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This quote by TheReturnOfPEP@reddthat.com is a good thing to keep in mind. I’m not going to lock it because it genuinely seems to be helping some people. I’m getting reports though, so remember to be excellent to each other please.
this comment section is a memorial of injured experiences.
tread carefully.
I think the username ends peb not pep
Also you might want to pin your comment to put it at the top
It is at the top for my instance, it doesn’t work on some clients though. Thanks, I’ll fix his name.
Right :) top is variable by user settings, is it pinned and my client just doesn’t respect pins?
That’s what I’ve heard. It probably respects it if you were a sh.itjust.works instance member, but not if you’re not? That’s from people talking about it last time this came up.
Mine is set to sort oldest first and it comes up top for me, though I don’t see any other indication that it’s pinned… It being there is most important though…
I don’t know what to tell you, the mod tools for Lemmy are pretty minor. All I can do as speak as moderator and then it goes to the top for my instance and I think fellow instance members. All bets are off for other users. There’s no way to actually sticky or pin anything to top that I’m aware of other than to speak as moderator as a top comment.
I also see this pinned on my instance.
Also just an fyi that my instance and app display it as pinned (slrpnk and connect). Also my default is to sort by top.
Idk what it means, just figured I’d also chime in with some extra data lol
FYI, I see it pinned as a top comment even from my instance
It’s ok to cry about sad life experiences… But not about xitter.
I have been dumped for not expressing emotion, and crying, due to tragic things happening.
When they ask about express more emotions they mean positive emotions about them. So don’t be bother by it. If you express the “wrong” emotions you will be dumped too.
No, they were put off because I didn’t cry over the situation, or really demonstration and strong signs of despair.
I like to have a cry every so often, like if I’m starting to feel overwhelmed easy and constantly, I’ll go watch one my insta cry shows or movies.
One that works really well and lets me cry but over a more uplifting way mostly, is Ricky Gervais show Derek, I ugly cry so damn much in that show and afterwards I come out feeling great.
I used to hide it, but now I’ll tell anyone, I don’t care anymore, I’m nice, I’m caring and helpful, I’m a good person who uses crying as a form of self therapy, you’re the negative one belittling me over a childish viewpoint that makes you feel uneasy because you lack the ability to actually express your emotions, so others shouldn’t either.
I went through the worst depression of my life around 2017, tried to express these feelings to my gf at the time and explain why our romance was failing or why I spent half the day in bed.
Basically got told “poor you”, everyone has struggles, snap out of it and be a man. That definitely helped, and didn’t push me even deeper into feelings of worthlessness…
I’m doing ok now, but it was the first time I felt comfortable enough with someone to express those emotions, I was at my wits end. The response was eye opening, never again.
Instead of saying to yourself “never again”, how about “never again with someone who will betray my vulnerability”? Because what happened to you sounds really horrible, but there are people out there who will be with you in your struggles and nurture and build you up in your vulnerable moments.
As a man someone who also struggles with vulnerability, there are ways to test the waters in a relationship (family, friend, partner, etc) when it comes to vulnerability so that you won’t be hurt like that again. I actually watched this video recently and found it really helpful: https://youtu.be/WyKFHd7cSaU?si=J8zSMvZt_7WouQb7
Of course, none of this is easy, but it can be life-changing to open up to someone and feel cared for. I’m glad you’re doing better, and I wish you the best.
I’ve been in a relationship with my partner for 12 years now and I am lucky that I found someone that was supporting of my issues since pretty much day one.
In the last year, after many years of therapy, I was able to finally be totally vulnerable to my partner even if she always was supportive, not holding anything back, and it was liberating and almost addictive for a while.
The feeling is indescribable and one of the best feeling of my life.
A given group of people are not a monolith. While we do share a lot of similarities, we also all have the potential to be a little different from one another.
I hope you get a chance to find someone that will allow you to be open like that again. Sharing those emotions and having someone their to empathetically receive them is one of the most gratifying things as a human.
Im sorry that happened, but never again what?
Like, “never again open up about a huge important part of my life to”
a) anyone, or b) someone you don’t know too long
Because only a) is healthy. I don’t think trying to mask your depression can work in a serious relationship.
Wore nail polish at work this week, because I’m a bloke in his 40s who works in an office so fuck it, why not.
Our HR manager - a man in his 50s who fairly recently sent out an email reminding us to talk about our feelings to help our mental health - asked me (half jokingly) if I was “going through some life changes”
I will be when I find a better company to work for.
If you’re so sensitive to comments about your appearance, then maybe you should question why you made the change to begin with?
Sounds like a harmless interaction, and your reaction makes you sound more offended than reasonable. But maybe i’m missing some subtleties lost in translation to text. Perhaps you did it cause you don’t like your job and wanted the reinforcement?
Dude, be kinder and don’t start fights.
The guy insinuated some pretty mean things about his colleague. But thats okay, since his colleague doesn’t read lemmy?
You sound like an asshole. And if you take offense to this comment you probably shouldn’t put your opinion out on the internet because clearly you’re too much of a sensitive snowflake.
To give benefit of the doubt, the polite and kind way to disagree with that person’s assessment of the situation, without shitting on them as a human being, may be found here: https://lemmy.world/comment/14298370
Please don’t call people assholes, please report it and I’ll remove it as soon as I can. Thanks.
No offense taken. Trying to bring some sanity is all. I still haven’t received an honest answer to the question, so i guess it struck a bit to close to home.
I’ll once again give you the benefit of the doubt: the entire first paragraph was me deliberately mirroring you as well as I could in an attempt to make it clear why you’re getting downvoted to hell. Apparently you’re immune.
Did you though? You called me an asshole for asking a pretty non-judgemental, open ended question about the headspace of the person in question. I wrote nothing in there that i wouldn’t say to their face if they said what they said in the comment. You talk to me in a demeaning manor, which i didn’t do.
To be fair, that could have been a genuine attempt to reach out to you. Coming in with painted nails when they’ve never seen you present yourself that way could be interpreted as you going through some life changes, and maybe you want to talk about them given an opportunity?
Who talks to hr out of their own volition anyway?
Toby apologists
It’s a small firm, so I know our HR manager pretty well. But yeah.
But also HR is never your friend. If he opens up it’s just a document in a file and if he gets fired it’s ammunition on why he wasn’t performing up to spec based on “life changes.”
Wrong
HR is always your enemy
:(
Nah, he knows me well enough to know what I’m about. And ultimately he doesn’t really care whether I do it or not, but he’s an ex-army man of a certain age, and me wearing nail polish doesn’t jive with his view of what’s ’normal’.
I decided to end a relationship and marriage, after being together for 13 years. For the first time in years I put myself first and realised that I needed to be out of the relationship. Coming out of this has been very difficult and I’ve been struggling with my mental health since.
I started dating again, and have had two horrible experiences where my feelings were just put aside and it really hurt. Both of which ended up with the relationship ending. It’s like I’m not allowed to have feelings or struggle. 😞
I lost my little brother last year and I would say I already wasn’t a very “manly” man before that but that put things into a new perspective. It was a horrible time but also one that showed me that I chose my friends and family very wisely.
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That’s not what that word means. “patriarchs” aren’t men in general, that’s why it’s possible (and in fast true) that the patriarchy harms people of all genders.
As this post demonstrate, men don’t benefit from it, e.g. it makes us live shorter, it encourages suppressing our emotion, it encourages our aggression. Because some (mostly) men in power benefit if we don’t unionize, let ourselves be pressed into shit jobs or the military, and so on.
Read the other messages here and you might understand.
Patriarchy isn’t “men bad”, it’s a social system that places men and women into predetermined, rigid boxes. This harms both men and women, since none of us are as rigid as the system demands us to be.
“Boys don’t wear pink”
“Girls play with dolls”
“Men don’t cry”
“Women who dress ‘that way’ deserve it”
All of those are patriarchy reinforcing statements. Again, this harmful belief that “men shouldn’t have feelings” and them then bring rejected by women due to opening up is, on a macro level, due to the patriarchy. On an individual level, they’re just people being assholes to their loved ones.
I honestly wish that a better word had been chosen than “patriarchy”. Because at first blush it does look like “men bad” in an environment in which there are people who are predisposed to dismiss it as such.
Particularly since the patriarchy harms everyone. It can smack of “you’re the enemy and it’s your fault you’re suffering” to the uninitiated. And bad faith actors are using that to misrepresent feminism and perpetuate the patriarchy.
That’s what “patriarchy” means; rule by men. If you mean something else, say something else.
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Yeah, if it’s not intended to be anti-men there’s plenty of other words that could be used. Patriarchy as a concept is as the other poster described, but weaponization of the term is a different layer from the term itself. There’s all sorts of mental gymnastics involved when you talk to people whose main patriarchy problem is their mother.
That having been said it’s important to remember that in terms of the overall bulk of humanity, men are significantly more externally violent and rapey than the general population of women by at least an order of magnitude. My gut feeling on the situation is that a lot of the sentiment in this thread is directly related to that outcome, but it’s still important to remember that on average if you put a woman and a man in a locked room, the woman is in far more danger.
Curiously, lesbian relationships show similar rates of domestic abuse to hetero relationships.
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So many people blaming “the patriarchy” for the terrible behaviour of women.
No, that doesn’t justify treating the men in your life as soulless servants.
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patriarchy is a social hierarchy system, not the set of all men. It harms women and men in distinct but very real ways
Thank you.
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is belittling to tell a victim
Good thing I’m not telling that to a victim then.
Claiming everyone is a victim of social hierarchy isn’t helpful
Analyzing cultural and systemic issues is good, actually.
It’s good, but not particularly helpful in 1 on 1 discussion where it’s more valuable to focus on the individual behaviors first.
Sure, and I wouldn’t be bringing up the same subject when consoling a friend who was just treated this way by their partner, or talking to a friend who just treated their partner this way. But the context here is the discussion section of a post of a screenshot of a post of a stranger recounting their experience. I’m not trying to help Silverwing Secundus; they’re not here in this thread. There’s a lot of discussion in this comment section about common experiences and gender relations. So it seems perfectly natural to bring up one of the most significant influences on the way people of opposite genders interact in our society.
Things everyone must learn themselves because patriarchy instills in them the opposite:
- Women are people
- Men are human
-Don’t tag yourself as PantsuInspector and then get mad that people don’t respect your opinion
A classic reddit moment, reading some very heartfelt words on the emotional journey of overcoming the loss of a loved one, you start typing a reply to thank… PantSniffer69
Meanwhile somewhere out in the world a poor lad born in '69 whose parents decided to call him Pant Sniffer is crying as the tiny 'puter people think he’s just a shitposter instead of a loving and caring fella.
Super socially awkward and anxious in middle school and high school and was also bullied a ton. Girls would ask me out as a joke, and there’s no good response. If you say yes you’re a dumbass for thinking they’re actually interested in you, if you say no you’re gay and should kill yourself. Combined with being an impressionable teen with incredibly negative self esteem on reddit at a time where something along the lines of all men are rapists was a common sentiment, it really honestly fucked me up. I still am not comfortable with romance and intimacy with women to be honest.
Female bullying culture is very cruel.
This whole thread needs to listen to Samaritans by Idles.
This whole comment needs to explain why if you expect a real response other than downvotes.
My belief is that most women belive they want a sensitive man (after all, that’s the cultural norm), until they actually get one. It’s not super cool IRL unfortunately. Though it’s very rare that women admits this to themselves or others. Usually you can find another believable excuse, that fits with the norm. Abnormal sensitivity often comes with extra baggage.
Fuck, i can’t even cry when I need to.
Have you tried old school country music?
Some of the modern stuff, but mostly stuff from 20-30 years ago that’s just sad as fuck.
Just get in your own head and start thinking of past regrets and people who are gone.
Like, “having a good cry” honestly helps, so it’s worth putting the work in to “learn” to cry. It’s flushing out hormones and neurotransmitters, and can lower cortisol which has a whole bunch of benefits.
So maybe not country, but find some music that makes you emotional and start a straight up “crying playlist” to get you in that headspace. It’ll get easier overtime
I know how that feels, and I know a few more people of any gender who have been made that way.
I eventually gained it back, but it sometimes I still feel like I’m close to tears yet can’t go there. Feels like a sneeze that doesn’t come except more emotional.
That’s one of the reasons why I love stories that make me cry. It’s literally the only place where I’m able to do it and allows me to release some of the stress that way.
Yupp, have the same general problem. Although maybe not fitting to the stereotype of men and masculinity, I am also basically incapable of getting angry. The only responses I have to stress are shutdown and fawning, I think it (partially) stems from a combination of mostly absent father and an overwhelmed mother with a lot of unresolved mental health issues, that sadly wasn’t able to properly handle children being normal children, lots of essentialist sentences about me being horrible still floating in my head from that childhood.
What helps me with anger is aggressive-depressive music. While that channels it just as a primal feeling, it’s also a good stimming time. Crying is harder, though, although I had moments - some years back I was able to cry for over an hour while with my best friend, that really was a watershed moment in my life, but it unfortunately did not just make the underlying problems and blockade go away.
Other things that sometimes manage to tease anger and tears out of me is watching some true crime shit, or stuff like holocaust documentaries. Getting angry and disturbed for someone else comes a lot easier for me, but even there, the wall is high to climb.
Then it will come at the worst possible time.
I was watching Arcane on Netflix with wife and her family a couple nights ago. The very beginning, where it deals with loss of family, I just immediately lost it, like I had been shot. I don’t even remember what the show was like, I just cried with my face buried in my hands the whole episode. Totally came out of nowhere, I was fine a moment before.
The room was dark, so nobody saw but my chest was heaving and I couldn’t even try to move to excuse myself because I knew I was about to let out a loud screaming sob. I sat there for a full hour hyperventilating, worried someone was going to turn on a light or hear my breathing.
I have spent a lifetime being “the guy who takes care of everything” and the stoic fighter, always the one encouraging others. I couldn’t deal with the fallout of freaking out everyone, they already know I have anxiety disorder and really, really don’t understand mental health, so if I started acting erratic everyone in the family will start walking on eggshells around me.
So to those browsing down here: “Why do men keep everything inside?”
Because of how you react when we don’t. Your ideas of what it looks like to express emotion as a male is not connected to reality.
I wish I could give you a hug. My husband is similar, he struggles with emotions and has always been “the calm rock.” Everyone compliments him on his patience and temper, he is an extremely chill person to be around. Because of this, he struggles heavily with any time he does not fulfill that role. His self worth is tied to how much he can fix or do for others and in a non-bothersome way. We’ve been together for about 10 years and he’s gotten more comfortable expressing his emotions but still feels immense shame when he cries or breaks down. Your last sentence is such a good point I’ve never really thought about. I should start paying more attention to how he needs and wants to express those emotions earlier. He’s bottled and masked for so long I don’t think he’s ever been able to give different forms of expression a chance.
I’m sorry the people closest to you struggle to give you the space you need when things get overwhelming. Life isn’t made to be easy, and you’ve worked hard for a long time. I hope you get some time for whatever you feel like now that the holidays are over.
Always remember that the patriarchy harms everyone
An asshole is an asshole is an asshole, don’t you dare act like it’s not these women’s fault if they have no compassion.
I never claimed it wasn’t. Shitty people are going to be shitty but they feel comfortable being shitty in the way that they are, in public, because the patriarchy has made that normal. I never excused her behavior, I identified it as being connected to a much broader sociological issue.
Some women would be shit to men and women and fucking anyone and everyone even if we lived in a matriarchy. Just like some men are shit to everyone and some men and women are nice with everyoneat.
Assholes are assholes, that’s it.
I never advocated for a matriarchy. People will continue to be shitty to eachother but the deconstruction of gender based discrimination and violence would benefit us all. In order to do that we must recognize that what holds us back from this is patriarchy.
My point still stands, no matter if there’s discrimination or not, some people will continue being shit to others and pretending they’re shit because of the system we live in is removing all their agency. “It’s ok if you’re a bad person, it’s just because [insert reason that is out of their power].”
I never said it was ok and I never denied their agency
Hey comrade, I am seriously glad that comment like yours are starting to not be accepted anymore.
I somehow agree with you, the patriarchy harms everyone. But it does not help anyone to slap it in the face of men who are suffering, and also I disagree that a faceless concept has more responsibility than the people pushing it forward.
Yeah this comment section has not brought me hope. I’ll admit that this may not have been the best place and time for this conversation but it needs to be spoken of, especially to the people who want to hear it least. I need these people to understand that societal issues cannot be solved at an individual level. You cannot simply be angry at a woman for being cold and heartless. This helps no one. The people who perpetuate patriarchal society won’t stop doing it because we get mad at them. They must be confronted about their behavior first and foremost with an understanding of the material conditions that drive them.
Yes, the perpetrators of patriarchy are responsible for its continuity but they do not realize this. They do not recognize the very existence of a patriarchy and this is why the world struggles to fight it. Often the biggest perpetuators of patriarchy are the most harmed by it and they don’t even know. They are as much victims as they are villains. How can we call them responsible on an individual level when patriarchy is the only thing they have ever known?
Where do you draw the line? Where do you stop blaming patriarchy and start blaming the people who have a fucked up sense of right vs wrong?
A man that screams at his wife when he’s angry, that’s patriarchy or that’s on them?
A man that quietly belittles his wife?
A woman that does these things to her husband?
If there’s physical violence I’m sure you won’t repeat your previous message and say that they’re victims as well.
I don’t understand why it cannot be both? Yeah these people are responsible for their actions and should be confronted on it on an individual basis but their actions are also influenced by the society in which they live. We need to confront and discuss that too.
You cannot simply be angry at a woman for being cold and heartless.
Yes, we can. Patriarchy or not, there are some awful people and behaviours being described in these comments. And while the “patriarchy” no doubt plays a role in enabling that, people also need to take ownership of their behaviour.
I’ll admit that this may not have been the best place and time for this conversation but it needs to be spoken of,
Hear me out here, but maybe if it’s “not the best place and time for this conversation” don’t have it.
especially to the people who want to hear it least.
Disgusting.
Look you’re spreading a mythologized patriarchy-as-Satan theology.
You may not want to hear it, but just shut up about feminism when men’s issues come up, and listen.
How can we call them responsible on an individual level when patriarchy is the only thing they have ever known?
This is such an extreme definition of total patriarchy that it’s an agency-robbing mythos. “What if every bad thing was caused by a concept?” isn’t a coherent or practical worldview.
Don’t believe in agency-robbing mythos. Don’t spread them, because somewhere in there you’re just giving yourself permission to lecture other people against their will at a time and place in which it is not appropriate for you to do so.
Incedible how unserious you are
It’s terrible to see. It’s another feature of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity - blaming the victims. It’s why it has been going on for so long.
In a similar vein: Why do women not report rape? This is why. Because even women have been so oppressed by the system that they will even question “if they were asking for it.”
What you’re doing is the mirror of MRAs who pretend feminism means ‘women uber alles.’
You can stop.
Men =/= the patriarchy. Tell a friend.
Honestly, ‘patriarchy’ is a terrible term that leads to so much confusion. Too many people use it as ‘blame men’ and forget that it’s supposed to be about men being culturally cast as perfect leaders and therefore punished for not meeting those impossible standards.
I have high hopes that the spreading acceptance of transfolk will start to break down the weird gender roles we’ve got, and maybe we can talk about some of this stuff more directly.
You know, I hadn’t really thought about the benefit that LGBTQ+ acceptance plays in this.
Of everyone who has been so supportive of me, it’s been my queer and non-binary friends.
I am a straight white male with money. While it upsets me to see women saying stuff like this post, I also know that I am not going to blame the women perpetuating the problem, because they themselves are victims of toxic masculinity and established gender norms.
I have a lot of queer friends (being pansexual myself) and I love the general awareness of mental health at least within my social circle (mainly well educated people throughout their 20s). For example it’s incredibly refreshing not to have to make excuses if you don’t feel like being around people that day, instead just being able to say just that without judgement.
Thank you for pointing out this. I hat the term ‘patriarchy’. I can see the people here using this term are trying to make a point. But it seems to me, that the wording ‘patriarchy’ hints towards to that ultimately men are to blame. It is also unnerving that feminism tends to excuse problems that women really have is systemic, while trouble that men have is caused by individually shitty behaviour.
I very much would like a society, where every human regardless of gender is being met with the same empathy.
Saying something is the result of patriarchy doesn’t absolve anybody (including women) of the responsibility for fixing it.
It’s not the result of patriarchy, is the result of them being bad people. They would still exist under a matriarchy.
Probably far worse actually.
“patriarchy” in this context means something other than you think, I.e. it means a system that upholds gender roles that benefit a (majority male) ruler class, e.g. by encouraging worker class men to go to war for their benefit, worker class women to be caretakers, and so on.
The counterpart to this definition of “patriarchy” is a society with no stratified gender roles, not “matriarchy”.
No.
patriarchy noun pa·tri·ar·chy ˈpā-trē-ˌär-kē plural patriarchies 1 : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power 2 : a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy For 20 years the country was ruled as a patriarchy.
You actually mean
gender role
A culturally and socially determined set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics based on concepts of masculinity and femininity. A gender role should not be confused with gender identity, which refers to an individual’s internal sense of being masculine, feminine, on a spectrum between the two, a gender unrelated to that binary, or no gender at all.
This is exactly why its such a bad word to use to describe this, it automatically puts people on the defensive and needs to be explained to people that it doesn’t mean what the word means (rule of the fathers).
Yes. It is their fault that they’re supporting the patriarchy.
Stop deflecting blame from shitty women. There are shitty women who do shitty things and “the patriarchy” does not excuse their behavior.
Stop worshiping the patriarchy. The patriarchy is not God. The patriarchy is not to blame for every shitty thing a shitty woman does.
Sometimes women are shitty and you make the problem worse by telling everyone it’s not their fault because the patriarchy is God in your idiot doctrine.
so are these women naturally “shitty” this is a deterministic take. a more is grounded in material approach is the patriarchy / modern culture teaches us to behave in certain ways etc, women need a strong man as women are weak according to western cultural norms.
You are correct that I was speaking glibly and that when I said “shitty woman” I could have said “a woman who happened to be acting shitty.”
Women thinking men are icky when they express emotions is because they’re taught from a very young age that expressing emotions is feminine and feminine, especially feminine men, is bad. This wasn’t a reach to blame on the patriarchy at all.
Women thinking men are icky when they express emotions is because they’re taught from a very young age that expressing emotions is feminine and feminine, especially feminine men, is bad. This wasn’t a reach to blame on the patriarchy at all.
Just because you were taught to say stupid things on the Internet doesn’t make them not stupid.
You chose to say a stupid thing on the Internet, and you’re responsible for that choice.
Don’t erode your agency. Don’t erode the agency of women.
Just because you think women are mindless slaves implanted with doctrine by whatever they are taught doesn’t mean we all have to believe it.
The patriarchy isn’t “men are harming people all by themselves.” It’s the gender roles and gender hierarchy that both men and women perpetuate.
This wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up. You don’t have to center feminism in a topic about how masculine emotions are belittled by women, undermined by women, and appropriated by women to further their agenda. If you do, you suffer the consequences.
This is an opportunity for you to listen.
Pointing out shitty behavior is systemic doesn’t absolve the person of their responsibility for that behavior. It helps illustrate the issue is systemic and not just some crazy one off occurrence. It also gives an angle of attack on solutions to the systemic problem.
The patriarchy is just as much a men’s lib issue as it is a feminist issue. The gender roles and hierarchy harms men. Women being shitty to a guy for expressing emotion is an example of just that.
You should really learn to ‘respect my no.’
This wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up.
I understand that you feel discomfort when men talk about the alienation of experiencing women being shitty, but you’re out of your lane now.
Blaming the patriarchy online does nothing to further your agenda, it just makes you look like someone who appropriates issues thoughtlessly and carelessly, as well as selfishly.
I understand that in your limited viewpoint “abolishing patriarchy” will solve every problem men have, but I think that’s stupid. Your ideology is not a cure; the only thing your spreading it cures you of is your own discomfort, and that’s inappropriate here.
This wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up.
There wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up either. But you chose to speak up so you should expect some push back. Looking at how you’ve presented yourself so far I seriously doubt you’ll listen to me, so I’ll just put my argument very plainly. Nobody should listen to you because you refuse to listen to anyone else.
You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said. All you’ve pretty much done is try to put words in their mouth so you could counter an argument that was never made. There’s no discussion here, it’s just you screaming into the void and the other person wanting to believe you’re a normal person.
But people are listening to me.
You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said.
So?
My point is about the nature of their statement and how it centers women in a topic that is about how when men speak about feelings women center a feminine perspective.
Just because you’re not listening doesn’t mean others aren’t.
I have to push back here and say that I think that the “emotions are feminine” explanation gives the whole picture. There’s also instrumentalization of men.
We’re all familiar with objectification, the tendency of (some) men to ignore women’s agency, and treat them as objects for their own use. On the flip side, in my experience, (some) women instrumentalize men. That is, treat men as agents to be used as tools to achieve their own goals. As a result, I think that (some) women use men as a bulwark against the stresses and existential terror of human existence, or sometimes even literally, like a bodyguard, or the one who has to deal with the spider in the house.
You want your vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt when you pull it out of the closet, and then disappear quietly back in there once the job is done. You don’t want to have to change the bag, and clean the motor, and replace the belt every time. More metaphorically, you don’t want to find out that your emotional ramparts against a scary world are built on sand, and that’s what kind of happens when (some) women find out that their partner has fears and weaknesses, too.
I’ve heard the same story many, many times from men whose partners begged them to open up emotionally, only to flee once they found out that those emotions included fears and self-doubt. It doesn’t make sense that they’d do the first part, if emotions were unattractive, per se.
I think you’re quite correct in this analysis as well. Historically, women have often had to depend on a husband for financial security and to be this instrument of protection. This archetype of the provider and protector husband is still baked into our patriarchal culture and leads women who don’t deconstruct this attitude to treat their male partners as you describe, and men in straight marriages to feel this burden alone. I’ve seen it often lead to insecurity and self doubt among husbands who feel they can’t live up to this impossible expectation, who also for the reasons widely discussed in this thread don’t feel able to express this insecurity and doubt, or are punished for doing so because it goes against their culturally-prescribed gender role of the strong male protector.
It could also be because they view their husband/partner as a means to an end, rather than a person with feelings.
At some point, the individual needs to take responsibility for their actions, society is made up of individuals after all.
If patriarchy is the cause of literally everything in gender interaction, it’s not very useful as a concept.
That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.
The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.
Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.
It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.
Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.
But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.
I am biased because I own (small) parrots who genuinely love crackers, and any reference to that cute behavior is positive for me. But I believe this would be a great metaphor even if I weren’t biased in favor of parrots.
It’s just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it’s helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that’s causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.
On the contrary, the term is performing exactly as designed - blame men for men being shitty (toxic masculinity), and blame men for women being shitty too (internalized misogyny).
How is “women are also perpetuating and engaging in the patriarchy, this is a problem” blaming it on men? “The Patriarchy” is not blaming stuff on men, it’s a descriptor of the gender-roles-system we live in and people of all genders can be perpetuators of its toxic aspects.
Because “patriarchy” isn’t just a neutral, ivory-tower descriptor of a system of gender roles. Just look at Twitter, or Reddit - the number of feminists using the word patriarchy on a daily basis to blame men far outnumber the tiny number of academic feminists that (supposedly) use the term without misandrist intent. Words’ meanings are determined by their use, and going by its use, “patriarchy” is a misandrist term that is used to blame men for all of society’s ills, which has resulted in demonstrable negative societal outcomes for men and boys. It’s naive or disingenuous to act otherwise.
And even among more academic feminist circles, it’s naive to think the term “patriarchy” isn’t being used in a misandrist way by a significant percentage of feminists - radical feminism, just to target the low-hanging fruit, is entirely organized around mistaken and harmful ideas of “male supremacy”, and as a result most of feminism’s terminology is also entirely organized around men being the oppressor, and women being the oppressed.
This is where we get the real brilliance of feminist thought: “academic”, “neutral” terms like “toxic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny” ensure that all discourse about society’s ills are entirely framed around oppressor/oppressed language (where, of course, men are always the oppressors and women are always the oppressed), which, as discussed above, ensures that the public at large will blame men for literally anything that goes wrong. And, of course, this is exactly what we see on social media, from both men and women. It’s a brilliantly designed system. Horrible, but brilliant.
The consequences of this inherently misandrist philosophy have been felt throughout society for decades. There are practically no domestic violence shelters or rape resources for men, even though men constitute almost half of rape victims. Men having lower rates of graduation from both high school and college (and of course all of the feminism-funded scholarships are for women, even though they’re currently approaching 60% of graduates - gEnDeR eQuALiTy). Generations of boys having now grown up internalizing this misandry, being told that they’re inherently aggressive rapists and being forced to take re-education classes. The results of this widespread, societal internalized misandry are clearly visible here in this thread.
And, of course, as mentioned above, the incredible brilliance of the system is that all of these failings (and countless, countless others) are conveniently deemed due to the totally neutral academic term “patriarchy”, and not due to feminists pushing misandrist policy for decades that have had demonstrable negative outcomes for men. So, out here in the real world, men get blamed for women’s problems, and they get blamed for their own problems as well.
Feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on gender equality, as much as people claim it does (“If you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist whether you like it or not!”). Feminism is fundamentally built on decades of misandrist philosophical baggage, and it’s time we threw it all out, burned the system down, and started over with a philosophy that’s actually dedicated to gender equality, from the ground up.
Edit: I’m not saying the patriarchy isn’t real, it definitely is and should be dismantled. But you need to interrogate your own righteousness or you’re just spreading neoliberal schlock to make yourself feel better about how women can be shitty to men.
“neoliberalism is when you want to dismantle patriarchy”
Idk why you thought I was doing any of that. What I meant was this woman feels that it is normal or okay to act in the way that she is because the patriarchal society in which we live makes that normal. It is not an excuse, it is an explanation and identification of a much broader issue.
Idk why you thought I was doing any of that.
Sounds like an opportunity for introspection for you, then!
Thank you for making me introspect about my snarkiness on Lemmy. You’ve helped me see how much of a dipshit it makes me look like
Sure, shift blame away and never help feminism 101 when it comes to men
Exactly. All of the internalized misandry in the comments here is really disheartening.
What do you expect from a feminist perspective? Their philosophy already has an answer and that answer is men are the oppressors and women the eternal victim. I grew up the only man in a family of women, it was hell. I was always too loud, too big, too expensive because I couldn’t wear my sisters hand me downs and once the mental health issues being hammered into a mold I don’t fit began to crop up. Feminism contributed more to my suicidal young life than anything else. The only reason I am alive today is I found male friends, even the toxic ones helped more than feminists ever did. My toxic friends taught me to stand up for ME. Feminists told me to shut up and let people abuse me, to smother my sense of right and wrong.
Please read the rest of my comments
I am a man, I have been hurt by women who would not have done so if the society in which they live did not deem it normal and ok. While these women are responsible for their actions and should do better, they would not have acted this way if patriarchal society didn’t deem men to be lacking in emotion or “emotionally strong”.
You are doing everything but blame your abuser, you’ve literally shifted the blame to society itself
You can blame the abusor and want a society that would not create them
