I know that I am not interested in those kinds of spaces. I do not know if this is genetic/nature or cultural/nurture. Either way, I have zero interest in creating or participating in such spaces. I don't know of any man in my family, friend, coworker, or acquaintance circles who would be interested either.
But, I keep seeing these messages that there is something wrong with me for not wanting to create or participate in these types of things.
Men (I am a men) have sought out places to discuss feelings, feelings of apathy or tiredness, feelings of the expectations of society.
These places are called pubs, social clubs and I believe it's the basis of some "lodges" (as parodied in the stonecutters episode of the Simpsons).
These places would likely not exist if it wasn’t for this need.
And I like to just point out that implying that it's just him is both humiliating and toxic.
However not having someone to help you through a tough patch, and allow you to express emotions other than dirty laughs and anger is quite debilitating in my experience
I don't think that the suggestion is that we gather formally in a circle and discuss our feelings. Or indeed act like stereo typical teenage girls where we gossip about other people behind their backs in a high pitched voice.
Just having one person to say: "This is hard, I don't feel like I can do this" and not have to brace for "AHAHAAAA WANKER" in reply, might be be of help to a lot of men.
It's similar to how some people react to homosexuality as if it reflects on them. "What, there are people who are attracted to the same gender?! WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME!?!"
There are men who do like such spaces for men, but I've also seen how they can be challenging to maintain. There are a lot of feelings that come up for men, and a lot of toxic thought patterns and habits, as well as patterns that can come up around shaming others who may not feel the same way as the group.
I find also that directly talking can be useful and powerful, but so can community building alongside talking, such as participating in a shared activity- building, gaming, etc.
There's a need for both, and most of all, for men to feel valued just for being alive, not for any deed they perform or value they bring to others, just their intrinsic value.
That being said, there are times I want to really dig deep on a specific thing that is troubling me and I usually just rely on a small cadre of confidants when that happens. And, stereotypically enough, those confidants are all men and we end up "working the problem" rather quickly after the initial exchange of describing how I feel. This, I'm told, is the exact opposite of how you're supposed to listen to someone's problems.
However I know that my personal preference is not universal and doing the 'listen and refrain from offering suggestions' approach is much more comforting for most people.
That's because they don't talk about it with you, because you're not interested. It's kind of like if you know any black or gay people or women, they've probably never told you of prejudice they've experienced. It's not an easy subject to broach. But, 100% chance, they have experienced it.
It's not the focus, but having that "space" to vent and to talk honestly with other folks going through the same sorts of things is a benefit to all of us.
I think a lot of this is just friendship. Societally, men are reporting having fewer and fewer people in their lives to talk over important issues with [1] which definitely seems like a problem.
Not harmful, but clueless nonetheless. To their credit, they tried to be either supportive or to avoid the subject, so it was at least a relief in that sense.
I chose to seek a professional therapist instead (which helped significantly after a few months)
I didn't see a single sentence in the article-- explicit or implicit-- that made me think the author would find something wrong with someone who doesn't feel the need to utilize such a space.
In fact I'm having a hard time figuring out what could have prompted you to write that sentence.
Digression-- for some reason it reminds me of a friend of mine who said when they moved into an apartment the landlord who was insistent about never putting noodles down the drain of the sink. My friend agreed he would never do that. Then one day when there was a leak in the kitchen sink he called the landlord, who immediately yelled back, "You didn't put any noodles down there, did you?" He assured the landlord that indeed, he had not put any noodles down the drain to cause the leak.
Anyway, I never found out what exactly happened with noodles and drains to cause his landlord to start any and all conversations with that directive. (It was an apartment complex near a university, so the equation most likely involves ramen plus a group of drunk college students.)
Much like having a footpump in the garage - you might not need it this day, or even this year. Some people will get through life without ever needing a pump. But if you need to inflate a tyre? You'll be glad to have it. And almost anyone can get a flat tyre.
What's wrong is that, if you are male and you do want/need to talk about your feelings, there's no place where you can do it. That's not a problem for you, but for some males, it is.
do you wanna talk about it?
The truth is that the majority of males in nature and in society, on average, has a worse lives because the dynamic of being a male causes a feast for a few and a famine for most.
Genetics gambles more with males than females because males can produce, rarely, a very large genetic return that females can't. This is easily explained by the rate limit of children for females but not for males.
This shows up in intelligence, strength, genetic disorders, etc. Male genetics are just more varied.
The average of mens lives, by rule, will therefore be worse for most and great for a few.
I know this is a sensitive subject but it would be nice to have a real conversation about it.
There's a lot of evidence that males are, on average, the more miserable of the sexes but their misery is ugly and ignored. They die sooner by suicide and drug overdose. They have less friends, and are more depressed. There's a lot of reasons for this but I believe genetics is at the core.
Society could help here by recognizing this and trying to push against it - promoting a more social man, for example. But the predisposition is here to stay.
Individually, I'd say being more compassionate and outgoing to those creepy/ugly/weird males is something we all should think to do. Society seems to give us a pass at being not nice to these guys. I certainly don't think it's right though I admit guilt at times here.
I do believe that it's much worse to be a below-average man than it is to be a below-average women, simply because people are usually more supportive of women. If you're a woman who isn't particularly smart, attractive, or talented, you still have the support of other women (who are usually more friendly) and men (who want to be your boyfriend/husband and take care of you). If you're a below-average man, nobody supports you - women just aren't interested (and you would be expected to take care of them anyways), and other men aren't interested because men are usually less friendly.
I don't think any of the above is very controversial either. In fact most people realize there's an issue with many many miserable men. The main controversy is how to fix this issue. Some lonely / ugly / socially-awkward men are really aggressive and dangerous towards women, and it's hard to tell which ones.
I absolutely agree with you that it would really help if men are less cold around other strange men and try to talk / learn about them. In fact there's not much reason not to be friendly towards other men, or to be scared of them. Unlike with women, a strange man can't necessarily overpower you, and he's unlikely to be creepy towards you, his interest is more likely to be genuine. The main issue IMO is that lots of men just don't care much about talking with strangers, and can't really tell when someone needs human interaction.
I get what you mean here, but when I was a kid, I was friends with everybody. It never occurred to me to not be, until I found out that, especially as an adolescent, you're judged by the company you keep (by both boys and girls). If you're friends with a bunch of "losers", you're a loser too. That's a stigma you can't escape, either. I learned in my teens to be way more aloof than I'm naturally inclined to be as a survival tactic.
There's less teenage drama as you get older but in reality it doesn't completely go away: there are still people (especially women) who will avoid you if your associate circle is too unimpressive.
While not the target audience the group comprised mostly young 20-30 yo men, who were searching for their place in life. Bluntly generalizing their problems revolved around insecurity and not finding a partner. Actually most of them dropped out after eventually finding somebody.
Surprisingly (to me), another major issue that was discussed was problems with parents. This expressed in different ways, but was mostly "why don't you have a job/wife/family/house/etc yet?".
[1] "We are not a support group!" [2] Surprise ... I am not :-)
That's cool, that's cool. You believe what you want.
Question to anyone reading this: What (if there is any) does the research say?
I say "umbrella" because the various researchers who advocate for the hypothesis tend to play fast and loose with which traits, exactly, are under consideration. Research shows that technical traits don't vary between natal genders? Move on to the next!
About that particular piece of research, the wiki article states (I don't know where to confirm it) "However, in the analysis the datasets from universities were discarded as they were considered possibly biased and insufficient. Instead only data from schools was used for the analysis."
This unfortunately is quite a political topic and, as such, research here can be politically motivated (for and against) so it is tough to break through the noise.
I don't understand how this follows. If we accept for the sake of argument that men are more varied, then shouldn't that result in more men doing exceptionally badly or exceptionally well, but men and women doing the same on average? If the idea is that life is a winner-take-all game and everyone but the most intelligent/conscientious/charismatic loses, then that would mean that even more women than men would lose out, because they're supposedly more likely to be average than exceptional. It could be that men are playing a winner-take-all game and women aren't, but I don't understand how that corresponds with our present reality. It's true that men are capable of impregnating a lot of women at once, and that might have affected the evolutionary development of male psychology -- but in Western societies today most relationships are monogamous. So when we're talking about the happiness of present-day males, I don't understand how it would be the outcome of a winner-take-all game.
Society cannot see anything, it's just an abstraction. Let's not confuse government propaganda with reality. The only people who might are 20 yo virgins with a major in STEM. Who should do themselves a favor and internalize all heartiste had to say before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29236676 catches up with them.
We could blame estrogen and other sex hormones for making women prioritizing social behavior over other things, but my bet would be on culture. When genetics and environment meet, it is generally differences in environment that create large changes in behavior.
Looking back at the cultural outcome of world war 1 and world war 2, boys were molded to exist in their family until the age of 18. Then they were drafted into the service of the state, and if several years later they survived, form their own family and social life. Girls in contrast could keep their connection with their family, and thus was also expected to do that. This is the historical base for which our current culture is formed from, and while most military drafts are gone the culture has remained to some degree. Boys are still expected to "leave the nest" at early age, and girls are still expected to keep the social connections.
If culture expects women to be social and men to earn money and be independent, it doesn't seem strange that on average women will also be more social and men be more focused on earning money and be independent.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050323124659.h... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anything-boys-can...
It seems that variability does vary amongst some phenotypes (height, for instance), but there is an equal amount of variability that shows females having it higher in other phenotypes.
However, I think "traditional masculinity" is mostly positive. Men are taught to deal with their problems on a personal level, suck it up, not blame external factors, and so on. Being tough is a good thing. No man is an island, but everyone (man and woman) should strive to be a promontory. Blaming society or culture or your parents or the world or God is usually not useful, even if it's true.
For these reasons, I find it a little disturbing when people start talking about "support systems for men" or when men are pushed to "be vulnerable and talk about our feelings". We have to thread a needle here: we should help people who cannot make it on their own but we also need to acculturate people to take responsibility for their lives, for their choices, for mistakes and failures. It's very hard to help people who struggle without making them weaker. One way it may be possible is for parents (and society) to be hard on kids while they're young but gradually ease up on them as they age. Being tough on a 5 year old is likely to help him. Being tough on a 30 year old who has mostly finished developing may just be cruel.
But I'm not sure how many men the above paragraph actually applies to. When you live online, it's easy to forget how, uh, primal the world can be for so many guys. I know people with good reasons to be happy, but due to some emasculating hangup (domineering father, absent father, bad dating history, height, etc), they view life through such a paranoid lens, seeing every interaction as some sort of competition. To them, letting one's guard down, stepping away from these masculine expectations, and being open about their fears still presents a legitimate challenge with legitimate reward.
This discourse seems tired because the demographic that needs it the least engages with it the most.
The problem is that traditional masculinity isn't traditional. I suspect that most people think of it as stoical silence. But I don't think thats universal.
Reading brideshead revisited(1945), the whole thing is stuffed with what one might would call "overly emotional men" but that same generation is marked as the "greatest" in the UK.
I really don't think its helpful to anyone to basically say: "here kid, you're on your own, if you can't solve it, we just keep quiet" Sure, discipline is key, but thats not the same as emotional repression. Its perfectly possible to be honest about your emotional state to someone, be stoic, self reliant and disciplined.
I think the big problem is that people think that masculinity is about repression of everything apart from getting sex and money. Any deviation is treated as weakness.
On the flip side, a woman with ambition, drive and leadership is treated like an anathema. Just as a man who cries in public.
The coin flips both ways and I can't find an argument for it being useful to wider society
Is a novel, not a documentary.
Completely agree about threading the needle. When I was young, men never talked about feelings. I grew up competent and successful, but also drank heavily to deal with anxiety. I didn't even know what anxiety was, that stuff just wasn't talked about when I was young. I agree though we can go too far and coddle people. This stuff is hard!
The goal is not to be immune to stress and trauma. That’s not really a thing. The goal is to be able to deal effectively with adversity and overcome it. Part of being able to do that is acknowledging that you’re not a robot and employing appropriate strategies. Discussing these things with people that share common ground with you is an effective release mechanism. Releasing pressure during downtime enables mental toughness and self reliance in critical moments.
My experience is that, yes, toughness is abrogated by "talking with others about your internal experience". Internal experience is subjective. No one but artists can really share it and when we try, we mostly just whine.
> The goal is not to be immune to stress and trauma. That’s not really a thing. The goal is to be able to deal effectively with adversity and overcome it. Part of being able to do that is acknowledging that you’re not a robot and employing appropriate strategies. Discussing these things with people that share common ground with you is an effective release mechanism. Releasing pressure during downtime enables mental toughness and self reliance in critical moments.
No one is immune to anything. Being tough is a huge advantage and the way you make people tough is by being hard on them. "Being hard on" is not abuse. There's room for compassion and love. But, today, as far as my experience goes, we're too far on the coddling side of things.
As I tried to counsel him a bit to help him down from the worry ladder, I thought to myself how scary it is that even despite our current point in history, divorce has rarely if ever worked well for men, and most of what I say to console him is likely meaningless comfort.
With all the problems in the world, worry is what kills the most of us. I manage it by only focusing on what I can control and by staying out of the spotlight of scrutiny and shame as a man myself. It's probably also the reason why I've chosen to not get married unfortunately as well to this day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/67xa50/why_does_cu...
I've understood early that feminism was not about women but about gender perception.
I also can't help myself but point out that it is very bad to extrapolate from a sample of outliers.
There might be some lessons to learn from the experience of a few transgender men, but I'm not sure they speak towards the experience of cis gendered men or women, they most likely speak more towards the experience of transgender men.
Try framing it like this: foreign correspondents. They are from your culture and are able to describe the nub of what its like to be in country x and watch them do something foreign to you.
because they have experienced both things first hand they are able to describe vividly and concisely the differences and attempt to find a cause.
I don't think that's exactly what's happening here.
As an analogy, look at twin studies: they're undeniably based on "a sample of outliers" in a sense, yet they're also key tools in many sciences because the outlier-ness of the participants isn't [directly related to] what's being measured. Rather, it's an external factor that allows the experimenter to control for other factors that might otherwise be difficult or impossible to account for.
The accounts mentioned in this article are far from an objective result. Yet, who better to understand the differences between how men and women are treated in society than somebody who's existed as both? Assuming they "passed" before and after their transitions (a fair assumption IMO), they offer a unique and highly relevant perspective.
With all the modern political strife around these issues, which includes a lot of misinformation and misrepresentation, I think it's easy to draw certain lines between "trans" and "cis" people that may not have much basis in reality. I'm not trans, but it's my understanding that for many trans people "trans" isn't an identity in principle or practice. Rather, they are—for all useful intents and purposes—representative "members" of the genders they identify with.
That hits close. That's how I have felt my entire life, and when I expressed anything else as a child I got "be a man". Now that I'm a an adult about to early retire, I'm thankful for that capacity to bear down and focus, but given my gout I wonder at what cost.
…Welcome to earth little man, it’s only going to get worse from here.
It's sad that these barbaric practices are still tolerated, but it's not exclusively a male problem.
I recognise that my thought process that leads me to conclude that probably falls into the category of "toxic masculinity", but my issues are my own, and, regardless of whether or not I am in a "space" that allows for me to share my feelings, I personally feel that offloading your issues onto people who aren't trained professionals is selfish and can be harmful.
From my perspective, what men need is to be able to destigmatize seeking professional help for mental issues.
And I'll admit that it may be a case of I'm not understanding the details of what the original article was meaning, but I read it as "support networks" etc.
I don't want to get together with people, regardless of if they are strangers or friends/family and talk about my problems. Realistically what can they do? More often than not in those spaces it is a lot of listening and empathising. If that makes a person feel better, then I'm all for that. But for me, it comes across as performative caring to make others feel good about "helping" and isn't actually addressing what my issues are or why they make me feel a certain way.
I will say, all of the above is based upon my own experiences and how I feel, and isn't intended as a sweeping claim. I want everyone who has mental health issues to have access to the help they need, and if someone needs the kind of help that involves listening and empathising then they should absolutely have access to that. I'm just not sure based upon my own experience (and the experiences of other men), that a lot of men want the same kind of mental health support that is available to women.
A few weeks ago I wrote that I have British roots and I got flooded with matches.
Not sure of the algorithm was showing my profile more or just girls are racist towards some nations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
This is the biggest barrier to getting men's issue into the broader public discourse. It is frustratingly difficult to gain any traction and form communities for men's issues because men's rights appropriating misogynists use them as lightning rods organize and "legitimize" their crude hatred of women. Feminism has the same problem but managed to reach critical mass in large part by leveraging academia as a way to organize, raise the quality of the discourse and distribute it. It's fundamentally an education and exclusion problem. You need the history and literature to be taught and known by a large body of people so the movement can identify and shake off the nutjobs.
Support communities for men probably attract men who are disillusioned with women, in the same way support communities for women are likely to attract women who are disillusioned with men. Is it any surprise the conversation is going to drift at some point to less-than-charitable over-generalizations about the other sex? (e.g. among sexual assault survivors)
I do think there is a point there though, because there is a subtle difference between an emotional overgeneralization made by a sympathetic victim (which is probably not a good idea to censor if you want to actually help these men), and more insidious misogyny. It doesn't help that the former is sometimes purposefully mischaracterized as the latter by opponents of men's issues, however.
But supposing that your message is not vile and hateful, the trick is to ignore the lies that people spread about you and speak the reasonable truth until you build a core audience. (Having fuck you money helps.) You will be labelled as a nutjob and outcast, but who cares, if your message is getting out?
For those interested in a pro-mens issues space, I spend some time on r/menslib subreddit on Reddit [0]. It’s specifically focused on mens issues, but in a way that actively affirms specific movements like feminism, racial equality, and lgbtq progress.
Other than that one, I don't know of other such positive men's spaces.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007VJU7C4/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
I like his book "Better Never to Have Been"
Weirdly I guess it isn't about the space or the place. For me it is about listening, showing interest, talking a little less, not judging, and not avoiding awkwardness with jokes.
It is easy to make these spaces, you don't even need to find a space. Just listen.
We do, we just don't put labels on it, it's informal, usually unscheduled and happens in various context and settings. You're out doing X and topic Y comes up. I personally don't like the topic of safe-spaces because no space is truly safe when you discuss actual dark or contrarian thoughts.
I've always tried to be reliable and here for people around me, but had a very hard time talking about my problems. I thought that in a way I was doing a favor to these people by "giving" and not "taking". It turns out that it wasn't true, and that you need a level of reciprocity for a healthy relationship. These days I try to open more to my friends about my problems and struggles, and I feel better thanks to that.
I'm not sure I have useful advice on how to meet new people though. This is a part I'll try to explore a bit more in the coming years.
maybe the vr metaverse will be useful after all?
Having strict gender definitions isn’t good for anyone. I’m looking forward to people getting to be people, both emotionally supported and taken seriously at work.
NOTE: I'm not looking for troll comments in replies (or for folks to try and rope me into some toxic anti-something culture/group). I understand this is a sticky subject, so please take the most-positive interpretation of my words below, as I am not a good writer or speaker.
When I recently discovered, at mid-life, that I could have been a stay at home dad, I was amazed that I went through my whole life striving for a career when all I really want is to take care of my home and kids, and have someone else make the money and do the career stuff. It never even occurred to me that I could choose to do the "woman's work" as a full-time homemaker, and find a partner that had a career. Now, I am stuck being the career person for at least another 5 or 10 years (while my wife tries to build a career, which she prefers over home-making) and I have to go through daily crap that I hate, rather than spending all my time with my son and maybe other kids I could have had. I'm just lucky my wife enjoys working and wants to build a career to support our family.
When I got married, my wife didn't want to change her name (for various reasons that are extremely valid) and I didn't mind that. However, I wanted to have the same name as my possible future kids because it's hard to do things like pick them up after school. So, I changed my name to my wife's last name. Lucky for me, the state that I resided in and the state that I was married in were both of the 9 out of 50 (at the time, not sure today) which allowed a man to take the last name of his wife when married (again, I am not sure about same-sex marriages so I can't comment). If not, I would have had to spend thousands and months of my time to change my name. Interestingly, I also had several people comment straight to my face (or behind my back, which I heard about) that me changing my name wasn't what a man did, it wasn't manly, etc.
The biggest issue: I also have trouble finding my own spaces where I can be supported, not even just with other men. Sure, traditionally men gathered in pubs or lodges and they could talk about men's issues, and perhaps those still exist today. However, there is no club or place for a guy like me, who is not into sports or anything, and where I would rather talk about my problems and how to solve them without blaming women, getting crass about sex and women's bodies, or talking about the things I enjoy. Sure, I can go to a game store and talk to folks about my hobbies, or I can discuss things here on HN about tech, but that's not my everyday life. Also, I found that after 10 years with various "professionals", that a therapist is NOT a replacement for friends and an open environment. I want to discuss my issues with stress and anxiety, I want to discuss my marriage issues, and I want to talk about my hobbies with men who won't tell me to divorce my wife, get a girlfriend on the side, or tell me to "suck it up". I basically want to be accepted much like women seem to accept each other, and will just listen to each other even if they don't understand or don't care about some topic. I have tried to make friends with women in groups, but they are always thinking I have ulterior motives, and I don't disagree with their pattern-matching in that area because many men do have ulterior motives for befriending women. When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was go into the dorm room next door with the 3 women who lived there, and I would sit and talk to them about various topics, I don't even remember what. I never thought about sex or relationships with them, I just enjoyed time with them as friends. After a while, other men in the dorms would tell me I should stop hanging out with them, because I would turn into a woman, or they would say "so and so is such a BITCH, why are you in there all the time? are you fucking them?" In any case, I stopped going in there, through social pressure, and to this day I regret caving to that pressure.
Anyways, this was just on my lunch break, so I have to go work, but I have this empty hole inside myself that needs a social connection where I can talk and not be judged, and where I also don't get that toxic social negativity about blaming some other group for my problems. Women, feminists, liberals, etc. are all blamed for the problems I face, but I don't see anything in their platforms that say, "We're out to get 'ok_dad' and everyone should make his life harder in subtle ways". I just want to be me, and be accepted for it, and for people not to ascribe my anger/stress/anxiety as some nebulous factor of my personality only due to being a man or being some ethnicity or class or whatever.
AGAIN: I do not want to get into a fight over this, here on HN or anywhere else, so please don't try to pivot my words into hating some other group or try to blame my ills on another group or person; my problems are my own and the ones that are structural in society are due to the weird things that happen when different groups interact, not because some group is trying to make my life, or men's lives, harder.
