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A comment on Suicide increasing among American workers. Parent comment

Re:Suicide increasing among American workers by krapp on Thursday November 15, 2018 @08:26PM (#18465386)
>If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".

The concept that masculinity can have negative effects while not itself being negative isn't something that should take a great deal of effort to comprehend. There are entire male created social complexes like "gentlemanly behavior" and "chivalry" built around the pretense that inherent male traits have both positive and negative aspects.

The problem here is not that "feminist sociologists" are talking down to men and making them quail in fear -- men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism. The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. The feminism they oppose mostly doesn't even exist, or at best they're attacking the fringe and not the mainstream.

If you have a problem with the concept of toxic masculinity, for example, all I and the "feminist sociological agenda" (or whatever) ask is that you bother to find out what the term actually refers to. Cribbing from Wikipedia:

    stereotypically masculine gender roles that restrict the kinds of emotions 
    allowable for boys and men to express, including social expectations that 
    men seek to be dominant (the "alpha male") and limit their emotional range
    primarily to expressions of anger.
...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Suicide increasing among American workers by belorn on Friday November 16, 2018 @09:08AM (#18468788)
Toxic masculinity get judged based on the meaning it express as words. Languages in the end is all about expressing meaning.

If we talk about toxic Muslims, we could define it to only be about terrorists or other narrow defined subgroup of criminals, but if you use those words then the meaning being expressed is a generalization that invoke a expression of racisms and hate. Lumping together all Muslims, only to then say "technically, I only meant this small subgroup" don't work. Does not work for racism, and it does not work for sexism either. The term toxic masculinity will always seem like veiled hatred against men, and no amount of "wait, I only mean ..." will change that.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Suicide increasing among American workers by shard972 on Friday November 16, 2018 @01:19AM (#18466869)
The concept that masculinity can itself be positive shouldn't be too hard to comprehend either but here we are.

> men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism

You haven't spent much time in democratic party meetings then.

> The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all.

And at which point do the "real feminists" stop and agree that it's just a fringe group of feminists that have an axe to grind against men?

> ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.

Um, it is?

Just look at the framing, claiming that TM "restricts" males. Why is the assumption always that freedom to express is always what people need and will always be a positive outcome?

Humans need structure in life, some more than others. When you try to deconstruct every social norm around a culture you will have a large amount of men who will find themselves lost in a landscape that is actively discouraging them from fitting within the beaten path laid before them.

Maybe the reason men are killing themselves isn't because they don't cry more to their mates but because they are thrown into this modern world that is actively trying to push them towards transcendence of the human condition.

[ Parent | on HN ]