of pain, suffering, and death. This does not mean you are bad. It does mean though that you need to deal with the consequences of that history. Understand that going on a first date from a woman’s perspective is very scary. So don’t do anything that would cause concern. Be considerate. Give the woman an out. Keep your sketchy jokes to yourself for a couple of dates.
When dating, remember and enforce your boundaries and respect their boundaries. Women, like men, are not intrinsically good at relationships.
Pro dating tip from me to you: I have found sometimes that women just want to have someone listen to the problem they’re having and sympathize. They’ll do this even though they already know the solution. My instinct has been to try to suggest solutions. This does not go well. Just listen to their problem, resist the urge to suggest the obvious solution, and say something like " Wow, that sounds hard!"
I understand what I’m asking is very hard to do, but remember 99.999% of my advice also applies to all humans, not just men. It’s just as men, you’ve been kept out of the loop by culture. It’s not your fault. Feelings and boundaries are hard for everyone. It’s like learning how to ride a bike at 30 years old. Most everyone already knows how to do it. And now you’re at the age where it’s hard to learn.
Don’t forget you have intrinsic value. Love yourself!
Sincerely, thank you! This is more than I could’ve hoped for and, yes, it’s plenty clear wherein lay the problems.
Also reassuring, because the entire list just sounds like “be human and humane,” which… I mean, yeah!
I like this comment a lot.
Regarding the part about feelings, what should we be doing when we understand our feelings? Like, I understand that I’m sad or nervous about a new situation or whatever but I can’t function as well when I’m sad or anxious. When it changes to anger I can still do the things I need to do. I’m probably not pleasant to be around but I’m not pleasant to be around when I’m emotional in other ways either so it kind of evens out because at least I can work. If I can take the time to just be sad I do but I prefer to be alone with it so usually it comes out when I’m driving or other situations where I know I’ll have privacy. My friends would support me and I have supported them in the past but it’s just something I prefer to deal with alone. The few times I’ve let it out in front of a girlfriend though have been the beginning of the end of the relationship. It’s like they immediately lost their attraction to me when they saw me cry.
The few times I’ve let it out in front of a girlfriend though have been the beginning of the end of the relationship. It’s like they immediately lost their attraction to me when they saw me cry.
I’m very sorry to hear that. It may be that they did not have the emotional and social maturity to process it well. Or, maybe your expression did not come across in the way that you thought.
Regarding the part about feelings, what should we be doing when we understand our feelings?
This is one that I can’t answer as an expert, both because I am not a mental health professional and because I struggle with my emotions a bit due to my ADHD and maladaptive coping mechanisms to deal with childhood trauma. But, therapy has helped significantly and I will always suggest it to anyone who is able to access it.
What I can offer, though, are some tools, theory, and suggestions that have been helpful for me so far:
Find a good Feelings/Emotion Wheel. So far, I like the ones patterned after the Junto Institute as it delves into the nuance of emotions that we experience.
How do you use it? Well, there are a lot of different approaches. What I find helpful is looking at it from time to time to “look at the map” and thinking about times when I have experienced intense emotions, using the Wheel to better draw out more precisely what I was feeling. This exercise generally also goes into exploring why I was feeling that way and contemplating what ways I could act in order to express the identified emotion in a manner that is both genuine and constructive (I am much more comfortable with logic than emotionality).
When it comes to interpersonal expression of one’s emotions, one can try the same thing with a bit of extra roleplaying. First, I might walk through how I was feeling and how I expressed it, then pretend that I am the person who I expressed it to and try to identify how I would feel in their place and why (every other person is another human being with their own hopes, dreams, desires, and emotions).
An extremely important thing to keep in mind when working through past experiences is to be kind to your past self and past people that you interacted with. Malice is not a very common thing to encounter, so try not to assume it.
The idea, overall, is that by going through exercises like those, one builds their comfort and familiarity with their own emotions and are better able to self-regulate and express themselves in a manner that will lead to more healthy outcomes.
Going back to the first bit of yours that I quoted, if you did indeed express yourself in a healthy and appropriate fashion, splitting ways may have, in fact, been the healthiest outcome for you. Being with a partner that does not value you for who you are (our emotions are part of ourselves), is not something that is psychologically healthy or conducive to a stable relationship.
Good questions!
So in an ideal world, if you have a feeling. You should be able to say something like “I am having emotions and I need some time alone to deal with it.” and then leave the area to find a safe space.
Unfortunately, we are rarely living in the ideal world. The next best thing to do is to communicate that you are having feelings and might do some wacky stuff. Only do this if you feel safe to do so.
If you don’t feel safe to communicate or go find a safe space, then yeah, your kinda stuck to power though it. If you find this happens often you have to weigh weather or not it is worth changing your situation. This is very hard to do and is a result of pervasive toxic masculinity and bad luck.
As for the situation with your x it could be a range of things from she was affected by toxic masculinity as well (the expectation that all men need to be emotionless) or at worst, she was using the fact that you didn’t feel like you could show emotions against you. So when you showed emotions, the gig was up. Either way it sucks, I am sorry you went though that.
My personal preference is to only date people who understand that all humans have emotions. You need to make your own calls in this regard. Again, unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world.
Part of the challenge of moving away from toxic masculinity is we have to be firm with our boundaries. This may get expensive, so you have to weigh out how much life suck you can deal with. Its not always clear what the right answer is.
Good luck!
In my opinion, while I do agree that keeping a finger pointed at the problem is a must in order to avoid it slipping from the list of things to solve moving forward, just pointing the finger and letting others figure it out is not. This is part of the very problem we’re trying to address, we all (yes, all, including myself) want people who identify as and own “man” as a part of their identity to grow and become healthier as members of this species, yet most material just says “men are toxic” and that’s it. There is no example offered, there is no list of things to be addressed, and, to be very honest, these feel like they’re coming from a place of hurt and not with an intent to teach, fix or help fix.
this big problem here is that we need a fundamental shift in child rearing and how we raise boys. There isn’t really a good example beyond that. Currently the best you can do is be a good mentor and role model for the boys and young men around you. Preferably without becoming a suspected child predator, which is the hard part.
it’s looking like we’re moving towards that, but we have very little direction and very little scientifically backed evidence for any of this, so we’re kinda just pushing into a marshy field and trying to find a coin someone dropped somewhere at this point.
That’s exactly why I’d add as many details as possible with posts such as this! Swing it from a “you’re an asshole,” to “you’re an asshole because:” and I’m sure this’ll resolve a lot of potential knee-jerk reactions in those who are targeted by and come into contact with said messages.
I agree that it’s up to us to redefine what healthy masculinity should be, there’s a lot of redefining to do in general… And the value of information cannot be overstated in these cases, because examples of how not to do it can be the perfect points with which to define to-dos!
this could help, but you could go even further. Instead of “you’re being an asshole” you could say “this is an asshole thing to do, you probably shouldn’t do this” or something like that which dissociates the person from it very aggressively.
I agree that it’s up to us to redefine what healthy masculinity should be, there’s a lot of redefining to do in general… And the value of information cannot be overstated in these cases, because examples of how not to do it can be the perfect points with which to define to-dos!
yeah. It’s going to be a big change socially.
As a cis male, I find this post to be so true. And you’re never done trying to unfold this socialization.
you shouldn’t be trying to unfold it, it’s not super practical, you need to focus on folding the rest of your clothes first. If we don’t socialize children correctly, we can never truly fix this problem, but we’re at a point where we can still fix the majority of this problem in younger children and men right now. We can worry about the holdouts later.
Younger men and children as they age out can be a massive force to push this change as well. It only takes a few people to change the minds of hundreds of others.
The ‘fun’ part is when you start to unwind the really deeply rooted parts and question how much of you is socially conditioned reflex. Blegh. Really wish I’d just been lucky enough to be born at a point where society had moved past this shite.
As a woman, this seems universal to me. Not a gendered issue. More a social issue.
As if the wildabeasts with Karen haircuts, the inability to change a tire, and the ability to complain makes these women somehow better than the men they complain about. Thunderthighs -away-
This is such a great way to articulate the issue. The conversation mostly revolves around individuals (“men are bad”). This is one of the few rimes that men are talked in a way that acknowledges the system at play, that they are a product of an environment and society that has shaped them a certain way.
I’ve lost the podcast source that talked about “there is no good way to be a man currently”. Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
At least that means the routes men take will be more unique
Or they’ll all fall down the Andrew “Sex Trafficker” Tate pipeline instead.
He’s not special. Run of the mill pimp.
im sorry sex trafficking isn’t special?
Ugh, in no way am I trying to suggest this is a good man doing acceptable things. I’m trying to suggest he is a bad man doing exploitive things AND that there are many like him that perhaps are less skillful with social media.
yeah, and i don’t think that makes it or him “normal” either. He’s an exceptionally terrible human being. That has managed to be the kingpin of an entire attention economy for years now.
In some regards he is special That’s why Romania is putting him through the ringer, it’s why the extradition might actually happen.
Ok fine, he’s a special pimp.
I didn’t say he was special, just that his type has an outsized influence on young men.
That’s correct. Please accept my apology if it seemed I was suggesting otherwise.
All good, I did misinterprete what you were trying to add :)
therapy is a good place to start. men need to want to improve themselves. many don’t. I find this issue to be more prevalent among older generations who are extremely resistant to therapy.
there aren’t role models
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behaviour.
Robin Williams was always a standup guy, Keanu Reeves seems like a nice guy, Ryan Reynolds seems to be a standup guy (but he has a hard monetary incentive to keep this image), the guys from Cinema Therapy seem to be decent. Do these people count as role models?
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behavior.
people that are the stereotypical mr rogers of the real world. We really do just need more people that are such good people that just they instill goodness in others on a fundamental level. That and people willing to spend time educating others.
if you aren’t a stereo-typically perfect individual, that’s fine, you almost certainly have something useful that you can teach someone young that’s around you.
Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
Bluey.
bluey is great, but it’s only one example in a sea of no ships. It’s also aussie, so it’s not even super culturally relevant to most of the west, it’s also focused at really young children.
Beyond young children you have shows like, full house, which is literally fucking ancient.
This is hilarious because Bluey is a girl
I meant the father from Bluey. What’s his name? Bandit?
Yeah, it’s Bandit. It’s one of those series that you can watch as an adult. It’s great. If they ever stop making it, I’m going to riot.
The best example of good manliness in media I can think of is Bandit from Bluey.
The options are pretty slim if a cartoon dog from a children’s show is humanity’s best example of being a good man.
Uncle Iroh is another one
Idk, I think Aragorn is a great example. As is Samwise.
Tim Walz seems to do it right.
And the speech professor
We, as a society, are still trapped within the “feminist revolution”, there’s fighting going on and no new normal emerged.
Both sides are ripped apart by two often contradicting sets of expectations, the traditional role and the progressive role.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
And that also reflects on women, to put it extremely bluntly, he’s expected to pay for dinner, but she still wants equal pay. It will take decades to sort all of that out.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
the important distinction here is that these privileges were the reason that men did what they did. Without them now men don’t really have an overall driving force through life. Without the expectation of “being a strong man” they literally have nothing to live for in society.
That’s what the post above mine meant by there not being a positive manliness.
Progressive manliness is described as a substraction from the old ideal. We simply have not yet formed a positive, progressive male identity.
yeah, we need to work towards building something that solves this problem sooner rather than later, if you’re a parent now, you should be figuring this out now, and if you want to be a parent, figure it out before you have children.
What?? So when you were a kid ,you just wanted to be a “strong man” when you grew up??
there was nothing i wanted to be when i was growing up. I got the question of “what do you want to do” but there isn’t exactly a good answer to that question and nobody seemed to ever really care either. Things are more focused on education and not being an asshole individually, as opposed to be a socially good person who respects other people.
It should be no wonder that people raised like this turn to figures like andrew tate looking for some semblance of something to focus on.
the reason why strong man is quoted is because if you don’t grow up to be a strong person, as a man or a woman, or whatever in between, you fucking die.
Being a good human being is an option for everyone.
And I know this is from a kids cartoon, but Uncle Iroh from Airbender embodies benevolent masculinity pretty well. If we want children and young men to be socialized better, a good place to start is with our media to depicting more characters like that.
I like it
It sucks. As a dude, I feel it’s almost impossible to balance being confident and approaching women you don’t know and also not being a creep or bothering them. I’m not the best but not the worst when it comes to looks, I have many friends of different genders (shoutout to my enby fellows who have to deal with this mess and also discrimination) and I’m confident in most things I do aside from dating. It’s gotten to the point I just won’t ask women out due to anxiety over coming across as a creep or bothering them, and instead endure loneliness. Which is not great, but it is what it is.
Sucks that your type has this character.
True, but it encompasses a lot of people.
As a man, who knows many “men”, I have to say, a lot aren’t being raised… At all.
It’s funny that you both place quotation marks around men, showing you don’t believe they are, and yet pretend that you think the fault is in how they’re being raised.
It’s like the dichotomy escapes you. Are they real men raised poorly? Or are they fake men and therefore they’re not the subject of this discussion at all?
I don’t expect you to have any reasonable response though because clearly the misandrist brain rot hit you pretty hard. My condolences. Maybe you should isolate though.
What even is this response?
I was raised. I raised myself.
I see a lot of boys who are so sheltered from the world that they can’t even make hot pockets or do their laundry without someone helping them.
I wanted to be raised by my parents and I was forced to raise myself. I don’t say this to garner any sympathy, because I know I won’t get any. I’m not going to throw myself a pity party because I was left to figure it out.
The only point I’m making, if any at all, is that: school doesn’t prepare you for life. It certainly didn’t prepare me for life… And parents should be teaching their kids how to deal with stuff, and think about their choices so they can make good ones without needing to be told what to do.
I had to figure that out on my own. It’s 100% possible to have a very easy upbringing and be raised right.
I don’t think I need to tell anyone that nobody gives a fuck about how you feel or how much you’re struggling, if you have a dick between your legs, and that demonstrates the problem in society. Boys will “figure it out”.
Most of them don’t, more than a few, never will.
What’s all this shit about being raised? Who raised you?
I was like that, dad left when I was 11 and mom was majorly depressed. Watched a shit ton of YouTube and thankfully found myself on the good side. Around this time there was the war between Logan Paul and the rest of the internet and I watched a lot of commentators call his shit out.
Probably not the best for me, but it did teach the basic morals of “don’t be an asshole”. Most other kids watched Logan/Jake Paul and were insufferable fucks.
To summarize my youth: the only stuff I learned, outside of school, was taught to me by my brothers, in the form of bullying.
I was the youngest.
What I’m most annoyed by is that my dad, a teacher, with a bachelor’s in bookkeeping, taught me exactly nothing about money.
They fed me, and I got older, but I raised myself. I learned how to handle my own finances, and live on my own, because they certainly didn’t help me in that regard, and when I found myself basically on my own at 16, after my parents divorced and I was essentially abandoned, I had to sort my shit out damn fast. It was sink or swim.
Obviously there’s a lot more to it than that, but I’ll tell you this: as a teenager, I had no goddamned idea how to shop for groceries, or cook for myself.
I try not to bitch about it too much because that was more than 20 years ago now. I don’t want to compare my challenges to anyone else.
My entire point is that, I wasn’t taught anything. I figured it out without any help. The difference between a man, and a child who got older, is whether you taught yourself how to be self sufficient, when everyone else decided that you were old enough to know everything you needed to know, when nobody has actually explained anything to you about how to survive, then pushed you out the door… If you experienced that, and you figured it out. Welcome to adulthood, congrats. If you were never in a situation where if you missed a couple of shifts at work, you’d have to sleep under a bridge, then, IDK. Sounds a bit pampered to me.
They feed you and expect you to grow but they didn’t have a plan on how to mautre just a list of don’ts you have to follow.
Do as I say!
Don’t talk back!
Becuase I said so!
Some just wait all the life to be in that position of power and now they are removed from it telling them they are wrong. If you think about it is almost a given they’ll turn to right wing if they promise them the price they were denied…
I relate, kind of.
Men grow up to have whatever habits worked well for them when they were boys.
Tolerate dishonesty in boys? They’ll be dishonest as men.
Encourage aggression in boys? They’ll be aggressive as men.
Oblige pickiness in boys? They’ll be picky as men.
This is inevitably true of women too, though girls tend to push different boundaries than boys.
Reward emotional manipulation in girls? They’ll be emotionally manipulative as women. (Boys do this too, but they’re often not as subtle about it, get called out, and switch to anger instead)
Oblige pickiness in boys? They’ll be picky as men.
- Pickiness in women? “It’s her fundamental right to be picky!”
- Pickiness in men? “Zomg, what a misogynistic incel!!!1!”
That gap is indicative of how much anti-male hatred and gender hypocrisy there is floating around out there. Pick one attitude or the other for both sexes to share, but you cannot have each sex be subject to a unique attitude in any society that purports to “value equality”.
Encourage aggression in boys? They’ll be aggressive as men
Women - especially educators - frequently paint competitiveness and a need for physical action as “aggression”, because they don’t understand what they are looking at. They aren’t men, so they have no frame of reference to interpret masculine behaviour correctly in the first place. This is why boys everywhere are being denied the masculinity they so desperately need, and instead are being treated as broken girls, leading to severely malformed adults who don’t know how to be men.
It’s time to re-introduce gender-segregated schools, and have boy’s-only schools staffed with only male teachers. So many boys are starving for the role models that women simply cannot provide…
Oblige pickiness in boys? They’ll be picky as men.
I feel like this isn’t necessarily a bad thing… My son is super picky, and it’s annoying for sure, but it doesn’t deserve to be in the same list as dishonesty or aggression… It means he knows what he likes and won’t let anyone push him into something he’s not comfortable with. He’ll try new things on occasion, but he has to be ready for it, if we push him he just digs in and refuses to budge. I’ve had the best results with “hey bud, want to try this? It’s really good” and when he says no, “suit yourself, more for me.” It doesn’t work often, but when it does, it sticks. New food option unlocked. My wife will bargain with him, and she gets him to try stuff, but only to get what she’s offering, even if he ends up liking it, he needs to keep up the appearance that he doesn’t because it’s been made into such a big deal…
There are pluses and minuses for most things. Aggression can be very useful if the kid is into sports, or even competitive video games. Too much can be a problem, but too little and you get Milton from Office Space.
Pickiness can be thought of as the opposite of adventurousness. If someone’s too picky they may never try new things. If they’re too adventurous, they may never settle down, and might seek out situations that are too dangerous and thrilling.
I don’t know if how you’re raising your kid is good or not. But, I do know that as a kid, my parents never would have put up with that kind of pickiness. Either I ate what they were preparing, or I didn’t eat that meal. On one hand, this did result in my absolutely hating brussels sprouts. They were always prepared ultra mushy and now, even if I try some that are prepared well, the memory of the disgusting ones comes up and I gag. On the other hand, I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new foods. I’ll hesitate a bit at brains or other organs, bugs, and fermented things, but other than that I’m eager to try new things. I think overall it served me well to have been pushed to eat outside my tiny comfort zone as a kid.
Either I ate what they were preparing, or I didn’t eat that meal.
My mother tried that with me. Unfortunately for her, I inherited her stubbornness, so I was willing to just not eat and/or be punished.
Eventually she caved and change the rule from “Eat what I make or don’t eat” to “Eat what I make or make something your damn self”, which I found much more agreeable.
Oh hey, it’s me
My mom wasn’t as stubborn though, she caved to “Fine, make it yourself” pretty early, and then I ended up being a decent cook. I attribute the fact that I took Home Ec (particularly cooking) to the fact that I was picky, and was allowed to be so
