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A comment on Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men.

Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by motohagiography on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @12:45PM (#28291366)
Viewing masculine gatherings and mentoring relationships through the lens of "therapy," is patronizing and another example of filtering culture through the narrative of powerlessness. Here's another take. Most people who say they want you to talk about your feelings are predators looking for angry and vulnerable young people who they can manipulate with sympathy and groom for other pipelines and agendas. The barber shops represent a barrier to those people because heterosexual men typically don't relate well to the sort of enablers who prey on young men, and those personalities cannot navigate masculine environments well.

It's useful to ask whether people who say they are operating on the pretext of "healing," and "trauma," are really just morbidly attracted to weakness and vulnerability, and if so, why. These barbershops are places created by black men as a place to gather and have some community, and the reasons for a CNN reporter to pay them any attention at all should be treated with suspicion. Journalists aren't part of the communities they cover, they are scavengers and mainly a nuissance to what they perceive to be power, so if you start seeing them, it's probably because there is something nearby whose vulnerability or weakness has made it a target to co-opt into their narrative. Those barber shops are community treasures, and I'd wonder whether they benefit from having someone else co-opt their story and re-tell it on their behalf.

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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by GavinMcG on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @01:04PM (#28291715)
The idea that abusers "cannot navigate masculine environments well" is absurd, ignores the fact that much abuse has taken place in masculine environments throughout history, and imagines that abusers somehow give themselves away by not presenting as traditionally masculine. Where are you getting this?
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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by exolymph on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @03:10PM (#28293451)
He's not talking about all abusers, but a particular type.
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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by motohagiography on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @03:49PM (#28294006)
Abuse, e.g. sadism, opportunism, deception are all definitions of unmasculine behaviours. There are men who behave in unmasculine ways, and I'd reassert they usually disqualify themselves from deeper friendship with men who don't. Among men, I would also say that negative traits are necessarily also unmasculine because they are usually immoderate instances of other qualities.

Of course, this is a practitioners view which perhaps does not reconcile itself to theory.

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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by lemmsjid on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @04:50PM (#28294832)
I'm having trouble following you. The behaviors you describe above are neither 'unmasculine' or 'unfeminine'. They are behaviors that can be evidenced across the gender spectrum.
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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by nick__m on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @05:57PM (#28295495)
You listed traits correlated with being on the dark triads spectrum. These personality traits have almost nothing to with sexual identity.
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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by mrxd on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @02:07PM (#28292695)
I think you are right that many therapists expect their clients to adopt a position of helplessness and submission, and label them as uncooperative if they don't. We constantly hear about the stigma among men against going to therapy, but no acknowledgment that men's approach to emotions is influenced by the fact that men are the main breadwinners in most households. The typical stoic male approach to emotions isn't just arbitrary "male culture", but a product of the fact that if you as a man can't get out of bed in the morning, people go hungry.

A second, related issue is that the culture of therapy since Freud is heavily influenced by romanticism, a 19th century social and aesthetic movement that prioritized sentimentality and emotion as the source of individual authenticity and creativity. Being in touch with your emotions can be valuable for certain kinds of artistic expression, but in many circles those ideals has become so powerful, they're synonymous with mental health. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the values of the artistic class don't find traction among working class.

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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by whymauri on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @12:47PM (#28291406)
>Most people who say they want you to talk about your feelings are predators looking for angry and vulnerable young people who they can manipulate with sympathy and groom for other pipelines and agendas.

I'm not really sure what this means... are you lumping in licensed therapists and social workers in here? Seems unfair to me, IMO.

I guess just a little clarification would be useful, not trying to tear down your view or anything. I'm equally skeptic of journalists from big orgs like CNN coming into these spaces.

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Re:Black barbers have become mental health advocates for Afr... by motohagiography on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @02:45PM (#28293136)
The examples I was thinking of came from growing up in a city where there is a layer of social workers, teachers, "educators," and even therapists who encourage young men to blame their problems on society and an oppression narrative instead of equipping them with the tools to develop constructive masculine friendships with boundaries. There are real systemic social issues that men who are american and black must face, but the article reframing normal relationships as therapy is precisely the kind of framing that harms male friendships.

Maybe this coalition is doing good work, but anyone who leads with problematizing men talking about their feelings earns very reasonable suspicion, imo. The main reason I see men having trouble connecting is because they haven't spent enough time around another men to learn the normal cues and boundaries. Setting up their friendships in yet another relationship that treats them like problem children isn't going to help them.

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