You are illustrating the problem which is that men are “not allowed” to have problems.

There are plenty of things, such as unrealistic body image portrayed by the media, that affect both men and women, yet women claim it exclusively as theirs, because men aren’t supposed to. Can’t men have a thing?

> women claim it exclusively as theirs

This way of putting things, as if groups like "women" or "men" were clubs with decision making processes, is absurd and only serves to cause division and infighting.

Call it emergent behavior then; whether through uncoordinated coordination of the media/marketing world, or uncoordinated coordination of peer/social pressures, these expectations exist.

I have literally been shut down in a conversation, in person, at work, more than once, because I was a white male in tech.

It certainly takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to figure that a problem that disproportionately affects men is another example of men excluding women from something...

it's not a way of putting things, it's fact

I'm illustrating the problem, which is that we have to decide that one gender or group has "a thing" to the exclusion of everyone else.

I don't see how your solution of "men hav[ing this] thing" helps men who have body image issues, nor women who don't feel they have close friends.

It's not like the dude with body image issues is saying "oh, thank god my problems would be recognized if only my issue were a lack of close friends."

Why do you think that? As a man I think we are the victims of our culture where as a man you need to be tough and not reach for help or chat about things.

While at the same time a counter-culture push exists for men to refuse all of that or risk getting called out as "toxic" and/or "mysogonistic" over some of the most mundane behaviors.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Yes, this is the important part. A lot of men lack the tools to be able to go through a hard situation but instead turn into drugs, violence or other negative coping mechanisms.

I think when I feel lonely I watch old TV shows like Star Trek or House and a ton of youtube (mostly educational/scientific channels) I avoid drinking, I only got drunk 2 times in my life , without intending it, and a lot of unhappy feelings surfaced, I seen this in my father too, maybe other get violent but me I get extremely sad (last time was 15 years ago so now I would probably be 10x worse)

I don't see how that's relevant to this article, it's talking about friends, not wives.

That's funny. My first thought was that the narrative being fed here was "men are victims of the patriarchy", and my second thought that maybe The Times would now on be considered "a platform for the man's rights movement's narratives".

Once upon a time under the patriarchy, men’s social clubs were a common phenomena, but then it became unacceptable for such places to exist because of “power structures” yada yada yada. It’s not a coincidence that loneliness for men rose as spaces for men declined.

> It’s not a coincidence that loneliness for men rose as spaces for men declined.

This assumes that men can only congregate in "spaces" which exclude women, which is obviously untrue. I also assumes that men primarily socialized in such spaces to begin with, despite them also typically discriminating by class and race, as well as gender.

That such spaces have declined should have no effect on the ability of men to congregate and form relationships with one another. Gaming as a culture, which is primarily (albeit not exclusively) male-oriented, wouldn't exist otherwise, as one example.

>>>This assumes that men can only congregate in "spaces" which exclude women, which is obviously untrue.

While male-exclusive bonding isn't men's ONLY option/method, it most definitely yields different results than any gender-integrated environment. Anyone who has spent time in an all-male combat arms unit can attest to this.

>>>That such spaces have declined should have no effect on the ability of men to congregate and form relationships with one another.

Should we eliminate female-only spaces as well? If not, why? A subsection of feminists have fought to keep bathrooms exclusive to biological females. Why does the Girl Scouts still exist if the Boy Scouts has been gender-integrated? Women must be deriving some sort of bonding utility out female-exclusive zones. Why shouldn't men also have such options?

In this context, I find this unlikely.