As a bisexual guy, this is exactly why I mostly dated women.
Hey! Bi cis male here, the few men I seem to go on dates with always seem to have some hangup. I’m not gay enough, I’m married to a women, hates vegans, hates trans people. It’s really exhausting to the point that first dates feel like I’m interviewing them.
It’s really exhausting to the point that first dates feel like I’m interviewing them.
If it’s a first date, you are interviewing them. I’m sorry it feels exhausting for you though.
I get what you mean but it shouldn’t feel like that. I shouldn’t be searching for something they might hate me over.
Men are hot, but I’m more pessimistic about finding a guy I’d want a relationship with than finding a girl. As a transfem, I’d have an easier time finding a guy, but a majority would probably be abusive or chasers. There might be fewer women, but it’d be safer(women are more likely to be progressive) and they’d be more into me as a person. It’d be harder to hookup, but easier to find a gf than bf.
Even transmascs would be better than cis dudes because they’re almost certainly not bigoted chasers that were raised to see women as goals instead of people.
Wow! Sample size: 1. Sure showed them, buddy.
Clearly not bi, btw, you’re a misandrist. Congratulations 🎉!
I’m not gonna be the “not all men” guy because this person does have a point,
But I will say, if all you look for is negatives, that’s all you’re gonna find.
Ah yes, you look at the entirety of the male population, say “there’s no positives”, and still think you have a point 😂😂😂.
It’s like you can’t even wrap your own head around the sheer amount of misandry oozing from your mouth.
“… in a way that makes them desirable as actual adults.”
FTFY.
This is such an insightful way to articulate the issue. The conversation mostly revolves around individuals (“men are bad”). This is one of the few times that men are talked about in a way that acknowledges the system at play, that they are a product of an environment and society that has shaped them a certain way.
I’ve lost the podcast source that talked about “there is no good way to be a man currently”. Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
Or they’ll all fall down the Andrew “Sex Trafficker” Tate pipeline instead.
The best example of good manliness in media I can think of is Bandit from Bluey.
The options are pretty slim if a cartoon dog from a children’s show is humanity’s best example of being a good man.
We, as a society, are still trapped within the “feminist revolution”, there’s fighting going on and no new normal emerged.
Both sides are ripped apart by two often contradicting sets of expectations, the traditional role and the progressive role.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
And that also reflects on women, to put it extremely bluntly, he’s expected to pay for dinner, but she still wants equal pay. It will take decades to sort all of that out.
It sucks. As a dude, I feel it’s almost impossible to balance being confident and approaching women you don’t know and also not being a creep or bothering them. I’m not the best but not the worst when it comes to looks, I have many friends of different genders (shoutout to my enby fellows who have to deal with this mess and also discrimination) and I’m confident in most things I do aside from dating. It’s gotten to the point I just won’t ask women out due to anxiety over coming across as a creep or bothering them, and instead endure loneliness. Which is not great, but it is what it is.
What makes it so hard for a lot of men is, that it’s a willful surrender of privileges. Men lost a ton of privileges over the last decades and it takes a bit of reflection to understand that these privileges were never legitimate in the first place. Instead, they frame women’s rights as weakness, because it directly contradicts their narrative of a strong man.
the important distinction here is that these privileges were the reason that men did what they did. Without them now men don’t really have an overall driving force through life. Without the expectation of “being a strong man” they literally have nothing to live for in society.
That’s what the post above mine meant by there not being a positive manliness.
Progressive manliness is described as a substraction from the old ideal. We simply have not yet formed a positive, progressive male identity.
Being a good human being is an option for everyone.
And I know this is from a kids cartoon, but Uncle Iroh from Airbender embodies benevolent masculinity pretty well. If we want children and young men to be socialized better, a good place to start is with our media depicting more characters like that.
What?? So when you were a kid ,you just wanted to be a “strong man” when you grew up??
Even for someone who wants to be a better man, there aren’t role models or celebrations of " good manliness". There’s no positive road map, only a list of “don’ts” and stereotypes to avoid.
Bluey.
bluey is great, but it’s only one example in a sea of no ships. It’s also aussie, so it’s not even super culturally relevant to most of the west, it’s also focused at really young children.
Beyond young children you have shows like, full house, which is literally fucking ancient.
there aren’t role models
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behaviour.
Robin Williams was always a standup guy, Keanu Reeves seems like a nice guy, Ryan Reynolds seems to be a standup guy (but he has a hard monetary incentive to keep this image), the guys from Cinema Therapy seem to be decent. Do these people count as role models?
What would you expect from a “role model”? Just a person who does good for its own sake? Doing so would be something that’s not publicized, so it’s hard to show off good behavior.
people that are the stereotypical mr rogers of the real world. We really do just need more people that are such good people that just they instill goodness in others on a fundamental level. That and people willing to spend time educating others.
if you aren’t a stereo-typically perfect individual, that’s fine, you almost certainly have something useful that you can teach someone young that’s around you.
What does this imply, exactly? They aren’t responsible?
More that we, as men, are poorly socialized to deal with interpersonal relationships due to the way that society teaches us to prioritize certain behaviors and values and eschew others.
ples ignore if i come off like idk… this has been just really fascinating to me and talking to people about this has been a fucking nightmare…and i have been craving to infodump on somebody… im sorry please forgive me. im really not trying to explain anything with any authority, but reading about this was kind of very low key mind blowing, more like “well of course…” :
… so I have almost finished this book (1) about how misogyny became so normalized through history… and like the books’ theory, based on archeological findings and studiyng various ancient texts, including the bible, so that theories starting point is before agriculture made us settle down, includes all the history up to when the romans okayed christianity into their statemodel and loads of other stuff that i started to write down in an editor until i realized i was trying to recap a book of 620 pages, 20 pages of references and 30 pages of additional literature… im sorry i love this book in a way… and i hate it in a way… i can only recommend it
… so i already typed this and it is basically a deep dive into a recap and the starting point of the book kinda…
before agriculture made us settle down, we had to be very egalitarian in regards to gender roles, there didnt exist any societal expectations yet except that of the little group you belonged to, but that was exclusively of cooperative nature, eventually the early humans realized left behind seed would sprout vegetables, and those places would be more often frequented and eventually we would settle at our favourite spot and for the first time we would call something our own, property was invented. some settlements would develop to be matrilinear, others would be patrilinear, but since women had always been the ones tending to the plants and little animals, while the men had been hunting large game, it would be the women who would have to grind the seeds they harvested into flour, so due to this hard work and the already higher exertion due to child birth, women would die earlier than men by about 10 years or so, men wouldnt become older than 40 or something…
… yeah hm
(1 “Die Wahrheit ueber Eva, Die Erfindung der Ungleichheit von Frauen und Männern” Carel van Shaik, Kai Michel) am on page 580 and i want to murder some specific men. they already are dead though
I’ve definitely heard that theory before!
Another big cause was mass infantry warfare - you can see in low-density sedentary societies and nomadic pastoral societies (which generally had strong traditions of mass horsemanship, rather than infantry combat) that oftentimes (though not always) women can still hold very high position.
It’s when the norm of warfare changes from “Who’s better with a sword” (in which women can very much remain competitive with men) to “What massive group of human meat on foot can roll over the other” that women begin to be pushed out of military roles (due to the triple-problem of women being shorter and lighter on average, women having less dense bones, and such stage 1 societies prioritizing ridiculous birth rates to maintain or gain advantages over neighboring societies). And, as the saying goes, power flows from the barrel of a gun. Or, in this case, the edge of blade!
Exactly that sort of thing! But also subtler cues, like being encouraged to react to problems with aggression without it being outright ‘said’.
Not that aggression doesn’t have its place as a reaction, but it very much bleeds into “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” sort of thing.
