100% correct and based. I get annoyed sometimes because I see female presenting(or perhaps just appearing) people say things like “it’s not my job to help emotionally stunted men.” Which yeah, I guess technically it isn’t, it is unfair that a lot of women have been used as crutches for men and that isn’t good, and you don’t always have the energy for it. That’s all fair, but it was someone’s job, and that person failed. This is a hard problem to fix alone, you cannot get better at relating to other people and seeing them as human without other people being present. And are they going to talk to other men about it? The people that in many cases berated and hurt them to instill this belief, this emotional weakness? It’s not any one person’s job to fix a broken man they are around, but it is all of our jobs to help each other. If you saw someone bleeding out in the streets, would your first thought be “it’s not my job to get them to the hospital”? I’m not expecting every woman or female presenting person to out themselves in harms way to help every man they meet that isn’t perfect, I get lack of emotional space, personal trauma or just general distaste for the work, and genuinely valuing their own time, but the smugness some people post about this with is disgusting. You should never be proud you saw someone hurt and didn’t help them.

And the doubling down on sexist language towards men. It’s not okay to make fun of a guy for being short, or not being muscular, or being shy or nervous, or any of the other things which it is just mean to mock people for. It doesn’t break down gender walls, it reinforces them. It also reinforces transphobic rhetoric. If being a short man is bad, or not having facial hair, or not being muscular, and so on, for men but not for women, seems like anyone with those traits who wants to live as a man would feel like garbage all the time. It also breeds the idea men are stronger and more brutish than woman, and deserve more abuse because they can take it. The fact that I, living as a man, have been called sexist because when a woman insulted me I insisted her back is absurd. She is not porcelain and I am not steel. Anyone who disagrees with that is not a feminist.

I’m lucky to have had supportive men and women growing up, and now have people of all genders around me who encourage emotional vulnerability and openness, and don’t expect stock masculinity from me. I wish everyone had this opportunity. Until they do, it’s my job to try and provide it for them, so they don’t fall to the manosphere. Because it is tempting, it’s easy to blame all your problems on others if they seem adversarial to you, and society blame your problems on them, or their problems on you when you’re still growing. The solution is the same as it always is to us as leftists: we reach out, educate, and build solidarity.