Having read your story, I think you’ll actually love what bell hooks has to say, here. When I said patriarchy affects men and women in different ways, your story is exactly what I mean. Patriarchy puts men into very narrow boxes of what is deemed “acceptable,” and destroys what is outside that boundary. Women are impacted more by patriarchy than men are, but The will to change is a call to action to liberate both women and men from its shackles. It’s a deeply empathetic work that touches on stories very similar to yours, not a condescending authority piece. hooks writes with a deep love and a desire for herself to grow as well, frequently she speaks of her own mistakes and negative feelings towards men such as her father, and how she came to forgive and love him.

Trust me, you’ll love this book by the sounds of it.

I liked it a lot! I know people talk about the patriarchy a lot, and thus a lot of what it puts forward isn’t “new,” but the depth hooks goes in on the various facets of patriarchy specifically really helps a lot.

I support mens health.

Ive a million stories of hurt men who didnt deal or heal well with their hurt, and ended up hurting others (and themselves) for it. Usually its some tragic thing that happened when they were young and never dealt with it, because culturally men have been told to shove it down and man up for decades at least. But, I’ve been told many a tragedy from male family members, friends and ex lovers. And then watched them go from victim to abuser, or some other consequence, and its sad

Men should be taught, and allowed to express themselves. Its literally okay to cry, its a process of emotion.

Support fellow humans

Appreciate the key points!

hooks suggests that men need to develop a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of masculinity, one that values emotions, relationships, and mutual respect.

Yep, written by a woman. Replace that with “value traversing rivers on couches strapped to floats and having a blast with the pals” and you’ll get somewhere.

Valuing something already is an emotion so you’re being emotional about being emotional about something so, yeah, no. Go climb a tree, create a tasty recipe, fix a shoe. Shave the soap.

Are you under the impression I’m conveying there is no problem?

“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.

The problem with the term “toxic masculinity” is what exactly can we describe as “positive” masculinity? Is masculinity only toxic, or are there positive things that aren’t feminine?

Appreciate the support! <3

I mean everyone gets allergic from time to time but a thoughtful person will see this and adjust.

I guess It’s hard for people to feel empathy towards those who they identify as the culprits of their suffering. And since, as humans, we have trouble separating the blame of individuals with the blame of the tribes they belong to… yeah, some people consider men the problem with an occasional “but not you/him” just like some other people consider feminism/sts the problem with an occasional “but not this part/these ones”.

I think hit the nail on the head, though. It’s important for all of us to remind ourselves compassion and empathy regularly, even when difficult, because as many gender theorists and feminists have taught us, some people don’t adhere to social norm or convention. Understanding this is understanding that blaming a full demographic for anything is not only unfair and lazy, it also leads to the very worst in all of us.

Have a great day and stay awesome!

Heh. I actually hope you’re right. I don’t even believe in utopias anymore.

Wow yikes. You sound like fun at parties. Go find someone to care about.

For the record, I think there is a loneliness epidemic for both genders.

> capitalism
> self-inflicted

Sure, bud.

It is telling that you took, “stop blaming women for everything” personally to the point that you decided to insult them.

Do some self-criticism.

You’re presumably middle aged, and you’re married with a family. You’re not the person the meme is targeting. Way to ignore the first 3 panels.

Should we also show “empathy” to Klansmen who joined up because they claim to feel disenfranchised by society? Give them a pat on the back? No, we tell them why their belief system is backwards and help them turn away from it.

Your idea of empathy is why the Andrew Tates of this world can thrive. Worthless sentimentality and obsession with civility rather than seriously challenging toxic ideology. It’s the liberal way.

You are the clown in the meme.

This was a pivotal video about “nice guys” I watched growing up that imo everyone should watch.

Favorite line:

This is not a transaction where you walk up to the cashier and pull out your nice bucks and buy sex and romance.

Honestly, this argument comes across to me as a horrible mangling of different pop-sci concepts to construct a victimology. There’s good evidence of the mechanism by which stress and trauma induce epigenetic changes in organisms. (Selective methylization regulating expression of genes.) There’s some evidence of epigenetic changes due to physiological trauma passed down through germ cells. But it’s a huge leap to ascribe mtDNA damage to psychological experiences.

The mitochondria have a degenerate genome, a tiny amount of DNA with (looking it up) 37 genes to support the processing of energy into ATP to power the cell. It is susceptible to epigenetic changes, which leads pretty directly to a number of metabolic disorders, but I can’t find any evidence that those changes result from life experiences of an animal. The idea that mtDNA has accumulated generations of damage from sexist trauma beggars logic, too, because there’s just not a lot of room to collect damage, and that damage leads to health problems fairly directly. If one got every cell of life from one’s mother, in turn, she got it from her mother, and so on all the way back to the first eukaryotic life. All of those generations of trauma, how are we even still living?

Furthermore, the assertion that “men created the patriarchy” ignores actual history and context. One simply cannot ascribe a singular intent to a class comprising billions of individuals across time and space. At best, one could describe patriarchy as an emergent phenomena of societies and cultures. About half of the individuals in those societies and cultures were women, so you’d have to conclude that women helped create patriarchy, unless you deny their agency or intelligence.

Puh what a rant.

I actually just want to correct you on one thing and I am also Not sure what you really meant.

But we dont get 100% of our cells from our mothers. We get the mitochondria from our mothers. The cells that enclose those mitochondria are perfectly 50/50 after fertilisation.

deleted by creator

A woman is absolutely a threat to another human. Any animal that size is. That you think women are harmlessly is ironically, misogyny.

Yes all people are potentially dangerous.

But the biomechanics in adults are very different and need to be recognised. Statistically the physical intimidation is mostly one way when you account for sexual dimorphism in height, weight, reach, muscle mass etc. There are always exceptions but women live in a very different threat environment. That isn’t misogyny.

If people tend to hate what they fear and mysogyny is literally hatred of women like what the fuck? Perhaps some men are terrified of emotional harm. I can understand that but perhaps they would be better off with some therapy or a bit of self awareness.

This is a perfect description of the male and female meta. It is why males are stronger. Not to protect or lead, but to control through fear and violence.

It’s a priviledge men developed a higher sensitivity to oxytocin to compensate for a lower expression of the stuff. Enabling men to give a damn about someone other than their desire to dominate. Men can love their partner, their family, friends, their pets because of this.

Chimps ain’t that lucky, and males would rather watch an orphan die from neglect (and eat it) than take care of it. The males are known to kill females for showing assertive behaviour.

Same goes for prolactin in the brain, that makes humans more monogamous and increases a desire to protect something you care about. It never was a male feature before, but it became one in humans. It even peaks after the baby is born and the father is exposed to seeing his baby. Over time, similar adaptations to the brains of pregnant women, are seen in father’s brains. Which is amazing.

Men ain’t that bad, but old habits die hard. Men are more aggressive, stronger, more impulsive and less afraid of consequences on average compared to women. Those who were better at avoiding male aggression, lived longer. Hence why estrogens play a role in stimulating brain development in areas essential to risk assesment, consequence sensitivity, resistance to suicide, thinking ahead, planning, reading emotions (of themselves and others), learning and memory, reducing own aggression, communication and impulse control. Giving women an edge in academical performance despite there not being a statistical difference in intelligence. (Imagine if men had these boons instead…)

While all those obvious “big scary male” traits in men makes them seem like a bigger threat, women are well equipped and know how to dominate and eliminate people indirectly.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

https://youtu.be/NNnIGh9g6fA

Please take the time to listen to this lecture. It will genuinely help you and it’s very entertaining imo.

Testosterone causes enforcement, not aggression or dominance of women. Enforcement. Sapolsky did a famous study on baboons about this, amd we also have a human example - Buddhist monks who go around “enforcing” peace by chanting and praying etc.

Men hate women because they believe they should, they abuse women because they give themselves permission to do so. No other reason. Anything else is an excuse and justification for it. Read “Why Does He Do That?” By Lundy or “Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist” to learn more.

Bigotry is a product of narcissism, which is based in delusional beliefs. A narcissist may never get better. A racial narcissist example is a white supremacist (“my race is best”), which is obviously delusional, which causes narcissistic supply every time they confront it and refuse to let the delusion be corrected. They then will act out, eg say racist slurs, to enforce their racial narcissism on others to satisfy their brain chemistry (it’s deeply uncomfortable to resist unlearning delusional beliefs when faced with evidence, so they satisfy the histamine with adrenaline rushes included by being antisocial).

As a fat highschooler, ehen, as a fat woman highschooler, i got rejected so many times. Never once did it make me hate and distrust men. Because every person is their own.

Andrew Tate is so successful because there already existed the conditions to radicalise young people for quite some time.

Cult leaders or radical leaders don’t have a platform if everyone is just fine. No-one in a healthy environment wakes up in the morning and decides “let’s start some hateful shit, because it’s just so much fun!”

That attitude existed before Tate came onto the scene. Try again.

You can keep digging the trenches if you want. Why do you want to alienate people for the sake of it?

Not as laughable as the assumption that “needing a large gender affirming car” was the actual reason someone bought a car, without knowing anything about them except that they’re male. Maybe that proves psychic powers are real too!

need a large gender affirming car

???

This is a projection of your own brainrot sexism, nothing more.

Don’t try to make it sound like you ever mocked a woman for having a large car, either, you’re not fooling anyone with “people”, lol.

A better example for a straw man argument would be OPs picture, as it essentially proclaims “all lonely males are just shit people and it’s their fault!”.

Anybody can create a meme, but too many people get too much of their “information” from them.

I have always found that being good at it is a very good way to be invited back. It’s the least gay thing that you can do.