throwaway11823
Everything I've said is true. I think you object to not indulging your curiosity about details of my life; I'm not here to be a narrator, I'm here to discuss an article.
> “My SO isn’t a woman”.
That isn't what I said; I told you that you making suppositions. I have neither said my SO is or is not a woman. If you think you know whether they are, the only explanations that I can see are that you've mistaken someone else's comment for mine, misread one of my comments, or that you have confidence in stereotypes.
> Somehow I knew you’d make this statement.
You are likely experiencing confirmation bias. You felt so confident in what I would say that you "knew" it, and didn't listen to what I actually did say.
> You are still vague.
I told you I was doing this intentionally. It should be pretty clear from context that it is to protect my privacy; I don't have to justify withholding personal information. If you didn't interpret my telling you that
> The responsibility of clear communication lies with you. It is not our burden to carry.
I think I've been crystal clear with you, I think you're not reading what I've said very closely. You're explaining criticism to me I've already acknowledged, telling me to get a therapist I've already mentioned having, etc. I don't know what your thought process is, but it seems like you're interpreting my declining to elaborate on details as a deception. It isn't. I told you I wasn't at liberty to discuss this.
> I do not know you. It’s a big ask to trust your word when everything you have communicated says the opposite.
Forums run on the presumption of good faith. But believe what you want, I asked you not to rant at me about how I need to fix my relationship with my SO because of problems you suppose we have. I'm not this person you imagine me to be; I don't really want to hear the criticism you intend for this person.
> This is a manipulative tactic that is very subtle but not uncommon.
There's no manipulation. I think you're ascribing entirely different motives to me than I actually have, and not believing me when I tell you I'm discussing an article, and that my statements are related to an article. So I think that when I made my comments, you interpreted them in an entirely different context than I created them, and imagined me to be some sort of monster.
> Also: I didn’t read every comment and your reply to it in the thread. This is not my homework. I only replied to the parent.
Do whatever you want. Understand that if you don't have the full context, you might not be received in the way you expect. If you are curious, for your own edification, you may find these comments enlightening:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34436172
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34435037
I'm sorry if I made you feel called out or defensive.
This group of commenters in this subthread are laboring under the misunderstanding that I don't understand this criticism; I accepted it in my top reply in this subthread. The statement I think you're interpreting as a rejection of this criticism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34436762) is an expression of a boundary; I'm saying, you don't have enough context to understand this, you're overextrapolating from a single data point, and I'm not going to enlighten you with additional context - I'm deliberately limiting the amount I share in this thread.
Additionally, this isn't actually what I was arguing; if we accept the axioms presented in the article, a poor presentation of thought doesn't indicate a lack of understanding, a poor expression does. That it is possible to be lonely as a result of a poor presentation is contradictory to the article's conclusion; make of that what you will.
When you continue that line of criticism - without asking questions, without understanding the boundary I expressed, and generally without showing me that you've listened to my previous statements & just repeating the criticism - I take that as transgressing my boundaries, and I draw the inference you are more interested in nitpicking my statements and expressing your criticism than respecting my boundaries.
I'd ask that, if you want to express such direct and personal criticism, you read much, much closer, especially with an eye to when I tell you that I'm not comfortable engaging with that criticism. If you didn't understand that saying, "I would not treat you this way, please do not treat me this way" was an expression of a boundary - now you know to be on the lookout for this common script for expressing boundaries. If you understood that it was a boundary and interpreted that as a challenge, or you don't feel it's legitimate for me to express a boundary in an online space - that is something to think about.
I think it would be worth considering that the ideas you were describing are axiomatic in incel ideology. If you dug through some Andrew Tate videos, you wouldn't have any trouble finding him make the same case as you've made. The crossroads here is, once one observes these critiques of masculinity - do you accept them fatalistically, attributing them to some indelible aspect of biology (this is the Peterson route), or do you seek to change it? Do you place the blame on women (the incel route), or do you observe that there is a power structure (the patriarchy) that is simultaneously oppressing and privileging both men and women in different ways, so that they both enforce the rules of the patriarchy on one another?
There is a problem here, absolutely, we're on the same page there. But it doesn't stem from biology, it is a set of social constructs and expectations; artifices created by humans and which can be abolished by humans, no more immutable than the concept of the divine right of kings.
Men shouldn't be in touch with their emotions to attract women - they should be in touch with their emotions for their own well being.
The idea you're expressing is called hypergamy, and it's more of a caricature of human courtship than anything. There are women who are attracted to status and women who are looking for someone with emotional sophistication and there are millions of other things they might look for. They aren't robots; they don't behave in unison.
The other idea you're touching on is evolutionary psychology, the idea that human behavior stems from certain knowable evolutionary pressures. This makes sense at first glance but it ends up being a way for people to dehumanize others and use scientific language to justify the belief that a certain group of people are robots operating under a known ruleset. It's a rationalization of prejudice.
Evolutionary pressures are so vague and difficult to know, and sexual selection in particular, that you can justify anything with this framework. Try this on for size; "women disproportionately bear the cost of childbirth, so they're incentivized to select for partners with a high degree of emotional maturity, because these partners are more likely to attend to their needs during pregnancy, withstand the often traumatic stress of parenting an infant, and to be caring parents who will pass on these high-value traits to their male offspring." Is that any less sound an argument than that they select for high social status, or physical strength, or what have you?
I'd really encourage you to look into criticisms of these ideas. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to offer as far as places you may start, I've routed through my browser history and turned up a couple things that might interest you:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-...
(Non-paywall: http://web.archive.org/web/20230115075145/http://www.nytimes...)
I'm sure that somewhere out there is a person (or hundreds or thousands of people) who would be a perfect friend to me, but I doubt I'll ever meet them. It's pretty difficult to make friends as an adult, and every friendship I have made as an adult has been fleeting and fairly shallow.
It's bearable. Therapists exist for a reason.
Do I "not understand how I feel" because I feel lonely right now? Or is communication not a one way street? Most of the time when I miscommunicate with someone, I find it's as much about their not wanting to understand as it is about my being unclear.
As a man, I have lots of people in my life who love me, but they consistently fail to take notice of my emotional needs. When I express that I have emotional needs, all I get in response is a "deer in the headlights" look, from other men, from women, from parents, from friends, from my SO. So usually I just keep them to myself because I don't see the point in asking for something that someone can't offer me - a tremendously lonely experience. Do I "not understand myself?" Am I not speaking clearly enough? No, the idea that I might need something from the people who rely on me terrifies them, and they freeze up and stutter and generally are unable to offer me any assistance.
And of course, I'm sure all of us experienced during the pandemic the loneliness of not having access to other people or being able to fulfill your social needs - distinct from the loneliness of being with people who don't understand you.