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>>The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really

>>The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really means that masculinity can be toxic, and can manifest in negative ways And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women. You want to talk about obviousness and self evidence? Look at evolutionary pressure. Look at our closest related primates (and most mammals) and how much more agressive males tend to be, and how with, for example, gorillas, few males will mate with many females, while less dominant males go mateless. Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind). Instead, you deny biology, hand waving away all discrepancies and differences with words like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy." You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty. You cannot fix society by ignoring biology, and you are only alienating these men, who are human beings like you and me, by slandering them as incels for having the same desires for companionship and affirmation unfulfilled while simultaneously blaming them for the problems in society. Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world. Yes, there was plenty of bad along the way, but one cannot ignore all of the good that has resulted from these drives, and in truth, modern society cannot exist without them. Nor should it.

krapp 8y ago
>And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women. Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist. Ancient cultures considered sex between men to be a perfectly reasonable thing for a masculine man to do, since the concepts of "hetero" and "homo" sexuality didn't really exist at the time. Men in Elizabethan times were far more free to express emotions than now - consider that many of Shakespeare's sonnets, including the famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") were addressed to a man. >Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind). Also, innate predisposition doesn't justify all expressions of those dispositions. One may say that men are predisposed towards physical aggression due to their increased musculature relative to women and testosterone, but that doesn't mean every act of violence is healthy. Females may be attracted to dominance, but that doesn't mean all means of dominating women are justifiable. We may be apes, but that doesn't mean we get to rape any female we find attractive and murder the offspring of rival males because, you know, we're trying to have a civilization here. >You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty. Plenty of unattractive, facially asymmetrical and socially awkward men are able to meet with women, date, have sex, all over the world, every day. Believe me, if women didn't have low standards in that regard, our species would probably have died out long ago. >Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world. You see... I literally said that wasn't what "toxic masculinity" meant and that people automatically confuse the term for an attack on masculinity itself... you literally quoted the part of my comment where I said that and then you went and did exactly that. At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.
- shard972 8y ago
  > At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon. Maybe this is why men don't feel like speaking up so often. If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".
  - krapp 8y ago
    >If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered". The concept that masculinity can have negative effects while not itself being negative isn't something that should take a great deal of effort to comprehend. There are entire male created social complexes like "gentlemanly behavior" and "chivalry" built around the pretense that inherent male traits have both positive and negative aspects. The problem here is not that "feminist sociologists" are talking down to men and making them quail in fear -- men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism. The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. The feminism they oppose mostly doesn't even exist, or at best they're attacking the fringe and not the mainstream. If you have a problem with the concept of toxic masculinity, for example, all I and the "feminist sociological agenda" (or whatever) ask is that you bother to find out what the term actually refers to. Cribbing from Wikipedia: stereotypically masculine gender roles that restrict the kinds of emotions allowable for boys and men to express, including social expectations that men seek to be dominant (the "alpha male") and limit their emotional range primarily to expressions of anger. ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.
    - shard972 8y ago
      The concept that masculinity can itself be positive shouldn't be too hard to comprehend either but here we are. > men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism You haven't spent much time in democratic party meetings then. > The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. And at which point do the "real feminists" stop and agree that it's just a fringe group of feminists that have an axe to grind against men? > ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits. Um, it is? Just look at the framing, claiming that TM "restricts" males. Why is the assumption always that freedom to express is always what people need and will always be a positive outcome? Humans need structure in life, some more than others. When you try to deconstruct every social norm around a culture you will have a large amount of men who will find themselves lost in a landscape that is actively discouraging them from fitting within the beaten path laid before them. Maybe the reason men are killing themselves isn't because they don't cry more to their mates but because they are thrown into this modern world that is actively trying to push them towards transcendence of the human condition.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
There are a lot of videos from Robert Sapolsky on youtube that might give you a better understanding of biology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky
- thwy12321 8y ago
  If anything Robert Sapolsky is heavily "red pill". There's a video of him on youtube saying that up to 10% of children are secretly illegitimate.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
Nobody denies that masculine traits like aggression aren't natural tendencies in males. But, the notion that its natural isn't contradictory with the notion that it can be the driver of highly selfish and oppressive behaviors. Slandering people as incels because they're ugly or unpopular is not a commonly held view. Calling them out for aggressively blaming women for their problems and encouraging sexual violence as a justified way to satisfy natural needs is common. The term incel is typically self-assigned. Your last argument is a good example of the main fallacy here. Nobody says that drives for achievement and competition are bad. But its not an excuse to be an asshole. Maybe men are predisposed to certain behaviors that make them assholes. Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. Can't help it? Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. The drive against toxic behaviors is really simple. Don't do them.
pike1 8y ago
You have to understand most of the above poster(s) are either: 1. Too far gone from reality such that they actually believe this made up drivel they repeat constantly. 2. are of the type who are so privileged to say to these downtrodden men: "Let them eat cake" I'm going to go with #2 as that is what most of these "feminists" are. They might even write an ironic article calling higher suicide rate amongst men a problem of patriarchy. Reading these comments you realize they have no self awareness.
belorn 8y ago
Most of those biology claims have been found to be mostly or completely false by researchers observing primates and disproving theories of hard wired behavior. For example, the theory that the most aggressive male primates get most children has been generally disproved since longer term studies show that those males at top generally get dethroned, injured and kill at much faster rate. A secondary issue is that primate females mate not just with the pack leader which means that paternity becomes a statistical probability, which get worse as you go up the hierarchy. Similar aggression is only a effective strategy if and only if aggression get rewarded. Relative recent trend in primatology is to talk about culture, and it has been observed that it has a massive impact in regard to aggression. All those "hard wired" behavior which people took for certain in primates changed if a troop has a cultural change, which happens occasionally. A unintended experiment is when a bunch of young specimens of a species is transfer to a new environment (often creating a invasive species but thats beyond the point). Behavior which researcher thought was innate and hard wired is then often found to have disappeared when no initial adult member is there to transfer existing cultural behavior, a fact that holds true multiple generations later. Instead of looking for biological causes, let ask following questions. What does our culture define as attributes that women should look for in men, and men in women. What behavior defines social status for men and for women, and how do inter-sex competition work men and for women. Feminists who look to blame male behavior (with terms like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy") ignores half of the picture that defines gender roles and gender expectations, while also making negative generalization. It is very likely a contributing reason for increased suicide rates and polarization between women and men.

krapp 8y ago

>And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women. Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist. Ancient cultures considered sex between men to be a perfectly reasonable thing for a masculine man to do, since the concepts of "hetero" and "homo" sexuality didn't really exist at the time. Men in Elizabethan times were far more free to express emotions than now - consider that many of Shakespeare's sonnets, including the famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") were addressed to a man. >Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind). Also, innate predisposition doesn't justify all expressions of those dispositions. One may say that men are predisposed towards physical aggression due to their increased musculature relative to women and testosterone, but that doesn't mean every act of violence is healthy. Females may be attracted to dominance, but that doesn't mean all means of dominating women are justifiable. We may be apes, but that doesn't mean we get to rape any female we find attractive and murder the offspring of rival males because, you know, we're trying to have a civilization here. >You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty. Plenty of unattractive, facially asymmetrical and socially awkward men are able to meet with women, date, have sex, all over the world, every day. Believe me, if women didn't have low standards in that regard, our species would probably have died out long ago. >Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world. You see... I literally said that wasn't what "toxic masculinity" meant and that people automatically confuse the term for an attack on masculinity itself... you literally quoted the part of my comment where I said that and then you went and did exactly that. At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.

shard972 8y ago
> At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon. Maybe this is why men don't feel like speaking up so often. If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".
- krapp 8y ago
  >If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered". The concept that masculinity can have negative effects while not itself being negative isn't something that should take a great deal of effort to comprehend. There are entire male created social complexes like "gentlemanly behavior" and "chivalry" built around the pretense that inherent male traits have both positive and negative aspects. The problem here is not that "feminist sociologists" are talking down to men and making them quail in fear -- men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism. The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. The feminism they oppose mostly doesn't even exist, or at best they're attacking the fringe and not the mainstream. If you have a problem with the concept of toxic masculinity, for example, all I and the "feminist sociological agenda" (or whatever) ask is that you bother to find out what the term actually refers to. Cribbing from Wikipedia: stereotypically masculine gender roles that restrict the kinds of emotions allowable for boys and men to express, including social expectations that men seek to be dominant (the "alpha male") and limit their emotional range primarily to expressions of anger. ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.
  - shard972 8y ago
    The concept that masculinity can itself be positive shouldn't be too hard to comprehend either but here we are. > men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism You haven't spent much time in democratic party meetings then. > The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. And at which point do the "real feminists" stop and agree that it's just a fringe group of feminists that have an axe to grind against men? > ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits. Um, it is? Just look at the framing, claiming that TM "restricts" males. Why is the assumption always that freedom to express is always what people need and will always be a positive outcome? Humans need structure in life, some more than others. When you try to deconstruct every social norm around a culture you will have a large amount of men who will find themselves lost in a landscape that is actively discouraging them from fitting within the beaten path laid before them. Maybe the reason men are killing themselves isn't because they don't cry more to their mates but because they are thrown into this modern world that is actively trying to push them towards transcendence of the human condition.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

There are a lot of videos from Robert Sapolsky on youtube that might give you a better understanding of biology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky

thwy12321 8y ago
If anything Robert Sapolsky is heavily "red pill". There's a video of him on youtube saying that up to 10% of children are secretly illegitimate.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

Nobody denies that masculine traits like aggression aren't natural tendencies in males. But, the notion that its natural isn't contradictory with the notion that it can be the driver of highly selfish and oppressive behaviors. Slandering people as incels because they're ugly or unpopular is not a commonly held view. Calling them out for aggressively blaming women for their problems and encouraging sexual violence as a justified way to satisfy natural needs is common. The term incel is typically self-assigned. Your last argument is a good example of the main fallacy here. Nobody says that drives for achievement and competition are bad. But its not an excuse to be an asshole. Maybe men are predisposed to certain behaviors that make them assholes. Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. Can't help it? Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. The drive against toxic behaviors is really simple. Don't do them.

pike1 8y ago

You have to understand most of the above poster(s) are either: 1. Too far gone from reality such that they actually believe this made up drivel they repeat constantly. 2. are of the type who are so privileged to say to these downtrodden men: "Let them eat cake" I'm going to go with #2 as that is what most of these "feminists" are. They might even write an ironic article calling higher suicide rate amongst men a problem of patriarchy. Reading these comments you realize they have no self awareness.

belorn 8y ago

Most of those biology claims have been found to be mostly or completely false by researchers observing primates and disproving theories of hard wired behavior. For example, the theory that the most aggressive male primates get most children has been generally disproved since longer term studies show that those males at top generally get dethroned, injured and kill at much faster rate. A secondary issue is that primate females mate not just with the pack leader which means that paternity becomes a statistical probability, which get worse as you go up the hierarchy. Similar aggression is only a effective strategy if and only if aggression get rewarded. Relative recent trend in primatology is to talk about culture, and it has been observed that it has a massive impact in regard to aggression. All those "hard wired" behavior which people took for certain in primates changed if a troop has a cultural change, which happens occasionally. A unintended experiment is when a bunch of young specimens of a species is transfer to a new environment (often creating a invasive species but thats beyond the point). Behavior which researcher thought was innate and hard wired is then often found to have disappeared when no initial adult member is there to transfer existing cultural behavior, a fact that holds true multiple generations later. Instead of looking for biological causes, let ask following questions. What does our culture define as attributes that women should look for in men, and men in women. What behavior defines social status for men and for women, and how do inter-sex competition work men and for women. Feminists who look to blame male behavior (with terms like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy") ignores half of the picture that defines gender roles and gender expectations, while also making negative generalization. It is very likely a contributing reason for increased suicide rates and polarization between women and men.