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> But the other path IS viable. You can move to [name any big city], get an education, get a decent job, paint your nails, treat women nicely and, if you ask me

> But the other path IS viable. You can move to [name any big city], get an education, get a decent job, paint your nails, treat women nicely and, if you ask me, have better relationships, better sex, better lives than were ever available to most men in the past. I agree this is viable, but you have to understand that for heterosexual men they face a lot of day-to-day backlashes for this. You have to understand the vast majority of women will not consider a relationship with them. And they will suffer in their career as well. Lack of masculinity, or rather perceived masculinity, in men means lack of respect across the board. Because progressivism has not focused on that, so we're still dealing with many decades old understanding of masculinity. Even extremely surface-level reimagining, such as painting nails, is fringe. And I think that really demonstrates the problem. I mean, forget emotional intelligence or vulnerability. We're battling black nail polish. We haven't even begun to take a crack at the simplest, most surface level stuff. Let alone the deeper stuff. I said this in another comment, but modern heterosexual men are in a strange position where they have to perfect the art of performing masculinity in most situations, and then leaving hints of progressivism where other's find it most convenient. Ultimately, even the most progressive woman is looking for a man who is somewhat kind and maybe he can get away with painting his nails. But he must still be masculine, he must not cry very much if ever, and he must always be a low level of emotional labor. Women want to deal with things like grappling with the shame of dating a man who paints his nails and the social repercussions of that, they don't also have the bandwidth to deal with, say, depression. That's step 100, we're still getting past step 1.

skyyler 2y ago
> Women want to deal with things like grappling with the shame of dating a man who paints his nails and the social repercussions of that, they don't also have the bandwidth to deal with, say, depression. When you say “women” here, do you mean yourself? Do you mean the women you have interacted with in the past? Do you mean all women, everywhere? How do you know how they feel about this?
- consteval 2y ago
  This is all purely anecdotal as I've noted at the beginning, because there's no studies on this or anyone looking into this at all. I don't mean myself, I mean the heterosexual women and men I know. I'm gay, almost all my friends are women and it's just what I've observed. And, to be clear, I'm not blaming women. Because relationships, too, are a performance. This part is really important: > Women want to deal with things like grappling with the shame of dating a man who paints his nails and the social repercussions of that It's not just men who lose respect when masculinity isn't performed to a high enough standard, women associated with them lose respect too. Women have a lot to deal with, it's unreasonable for them to also take on additional emotional burden when they already have to manage the appearance of their relationship to outsiders. As for how I know how they "feel" - well, I don't. But I see their actions and what they choose to tell me. From what I've seen, it's extremely risky for heterosexual men to be vulnerable in their relationships. The odds are incredibly high that will come back to bite them, often immediately, sometimes much later. And, women seem very hesitant to talk about any perceived feminine traits in the men they date. Typically, they do the opposite, almost talk them up. I think there's some perception management going on.
standardUser 2y ago
I really appreciate your perspectives on this. This is possibly the most important conversation of the current era and, like you've expressed, we've barely begun to have it. The part that strikes me the most is the idea that women aren't ready to accept new gender norms among men. We're definitely in a transition era where expectations are out of whack. I do think a lot of women want an unrealistic blend of traditional masculinity with just the right types and amounts of femininity. And they are not finding it very often. This is one of several recent surveys that show a sharp and rapid turn away from traditional gender and sexuality: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.asp... The trend is obvious in Millennials and then it absolutely skyrockets among Gen Z. More than a quarter of Gen Z women are rejecting traditional straightness in one capacity or another. I imagine many more have perspectives that are far more open than the traditional norm, even if doesn't change how they identify. I think that these women are capable of accepting a new form of masculinity in their partners. I think they are 10 steps ahead and they create a huge opportunity for men to embrace their gender in different ways without being ostracized. In fact, I think men will be rewarded, and the allure of those rewards will accelerate male rejection of traditional masculinity. Not to get too personal, but in my hyper-progressive bubble of NYC, I see this exact dynamic playing out amongst my younger friends in their late 20's to late 30's. And they aren't even Gen Z. I like to think it's a preview of the large trends to come.
- consteval 2y ago
  I 100% agree things are getting better and only getting better. It's just a very slow change, because I think those young people have to grapple with the people who are raising them and who they respect. But - I will say in terms of sexuality among women - it's not all rainbows (ha). The majority of bisexual women I know would not date bisexual men, and they make it known. The "gap" in progressivism exists there too, just much less. Meaning, a lot of bisexual women are willing to accept all kinds of women and have a self-expression of wide variety, but many still look for what they deem to be a traditional, heterosexual man (when they are dating men). It's complicated and then that really gets into a more intersectional issue because the elephant in the room is there's many strings connecting sexuality to masculinity. I think, in general, there's less genderized implications for behavior for women who are bisexual than there are for men who are bisexual. Being a bisexual man just comes with much more assumptions and baggage about identity in terms of masculinity/femininity that I don't really see for bisexuality in women. You can sort of see this in statistics, where bisexual women self-identify significantly more than bisexual men. But bright side: this is improving, too. I see a lot less men hiding their bisexuality these days than I saw 10 years ago.
mrguyorama 2y ago
>I agree this is viable, but you have to understand that for heterosexual men they face a lot of day-to-day backlashes for this. Are you under some weird belief that women who fought for progressive female empowerment did not face pushback from men AND women who wanted them to "stay in their place"? Getting pushback from men and women while trying to be progressive isn't some special thing that affects only men. It's the damn default to any progression. Women worked for decades to get passed it. They had to convince enough men to vote to give them the vote remember. They had to get laws passed so they could own a fucking credit card. Despite sitting politicians openly mocking women fighting for their rights, to this day, women were able to build spaces that helped women. Women were able to make support groups and businesses and all these things to try and be positive influences. Women are still not past the pushback for wanting to be seen as equals. >I said this in another comment, but modern heterosexual men are in a strange position where they have to perfect the art of performing masculinity in most situations, and then leaving hints of progressivism where other's find it most convenient. Absolutely not. If your friends/family/etc can't handle you not being a toxic shithead of a man, you should push back. Is that not part of being a man? IMO that's part of being a good human. A space that makes jokes and mockery of women is not a safe space for good men. So women fought adversity and built all this pro-women social infrastructure to be inter-supporting and improve the lives of women. What have men done with their systemic adversity? Well, young men have decided what they want to do is follow andrew tate, and ghouls like the "Fit and fresh" podcast on twitch, which spends hours every day espousing hatred towards all women. Young men are openly advocating for burning down society and replacing it with one where they are guaranteed sex. Young men are shooting up their schools because they couldn't get laid. Young men are rediscovering fucking phrenology to find a reason they aren't getting laid. Why are young men so absurdly hung up on sex? Why is not getting laid in high school a psyche breaking experience for men?
- consteval 2y ago
  > Getting pushback from men and women while trying to be progressive isn't some special thing that affects only men. It's the damn default to any progression I absolutely agree, but I think this is unique in the sense that progressive men often don't get support from progressive women. But progressiveness has been focused on progression for women, so often progression for men is viewed as strange, distasteful, un-man-like, etc. > Absolutely not. If your friends/family/etc can't handle you not being a toxic shithead of a man, you should push back. Is that not part of being a man? IMO that's part of being a good human. A space that makes jokes and mockery of women is not a safe space for good men. To be clear, I'm not talking about being a shithead here. These men I'm referring to are the good ones. The ones you'd see on liberal college campuses. They are progressive, but progressive for a man. They still perform masculinity nearly constantly, and drop only the most convenient and easy to digest hints of progressiveness when needed. They might, say, talk about how poorly show X has aged. They won't talk about their feelings, their depression, their desire for a fresh self expression, etc. > Well, young men have decided what they want to do is follow andrew tate, and ghouls like the "Fit and fresh" podcast on twitch, which spends hours every day espousing hatred towards all women. Once again, I agree, but these are not the men I'm referring to. > Why are young men so absurdly hung up on sex? Why is not getting laid in high school a psyche breaking experience for men? I can answer this one: it's because heterosexual men's self identity relies on sexual prowess. From a young age, boys are told they are sexual deviants. They can hardly exist around girls without overly-sexualized connotation from adults. Sexual behavior is not just excused, it's expected. A successful man is one who has the ability to get sex. Look at any media, and I really mean any. Who has the most power? Who has the most money? Who has the most confidence? Is it the man who has sex, or the virgin loser? This reinforces the message that without their sexuality, men are nothing. They will be lonely, poor, with no future. People sometimes miss this key part of sexual objectification. When we make women sex objects, we make men oglers and sex-doers. Sex is often perceived as something men DO to women - not something two people engage in together. It's both subtly, and blatantly, reinforced in movies, TV, and music. The most successful rappers brag about their women. The most successful men have trophies. The most loser men in movies are ugly and awkward. For these men, a loss of sex translates to a loss of life. They have no future. Of course it's all perception, and their perspective is incorrect. But we need to understand WHY they have this perception if we want to deconstruct it and remove it.

skyyler 2y ago

> Women want to deal with things like grappling with the shame of dating a man who paints his nails and the social repercussions of that, they don't also have the bandwidth to deal with, say, depression. When you say “women” here, do you mean yourself? Do you mean the women you have interacted with in the past? Do you mean all women, everywhere? How do you know how they feel about this?

consteval 2y ago
This is all purely anecdotal as I've noted at the beginning, because there's no studies on this or anyone looking into this at all. I don't mean myself, I mean the heterosexual women and men I know. I'm gay, almost all my friends are women and it's just what I've observed. And, to be clear, I'm not blaming women. Because relationships, too, are a performance. This part is really important: > Women want to deal with things like grappling with the shame of dating a man who paints his nails and the social repercussions of that It's not just men who lose respect when masculinity isn't performed to a high enough standard, women associated with them lose respect too. Women have a lot to deal with, it's unreasonable for them to also take on additional emotional burden when they already have to manage the appearance of their relationship to outsiders. As for how I know how they "feel" - well, I don't. But I see their actions and what they choose to tell me. From what I've seen, it's extremely risky for heterosexual men to be vulnerable in their relationships. The odds are incredibly high that will come back to bite them, often immediately, sometimes much later. And, women seem very hesitant to talk about any perceived feminine traits in the men they date. Typically, they do the opposite, almost talk them up. I think there's some perception management going on.

standardUser 2y ago

I really appreciate your perspectives on this. This is possibly the most important conversation of the current era and, like you've expressed, we've barely begun to have it. The part that strikes me the most is the idea that women aren't ready to accept new gender norms among men. We're definitely in a transition era where expectations are out of whack. I do think a lot of women want an unrealistic blend of traditional masculinity with just the right types and amounts of femininity. And they are not finding it very often. This is one of several recent surveys that show a sharp and rapid turn away from traditional gender and sexuality: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.asp... The trend is obvious in Millennials and then it absolutely skyrockets among Gen Z. More than a quarter of Gen Z women are rejecting traditional straightness in one capacity or another. I imagine many more have perspectives that are far more open than the traditional norm, even if doesn't change how they identify. I think that these women are capable of accepting a new form of masculinity in their partners. I think they are 10 steps ahead and they create a huge opportunity for men to embrace their gender in different ways without being ostracized. In fact, I think men will be rewarded, and the allure of those rewards will accelerate male rejection of traditional masculinity. Not to get too personal, but in my hyper-progressive bubble of NYC, I see this exact dynamic playing out amongst my younger friends in their late 20's to late 30's. And they aren't even Gen Z. I like to think it's a preview of the large trends to come.

consteval 2y ago
I 100% agree things are getting better and only getting better. It's just a very slow change, because I think those young people have to grapple with the people who are raising them and who they respect. But - I will say in terms of sexuality among women - it's not all rainbows (ha). The majority of bisexual women I know would not date bisexual men, and they make it known. The "gap" in progressivism exists there too, just much less. Meaning, a lot of bisexual women are willing to accept all kinds of women and have a self-expression of wide variety, but many still look for what they deem to be a traditional, heterosexual man (when they are dating men). It's complicated and then that really gets into a more intersectional issue because the elephant in the room is there's many strings connecting sexuality to masculinity. I think, in general, there's less genderized implications for behavior for women who are bisexual than there are for men who are bisexual. Being a bisexual man just comes with much more assumptions and baggage about identity in terms of masculinity/femininity that I don't really see for bisexuality in women. You can sort of see this in statistics, where bisexual women self-identify significantly more than bisexual men. But bright side: this is improving, too. I see a lot less men hiding their bisexuality these days than I saw 10 years ago.

mrguyorama 2y ago

>I agree this is viable, but you have to understand that for heterosexual men they face a lot of day-to-day backlashes for this. Are you under some weird belief that women who fought for progressive female empowerment did not face pushback from men AND women who wanted them to "stay in their place"? Getting pushback from men and women while trying to be progressive isn't some special thing that affects only men. It's the damn default to any progression. Women worked for decades to get passed it. They had to convince enough men to vote to give them the vote remember. They had to get laws passed so they could own a fucking credit card. Despite sitting politicians openly mocking women fighting for their rights, to this day, women were able to build spaces that helped women. Women were able to make support groups and businesses and all these things to try and be positive influences. Women are still not past the pushback for wanting to be seen as equals. >I said this in another comment, but modern heterosexual men are in a strange position where they have to perfect the art of performing masculinity in most situations, and then leaving hints of progressivism where other's find it most convenient. Absolutely not. If your friends/family/etc can't handle you not being a toxic shithead of a man, you should push back. Is that not part of being a man? IMO that's part of being a good human. A space that makes jokes and mockery of women is not a safe space for good men. So women fought adversity and built all this pro-women social infrastructure to be inter-supporting and improve the lives of women. What have men done with their systemic adversity? Well, young men have decided what they want to do is follow andrew tate, and ghouls like the "Fit and fresh" podcast on twitch, which spends hours every day espousing hatred towards all women. Young men are openly advocating for burning down society and replacing it with one where they are guaranteed sex. Young men are shooting up their schools because they couldn't get laid. Young men are rediscovering fucking phrenology to find a reason they aren't getting laid. Why are young men so absurdly hung up on sex? Why is not getting laid in high school a psyche breaking experience for men?

consteval 2y ago
> Getting pushback from men and women while trying to be progressive isn't some special thing that affects only men. It's the damn default to any progression I absolutely agree, but I think this is unique in the sense that progressive men often don't get support from progressive women. But progressiveness has been focused on progression for women, so often progression for men is viewed as strange, distasteful, un-man-like, etc. > Absolutely not. If your friends/family/etc can't handle you not being a toxic shithead of a man, you should push back. Is that not part of being a man? IMO that's part of being a good human. A space that makes jokes and mockery of women is not a safe space for good men. To be clear, I'm not talking about being a shithead here. These men I'm referring to are the good ones. The ones you'd see on liberal college campuses. They are progressive, but progressive for a man. They still perform masculinity nearly constantly, and drop only the most convenient and easy to digest hints of progressiveness when needed. They might, say, talk about how poorly show X has aged. They won't talk about their feelings, their depression, their desire for a fresh self expression, etc. > Well, young men have decided what they want to do is follow andrew tate, and ghouls like the "Fit and fresh" podcast on twitch, which spends hours every day espousing hatred towards all women. Once again, I agree, but these are not the men I'm referring to. > Why are young men so absurdly hung up on sex? Why is not getting laid in high school a psyche breaking experience for men? I can answer this one: it's because heterosexual men's self identity relies on sexual prowess. From a young age, boys are told they are sexual deviants. They can hardly exist around girls without overly-sexualized connotation from adults. Sexual behavior is not just excused, it's expected. A successful man is one who has the ability to get sex. Look at any media, and I really mean any. Who has the most power? Who has the most money? Who has the most confidence? Is it the man who has sex, or the virgin loser? This reinforces the message that without their sexuality, men are nothing. They will be lonely, poor, with no future. People sometimes miss this key part of sexual objectification. When we make women sex objects, we make men oglers and sex-doers. Sex is often perceived as something men DO to women - not something two people engage in together. It's both subtly, and blatantly, reinforced in movies, TV, and music. The most successful rappers brag about their women. The most successful men have trophies. The most loser men in movies are ugly and awkward. For these men, a loss of sex translates to a loss of life. They have no future. Of course it's all perception, and their perspective is incorrect. But we need to understand WHY they have this perception if we want to deconstruct it and remove it.