I haven't voted in this article either way, but my take on why people might be downvoting you are twofold:

1) You've come into a thread that is specifically looking at men's problems, and made it about feminism and your own highly female-oriented viewpoints: "As a feminist", the (justifiable) fear that people make this out as "men's problems are more important than women's problems", "allowing women to be strong and independent, I think we also must allow men to be weak and to ask for help if they need it.".

If people came into a thread about sexism in the work place and explained an opinion with similar words with flipped gender, they would be criticised.

2) For the worse, the terms you pick out yourself have been coopted by an unfortunate group who use them to push their own agenda, who go around with mugs marked "Male Tears", gleeful in the support of a minority of people abusing the term and the quiet tolerance of many more. They don't represent feminism or progressive values. But they do use the words most loudly, and that develops unfortunate connotations.

Overall, your points may be valid, but your expression of them alienates the people this article is about and addresses.

Thanks for the response. What I was trying to convey is that I agree with Aurelianito. There does need to be attention paid to men's issues. I framed it the way I did because I think this is often portrayed as an anti-feminist argument, by people on both sides, and I disagree with them; I think it's important for feminists to care about men's issues, and it's important for feminists to say that precisely because of the people you mention in #2, to counterbalance them and demonstrate that they don't speak for all of us.

But some people don't want to see a reasonable counterbalance. They see a word they don't like and downvote without reading; they actually get angry when others fail to live down to their stereotypes. Going in the other direction, I've seen liberal feminists get confused and angry when they meet a conservative who supports GLBT rights. It makes people uncomfortable when folks don't stay in their pigeonholes. It's frustrating.

See, though, this is the thing. It's great that you're not being all "lol male tears", have a cookie, but you're putting a lot more effort into defending your conception of feminism, and into drawing a distinction between yourself and "lol male tears" and making sure we all know you're not like that, than into addressing the topic at hand. That's what is getting you downvoted, not some imaginary knee-jerk reaction to a word.

It's not accepted to derail a women-centered discussion with "but patriarchy hurts men too!"; why do you expect anything less in derailing a men-centered discussion with "but feminism is for men too!"? Granted you're not being That Guy in the usual direction. But you're no less being That Guy for it. Maybe consider not being That Guy.

I downvoted because I _knew_ the words patriarchy and feminism would derail the conversation and hoped to bury your post before it could.

Just like it's annoying for someone to chime in with "what about men's XYZ!" in a conversation explicitly about women, it's annoying for the inverse to happen.

While you're 100% right and gender roles (patriarchy) mean we're actually having the same conversation I would love to be able to have those two conversations independently without descending in to whattaboutism and explicitly gendered language.

I actually didn't downvote you, but I found your comment mildly offensive with respect to this topic because of the line

> But yes, in allowing women to be strong and independent, I think we also must allow men to be weak and to ask for help if they need it.

Men have this problem precisely because they are "strong and independent". Not pressuring men to work constantly to the point of isolation is not the same as "allowing men to be weak".