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This quote by TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com is a good thing to keep in mind. I’m not going to lock it because it genuinely seems to be helping some people. I’m getting reports though, so remember to be excellent to each other please.
this comment section is a memorial of injured experiences.
tread carefully.
Edit: fixed author’s username.
I think the username ends peb not pep
Also you might want to pin your comment to put it at the top
It is at the top for my instance, it doesn’t work on some clients though. Thanks, I’ll fix his name.
Right :) top is variable by user settings, is it pinned and my client just doesn’t respect pins?
That’s what I’ve heard. It probably respects it if you were a sh.itjust.works instance member, but not if you’re not? That’s from people talking about it last time this came up.
Mine is set to sort oldest first and it comes up top for me, though I don’t see any other indication that it’s pinned… It being there is most important though…
I don’t know what to tell you, the mod tools for Lemmy are pretty minor. All I can do as speak as moderator and then it goes to the top for my instance and I think fellow instance members. All bets are off for other users. There’s no way to actually sticky or pin anything to top that I’m aware of other than to speak as moderator as a top comment.
FYI, I see it pinned as a top comment even from my instance
Also just an fyi that my instance and app display it as pinned (slrpnk and connect). Also my default is to sort by top.
Idk what it means, just figured I’d also chime in with some extra data lol
I also see this pinned on my instance.
I’ve been scrolling the comments on this post for a while (longer than I should) and just want to say it is one of the most refreshing collective displays of thoughtfulness and empathy I have read online in far too long. Even the back-and-forwards where people disagree on details or semantics are still overwhelmingly positive, insightful, and respectable on all sides. Another comment here used a brilliant term “merciless insincerity”, and personally I’ve been leaning in a dangerously cynical direction lately about its prevalence. Although I know I am old & resilient enough to not let it capsize me I despise when so much lowest-common-denominator thinking hardens my shell and wallpapers a layer of apathy over who I really am (the angry-yet-optimistic teenager from the 80s/90s who screamed into the void about the climate-emergency, the corrosion of democracy by short-term vote-winning & fundraising, and - more relevantly - the toxicifying impact men and women have had on society - at interpersonal, familial, regional, national, and international scales - by regurgitating thoughtless archetypes and flagwaving in lieu of questioning reality from a fearless standpoint of “open-minded but critical, optimistic but sceptical, confident but fallibilistic”. Discussions like these are some of the very few bastions of antidote left for that cynicism and apathy. What blows my mind is that it is apparent a nontrivial proportion of you who are young (well, much younger than me) are introspecting and expressing yourselves about the subject better than I ever could. When I see the flood of toxic (and idiotically childish) nonsense almost everywhere else, discussions like these truly help bolster a dangerously scarce resource called “hope for the future”, and reinforces for me why about 99.9℅ of my “social online reading” time is spent on Lemmy lately. Gandhi said “be the change you wish to see in the world”, and it’s worth considering that what you are all writing here is a good example of you doing exactly that (even if you hadn’t realised or intended). It adds up, when groups of people give each other the chance to be truly unafraid (instead of “playing tough” - which merely broadcasts how truly afraid someone really is).
This sort of situation is how I knew my wife was/is a keeper. When I was pushed to the point where my negative emotions got too much, she was there for me. She didn’t shy away, but stepped in to help and support me.
In many of my previous relationships, showing negative emotions was lethal to their feelings. I could be happy, or stoic, but never upset or depressed.
On a side note, I had a chat with a trans friend once, regarding emotions. When they transitioned, the intensity of their emotions didn’t change much. However, their ability to contain them plummeted. Basically, men and women feel emotions similarly. Men are just a lot more able to bottle them up.
Super socially awkward and anxious in middle school and high school and was also bullied a ton. Girls would ask me out as a joke, and there’s no good response. If you say yes you’re a dumbass for thinking they’re actually interested in you, if you say no you’re gay and should kill yourself. Combined with being an impressionable teen with incredibly negative self esteem on reddit at a time where something along the lines of all men are rapists was a common sentiment, it really honestly fucked me up. I still am not comfortable with romance and intimacy with women to be honest.
Female bullying culture is very cruel.
in middle school, a girl in my grade died at summer band camp from a bee sting….
a group of girls called me to tell me she wanted to be her boyfriend. i declined, as it wasn’t the first time i had the joke girlfriend trick played on me…
but i guess the prank was, i was supposed to say yes, then be heartbroken when i found out she was dead…
instead i was heartbroken that anyone would try to do that to anyone.That’s horrifically fucked up. Children really do be out there causing misery for nothing, huh…
I tried to explain to someone that her all men are trash rhetoric isn’t gonna help anyone do better and the response was that they didn’t care, men should just be better or other men should be responsible for making them better but she sure wasnt. I think she grew out of that.
Im sorry :c
It taught me to stop feeling as a defense mechanism and I never really started again. Hooray for depression 🎉
I’ve shut it all down and can no longer relate to people. Hooray
this comment section is a memorial of injured experiences.
tread carefully.
Thank you for the warning, kind stranger.
I prefer “monument to all your sins” but hard to disagree.
I’ll add to the trauma dump I suppose
Got married in August 2018, the beginning of the next month my dad died of cancer. Obviously I was mourning him and was in a shitty place, my then wife took that as me not being active enough in our relationship and decided to start cheating on me with multiple guys. Once I found out and called her out on it, and also subsequently kicked her out all of a sudden I was the bad guy. I can’t even imagine the mental gymnastics she was hopping through to think that was justified.
Anyway I’ve moved across the country since then and have met who I believe is my soulmate, and things are amazing with her. Just had to go through sewers to find my green pasture I suppose
Consider yourself lucky you didn’t have kids with her
A few years ago I was struggling with body image and was starting to feel worthless and invisible in my marriage. When I tried expressing these feelings to my wife (really just trying to make an emotional connection) her response was curt and to the point: “You don’t have body image issues. I’m the one struggling with my weight.”
And that was it. I’ve never felt more alone in my life.
Hey you, you’re attractive. *Hugs
Thx. You legit got a smile out of me.
His hugs can be attractive I guess.
Can I change your mind about using the Calvin template instead of the waste of oxygen template?
Awwww you should’ve left the comment alone.
I love you!
I think I changed your to you’re. I couldn’t unsee it haha
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🫂
Dude, you are looking sharp today. Don’t ever think you can’t look good.
Don’t worry bro, you’ll always have us internet homies!
I decided to end a relationship and marriage, after being together for 13 years. For the first time in years I put myself first and realised that I needed to be out of the relationship. Coming out of this has been very difficult and I’ve been struggling with my mental health since.
I started dating again, and have had two horrible experiences where my feelings were just put aside and it really hurt. Both of which ended up with the relationship ending. It’s like I’m not allowed to have feelings or struggle. 😞
“Why are men in general so emotionally constipated? omg stop crying like a pussy; we just asked a question!” - the patriarchy, oppressing us all
feminism is for everyone. patriarchy is both against and enforced by everyone
Time to get downvoted for having an opinion, here I go:
In my experience, women were the ones constantly telling me I should be positive, I should smile/laugh more, I should not worry or cry or stuff like that (even lovingly telling me to shush), male friends were MUCH more accepting when it came to my emotional problems (both were equally useless tho).
BUT I don’t blame women nor the patriarchy, I blame toxic positivity, as most of us weren’t taught how to deal with emotions and came from toxic/broken homes so forcing a positive take on everything and shunning anything that could weaken that bubble was (and still is) the norm and that is genderless, assholery is a human thing, not a male vs female thing.Genuine question, how would you wish a good friend/partner would react?
Not the person you replied to, but just listening and allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard goes a long way. Getting it all out to someone and not being bottled up inside your own head can be a huge relief, even if the problem itself remains the same.
The instinctual reaction is to want to offer fixes. However, whatever the hearer thought of in five seconds, the sufferer probably also already thought of, and spent days/months/years attempting to make it work and it just didn’t, and now the listening session gets diverted into kind of an argument where the suffered has to justify they have already put in sufficient effort to the fix the listener is pushing that it’s not worth continuing on that road.
You’ll have to be more specific with your question because… if I’m pointing out a toxic positivity attitude and you tell me you don’t know what a more desirable reaction would be, it concerns me… a lot.
OK, be concerned. Now, please tell me how to be better. I am the first to admit that I suck at inter-personal things.
Let’s say you are hanging out with a good friend, it is late in the evening, and they tell you about some fucked up shit happening to them.
“That sucks, man hang in there,” doesn’t quite cut it, as someone else pointed out, no solution you can up with in five minutes is going to help them, and just awkward silence is awkward to both of you.
What do you do?
I do nothing.
I just sit there and listen to them, curse with them and let them blow as much steam as they need, you’d be surprised but most of the time people already know what to do, all they need is to be allowed to embrace whatever they are feeling at the time, to be heard and some empathy.
If you are afraid of an awkward silence then don’t be, sometimes just sitting in silence with someone can go a long way. Sometimes just little questions about it can help them open and show that you care.Not everyone wants help, not everything has a fix, not everything has to be fixed on the spot, forcing someone will only make them double-down or close themselves and that can get worse because they’ll stop looking for help.
Obviously… this is in general what I used to do, everyone is different so each person requires a different approach,
I have a very different friend group. Yeah people still like to project success and their kids whatever at the moment. But even that’s only my local friends. Many of us love to talk shit about the state of the country/world and try to take care of each other through mental and emotional issues.
It’s funny, I generally prefer to talk to a woman professionally, but I’d rather talk to a man friend about specific emotional problems. Of course I’m lucky to have a wife I would talk about most of these things with, but not everyone has a good partner.
When i was a kid it was the opposite… but in my adult years it’s been overwhelmingly women that tried to enforce masculinity on me any time I stepped out of the bounds of masculinity and did something feminine (wear feminine clothes, cry, make a comment getting hit on by men to name a few). I was a closeted trans woman in denial which made it extra annoying whenever it happened. Now that I’m out the women in my life have been extremely supportive so there is that. However whenever I go out in full femme with outfit and make-up I noticed it’s women who stare at me, had one lady look me up and down three times pretty deliberately while standing 4ft away from me. I don’t always see it as malicious (not that i would care), more like they’re curious or maybe even liking fit. But it’s an interesting contrast compared to men who seem to give me almost no mind or attention by comparison. It was something I didn’t expect.
My wife makes way more than me, with the potential to be sole provider in less than 5 years. I told her id love to stay home and take care of the house/kids. She got offended, and said itd probably end our marriage because that wouldnt be masculine.
Shes always been a big proponent for gender equality… i guess she always only ever thought of one gender
Take precautions. Seriously. Economic abuse is just as if not even more common than physical abuse. And you already know she’s got emotional abuse locked and loaded.
Start wearing a frilly pink apron around the house. Gotta have some fun while you can
But also yeah, good luck with the divorce 😶🌫️
Man your wife is fucked up. I’d love to give the husband an ejection seat for the rat race
lolwut y she so going so 1950s on you
Taking care of the kids is a masculine thing to do! 💪
Funny how that works, right? Both my mom and my ex, super feminists, all down with the gays and progressive but were some of the worst people when it came to enforcing my masculinity. My mom is coming around now after putting my foot down pretty sternly more than a few times. But when I was closeted that shit was really fucking hurtful and kept me from expressing myself.
Yes, and many women are strict enforcers of the patriarchy, too. Boys are raised to deny their feelings by both parents, because both parents were raised that way, too. There’s a focus on hyper masculinity that hurts both men and women, and is perpetuated by both men and women. Society has been leaning away from that, but it’s caused a backlash that’s kinda hurting us right now. And some social media is amplifying it.
We’ll get past it, but it’s going to hurt for a while.
Eh, this is all stuff that was written up in the 70s and 80s, it’s gonna take a while before anyone even attempts to do anything about it.
You or @Ofiuco@lemmy.cafe in somewhere like the SF Bay Area, California?
Curious cuz this ain’t cool and I dare say my circles ‘round these decently progressive parts would concur
Wait you know people here who have genuine opinions they share and aren’t just being performative?
I think the ideology you think of when you say it’s for everyone, is egalitarianism. Feminism can’t be for everyone in the same way that patriarchy can’t mean “womens oppression of men”.
Unless of course, you’re looking to confuse with the terminology.
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.
Tell me where in feminism are men’s issues dealt with? They aren’t, because feminism is about acheiving equality of the sexes for women. It is about advancing women and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Feminism doesn’t address men’s issues. It never has and never will because that’s not the purpose of the movement.
Beating people over the head with this out of context “social equality of the sexes” is only going to drive men to declare they aren’t feminists because feminism does not and never will address mens issues.
If you feel that claim is unwarranted please point out a single men’s issue that has been addressed by feminism because the Wikipedia article certainly doesn’t include any examples.
The word literally derives from feminine
feminine adjective (WOMEN) Showing qualities that people generally think are typical of women
There is an opposite term to feminism, masculinism, which then leads to the idea that it can’t be completely equal. But i assume people will keep using the term to mean “equal rights for all”, since thats usually how it goes with languages.
I just worry that the implication is changing so that women = equality and men = inequality. That train of thought is mainly what drives younger men to go off the wall with their chauvinistic tendencies.
But that is not how it ends up working. There are very little places to talk about men’s issues. It either turns in some incel shit or reddits menslib.
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Thou I’d love to hear your thoughts on veganism. Suffice it to say you’re wrong this time champ.
Feminism is explicitly about the social equality of sexes.
Actions speak louder than words, and despite all the No True Scotsman-ing, many, many words and acts of sexism against males has occurred under the banner of feminism.
I’ve read public press releases from mainstream feminist organizations like NOW proclaiming that the only reasons a father would ever seek custody of his child in a divorce is because he’s either a wifebeater who wants to retain access to the woman he’s abusing, or he’s a deadbeat who’s just trying to get out of paying child support.
There is a reason that the vast majority of people believe in equal treatment for both sexes, but only a small minority self-identify as “feminist”.
In theory, yes. In practice, not always.
Many feminists would not agree with you.
I prefer talking about equality when talking about equality.
Just because one claims that their own views align with feminism, doesn’t mean that it is, by definition- feminism. By this, I aim to mean that there will always be bad apples in any group of people.
So how about maybe not judging the whole of a thing on those that claim to align with it- yet show no similarities to it.
So how about maybe not judging the whole of a thing on those that claim to align with it- yet show no similarities to it.
Maybe if the people who are pro-equality shouldn’t grasp onto their gendered term so hard. Kinda weird that out of one side of their mouths so many people will say it’s about equality for all but insist we must use the feminine term over the genderless one we already have
Don’t want to be judged on gender lines? Don’t use gendered terms to describe yourself, simple
Again, you’re judging the entirety of a thing based on a portion of a thing. This is the same thing as when people call all vegans “obnoxious” when it’s just a portion of them that act this way.
I won’t get into the rest of the stuff in this thread, but I’ll disagree with your first point.
Feminism is a word. An English word. And that means it’s definition is driven by common usage not a book. If the common usage shifts to a toxic place, the meaning shifts with it.
If you disagree I’d love to hear your gymnastics around the word invcel, it’s evolution into incel, and then that further extension to femcel (even though the person who coined invcel was a woman).
Feminism has a static definition. And because of this fact- I disagree wholeheartedly with the entirety of your response.
This is not gymnastics. This is empirical truth. And I’m not getting locked up in attempts to define any whatabout attempts to derail the topic.
Many feminists would not agree with you.
Really? Who? Give me some names and citations.
Read the rest of the comments, there’s a few good examples.
So, people who aren’t notable feminists and who could be trolls or bots? Gee, thanks, those sound like great sources.
Sometimes it even meets that aspiration!
Thanks, buddy. A needed statement.
It’s ironically self-unaware victim-blaming to use the male-based word “patriarchy” to describe a set of societal norms and expectations that both sexes are equally responsible for creating and perpetuating. Puts the blame entirely on men and takes women completely off the hook.
Pure sexism.
I say the same about calling the movement feminism
If men are equally welcome in it, it’s not feminism anymore, it’s egalitarianism, but every woman I’ve ever seen it suggested to flips their shit while every man I’ve seen it suggested to goes “yeah that makes sense”
This has nothing to do with men being in position of power, this has everything to do with people having no empathy. If we lived in a matriarchy and people acted the same way they would still be assholes.
Patriarchy says that men can’t be “soft” because that’s a womanly trait, and women are inferior.
So they where practicing the first part. Do we have a word for that?
No, patriarchy is men having power, it doesn’t define what they can or can’t do otherwise.
By patriarchy, I mean it in the context of feminism, as in the ideology that attempts to rationalize the idea of that men are better than woman, by using things such as religion, bioessentialism, and more. There are many definitions.
So toxic masculinity, not patriarchy.
Toxic masculinity is an effect of the patriarchy. These are the toxic traits that eminate from masculinity as defined by the patriarchy.
But hey at this point we’re arguing about semantics. There are traits that men and women are taught as being bad to do as men, even though some of those traits are actually necessary, or just part of someone’s personality.
Are people this shitty to women when they express sadness?
Yes
Stop using “the patriarchy” as an excuse for vile behaviour. Yes, it exists, but it’s made up of a large group of people behaving badly, and one way to break it is to address the individuals one at a time.
Stawp ghashlighting meh
I went through the worst depression of my life around 2017, tried to express these feelings to my gf at the time and explain why our romance was failing or why I spent half the day in bed.
Basically got told “poor you”, everyone has struggles, snap out of it and be a man. That definitely helped, and didn’t push me even deeper into feelings of worthlessness…
I’m doing ok now, but it was the first time I felt comfortable enough with someone to express those emotions, I was at my wits end. The response was eye opening, never again.
Instead of saying to yourself “never again”, how about “never again with someone who will betray my vulnerability”? Because what happened to you sounds really horrible, but there are people out there who will be with you in your struggles and nurture and build you up in your vulnerable moments.
As a man someone who also struggles with vulnerability, there are ways to test the waters in a relationship (family, friend, partner, etc) when it comes to vulnerability so that you won’t be hurt like that again. I actually watched this video recently and found it really helpful: https://youtu.be/WyKFHd7cSaU?si=J8zSMvZt_7WouQb7
Of course, none of this is easy, but it can be life-changing to open up to someone and feel cared for. I’m glad you’re doing better, and I wish you the best.
I’ve been in a relationship with my partner for 12 years now and I am lucky that I found someone that was supporting of my issues since pretty much day one.
In the last year, after many years of therapy, I was able to finally be totally vulnerable to my partner even if she always was supportive, not holding anything back, and it was liberating and almost addictive for a while.
The feeling is indescribable and one of the best feeling of my life.
A given group of people are not a monolith. While we do share a lot of similarities, we also all have the potential to be a little different from one another.
I hope you get a chance to find someone that will allow you to be open like that again. Sharing those emotions and having someone their to empathetically receive them is one of the most gratifying things as a human.
Im sorry that happened, but never again what?
Like, “never again open up about a huge important part of my life to”
a) anyone, or b) someone you don’t know too long
Because only a) is healthy. I don’t think trying to mask your depression can work in a serious relationship.
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I don’t know if I want to blame the patriarchy or the toxic masculinity that goes with it, but crap. My ex was so not ok when I cried over the discovery of her affair.
She genuinely thought I was trying to manipulate her. I was “too extremely emotional” over it. We were highschool sweethearts, had a kid, and she always talked about how she was disgusted with her own mother for having an affair. Even to the point where she cut off contact with her mother until they ended that relationship.
“No man goes to bed crying because their wife cheated on them or sends nudes to the same guy 4 years later.”
There were red flags earlier than that. “Why are you crying over a movie?” (I always do at emotional bits). “Man up, no one wants to be with someone expresses sadness.”
What’s worse is that it’s pretty much why I don’t bother going out, or have much motivation to get back into the dating game. The patriarchy and toxic masculinity has ruined being human to me. I don’t want to be friends with people who cover up all their emotions. I don’t want to be friends with guys who are clearly over compensating. Then the girls turn around complain about these men being cruel to them, yet state things like this.
Then you have all the men who have this strange belief that they are owed women, and by behaving like that they get the women they are owed. I won’t take part in that. I will not hurt someone else just to satisfy my desires. If that means I don’t date, I’m much more comfortable being a good person and alone.
I also try to bring it up in conversation, and then people turn around and act like my refusal to participate in patriarchal behavior is anti-social. I had one person point out “technically, you aren’t getting any, even though you want it, making you an incel.” I was so shocked. Its not the fault of women I’m not out getting laid. Its men. It’s the patriarchy. It’s this system set up to isolate me because I have an intense emotional awareness.
I’m still surprised people use the old definition of “incel” considering that the connotations changed to “radical misogynist” or “terrorist” in the eyes of the mainstream nowadays. Personally I wouldn’t be caught dead using the term to describe anyone who simply doesn’t get laid. In 2013 it would be fine but nowadays it’s almost slanderous.
you know her better obviously but sometimes you’re too close to see some things so here goes my opinion: I think she didn’t genuinely think you were trying to manipulate her.
I think she knew it was the appropriate response and she was the bad person so instead of facing that situation and losing the upper hand she thought she could use toxic masculinity to manipulate you to feel bad about yourself as a way to take the heat off of herself.
“you’re overreacting”, “you’re being too emotional” these are very common tactics that men use on women all the time. it’s just that it has the added toxic masculinity aspect when the roles are reversed.
That… Actually makes more sense and a thought I was trying to avoid. I know she said a lot of things where she said things to avoid feeling like the bad guy. Unfortunately for her, cheating on your marriage doesn’t have a defense.
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did you not read anything before or after that quote? we were already talking about a woman doing it. this is me talking about, in response to their comment about whether it’s about toxic masculinity, that it is done the other way all the time as well, and this way has the added layer of toxic masculinity.
now I haven’t added anything to my original comment but this is what you missed.
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The patriarchy is a system, and it’s both men and women who promulgate it
Then it shouldn’t be called “patriarchy”.
that’s not how things work. some prisoners helping the guards doesn’t suddenly put them at the same position in a prison.
I’m glad your ex is an ex. I believe it’s experiences like yours that highlights how sexism goes both ways. My heart goes out to you.
It only goes one way: from people using gender stereotypes to manipulate others to the victims.
The fact that you can manipulate any gender while being any gender logically follows.
My friend, I am so sorry you went through that. I understand it is incredibly hard to get over a betrayal coupled with an attack like that, but I know you can do it. Let yourself breathe and take your time but when you’re ready, there is a whole world of love out there for you.
There are so many people who will cherish the exact part of you that she took for granted. It is easy to go through something like that and come to the conclusion that you should stop feeling. I hope you don’t.
As for people saying you’re an incel… I literally have no advice other than no longer talking to them. There are people in marriages who are “involuntarily celibate”. This could become a rant about the awful nature of even the term “incel” but I think that would be a waste.
I hope you continue to show your strength by refusing to hide your vulnerability.
Thank you. That means a lot. I guess that’s the part I’m most uncomfortable with - why is expressing emotion seen as vulnerability? It’s one of our most effective methods of communication, particularly of empathy.
A lot of people are deathly afraid of self reflection, of thinking about themselves, about their own behavior and how it affects others. Because if you reflect on it, you might come to the conclusion that you have to change something about yourself. And that is hard work, that a lot of people simply don’t want to do (which I think is the reason for many things going wrong in the world). Being able to express emotion is a sign of the ability to self reflect, to be aware of how one feels and being able to communicate that. In a way it makes people aware of their own shortcomings, which is why they want to avoid it.
I think that maybe a different way to look at it would be to ask: why is vulnerability a bad thing? Everyone has emotions. Everyone is impacted and affected by things. To use your situation as an example - your partner betrayed you. You SHOULD be vulnerable to that. The fact that they can’t fathom having that level of vulnerability, to the point that they claimed you were trying to manipulate them, is the problem. That kind of emotional invulnerability is what leads people to do the kinds of things they did.
I truly believe that being vulnerable in front of someone, especially when they have hurt you so much, is strength. Showing someone how much they hurt you is really hard. Find people you can be vulnerable with. They’re out there.
“My ex cheated on me and rubbed my feelings in the dirt. How can I blame men for this?”
You can’t, if you think that women have any agency of their own lmao
It’s cultural. The problem is bigger than any one person. As soon as honest men speak out, they either deal with minimization like in the meme, or worse, support from chauvinistic incels who invalidate their message entirely.
Thanks to Culture War grifters, men’s issues are unfairly stigmatized as something associated with incels and the alt-right.
Culture War grifters
I really like this phrase. These people need to be called out more often.
It includes people who under the guise of ‘pure feminism’ rail against ‘patriarchy’ whenever men’s issues come up. Feminists are not immune to propaganda.
Sadly, they’re not. Propagandized feminists make all feminists look bad.
Yeah, I agree, this has the beginnings of incel vibes. Just like every generation has good, bad, poor, rich, each person of any fluid gender has the same. Some are mature in their teens and some don’t mature until their 30s. Sounds like his girlfriend was super immature and ignorant.
incel vibes
girlfriend
What
No sex before marriage? 🙃
I’m so sorry for all those commenters having sad stories and being told to “man up”. That’s very sad
I might be wrong but I have a feeling that it is a very US influenced problem (so now a very English speaking country problem). Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m influenced because it is Internet and there’s plenty of Americans and everything is written in English.
Being born in a French speaking culture, I don’t feel that way. My friends don’t, my non French speaking friends don’t as well. Most men of my generation (millennial) that I have met could express emotions without much problems, and women would not react badly to it, but maybe I’m just lucky.
Of course, there’s always some shitty people, some overly manly jerks or non caring women, but I would say that they represent less than 15% of the population I’ve met in my life (data source: My ass).
So, am I wrong ? Am I influenced by Internet ? How is it for German/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/Japanese/Whatever cultures ?
And if I’m right, well that sucks. How can we help ?
As a Portuguese (that has also lived in a few other countries in Europe) I would say that it’s more that there is a range of emotions that men can express without that being frowned upon were certain things are still frowned upon if you show them openly (mainly around sadness) though for example openly showing tenderness for your partner or children is expected and even approved (unlike certain other cultures were men are expect to be distant).
Mind you, in some cultures the limits on expression of emotions or selectivity about which emotions you are expected to express is pretty high for both men and women (for example, the Dutch in general tend to refrain from expressing much emotion to strangers) and in some cases there is even such a strong expectation that you react in certain ways that it leads to people in general faking expressions of emotion (the English upper and upper middle classes are pretty big on showing the “appropriate” reaction independently of feeling it).
I would say (from contact with Americans and consuming some American media as well as having lived in England) that the expectations on what emotions people should be expressing are quite different and in England they’re even very much defined by people’s social class (for example, the “English Gentleman” is entirely a façade - all about what you show, not at all about what you think - and occupies the same place in terms of male behaviour expectations for traditional old-money upper class English men as the bossy slightly-angry assertive go-gotter seems to occupy in the US).
So far I generally have seen a tendency for frowning upon grown up men expressing sadness for themselves (though in some countries, not for expressing sadness in empathy with others and their pain, especially if they’re close family) and have also noticed equivalent expectations on the expression of emotion by women (for example, it seems to me that middle and upper class English women have a massive weight of social expectations on them in terms of what they’re expect to show to others - including the emotions they express - in lots of situations, and a lot of it is about reacting with the “appropriate” emotion in some situations even if they don’t feel it)
I don’t think the stigmatisation of men showing emotions is exclusively Anglophone culture. I live in Ireland and there isn’t really a stigma of men showing emotions because of public awareness campaign about mental health for both men and women. But like you said, I’ve met couple of overly manly men jerks and uncaring women, but they’re the ones not worth your time and in tiny minority.
In any case, some cultures have antiquated machismo mindset which is sporadic across the world.
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I am from Spain. When I open to my ex when we were in the process of end our relationship she told me to stop to victimize myself. I think that the relationship started to fell down when I started to be myself in front of her (expressed doubts, weakness, expressing enjoy for things…).
I dont think it is very US influenced problem.
Yeah nobody has ever accused Spain Italy japan India china Pakistan Afghanistan Iran Iraq Egypt…of behaving similarly, just the commonwealth and the Yankees. You’ve cracked the code.
I’ve thought about this a fair bit, and I can definitely recall a bunch of cases from primary school and high school when I opened up about my feelings and personal stuff; and it ended badly for me. It ended badly every time, and I reckon that’s why I basically don’t tell anyone anything about myself now as an adult. I don’t even share most stuff with my partner, or my family - such are the scars of past experience.
I’m sure this is similar for many people.
It certainly is for me. I still have difficulty whenever someone tries to compliment me on anything as a result of childhood bullying that frequently took the form of merciless insincerity.
I hope you’re doing better. Your life is worth sharing.
That term “merciless insincerity” is an amazingly concise yet thorough way to capture one of the pervasive things I get most frustrated by (across the many countries I’ve lived in, so it is not a georestricted behaviour). Whenever I try to describe it I get too wordy. I’m stealing that.
People are uncomfortable when a guy expresses negative emotions. Even those that process it well often seem unable to accept it. I hope you (and the rest of you in the comments) have either found a space or a person that you can be yourself around, instead of what everyone else needs you to be.
