7 ms·

Our society will always value men who are confident, this is so much deeper to me than being scared to share your feelings because “it’s gay”. Women are attract

Our society will always value men who are confident, this is so much deeper to me than being scared to share your feelings because “it’s gay”. Women are attracted to confidence, employers reward confidence, hiring managers are impressed by confidence. Vulnerability and weakness are just not rewarded for men or women, but especially for men.

bonniemuffin 7y ago
I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness. Our society currently says it is, but I could equally imagine a future in which being vulnerable and honest about your feelings is seen as a feat of strength and courage -- because it DOES take a lot of courage, and even confidence, to be open and honest about your feelings.
- darkerside 7y ago
  Sure, it demonstrates a kind of strength and confidence to be open about your weakness. But that's literally what a vulnerability is: a weakness.
  - kungtotte 7y ago
    Developing mental health issues and unstable personal relationships because you're unable to access and share your emotions is also a weakness that derives from the emotional suppression that men are taught is a desired masculine trait. It doesn't have to be like this. Vulnerability doesn't have to be a weakness, showing your emotions can be a masculine trait. We're not defined by, nor locked into, our traditional cultural values and norms.
    - DollarGuru 7y ago
      Part of the issue though is that expressing those emotions seems to undermine your personal power in other people's view of you. To them you may have become ineffective and potentially ripe for replacement whether that is in a job, relationship, or friendship. Somehow you have to both express your emotions and that you are still highly effective. That you can't be exploited, a potential pushover, or a loose cannon for your emotional expression.
      - kungtotte 7y ago
        You're still thinking about this from a present day perspective. Yes, as it stands now what you say is true. Men derive personal power from stoicism and emotional suppression, our primary value is in how effective we are at shutting down non-essential aspects of ourselves and giving ourselves over entirely to whatever endeavor (usually work). We're also taught that we're entirely replaceable: if you can't put up the numbers, we'll swap you for someone who can. That is reinforced by our suppression of emotion, as that reduces us completely to whatever output society can get from us. If all you are is a highly efficient machine producing value, swapping you out requires no thought or emotion whatsoever. If you're a complete person with feelings and relationships with your fellow humans, you're no longer replacing Carl - The Production Machine, you're replacing Carl - our co-worker/friend/partner that you've an emotional history with. But what if we imagine a healthier tomorrow? A world where men can express all of their emotions. Where we're no longer reduced to our most basic aspects and valued from what we can produce, but instead seen as complete persons with a full range of emotions. All over the world men outdistance women in the number of successful suicide attempts by a wide margin. Some say it's because men tend to choose direct and effective methods (guns, hanging, etc.) whereas women tend to choose slower and less effective methods (pills, etc.). But it's also because there is almost no mental health discourse among men. We're taught to suppress our emotions and to never, ever, show them for fear of being labeled weak and replaceable. When we get to low points in our lives our first instinct isn't to reach out to a friend, family, or professional mental health services. Our first instinct is to suppress and deal with it on our own because that's what we're taught our whole lives. When we stumble and can't do it on our own, nobody has a clue what we're going through because we're so good at suppressing it and so we feel totally alone and helpless. Is it a surprise that so many of us choose to eat a bullet? Emotional discourse needs to change. Mental health discourse needs to change. People are literally dying over this.
        DollarGuru 7y ago
        It would be great but it would only work if men as a group someone come to some better understanding. Men collectively are our own worst enemies because there is always another man willing to put aside those healthy attitudes and behaviours. Until healthy male emotional expression becomes attractive it will be rejected by men and women. Currently unless you have other very attractive features being emotionally vulnerable is mostly against your self interest.
    - antepodius 7y ago
      Vulnerability is a weakness. It's what the word means. I'm fine with people being more open with their emotions, fine, but I'm not a huge fan of the idea of socially mandating that weakness itself is strength, which is just a lie (would you wish that someone you loved were more vulnerable than they are?) It's different to having a norm for admission of weakness being a marker of strength due to the courage required in the act, similar to how it takes strength for an addict to admit they have a problem and go get help. You want to normalise talking to someone about your problems with a view to improving the situation. You don't necessarily want to recast addiction (a weakness that you wouldn't wish upon someone you love) as strength, as a roundabout measure to get people to talk about it more. That just seems liable to backfire.
      - kungtotte 7y ago
        Being vulnerable doesn't mean that you go around being a weeping mess all the time, it means admitting to yourself and to others that you're susceptible to negative emotions and to suffering. It's part of the human condition. If someone I loved went around suppressing their own emotions I would absolutely wish that they were more vulnerable than they are, because vulnerability in this case means that they accept their own emotions whatever they may be and that they can now deal with them in a healthy fashion instead of suppressing them. Me saying that being vulnerable is a good thing is not the same thing as saying that addiction is a good thing. Addiction is what happens when we as a society can't talk about feeling vulnerable! That's the entire problem in a nutshell. The problem doesn't start with addiction, addiction is the self-medication people apply because they can't be vulnerable enough to talk about what's really hurting them inside. When a person feels sad they should feel free to express this emotion (i.e. be vulnerable) instead of having to suppress it to live up to society's ideals about emotional expression.
      - dwrodri 7y ago
        Semantically, you're absolutely correct. I think it's just important to clarify that "vulnerability" in this context refers more to "emotional transparency". I think someone who is confident in themself and has a respectable amount of emotional intelligence could navigate a position where they are emotionally honest (i.e. "vulnerable") with others without necesarily exposing weaknesses that compromise them from the professional point of view. While I originally saw this discussion chain as you playing devil's advocate, I realize now you've done a good job helping reframe the scenario in a much better light. For most people (including myself), we don't separate emotional honesty from vulnerability because emotionally we _are_ vulnerable. Working towards a sense of self that is comfortable with emotional reviews that are as intense as a code reviews is something worth striving for.
    - meshenna 7y ago
      Willingness to be vulnerable is necessary in close relationships. Otherwise there can't be a (meaningful) relationship. But being vulnerable by default leaves one open to endless manipulation.
  - aortega 7y ago
    > But that's literally what a vulnerability is: a weakness. There is a concerted effort at social engineering so powerful that now the very word meanings are challenged. Vulnerability is always, unequivocally a weakness. It's the very definition of the word. Redefining vulnerability as strength is exactly 1984's Doublespeak.
    - hope-striker 7y ago
      I agree, it's a very strange use of the word, and I'm confused as to how it became so popular, but concerted by whom and to what end?
    - danharaj 7y ago
      Lao Zi called weakness strength thousands of years ago. Maybe there's a useful idea you haven't yet understood.
    - dang 7y ago
      That's not the definition of the word. It means being wounded or capable of being wounded (Latin vulnus = wound): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulnerable https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulnerable https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vulnerable?s=t https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vulnerable?s=t Therefore all humans are vulnerable. Where strength vs. weakness enter into it is how one deals with one's vulnerability. That gets complex. Is denial strength or weakness? Maybe both.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  > I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness. They didn't assert that, though. They said that confidence is rewarded while vulnerability and weakness aren't. If anything, their description implies a distinction between vulnerability and weakness. I took their statement to be primarily about perceptions. That anything people perceive as a lack confidence is penalised.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  So having feelings is the new peacocking?
  - seph-reed 7y ago
    Dude, Bro. Brroooooooo. I'm telling you, dress and pig tails. Ladies love it. Btw, joking about bro bits, but also it's true.
- sebastianconcpt 7y ago
  It does require courage and even confidence but not of the masculine type. When a female exposes herself she receives an abundance of emotional support so there isn't much courage needed, just a little bit. So is easier for a female to feel confident about doing it. But if people see that you are a strong guy, then is natural for them to expect to "man up" and support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives. People want you to be a strong guy. Females and males. They expect it so badly that they will test that you genuinely are with jokes or challenges that if you are not psychologically strong, those can be felt like downplaying you. It feels that way because they are testing how strong your foundation is. And whatever you make of this, nothing changes the fact that weakness is profoundly unattractive and stregth is very attractive.
  - dang 7y ago
    No question those biases exist, but it's mistaken to think that vulnerability requires confidence "not of the masculine type". There are different ways to be vulnerable. Some have to do with being willing to take risks. Say you're in a group situation and it is affecting you in some way that's not ok—not merely annoying, but touching something of deep importance in your experience. If you bring that information into the group and state what you're experiencing, you make yourself vulnerable. That takes confidence and strength. Then it takes strength to face the effects of that action, whether in the group or from an authority. And another strength too: by speaking of what you're personally experiencing, rather than accusing others of doing something wrong in the abstract, you preempt many conflicts that would otherwise arise. That is self-responsible. To be vulnerable in that way is very much to "support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives". The victim reaction would be to say nothing, feel bad, and carry a residue of resentment. That's what most of us mostly do. Vulnerability that comes from strength does impress others. When someone shows the capacity to speak coherently from a wounded place in a situation where it is called for, the quality that fills the air is dignity. The reactions I've observed in people at moments like that are admiration and a sense their own experience was touched, as if the one who spoke had spoken for them as well. It's important not to confuse confident vulnerability with reactions that come from unprocessed woundedness getting activated in stressful situations—"bursting into tears during a code review", as a commenter memorably put it. Those reactions may be vulnerable but they don't show vulnerability in the sense of making a conscious choice to show oneself in that moment. They are more like a buffer overflow, with emotional bytes streaming through a breach in one's facade. Uncontained reactions make a situation more complicated because they are usually "too much" for the moment—the energy in them is coming from some other place more than what's happening right now, and not under conditions that offer opportunity for healing. That tends to result in wounds getting repeated rather than integrated. The reason it's important not to confuse those things is that if you do, you'll probably get stuck with two shitty options: (1) push your pain away even further, stiffen your facade and pretend to be what you're not; or (2) expose yourself in uncontrolled ways that show weakness and that others find unattractive. Actually, you'll probably get stuck with both: #1 as your default and #2 bursting out in stressful moments. (I don't mean "you" personally, but generally, or at any rate about traditional male roles.) An alternative is to stop pushing away pain, face what one is denying, feel it fully and allow whatever happens in response. That brings healing and strength—genuine strength that one can feel in oneself, as opposed to pretend strength that one doesn't really feel. This doesn't happen all at once; it's one piece at a time, but usually each piece provides enough relief that the process sort of 'pays' for itself as it goes. The other thing is—much as a lot of us, me included, would prefer otherwise—it seems to need to take place in the presence of others. The value of the work described in the OP, or some of it anyway, is that many men who would never otherwise take such a step find it possible to do so in the presence of other men, when the process is organized a certain way. This is a surprising phenomenon—it surprised me anyhow—and I don't think it's widely understood, but it's a good thing to take advantage of if one feels a pull in that direction.
dang 7y ago
Confidence and vulnerability aren't opposites. The confidence that comes from going through vulnerability and coming out stronger is worth more than the facade style of confidence, which covers unprocessed weakness.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Confidence and overt vulnerability are opposites. No one is going to be impressed if you burst into tears during a code review. They're going to be a lot more impressed if you bullshit your way through with positivity and can-do. This is irrespective of the quality of the code. This culture rewards overt displays of competitive individualism and punishes weakness irrespective of actual productivity, value, or objective performance. Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest. Sometimes there's pushback from the surrounding culture before something goes horribly wrong - but just as often there isn't.
  - dromen 7y ago
    They're not! Confidence and unregulated overt vulnerability are conflicting (but not precisely opposite). By acknowledging the possibility that you may have done something wrong, you make yourself vulnerable to judgment, and by doing so confidently you gain respect. Facing judgment is a sign of confidence and it requires making yourself vulnerable. In a more subtle example, showing signs of vulnerability in personal relations is a way of letting others know you, and that takes courage. There'd be no point to having social interactions if you were invulnerable, any interaction would literally be inconsequential for you and thus unmotivated. You "dress up" the vulnerability with a higher level strength (e.g. the capacity to listen to and analyze your own shortcomings), and then it's all good. There's a difference between being vulnerable, and putting yourself in a situation that will hurt you. It's fine to show yourself vulnerable if you can do so in a way that incentives good behavior from your peers.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    >> Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest. It gets you breaks until you reach the line which people don't want you to cross (which you will eventually cross due to your ever-inflating ego). At which point everyone you know will silently isolate you and you'll not even be able to realise what happened in time (again, due to your overly-inflated ego). I had seen that happen. People who are full of shit always have a glass ceiling, since they are even more useless than people who are willing to directly do bad to other people (at least those are more-or-less clear in terms of the direction they take).
apatters 7y ago
Most people believe that vulnerability is a weakness and a disadvantage but this is demonstrably untrue. Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people. Here is a great example using Jennifer Lawrence who is particularly good at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btud-zsdmk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btud-zsdmk4 There are definitely caveats to this. It has to be done a certain way. It works better when you already have some status. And I'd absolutely agree that society lets women express more vulnerability than men. In a hypermasculine environment like a group of socially clueless 20something males at a tech company, you will probably want to show vulnerability less often. But with the general population and normal people, it's really fine and even good to show some vulnerability, just do it in the right context.
- tomp 7y ago
  Isn’t this just faux vulnerability, or vulnerability from the position of power? In other words, it’s not the ”oh my god, my life is crashing, I don’t know what to do, please help me” kind of vulnerability (that one isn’t seen as very attractive or welcomed by the society), it’s the “my life is awesome, except this tiny part, but it’s cool, I’ll manage” kind of vulnerability.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    That seems analogous to the humble-brag.
  - apatters 7y ago
    It seems like you're using an extreme example. Most people's lives are not crashing down around them, but they still have vulnerabilities -- anxieties, problems, things they're afraid of. I responded to a comment saying that vulnerability and weakness are not rewarded, and gave an example of how they can be.
- aortega 7y ago
  >Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people. Also a way for people to attack you. A vulnerability is always a weakness, it's the definition of vulnerability. You are talking about faking a vulnerability, a social technique so old that is in Sun Tsu's "The Art of War".
bigred100 7y ago
I don’t really believe this. I know some people who I value less specifically because they are overly confident relative to their abilities. I expect them to play social bluffs to play up what they know how to do (or pretend to know things they don’t), manipulate people if they can awe them and try to intercept credit for their work without giving much of their own effort, etc. They basically just cause a huge amount of trouble and damage the productivity of those around them. Meanwhile I know people of roughly comparable ability who I have a pretty good opinion of. If someone keeps confidently asserting that 1+1=3 and then tries to act like he’s my superior, my conclusion is generally that he’s just a moron or is deluding himself. I had a typo above and wrote 1+1=2 but I’ve had the same situation: someone who is of normal competence keeps repeating things pretty much everyone in the room knows over and over and thinks he’s leading you forward.

bonniemuffin 7y ago

I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness. Our society currently says it is, but I could equally imagine a future in which being vulnerable and honest about your feelings is seen as a feat of strength and courage -- because it DOES take a lot of courage, and even confidence, to be open and honest about your feelings.

darkerside 7y ago
Sure, it demonstrates a kind of strength and confidence to be open about your weakness. But that's literally what a vulnerability is: a weakness.
- kungtotte 7y ago
  Developing mental health issues and unstable personal relationships because you're unable to access and share your emotions is also a weakness that derives from the emotional suppression that men are taught is a desired masculine trait. It doesn't have to be like this. Vulnerability doesn't have to be a weakness, showing your emotions can be a masculine trait. We're not defined by, nor locked into, our traditional cultural values and norms.
  - DollarGuru 7y ago
    Part of the issue though is that expressing those emotions seems to undermine your personal power in other people's view of you. To them you may have become ineffective and potentially ripe for replacement whether that is in a job, relationship, or friendship. Somehow you have to both express your emotions and that you are still highly effective. That you can't be exploited, a potential pushover, or a loose cannon for your emotional expression.
    - kungtotte 7y ago
      You're still thinking about this from a present day perspective. Yes, as it stands now what you say is true. Men derive personal power from stoicism and emotional suppression, our primary value is in how effective we are at shutting down non-essential aspects of ourselves and giving ourselves over entirely to whatever endeavor (usually work). We're also taught that we're entirely replaceable: if you can't put up the numbers, we'll swap you for someone who can. That is reinforced by our suppression of emotion, as that reduces us completely to whatever output society can get from us. If all you are is a highly efficient machine producing value, swapping you out requires no thought or emotion whatsoever. If you're a complete person with feelings and relationships with your fellow humans, you're no longer replacing Carl - The Production Machine, you're replacing Carl - our co-worker/friend/partner that you've an emotional history with. But what if we imagine a healthier tomorrow? A world where men can express all of their emotions. Where we're no longer reduced to our most basic aspects and valued from what we can produce, but instead seen as complete persons with a full range of emotions. All over the world men outdistance women in the number of successful suicide attempts by a wide margin. Some say it's because men tend to choose direct and effective methods (guns, hanging, etc.) whereas women tend to choose slower and less effective methods (pills, etc.). But it's also because there is almost no mental health discourse among men. We're taught to suppress our emotions and to never, ever, show them for fear of being labeled weak and replaceable. When we get to low points in our lives our first instinct isn't to reach out to a friend, family, or professional mental health services. Our first instinct is to suppress and deal with it on our own because that's what we're taught our whole lives. When we stumble and can't do it on our own, nobody has a clue what we're going through because we're so good at suppressing it and so we feel totally alone and helpless. Is it a surprise that so many of us choose to eat a bullet? Emotional discourse needs to change. Mental health discourse needs to change. People are literally dying over this.
      - DollarGuru 7y ago
        It would be great but it would only work if men as a group someone come to some better understanding. Men collectively are our own worst enemies because there is always another man willing to put aside those healthy attitudes and behaviours. Until healthy male emotional expression becomes attractive it will be rejected by men and women. Currently unless you have other very attractive features being emotionally vulnerable is mostly against your self interest.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    Vulnerability is a weakness. It's what the word means. I'm fine with people being more open with their emotions, fine, but I'm not a huge fan of the idea of socially mandating that weakness itself is strength, which is just a lie (would you wish that someone you loved were more vulnerable than they are?) It's different to having a norm for admission of weakness being a marker of strength due to the courage required in the act, similar to how it takes strength for an addict to admit they have a problem and go get help. You want to normalise talking to someone about your problems with a view to improving the situation. You don't necessarily want to recast addiction (a weakness that you wouldn't wish upon someone you love) as strength, as a roundabout measure to get people to talk about it more. That just seems liable to backfire.
    - kungtotte 7y ago
      Being vulnerable doesn't mean that you go around being a weeping mess all the time, it means admitting to yourself and to others that you're susceptible to negative emotions and to suffering. It's part of the human condition. If someone I loved went around suppressing their own emotions I would absolutely wish that they were more vulnerable than they are, because vulnerability in this case means that they accept their own emotions whatever they may be and that they can now deal with them in a healthy fashion instead of suppressing them. Me saying that being vulnerable is a good thing is not the same thing as saying that addiction is a good thing. Addiction is what happens when we as a society can't talk about feeling vulnerable! That's the entire problem in a nutshell. The problem doesn't start with addiction, addiction is the self-medication people apply because they can't be vulnerable enough to talk about what's really hurting them inside. When a person feels sad they should feel free to express this emotion (i.e. be vulnerable) instead of having to suppress it to live up to society's ideals about emotional expression.
    - dwrodri 7y ago
      Semantically, you're absolutely correct. I think it's just important to clarify that "vulnerability" in this context refers more to "emotional transparency". I think someone who is confident in themself and has a respectable amount of emotional intelligence could navigate a position where they are emotionally honest (i.e. "vulnerable") with others without necesarily exposing weaknesses that compromise them from the professional point of view. While I originally saw this discussion chain as you playing devil's advocate, I realize now you've done a good job helping reframe the scenario in a much better light. For most people (including myself), we don't separate emotional honesty from vulnerability because emotionally we _are_ vulnerable. Working towards a sense of self that is comfortable with emotional reviews that are as intense as a code reviews is something worth striving for.
  - meshenna 7y ago
    Willingness to be vulnerable is necessary in close relationships. Otherwise there can't be a (meaningful) relationship. But being vulnerable by default leaves one open to endless manipulation.
- aortega 7y ago
  > But that's literally what a vulnerability is: a weakness. There is a concerted effort at social engineering so powerful that now the very word meanings are challenged. Vulnerability is always, unequivocally a weakness. It's the very definition of the word. Redefining vulnerability as strength is exactly 1984's Doublespeak.
  - hope-striker 7y ago
    I agree, it's a very strange use of the word, and I'm confused as to how it became so popular, but concerted by whom and to what end?
  - danharaj 7y ago
    Lao Zi called weakness strength thousands of years ago. Maybe there's a useful idea you haven't yet understood.
  - dang 7y ago
    That's not the definition of the word. It means being wounded or capable of being wounded (Latin vulnus = wound): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulnerable https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulnerable https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vulnerable?s=t https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vulnerable?s=t Therefore all humans are vulnerable. Where strength vs. weakness enter into it is how one deals with one's vulnerability. That gets complex. Is denial strength or weakness? Maybe both.
jamesrcole 7y ago
> I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness. They didn't assert that, though. They said that confidence is rewarded while vulnerability and weakness aren't. If anything, their description implies a distinction between vulnerability and weakness. I took their statement to be primarily about perceptions. That anything people perceive as a lack confidence is penalised.
thanatropism 7y ago
So having feelings is the new peacocking?
- seph-reed 7y ago
  Dude, Bro. Brroooooooo. I'm telling you, dress and pig tails. Ladies love it. Btw, joking about bro bits, but also it's true.
sebastianconcpt 7y ago
It does require courage and even confidence but not of the masculine type. When a female exposes herself she receives an abundance of emotional support so there isn't much courage needed, just a little bit. So is easier for a female to feel confident about doing it. But if people see that you are a strong guy, then is natural for them to expect to "man up" and support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives. People want you to be a strong guy. Females and males. They expect it so badly that they will test that you genuinely are with jokes or challenges that if you are not psychologically strong, those can be felt like downplaying you. It feels that way because they are testing how strong your foundation is. And whatever you make of this, nothing changes the fact that weakness is profoundly unattractive and stregth is very attractive.
- dang 7y ago
  No question those biases exist, but it's mistaken to think that vulnerability requires confidence "not of the masculine type". There are different ways to be vulnerable. Some have to do with being willing to take risks. Say you're in a group situation and it is affecting you in some way that's not ok—not merely annoying, but touching something of deep importance in your experience. If you bring that information into the group and state what you're experiencing, you make yourself vulnerable. That takes confidence and strength. Then it takes strength to face the effects of that action, whether in the group or from an authority. And another strength too: by speaking of what you're personally experiencing, rather than accusing others of doing something wrong in the abstract, you preempt many conflicts that would otherwise arise. That is self-responsible. To be vulnerable in that way is very much to "support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives". The victim reaction would be to say nothing, feel bad, and carry a residue of resentment. That's what most of us mostly do. Vulnerability that comes from strength does impress others. When someone shows the capacity to speak coherently from a wounded place in a situation where it is called for, the quality that fills the air is dignity. The reactions I've observed in people at moments like that are admiration and a sense their own experience was touched, as if the one who spoke had spoken for them as well. It's important not to confuse confident vulnerability with reactions that come from unprocessed woundedness getting activated in stressful situations—"bursting into tears during a code review", as a commenter memorably put it. Those reactions may be vulnerable but they don't show vulnerability in the sense of making a conscious choice to show oneself in that moment. They are more like a buffer overflow, with emotional bytes streaming through a breach in one's facade. Uncontained reactions make a situation more complicated because they are usually "too much" for the moment—the energy in them is coming from some other place more than what's happening right now, and not under conditions that offer opportunity for healing. That tends to result in wounds getting repeated rather than integrated. The reason it's important not to confuse those things is that if you do, you'll probably get stuck with two shitty options: (1) push your pain away even further, stiffen your facade and pretend to be what you're not; or (2) expose yourself in uncontrolled ways that show weakness and that others find unattractive. Actually, you'll probably get stuck with both: #1 as your default and #2 bursting out in stressful moments. (I don't mean "you" personally, but generally, or at any rate about traditional male roles.) An alternative is to stop pushing away pain, face what one is denying, feel it fully and allow whatever happens in response. That brings healing and strength—genuine strength that one can feel in oneself, as opposed to pretend strength that one doesn't really feel. This doesn't happen all at once; it's one piece at a time, but usually each piece provides enough relief that the process sort of 'pays' for itself as it goes. The other thing is—much as a lot of us, me included, would prefer otherwise—it seems to need to take place in the presence of others. The value of the work described in the OP, or some of it anyway, is that many men who would never otherwise take such a step find it possible to do so in the presence of other men, when the process is organized a certain way. This is a surprising phenomenon—it surprised me anyhow—and I don't think it's widely understood, but it's a good thing to take advantage of if one feels a pull in that direction.

dang 7y ago

Confidence and vulnerability aren't opposites. The confidence that comes from going through vulnerability and coming out stronger is worth more than the facade style of confidence, which covers unprocessed weakness.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Confidence and overt vulnerability are opposites. No one is going to be impressed if you burst into tears during a code review. They're going to be a lot more impressed if you bullshit your way through with positivity and can-do. This is irrespective of the quality of the code. This culture rewards overt displays of competitive individualism and punishes weakness irrespective of actual productivity, value, or objective performance. Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest. Sometimes there's pushback from the surrounding culture before something goes horribly wrong - but just as often there isn't.
- dromen 7y ago
  They're not! Confidence and unregulated overt vulnerability are conflicting (but not precisely opposite). By acknowledging the possibility that you may have done something wrong, you make yourself vulnerable to judgment, and by doing so confidently you gain respect. Facing judgment is a sign of confidence and it requires making yourself vulnerable. In a more subtle example, showing signs of vulnerability in personal relations is a way of letting others know you, and that takes courage. There'd be no point to having social interactions if you were invulnerable, any interaction would literally be inconsequential for you and thus unmotivated. You "dress up" the vulnerability with a higher level strength (e.g. the capacity to listen to and analyze your own shortcomings), and then it's all good. There's a difference between being vulnerable, and putting yourself in a situation that will hurt you. It's fine to show yourself vulnerable if you can do so in a way that incentives good behavior from your peers.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest. It gets you breaks until you reach the line which people don't want you to cross (which you will eventually cross due to your ever-inflating ego). At which point everyone you know will silently isolate you and you'll not even be able to realise what happened in time (again, due to your overly-inflated ego). I had seen that happen. People who are full of shit always have a glass ceiling, since they are even more useless than people who are willing to directly do bad to other people (at least those are more-or-less clear in terms of the direction they take).

apatters 7y ago

Most people believe that vulnerability is a weakness and a disadvantage but this is demonstrably untrue. Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people. Here is a great example using Jennifer Lawrence who is particularly good at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btud-zsdmk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btud-zsdmk4 There are definitely caveats to this. It has to be done a certain way. It works better when you already have some status. And I'd absolutely agree that society lets women express more vulnerability than men. In a hypermasculine environment like a group of socially clueless 20something males at a tech company, you will probably want to show vulnerability less often. But with the general population and normal people, it's really fine and even good to show some vulnerability, just do it in the right context.

tomp 7y ago
Isn’t this just faux vulnerability, or vulnerability from the position of power? In other words, it’s not the ”oh my god, my life is crashing, I don’t know what to do, please help me” kind of vulnerability (that one isn’t seen as very attractive or welcomed by the society), it’s the “my life is awesome, except this tiny part, but it’s cool, I’ll manage” kind of vulnerability.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  That seems analogous to the humble-brag.
- apatters 7y ago
  It seems like you're using an extreme example. Most people's lives are not crashing down around them, but they still have vulnerabilities -- anxieties, problems, things they're afraid of. I responded to a comment saying that vulnerability and weakness are not rewarded, and gave an example of how they can be.
aortega 7y ago
>Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people. Also a way for people to attack you. A vulnerability is always a weakness, it's the definition of vulnerability. You are talking about faking a vulnerability, a social technique so old that is in Sun Tsu's "The Art of War".

bigred100 7y ago

I don’t really believe this. I know some people who I value less specifically because they are overly confident relative to their abilities. I expect them to play social bluffs to play up what they know how to do (or pretend to know things they don’t), manipulate people if they can awe them and try to intercept credit for their work without giving much of their own effort, etc. They basically just cause a huge amount of trouble and damage the productivity of those around them. Meanwhile I know people of roughly comparable ability who I have a pretty good opinion of. If someone keeps confidently asserting that 1+1=3 and then tries to act like he’s my superior, my conclusion is generally that he’s just a moron or is deluding himself. I had a typo above and wrote 1+1=2 but I’ve had the same situation: someone who is of normal competence keeps repeating things pretty much everyone in the room knows over and over and thinks he’s leading you forward.