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"As a man, I have lots of people in my life who love me, but they consistently fail to take notice of my emotional needs." Although every man's circles are dif
by fleddr 4y ago
"As a man, I have lots of people in my life who love me, but they consistently fail to take notice of my emotional needs."
Although every man's circles are different, your experience is highly common. I'm going to intentionally dramatize a little to get the point across efficiently.
Men effectively live in an emotional desert. Showing emotion, vulnerability or dependency is discouraged, dismissed or even ridiculed. Men lack a support system. They're often the last buck and there's nothing or nobody to back them up.
This is why to many men, their relation with their mother is holy. It's often the only source of genuine unconditional love and a safe place to be vulnerable. Of course, you can't even have that, this too is to be ridiculed, hence the many "your mum" jokes.
When men get sick, they're ridiculed for being such a baby. Here too a rare sign of vulnerability expressed is to be laughed at.
Men are judged by utility. Society doesn't care about men's needs or problems. They are willingly sacrificed in war, work, homeless on the streets, and in suicide without this even being a topic of mainstream interest.
The handful of reasonable feminists spotting how this complete indifference is a problem are shouted down by their radical counterparts, that have seized the movement. Not only is there no mainstream culture to care about men, it's openly hostile to men in general.
If I were to post my little lecture on a social network, I'd be piled on with: "oh you poor man, you have it sooooo bad lmao!!!"
Anyway, I know none of this helps, but I just wanted to share that your experience in many ways is the experience of many if not most men. And I think you analyzed the situation very well with the "deer in the headlights" remark.
- throwaway11823 4y agoThank you for sharing. It is definitely underappreciated how the patriarchy simultaneously oppresses and privileges men. I'm sorry if you've had bad experiences with online dog-piling, but I'll note that understanding intersectional feminism has been important for my own personal understanding of my gender and the ways it negatively impacts my life (or positively for that matter). I think dog-piling is universal and a product of unhealthy discourse and the way online spaces erases nuance.
- fleddr 4y agoThe female part of the patriarchy (a word I hate) is not to be underestimated. The idea that men should be more in touch with their emotions is nothing but a narrative, reality is exactly opposite to it. Women do not select for emotional men. They select for status, wealth, attractiveness. Only when those qualities are met FIRST, perhaps you may also share some feelings here and there, but do keep that shit in check. The above sounds brutal and primitive, but every social study and dating research confirms it. And it makes perfect sense as it 100% aligns with biological incentives, as much as we want to deny those.
- throwaway11823 4y agoFriend, I tell you truthfully that you are buying into a conspiracy theory, propagated by people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, which is not a true reflection of reality. Men shouldn't be in touch with their emotions to attract women - they should be in touch with their emotions for their own well being. The idea you're expressing is called hypergamy, and it's more of a caricature of human courtship than anything. There are women who are attracted to status and women who are looking for someone with emotional sophistication and there are millions of other things they might look for. They aren't robots; they don't behave in unison. The other idea you're touching on is evolutionary psychology, the idea that human behavior stems from certain knowable evolutionary pressures. This makes sense at first glance but it ends up being a way for people to dehumanize others and use scientific language to justify the belief that a certain group of people are robots operating under a known ruleset. It's a rationalization of prejudice. Evolutionary pressures are so vague and difficult to know, and sexual selection in particular, that you can justify anything with this framework. Try this on for size; "women disproportionately bear the cost of childbirth, so they're incentivized to select for partners with a high degree of emotional maturity, because these partners are more likely to attend to their needs during pregnancy, withstand the often traumatic stress of parenting an infant, and to be caring parents who will pass on these high-value traits to their male offspring." Is that any less sound an argument than that they select for high social status, or physical strength, or what have you? I'd really encourage you to look into criticisms of these ideas. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to offer as far as places you may start, I've routed through my browser history and turned up a couple things that might interest you: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-... (Non-paywall: http://web.archive.org/web/20230115075145/http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230115075145/http://www.nytimes...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWoJDpNsQQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWoJDpNsQQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgO25FTwfRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgO25FTwfRI
- potsandpans 4y agoyou lost me at the cabal of radical feminists
- luisapic 4y ago[dead]
- BirAdam 4y agoThis is most likely why the vast majority of suicides are men.
- rexpop 4y agoBut, in fact, the opposite is true: 3 out of 4 suicide attempts are by women.
- BirAdam 4y agoAccording to CDC, men kill themselves far more often. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909a7-H.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909a7-H.pdf
- rexpop 4y agoAnd yet, women make 3x as many attempts, which is more relevant in a discussion on mental anguish and not, for example, gun ownership and aptitude.
- harryha11er 4y agoOP talked about suicides, you talk about suicide attempts. Both of you are right, while women attempt suicide more often, men succeed at suicide more often and hence die by suicide more often (see Gender paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide)
- deadc0de 4y ago"Men are judged by utility." I didn't realize this until recently. Rude awakening. Even the most close relationships turn out to be quite transactional.
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoBetween the two genders, men also disproportionately take the lion’s share of the spoils of war/relationship/employment/power/clout. So here when men are judged by utility, it is essentially competition between the males of the species themselves. It isn’t dissimilar to ape societies or lions. The alpha wars are happening due to testosterone. There is most certainly an evolutionary and biological reasoning for this. This has nothing to do with women. Please leave us out of this.
- fleddr 4y ago"Only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally" - Chris Rock. It's not as transactional as to be loveless. It's conditional love.
- throwaway11823 4y agoI'd like to push back on this. I feel my friends & SO love me essentially unconditionally, but are simply ill-equipped to express that in a supportive way.
- fleddr 4y agoI think that this is technically true in most cases, but love isn't technical.
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoIs Chris Rock a comedian?