That may sound like a strange statement, but our programming is strong and no matter how much we debate it in the society it doesn't change. We are what we are. We may be able to evolve, but you can't snap your fingers and have that happen in a century. Arguably, I don't see us evolving past it either, as our programming likely gives us some advantage in reproduction.
In terms of "helping men" I used to work with troubled youth (13-17yrs); young men need role models and a place in society. They'll ask for help and the role models can help them. They do much better in apprenticeship type roles. I don't really think it can be force, but a bit of encouragement and guidance goes a LONG way.
Today our society coddles everyone, young men need responsibility, guidance and hard work. Everyone has the desire to be respected, show them how to fit into society and be respected and they'll follow your lead. Many of the issues we face in society today is we don't have high expectations coupled with mentorship. Sports do this to a degree, but it needs to be through all walks of life.
The main issue IMO is that we have removed male and female only spaces and are attempting to homogenize. We also coddle children and young adults to the point they are offended when someone uses their wrong pronoun. It's good to have roles in society it helps optimize and provides guidance to those who need it. It's also good to have a thick skin, so you can roll with the punches and still succeed. Men and women alike are attracted to the traditional roles of the opposite gender because it helps both partner. There's a good reason for that, historically and today. That's not to say other configurations aren't possible, but biologically, societally and economically the traditional roles make sense to most people internally.
"the problem"...
You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)?
This is exactly the coddling I was discussing.
The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.
That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying.
As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something.
Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.
What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is.
Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.
No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution.
There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming)
>If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended
Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying
>extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.
One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are.
Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report"
He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example
"Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone
>You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you?
I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s
>but yet to meet a man who actually is.
Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?
That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.
That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.
One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"
Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed
Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison
My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.
You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first.
So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.
What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.
Cool for you. Maybe next time he shouldn't have said something stupidly false.
Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.
It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?
People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.
The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.
The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.
All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.
I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.
The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.
If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.
so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.
Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.
I don't think we will be together much longer lol.
I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.
Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.
I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.
But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.
So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.
In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.
But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.
A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.
And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.
The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.
My personal observation is that if the parents love the kid more than they dislike themselves, they are going to stay, at least until the kids become adults.
If you want your kid to have successful relationships when they grow up, FFS don't let your kid grow up in an unsuccessful one.
Good call.
If kids are exposed to frequent arguments, spirals of primitive abuse, hatred, emotional coldness etc. they won't end up faring well in adulthood, and all the efforts of parents trying to stay together for them are pointless.
But yeah its a shitty situation where everybody loses.
I would replace "dislike" with "incompatible" though.
You can be very attracted physicslly to someone who is your intellectual and economic equal, to then not be able to hold it together because that person's personal traits ans preferences are so far off one's own. It goes beyond "he liked to watch tv instead of going out to eat w me"
That being said, your observation should be a heuristic, and it should be repeated more often.
But I do think it's quite reasonable to expect more from life and relationships. Women tend to expect more, and society doesn't tell them not to.
It's possible to have a self-consistent worldview that does tell both men and women to expect less, but personally I think that would make for a worse society.
I mean, this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West, myself included. We are objectified as wallets, we are treated very poorly, and when they inevitably leave to "find myself", they collect 50% of the assets we've earned and saved, and we collect 50% of the debts they've racked up in their instagram-influenced spending.
You can characterize the situation as "disgusting", but it's reality for millions of us.
Reality doesn't care about our moral judgements. It is what it is. The best we can do is attempt to educate our sons on the risks inherent in contractually obligating oneself to people who hate you.
Good grief, I hope not. My wife is nothing like that. At all. And very few of my friends and acquaintances have experienced a relationship like that. How sad to think that this is what marriage ought to be. That's horrifying. I'd be single and celibate before I'd let someone treat me that way.
Not to discount the lived experiences of men in this thread, but the discussion in here reeks of bitter manosphere ideology. Maybe people need to stop extrapolating their toxic relationships to an entire gender, or blaming them on biology.
And on that specific front, things are fine. The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household. I've accepted my fate, but I will raise my son with different lessons than I had.
That said, I have (multiple) friends whose fiances turned from "Perfect Angel" into "Literally Hitler" the day after marriage, so even if my situation was a proper evaluation of my life partner, it should be noted that many men are defrauded by that particular trap as well.
That's optimistic naïveté speaking. Marrying someone you got pregnant just because it's the right thing to do, is in fact very much the wrong thing.
> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
Maybe when they are very young. Kids aren't stupid, and you can't fake a warm, loving relationship accurately enough nor consistently enough to keep them fooled very long. At some point way before they become adults they realize exactly what is going on. At best they'll pity you. At worst they'll resent you for subjecting them to your inability to adult.
>> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
> Maybe when they are very young.
Ehh, even a one year old is very good at sensing their parents' emotions.
And how exactly this should help? It's clearly past that point already.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...
E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.
Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.
Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.
Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.
My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.
For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!
So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.
> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.
As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.
It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.
And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?
You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...
Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"
>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.
Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.
Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.
This isn't accurate: Contemporary feminism has long been obsessed with this topic; specifically, how some women contribute to their own oppression. Books have been published debating whether or not this is an inherently bad thing. You're conflating feminism and society, but society isn't feminist. Sure, libertarianism exists, but our current governments aren't libertarian, even if they pay lip service to the ideas and ideals; the same applies to feminism.
My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.
The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita
This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.
Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.
Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.
Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.
Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.
But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.
I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?
If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.
It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.
And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).
Short story about emancipation and empowerment:
At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.
Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.
But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].
The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.
0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...
1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html
People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters
From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:
> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.
>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.
No you can't. Do you think circumcised men don't fully enjoy sex? Where did you get that idea from?
I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.
Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.
>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.
I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.
It's called pilpul and he obviously will.
The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things.
Thus, men should constantly be striving for more value (read: status), or risk losing leverage with those they love. In a sense, projected status anxiety ensures that it is impossible for men to fully escape the evaluative sphere.
Internalizing this will age your soul, and not in a good way.
> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things
the devalue phase of an unhealthy narcissistic relationship is not representative of most healthy relationships. a healthy compassion based relationship would see a value plummet met with support.
I hate that I speak from experience on the matter.
Thank you.
A more disgusting thing to me is the idea that people see their partners (or believe their partners see them) as having “value” like they’re a breathing stock ticker symbol.
The harsh reality of life is that all relationships are necessarily about value transference. If we're not stronger together than we are apart, then what the hell are we doing together. If you're sucking more value out of me than you're giving back, then you're a parasite and I'd be better off without you.
If you're not doing the calculation of whether a relationship is and will continue to be mutually beneficial, you're almost certainly going to become a host for a parasite.
In general it's not intended to offer advice, but there are some moments that invite thought, for sure.
Something's profoundly wrong when people put so much importance on what is an externally mediated measure. I don't know what it points to other than a sort of spiritual void, but the status game is one you are statistically almost guaranteed to lose.
It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.
There are some sad stories in these threads.
I just want to add that not all partners are like this.
But the ones we attract in certain parts of our lives are definitely prone to it! When our self-identity (or at least our time and energy) is wrapped up in material success, or job prestige or some other externality, we attract people who agree with us.
It's a delicate edge, because most of us want to build, accomplish, achieve something that makes us proud of our efforts, and we dump a lot of that into "work" in our most-eligible years.
So if we "succeed", or move toward success, we attract those that see us the same way we imagine that part of ourselves.
And then the rest of life starts happening. I want to live in a van and see the national parks! I want to take the modest exit and move to the Caribbean. I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity. I've saved enough and don't want to deal with issue X. Etc.
This new status is not always met with the same enthusiasm as the climbing part of our journey. We created the fiction, so maybe it's not completely fair to be disappointed when our focus shifts and theirs does not.
(I don't mean to suggest that I know anything about your life, I'm just riffing on your last sentence.)
I can't recommend this enough!
You're allowed to cry when your mother dies or your dog dies. Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress. The constant encouragement to be vulnerable and express feelings is merely a test to make sure you're still "masculine enough."
I've always found it strange how women wearing men clothes is normal and just a style choice, while men wearing women's clothes is perverse and emasculating. Even many of the pro equality people feel this way
A 200lb man, who has the physical ability kill someone with their bare hands crying over an emotional vulnerability is scary. The issue isn’t “men aren’t allowed to have feelings”, but men are expected to have self-control over how they express themselves.
Many - if not all - of the difficult modern sociological problems we face are rooted in the inability for people to accept that while our technological understanding is, frankly, unfathomable compared to 100,000 years ago, our biology, our neurobiology, etc., is all still running under the software that was developed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Take our social norms around sleep, for instance. We call bad dreams “nightmares”, we set our business hours to 9-5, etc etc. All of this is social, but clearly there is a biological link because we’re not inherently nocturnal animals.
IIRC the invention of agriculture caused a huge shift in cultural dynamics as regards sex and gender world wide, favoring men. It is not unreasonable to think that an age that lasted 10kyrs might have some lingering affects on how we view the world.
But most other norms are more complicated. So the idea of the man as a physically strong provider - it’s not universal but it’s extremely common across the world.
Cultures and societies are subject to the same kind of natural selection as individuals and species. Cultures that are self sustaining, defensible, and expansionary are the ones that win out in the end.
It's the automation of force that will drive change to how we view maleness. The increasing reality is that strong, aggressive males aren't nearly as necessary in the battlefield for the defense of societies. A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male. Humanoid robots are rapidly entering the scene and will start to replace human soldiers and police officers as the ground units of power projection. eSports will start to overshadow the NFL as we start socially valuing individual human strength less and less in favor of tactical and strategic ability to control robots.
Societies have always used young males as disposable members who are thrown into the most dangerous and lethal jobs for the simple biological reality that wombs are scarce and sperm is not. If all of the lethal work gets automated away (a fantastic thing!) then that will be one of the most drastic changes to human social order that has ever happened.
You are making the same mistake as the clowns that cry how you “can’t use your AR15 to stop the government”.
Ignoring the reality of asymmetrical warfare, and failure of the strongest military or universe has ever seen failing to secure a state of uneducated farmers and merchants for the last 20 years…
If your goal is to glass something - sure the 100lb recruits in the drone program are your go-to. We leveled two parts of Japan and it ended things, then the math changed with mutually assured destruction.
But that isn’t how you actually take something over.
You take things by putting your people on street corners. Going door to door. Preventing undesirable assembly. Securing travel and trade.
Tanks and drones really suck at standing on the corner. The soldier isn’t as outdated as you suggest.
See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.
Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.
They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.
But of course cherrypicking just the convenient parts of feminism is common, and it's not always easy to tell early on what kind of person the other one is.
It is also possible that all the modern pressures and beliefs won't really override physical attraction. In general if someone is pretty to look at they have a lot of slack personality wise, whether they are a chest thumping mansplainer or an emotional crybaby.
Good for society: People should not be harassed or mugged when they walk at night. Good advice for an individual: Stay aware of your surroundings and make situational choices about your clothes and behavior.
Good for society: Men should also express their feelings, including their bad ones. Good for individuals: Know who is safe to express your feelings to, and who is not.
There was a big revelation that maybe we should try to improve society instead of all the victim blaming of the 70s-90s. I think it's great that we focus on perpetrators more than victims, but we forgot to tell individuals that they still live in a imperfect world, and that even though it's not their fault when they get targeted, they could still take action to protect themselves while waiting for society to improve.
This is an awesome way to put it and applies to so many more topics of public debate. Consider as a simple example:
Good for society: Close tax loopholes. Good for individuals: Exploit tax loopholes.
We should all be mindful that this distinction exists, and acknowledging it openly should be part of healthy debate culture.
I think this is wrong - like 180 degrees wrong. The mode of failure I see most often for men is low EQ - misreading the wants / needs of the woman and delivering the wrong things with no awareness of where they are going wrong.
The reason why women find confidence attractive is because low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors. See pride and envy occupying the lowest circles of hell.
Many guys totally misread this as women want assholes, rather than incessant approval seeking behavior indicates low self esteem / insecurity which has the potential to make her life hell. It’s not that you can’t be kind to women, you just need to be doing it for the right reasons - because you feel this is the right way to conduct yourself - and not because you are scared that you are unworthy of love or admiration.
Even the "quit dating assholes" stereotype is obvious, with women falling for the typical cocky jerk who goes against what society claims a man should be. Then it turns out, that guy ended up being problematic and scarred the girl for life.
Does that mean assertiveness has to be dark? No. But frankly, society is doing a lot to kill the "dark assertiveness" while not doing anything to insert "light assertiveness", if you're willing to view it that way. We're not exactly raising boys to be cowboys and gentlemen, we're raising them to be doormats and appeal to women in ways which clearly aren't dropping panties.
The seven virtues provides a useful framework to think about this. Prudence (emotional intelligence) gives rise to justice (knowing what is owed to whom), which gives rise to fortitude (assertiveness), which gives rise to moderation. Moderation without fortitude is cowardice. Fortitude without justice is tyranny. And justice without prudence is injustice. A little esoteric, but St Augustine knew a few things about life :)
It is very evident that [confident jerk] > [lacking confidence]. Kindness and compassion are not substitutes for confidence and assertiveness, as far as both anecdotes and token evidence goes.
As far as society goes, it is removing [confident jerk] in boys. It is not replacing it with [confidence]. It is also not teaching girls to actively value any of your other supposed virtues. Congratulations, most boys are now [lacking confidence], one of the few measuring standards.
Your "useful framework" does not align with the reality of the western world.
1. In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem. Their “confidence” tends to be a facade - a lie they tell themselves - which is why they seem to always have something to prove.
2. Assertiveness is not necessarily indicative of confidence. Again, it is clear that some of the most assertive wanna be dominant people are deeply insecure and simply acting out to assuage their internal feelings of low self esteem.
3. Compassion and kindness require true self confidence.
You can be assertive without being a jerk. Society and moral philosophy generally encourage this; and they discourage being a jerk. The difference is that constructive assertiveness is kind and compassionate and comes from a place of confidence. Destructive assertiveness comes from a place of low self esteem (pride/envy). Moral philosophers have written about this for over a thousand years so I don’t think that these values are especially modern.
The writing of St Augustine are a key part of the foundations of modern western (Judeo Christian) moral philosophy. This they offer many insights into moral reasoning in modern western society.
I find this to be a very convenient belief, in the same vein as "criminals are stupid" or "[not my political party] is stupid" or "good things happen to good people" or "bullies are insecure." I don't see any evidence or have any reason to believe that confident jerks are secretly harboring internal conflict, as satisfying as it may be to believe.
I mean the convergence of beliefs across a bunch of religions and moral philosophies is probably pretty good evidence. They were not exactly running randomized controlled trials; but they were smart people who thought a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure that the methods of modern behavioral science are so much more advanced :)
Otherwise this is just like one of those “obvious”, self evident things (i.e. obvious to some not to others). I do concede that there are a subset of jerks who have Dunning Kruger syndrome as well as a small number of true sociopaths out there.
Women don’t want assholes, they want security, and the traits I listed are all indications of security, whereas being emotionally sensitive is less so. Hell everyone wants security, it’s why confidence is so attractive.
If your time in the gym was a path to being more comfortable with who you are then it wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe you were good enough all along and just didn’t realize / believe it
there are a lot more factors that help with being confident with yourself.
i am none of these things: wealthy, handsome, social, and fit yet i am quite confident with myself. i'd say that with all the mistakes my parents may have made, this is one of the positive things i got out of my childhood. it probably also helped that i grew up in an environment where these things didn't matter. there was noone wealthy in my school, noone telling me that i had to be handsome, or that not being social or not being fit were bad.
[citation needed] (no snark intended)
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/...
> We are interested in the nature of narcissism. Narcissism is a personality disorder that is conceptualized as excessive self-love and manifests as a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, and superiority (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Auerbach, 1993; Freud, 1914).
> More recently, two subtypes of narcissism have been distinguished. “Vulnerable narcissism” characterized by low self-esteem, anxiety about attachments and extreme sensitivity to criticism and “grandiose narcissism”, which manifests as high self-esteem, self-aggrandizement and self-importance (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Rohmann, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012; Wink, 1991). This distinction has shown itself to be fruitful - vulnerable narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and interdependent self-construct. Conversely, grandiose narcissism is associated with high self-esteem and life-satisfaction and an independent self-construction (Rohmann, Hanke, & Bierhoff, 2019; Rose, 2002). These differential attitudes also present behaviorally. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists have a tendency to deliberately induce jealousy in their romantic partners, but for different reasons - a vulnerable narcissist is motivated by insecurities and seeks reassurance to compensate for low self-esteem whereas a grandiose narcissist induces jealousy primarily to gain power and control in the relationship (Tortoriello, Hart, Richardson, & Tullett, 2017).
> . . .
> Grandiose narcissism seems to resemble psychopathy in many respects, which raises the possibility that the tessellation of these conditions could be improved. It appears to be the case that grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy. This notion is supported by the finding that individuals who strongly exhibit psychopathic traits also tend to have a grandiose sense of self-worth (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995; Miller, Sleep, Crowe, & Lynam, 2020). Conversely, vulnerable narcissism might be better conceived of as “narcissism proper” or “primary narcissism”.
Looks like they are pretty much trying to rebrand grandiose narcissism to psychopathy as you might suggest. Not really sure I see any value in changing the widely understood definition. I also didn't see any numbers about which type was actually more prevalent, however. Again, I was only able to do a cursory review. At this point, I think it's fair to conclude that there's more than one type of narcissism and that one of them probably has nothing to do with low self esteem, while the other probably does.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...!
Low self esteem and insecurity aren't the problem. Lots of people suffer from it through little fault of their own and, frankly, people who think they're always right and never question themselves can be just as toxic.
The problem is people repressing their insecurities, acting out and making other people responsible for their pain, instead of facing their insecurities head on e.g. through therapy.
the question then would be, how does gender equality look like that doesn't rely on these narratives?
if on the other hand we assume that these ideals are good, then the problem is not that the narratives are false, but that we haven't yet actually achieved equality.
Second, you can have “moral equality” without assuming “fungibility.” My cousin just got married. The wife is brilliant—she’s civil engineer. The aunties are all impressed. But if they have a baby and her priorities shift and she decides she wants to stay home (which happens to many women!) those same aunties will 100% expect my cousin to take up the slack and support the family, because he’s the man. Morally equal, but not fungible.
traditionally picking up the slack would mean for the man to go earn more money. but women want to keep working. and, this is part of the issue, in middle to lower income families they have to. we have created a situation where a single income is no longer enough to support a family. the economic change is not financial freedom for women as much as a financial dependency on both parents working.
and the narrative we are creating and that we seem to want is that men help in the household and with childcare. and that too is happening but only just enough so that everyone supporting that narrative can point to an example, but not as much as everyone thinks. even in households where both parents are working, most of the housework is still done by women.
This hurts women in two ways. First it makes them more likely to select shiftless men who will run out in their families to pursue their dreams of being YouTube stars. Second, by setting cultural expectations and incentives, it increases the supply of such men.
When the narrative of "the one" breaks down, marriages dissolve. Children get custodial_parents -= 1.
Some times, one way is objectively better than another way. And yes it may be ego-bruising for those doing things the "less good" way, but we don't need to throat-clear so obnoxiously whenever these things are discussed.
I do think you should also take an honest approach to the valuable points Rayiner has made, here and elsewhere. Not everything is correct, but recently it seems like you're just jeering and nervously trying to change the subject when actual discussion of the issue would be uncomfortable for certain current orthodoxy.
In this case, American women (and men!) have been told, through the media, their peers, and reinforced through modern corporate culture, that behaving, acting, and expecting things in a certain way will make them happier. But that's not bearing out in reality. So are they being setting up for ego death, when reality doesn't match expectations, if the expectations are wholly unrealistic and perhaps even wrong?
I don't want to generalize, but that's a common narrative also. I have no direct experience.
I have a lot of female friends. They will rip their boyfriends apart for vulnerable moments or emotional needs or economic inadequacies. One complained about him having to visit his dying aunt and leaving her alone for a weekend. Another called her boyfriend a loser for not making enough money for them to live in Vancouver proper (an expensive place). Heck, my mother has called my father as loser for "only" making about 250K a year (my parents live in a 1 million person LCOL city).
You go through this as a man and it reinforces your suppression of feelings and desires to never open up to anyone because of the humiliation.
No wonder men kill themselves 4x as often as women.
I had a friend whose mental health always seemed a little precarious. One time he told me that he'd broken down and just hugged one of his kids and cried.
Intellectually, I knew he deserved pity. But my gut reaction was revulsion at showing such weakness to one of his kids. In retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.
Sorry for going off-thread a little, as I appreciate the subject here is men experiencing negative behaviours when showing vulnerability.
But I wrote about the issue of "inversion of caregiving" (good compact phrase) in Digital Vegan in respect to technology.
It's become perfectly acceptable for parents/adults to lionise the supposed skills of children around tech. They say things like: "Oh well kids just instinctively know about technology don't they", or feel perfectly happy recounting with a laugh how "My five year old has to show me how to use the TV remote".
If adults are too lazy or stupid to understand any technology and its attendant risks, handing it to children under their care is neglect.
I think this is part of a wider problem of shrugging abdication of agency under condition of "convenience" worship.
Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other - or else the kids who "instinctively know about technology" would also instinctively know the risks. On the other hand, it's probably faster and easier for someone who understands the technology to learn about the attendant risks, and understanding the technology may be required to personally validate the risks or to invent the best remediation strategies. But a considerable amount of parenting is, and always has been, received wisdom, for better or worse. I can see an argument to describe "lazy" as neglectful, but I take issue with "stupid": the scope of a parent's best reasonable effort to understand and mitigate technological risks for their children should be conditioned on what level of understanding they can realistically achieve, or else "neglect" is reduced to an IQ test.
It is possible to be simultaneously cautious and proud of one's children for quick adaptation, but it is far from common. In fact it's rare in my observation, and the pride is misplaced.
These "straw parents" are very real and embodied. I talk to them often through Digital Self Defence classes and have a first hand feel for their struggles (while also being a parent myself).
> Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't [s] completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other
This is a very interesting point you make. My opinion is that they are very much orthogonal right now, and that is a major problem. Much of what passes for "understanding" is shallow marketing hype, at best dangerously incomplete, but more typically misleading, deception and propaganda. I quite agree with comedian Stuart Lee's assessment of Vodafone's guide to online child safety as "Mr. Fox's Guide to Hen-house Security".
We are in desperate need of a renaissance in digital literacy. I have called for Digital Literacy 2.0 as a movement to repair much of the cavalier and avoidant half-arsed education around technology these past 30 years.
Despite the likelihood that the implementation will be a shitshow - regressive for many necessary forms of speech to challenge technofascism - in the UK our "Online Safety Bill" contains much good stuff in the margins and has my broad support.
I get the sense that you are neither defending bad technology nor bad parenting. But together these the things feed off each other - and the results are self-evident in depressed, suicidal, distracted states of anxious acedia and nihilism so many children suffer today, along with the frustration and confusion of parents who feel their children "need" to engage in technologies and habits that are clearly harmful to them.
EDIT: My main point stands though - that ot is unacceptable for parents to transfer the burden of responsibility to their children. That is neglect, however you frame the abilities and knowledge of the parties.
respects
I'm like you, totally stoic. But if one of my mates has problems or is obviously in a dark place and wants to talk, it doesn't bother me at all, even if it is a, from my perspective, petty reason - we're humans and not rational machines, after all.
If someone's opening up about something truly traumatic or difficult, they get all my attention and respect.
But if I feel like they're being a cry-baby (e.g. being hurt by words rather than their meaning, complaining with a plank in their eye, complaining without making efforts, being dramatic over a small difficulty/fear/etc., not pushing their limits, etc.) I cannot but feel repulsed.
Edit: as for the why, I guess because as men I think we should always strive to improve, face the abyss, and overcome dragons on a frequent basis. If someone cannot overcome the tiniest of dragon eggs, they seem weak and not worth my time. It's the antithesis of someone I want to emulate or associate with.
I’ve been open and emotional on multiple occasions with my partner, including to the point of crying. I’m open about my doubts, flaws, and weaknesses. It hasn’t diminished her desire or commitment in the slightest.
And if it did, I’d much rather lose her than lose myself like I did in my marriage.
Living your life behind a mask to earn the approval of someone else is the path to the life of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau wrote about. You’ll never feel loved and accepted for who you are, because you won’t have truly revealed yourself.
Why be with someone if you can’t be truly known by them?
The hard part is that it's something you can only really learn about your partner with certainty once it really matters.
So in a way it's actually better to open up early, when the cost of being disappointed isn't too high yet.
So I think this reaction can change but it will take time.
I don't know if I see the connection to emotional vulnerability in a romantic relationship.
>> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
How is that relevant? Supposedly men are not good at asking for and receiving help because of their traditional gender role.
You have to be an extraordinary man to have an ordinary life these days.
That isn't to say I don't think they should be divorced. It's just what's on my mind.
it is still good to have friends, but for me this is the definition of an ideal relationship. a fortress of well-being where both partners support each other.
It's not the vulnerability itself that is the problem- it's that the vulnerability is revealing what is perceived as a huge character flaw: emotional weakness. When guys are admitting that they feel afraid, helpless, scared, etc. it's demonstrating that they are lacking strength, courage, and emotional maturity to deal with hardships constructively. They probably really are lacking these things, and the women didn't realize it before because they kept silent.
Ironically, vulnerability is actually one thing women find most attractive in men, as explained in Mark Manson's book models- it is really an impressive and attractive thing when done properly, it shows that you aren't afraid of the woman's rejection.
However, to be attractively vulnerable you also need to be strong, brave, and emotionally mature. You can't really fake this, it comes from hard work and life experience. It takes a lot of work and time for most people, and yes, crying over little things might be a valuable first step in being aware of your own emotions and starting to work on these issues.
What women are looking for in a vulnerable man, is a man that has overcome some really difficult stuff, and is tough and stable as nails in the face of adversity. He might be upset about something, and share that, but he also has a plan for what he is going to do about it. He isn't much afraid of her, or of sharing his inner feelings and challenges, because he has a lifelong habit of directly facing his fears in a courageous way with circumstances much more difficult.
I do share my inner challenges and feelings with my girlfriend, and she finds it attractive. I have also been through some really terrible shit in my life, and always have that in mind that the current challenge is tiny in comparison, and something that will make me even stronger once I overcome it. I also plan to fix the problem myself, and let her know that I have such a plan.
Vulnerability revels inner truths about a person. Are those truths about you attractive or unattractive? If your inner truths are unattractive is that her fault or yours?
It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth. The perception of holiness to buy ones way.
In reality the overwhelming majority of those that say it's "okay" for men to be vulnerable and emotional will react negatively when it happens.
Unfortunately that in itself is an unacceptable opinion by the moralist because it paints woman in a poor light. Again, caring about perceptions, not the truth. In truth its universal, woman+man relationships just happen to be the majority.
It happens in all other forms. It's something about the power dynamic of relationships.
This isn't a uniquely Christian thing, and it's definitely not something that suddenly popped up in the last century. Here's Jesus rebuking the 1st century jews for this exact behavior:
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." Matthew 6:5 ESV
I think this is more of a "human" problem than a uniquely Christian problem.
good old triggers are more potent than any progressist concept that popped up in the last century
They need a better reward than just a nicer career to consider it worth it.
> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.
I've experienced this firsthand, and I think most men have, with their girlfriend or wife (or even mother or sister). Your value as a male romantic partner relies on you being that "rock," and anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet. Women, even Margaret Atwood-quoting feminists like my ex, are repulsed by male vulnerability.