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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 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.
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.
I’m trans and, until I started HRT, had very little access to my emotions. I would desperately want to cry, and just would be unable. Or I would know I was supposed to be having some kind of emotional reaction to something, and just…wouldn’t.
Very very soon after getting my hormones straightened out, I discovered that I was having emotions in sympathy with characters on tv or in movies. If I was sad I could actually cry for a bit and process the emotion rather than having to channel it into anger or physicality. It was like living in color instead of black and white, this whole arena of human experience I’d read about but hadn’t ever really felt.
I’ve heard the same from trans guys as well; they didn’t ever feel like their emotions made sense until they got on T.
My now-ex reacted to this, first with concern, then with contempt.
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
In my experience this isn’t universal. I’m trans myself, and I’ve talked about this with a lot of my trans friends and we’ve all had pretty different experiences with the emotional aspects of transitioning.
Personally, I definitely had a really hard time containing my emotions early transition. They felt so unfamiliar. It felt like I had gained an entirely new set of emotions, and I had to relearn how to cope with them. It didn’t help that I was going through the early stages of puberty-which is already a time of heightened emotions-while dealing with the loss of my entire support network.
Now that I’m more settled into my life as a woman: I’m accustomed to how I experience my emotions, I have a loving support network around me, and I’m in a new job where people treat me with respect; I feel like I have a much firmer handle on my emotions than I ever did pre-transiton.
Able to? Maybe, maybe not. Required to? Definitely.
We can never truly say for sure, but it’s the closest situation that can give a side by side comparison. Either testosterone allows better emotional inhibition, or estrogen reduces it. The main point is that men aren’t emotionless. Our emotions are just as strong as women’s, we are just better able to contain them (for better or worse).
Society then amplifies what is already there.
You’re going off of a sample size of one. Somebody who is transitioning probably has a lot more factors in play than a change in hormone levels.
It was when she started on the hormones. Apparently, it wasn’t surprising to her friends going through the same process.
Unfortunately, I only know 1 trans person well enough to ask them about it. Also, considering it’s a binary (either men feel less, or are better at containing it), I would be surprised if it goes the opposite ways when transitioning.
It’s not a scientific study however, just an interesting and relevant observation.
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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🫂
Don’t worry bro, you’ll always have us internet homies!
Dude, you are looking sharp today. Don’t ever think you can’t look good.
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.
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…
oh yes… i was bullied a lot, until i was lucky enough to grow taller than most of them….
i feel really bad for smaller kids who never got to stand up to their bullies….
if you want to be really horrified, read up on Kelaia Turner.
i was thinking lately, that might be why there’s so much school shootings (i hear the uk has a lot of school stabbings)….
but if a particularly mentally ill kid is ganged up on and terrified constantly by a large majority of the school, it seems more likely that they’ll do some extremely antisocial behavior… especially if teachers allow it and even join in a little bit.(i hear the uk has a lot of school stabbings)
It is a lot in a sense that every number above zero is a lot, but really numbers aren’t even comparable.
Overall, in UK from 2012 to 2022 there was reported 36k cases of violence in school. Meanwhile, in US 443,990 teenagers fell victim to school violence in 2022 alonehttps://www.brightpathbh.com/school-violence-and-teen-mental-health-statistics/
a tangential point to go over, but cases of violence compared to victims is different… as in the us, with guns, one case of violence would have a lot more victims that a stabbing…
so it would be better to compare incidents of violence involving a deadly weapon, especially more indiscriminate mass attacks instead of just fights… and then adjust for population….
still probably not comparable but a lot closer….
and, i suspect, the bullying is a lot less over there and the school staff is a lot more involved in stopping it…. but that’s just a guess.The data in the links follows up on exactly that
Female bullying culture is very cruel.
Children are just cruel in general. I have a giant scar on my stomach from an appendectomy gone very wrong and I used to get made fun of for it in the locker room. They called it my C section scar.
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.
I genuinely dont understand what people mean they say “men need to do better” as if were all some homogeneous collective. Ive seen a reddit post, of which you can probably guess the sub, where it directly tells men to “do better”
I don’t get yelling at some random person that they need to “do better” without knowing anything about them.
I truly dont know what they expect to happen.
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
“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.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.
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,
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.
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.
Start wearing a frilly pink apron around the house. Gotta have some fun while you can
But also yeah, good luck with the divorce 😶🌫️
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.
Yes, it was written up back then. Which is a large reason why many more GenZers were raised without those toxic values, because their GenX parents actually read that shit.
So this upcoming generation are being called woke pussies for being raised with empathy and against the historical gender norms, and that’s causing the normal pendulum of conservative panic to swing society in the other direction right now.
If you’ve watched history happen and really read about it critically, this is all very predictable.
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’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
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
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
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. 😞
Similar story here. 21 years and there’s a child involved. Even similar 2 instances of dating that involved not being allowed to express my feelings without risking the relationship. So I did and ended both relationships. It would be nice if there was a choice that isn’t hard. The only choice we seem to have is which hard we want. Both of which isn’t a great ending. I’ve since given up dating altogether. Resigned to the fact that that part of my life is over. Just being a good and present parent, being nice and helpful to everyone in my life. I don’t want to go through life alone but I don’t seem to have a choice in that without being a doormat for someone else, which I refuse to do because if I did, I’d be showing my child to put up with never getting what you need from a relationship and that it’s normal. I can’t do that.
I’m sorry to hear that man. Dating after a long relationship is so hard, but I do hope you come across someone kind who appreciates you for who you are, emotions/feelings and all.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be to go through this with a child too, but you sound like a good father.
I fear that I am in a situation that may end the same.
If you’re comfortable sharing, was there an epiphany you had that had you bite the bullet and break away?
Honestly, I had been ready to leave for a long time, and I had been caring for them almost 24/7 for years. The main reason I hadn’t left was that I was concerned that they’d end their life. There were many reasons why I didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore, health aside.
There was an attempt to take their own life and I realised I had no emotion and honestly felt like it would have been easier if they didn’t make it. My brother realised something was wrong so came to see me and it all came out. The next day I was trying to just go on like normal but couldn’t, something just snapped. She went to stay with her mum and I had time to think and confirm how I felt. This last part was probably the most important, as it was vital to make sure I didn’t regret the decision.
My advice would be: be honest, say you need time to think, give yourself the time and space, make sure it’s right for you and if so, leave. If they don’t give you the chance to think, then I’d say you have your answer. That’s much easier said than done however.
Are you also in America, by any chance?
Nope, UK
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’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.
Always remember that the patriarchy harms everyone
An asshole is an asshole is an asshole, don’t you dare act like it’s not these women’s fault if they have no compassion.
Saying something is the result of patriarchy doesn’t absolve anybody (including women) of the responsibility for fixing it.
It’s not the result of patriarchy, is the result of them being bad people. They would still exist under a matriarchy or in an equal society.
“patriarchy” in this context means something other than you think, I.e. it means a system that upholds gender roles that benefit a (majority male) ruler class, e.g. by encouraging worker class men to go to war for their benefit, worker class women to be caretakers, and so on.
The counterpart to this definition of “patriarchy” is a society with no stratified gender roles, not “matriarchy”.
This is exactly why its such a bad word to use to describe this, it automatically puts people on the defensive and needs to be explained to people that it doesn’t mean what the word means (rule of the fathers).
No.
patriarchy noun pa·tri·ar·chy ˈpā-trē-ˌär-kē plural patriarchies 1 : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power 2 : a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy For 20 years the country was ruled as a patriarchy.
You actually mean
gender role
A culturally and socially determined set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics based on concepts of masculinity and femininity. A gender role should not be confused with gender identity, which refers to an individual’s internal sense of being masculine, feminine, on a spectrum between the two, a gender unrelated to that binary, or no gender at all.
Probably far worse actually.
I never claimed it wasn’t. Shitty people are going to be shitty but they feel comfortable being shitty in the way that they are, in public, because the patriarchy has made that normal. I never excused her behavior, I identified it as being connected to a much broader sociological issue.
Hey comrade, I am seriously glad that comment like yours are starting to not be accepted anymore.
I somehow agree with you, the patriarchy harms everyone. But it does not help anyone to slap it in the face of men who are suffering, and also I disagree that a faceless concept has more responsibility than the people pushing it forward.
Honestly, ‘patriarchy’ is a terrible term that leads to so much confusion. Too many people use it as ‘blame men’ and forget that it’s supposed to be about men being culturally cast as perfect leaders and therefore punished for not meeting those impossible standards.
I have high hopes that the spreading acceptance of transfolk will start to break down the weird gender roles we’ve got, and maybe we can talk about some of this stuff more directly.
Thank you for pointing out this. I hat the term ‘patriarchy’. I can see the people here using this term are trying to make a point. But it seems to me, that the wording ‘patriarchy’ hints towards to that ultimately men are to blame. It is also unnerving that feminism tends to excuse problems that women really have is systemic, while trouble that men have is caused by individually shitty behaviour.
I very much would like a society, where every human regardless of gender is being met with the same empathy.
You know, I hadn’t really thought about the benefit that LGBTQ+ acceptance plays in this.
Of everyone who has been so supportive of me, it’s been my queer and non-binary friends.
I am a straight white male with money. While it upsets me to see women saying stuff like this post, I also know that I am not going to blame the women perpetuating the problem, because they themselves are victims of toxic masculinity and established gender norms.
I have a lot of queer friends (being pansexual myself) and I love the general awareness of mental health at least within my social circle (mainly well educated people throughout their 20s). For example it’s incredibly refreshing not to have to make excuses if you don’t feel like being around people that day, instead just being able to say just that without judgement.
Men =/= the patriarchy. Tell a friend.
What you’re doing is the mirror of MRAs who pretend feminism means ‘women uber alles.’
You can stop.
Yeah this comment section has not brought me hope. I’ll admit that this may not have been the best place and time for this conversation but it needs to be spoken of, especially to the people who want to hear it least. I need these people to understand that societal issues cannot be solved at an individual level. You cannot simply be angry at a woman for being cold and heartless. This helps no one. The people who perpetuate patriarchal society won’t stop doing it because we get mad at them. They must be confronted about their behavior first and foremost with an understanding of the material conditions that drive them.
Yes, the perpetrators of patriarchy are responsible for its continuity but they do not realize this. They do not recognize the very existence of a patriarchy and this is why the world struggles to fight it. Often the biggest perpetuators of patriarchy are the most harmed by it and they don’t even know. They are as much victims as they are villains. How can we call them responsible on an individual level when patriarchy is the only thing they have ever known?
You cannot simply be angry at a woman for being cold and heartless.
Yes, we can. Patriarchy or not, there are some awful people and behaviours being described in these comments. And while the “patriarchy” no doubt plays a role in enabling that, people also need to take ownership of their behaviour.
Where do you draw the line? Where do you stop blaming patriarchy and start blaming the people who have a fucked up sense of right vs wrong?
A man that screams at his wife when he’s angry, that’s patriarchy or that’s on them?
A man that quietly belittles his wife?
A woman that does these things to her husband?
If there’s physical violence I’m sure you won’t repeat your previous message and say that they’re victims as well.
I don’t understand why it cannot be both? Yeah these people are responsible for their actions and should be confronted on it on an individual basis but their actions are also influenced by the society in which they live. We need to confront and discuss that too.
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Incedible how unserious you are
It’s terrible to see. It’s another feature of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity - blaming the victims. It’s why it has been going on for so long.
In a similar vein: Why do women not report rape? This is why. Because even women have been so oppressed by the system that they will even question “if they were asking for it.”
Some women would be shit to men and women and fucking anyone and everyone even if we lived in a matriarchy. Just like some men are shit to everyone and some men and women are nice with everyoneat.
Assholes are assholes, that’s it.
I never advocated for a matriarchy. People will continue to be shitty to eachother but the deconstruction of gender based discrimination and violence would benefit us all. In order to do that we must recognize that what holds us back from this is patriarchy.
My point still stands, no matter if there’s discrimination or not, some people will continue being shit to others and pretending they’re shit because of the system we live in is removing all their agency. “It’s ok if you’re a bad person, it’s just because [insert reason that is out of their power].”
I never said it was ok and I never denied their agency
Yes. It is their fault that they’re supporting the patriarchy.
Stop deflecting blame from shitty women. There are shitty women who do shitty things and “the patriarchy” does not excuse their behavior.
Stop worshiping the patriarchy. The patriarchy is not God. The patriarchy is not to blame for every shitty thing a shitty woman does.
Sometimes women are shitty and you make the problem worse by telling everyone it’s not their fault because the patriarchy is God in your idiot doctrine.
Edit: I’m not saying the patriarchy isn’t real, it definitely is and should be dismantled. But you need to interrogate your own righteousness or you’re just spreading neoliberal schlock to make yourself feel better about how women can be shitty to men.
Women thinking men are icky when they express emotions is because they’re taught from a very young age that expressing emotions is feminine and feminine, especially feminine men, is bad. This wasn’t a reach to blame on the patriarchy at all.
The patriarchy isn’t “men are harming people all by themselves.” It’s the gender roles and gender hierarchy that both men and women perpetuate.
I have to push back here and say that I think that the “emotions are feminine” explanation doesn’t give the whole picture. There’s also instrumentalization of men.
We’re all familiar with objectification, the tendency of (some) men to ignore women’s agency, and treat them as objects for their own use. On the flip side, in my experience, (some) women instrumentalize men. That is, treat men as agents to be used as tools to achieve their own goals. As a result, I think that (some) women use men as a bulwark against the stresses and existential terror of human existence, or sometimes even literally, like a bodyguard, or the one who has to deal with the spider in the house.
You want your vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt when you pull it out of the closet, and then disappear quietly back in there once the job is done. You don’t want to have to change the bag, and clean the motor, and replace the belt every time. More metaphorically, you don’t want to find out that your emotional ramparts against a scary world are built on sand, and that’s what kind of happens when (some) women find out that their partner has fears and weaknesses, too.
I’ve heard the same story many, many times from men whose partners begged them to open up emotionally, only to flee once they found out that those emotions included fears and self-doubt. It doesn’t make sense that they’d do the first part, if emotions were unattractive, per se.
(Edit: Missing word.)
I think you’re quite correct in this analysis as well. Historically, women have often had to depend on a husband for financial security and to be this instrument of protection. This archetype of the provider and protector husband is still baked into our patriarchal culture and leads women who don’t deconstruct this attitude to treat their male partners as you describe, and men in straight marriages to feel this burden alone. I’ve seen it often lead to insecurity and self doubt among husbands who feel they can’t live up to this impossible expectation, who also for the reasons widely discussed in this thread don’t feel able to express this insecurity and doubt, or are punished for doing so because it goes against their culturally-prescribed gender role of the strong male protector.
It could also be because they view their husband/partner as a means to an end, rather than a person with feelings.
At some point, the individual needs to take responsibility for their actions, society is made up of individuals after all.
If patriarchy is the cause of literally everything in gender interaction, it’s not very useful as a concept.
That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.
The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.
Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.
It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.
Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.
But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.
I am biased because I own (small) parrots who genuinely love crackers, and any reference to that cute behavior is positive for me. But I believe this would be a great metaphor even if I weren’t biased in favor of parrots.
It’s just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it’s helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that’s causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.
On the contrary, the term is performing exactly as designed - blame men for men being shitty (toxic masculinity), and blame men for women being shitty too (internalized misogyny).
How is “women are also perpetuating and engaging in the patriarchy, this is a problem” blaming it on men? “The Patriarchy” is not blaming stuff on men, it’s a descriptor of the gender-roles-system we live in and people of all genders can be perpetuators of its toxic aspects.
Because “patriarchy” isn’t just a neutral, ivory-tower descriptor of a system of gender roles. Just look at Twitter, or Reddit - the number of feminists using the word patriarchy on a daily basis to blame men far outnumber the tiny number of academic feminists that (supposedly) use the term without misandrist intent. Words’ meanings are determined by their use, and going by its use, “patriarchy” is a misandrist term that is used to blame men for all of society’s ills, which has resulted in demonstrable negative societal outcomes for men and boys. It’s naive or disingenuous to act otherwise.
And even among more academic feminist circles, it’s naive to think the term “patriarchy” isn’t being used in a misandrist way by a significant percentage of feminists - radical feminism, just to target the low-hanging fruit, is entirely organized around mistaken and harmful ideas of “male supremacy”, and as a result most of feminism’s terminology is also entirely organized around men being the oppressor, and women being the oppressed.
This is where we get the real brilliance of feminist thought: “academic”, “neutral” terms like “toxic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny” ensure that all discourse about society’s ills are entirely framed around oppressor/oppressed language (where, of course, men are always the oppressors and women are always the oppressed), which, as discussed above, ensures that the public at large will blame men for literally anything that goes wrong. And, of course, this is exactly what we see on social media, from both men and women. It’s a brilliantly designed system. Horrible, but brilliant.
The consequences of this inherently misandrist philosophy have been felt throughout society for decades. There are practically no domestic violence shelters or rape resources for men, even though men constitute almost half of rape victims. Men having lower rates of graduation from both high school and college (and of course all of the feminism-funded scholarships are for women, even though they’re currently approaching 60% of graduates - gEnDeR eQuALiTy). Generations of boys having now grown up internalizing this misandry, being told that they’re inherently aggressive rapists and being forced to take re-education classes. The results of this widespread, societal internalized misandry are clearly visible here in this thread.
And, of course, as mentioned above, the incredible brilliance of the system is that all of these failings (and countless, countless others) are conveniently deemed due to the totally neutral academic term “patriarchy”, and not due to feminists pushing misandrist policy for decades that have had demonstrable negative outcomes for men. So, out here in the real world, men get blamed for women’s problems, and they get blamed for their own problems as well.
Feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on gender equality, as much as people claim it does (“If you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist whether you like it or not!”). Feminism is fundamentally built on decades of misandrist philosophical baggage, and it’s time we threw it all out, burned the system down, and started over with a philosophy that’s actually dedicated to gender equality, from the ground up.
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Pointing out shitty behavior is systemic doesn’t absolve the person of their responsibility for that behavior. It helps illustrate the issue is systemic and not just some crazy one off occurrence. It also gives an angle of attack on solutions to the systemic problem.
The patriarchy is just as much a men’s lib issue as it is a feminist issue. The gender roles and hierarchy harms men. Women being shitty to a guy for expressing emotion is an example of just that.
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This wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up.
There wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up either. But you chose to speak up so you should expect some push back. Looking at how you’ve presented yourself so far I seriously doubt you’ll listen to me, so I’ll just put my argument very plainly. Nobody should listen to you because you refuse to listen to anyone else.
You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said. All you’ve pretty much done is try to put words in their mouth so you could counter an argument that was never made. There’s no discussion here, it’s just you screaming into the void and the other person wanting to believe you’re a normal person.
But people are listening to me.
You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said.
So?
My point is about the nature of their statement and how it centers women in a topic that is about how when men speak about feelings women center a feminine perspective.
Just because you’re not listening doesn’t mean others aren’t.
Idk why you thought I was doing any of that. What I meant was this woman feels that it is normal or okay to act in the way that she is because the patriarchal society in which we live makes that normal. It is not an excuse, it is an explanation and identification of a much broader issue.
Idk why you thought I was doing any of that.
Sounds like an opportunity for introspection for you, then!
Thank you for making me introspect about my snarkiness on Lemmy. You’ve helped me see how much of a dipshit it makes me look like
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Edit: I’m not saying the patriarchy isn’t real, it definitely is and should be dismantled. But you need to interrogate your own righteousness or you’re just spreading neoliberal schlock to make yourself feel better about how women can be shitty to men.
“neoliberalism is when you want to dismantle patriarchy”
so are these women naturally “shitty” this is a deterministic take. a more is grounded in material approach is the patriarchy / modern culture teaches us to behave in certain ways etc, women need a strong man as women are weak according to western cultural norms.
You are correct that I was speaking glibly and that when I said “shitty woman” I could have said “a woman who happened to be acting shitty.”
Sure, shift blame away and never help feminism 101 when it comes to men
Exactly. All of the internalized misandry in the comments here is really disheartening.
What do you expect from a feminist perspective? Their philosophy already has an answer and that answer is men are the oppressors and women the eternal victim. I grew up the only man in a family of women, it was hell. I was always too loud, too big, too expensive because I couldn’t wear my sisters hand me downs and once the mental health issues being hammered into a mold I don’t fit began to crop up. Feminism contributed more to my suicidal young life than anything else. The only reason I am alive today is I found male friends, even the toxic ones helped more than feminists ever did. My toxic friends taught me to stand up for ME. Feminists told me to shut up and let people abuse me, to smother my sense of right and wrong.
Please read the rest of my comments
I am a man, I have been hurt by women who would not have done so if the society in which they live did not deem it normal and ok. While these women are responsible for their actions and should do better, they would not have acted this way if patriarchal society didn’t deem men to be lacking in emotion or “emotionally strong”.
You are doing everything but blame your abuser, you’ve literally shifted the blame to society itself
You can blame the abusor and want a society that would not create them
