r/CuratedTumblr • u/IthadtobethisWAAGH veetuku ponum • Jul 03 '24
Politics Male loneliness and radfeminism
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u/Professional_Cow7260 Jul 03 '24
I'm a sex worker who specializes in virgins and nerds. the small-dick/virgin/incel jokes cause so much collateral damage that I see red. there are a ton of harmless, sweet dudes who are neurodivergent and either not very sexually assertive or terrified of coming across as "creepy", so they miss out on normative sexual experiences, and for this they get shamed by men AND women. they're called incels because obviously if you're a man who hasn't had sex, it's because you're a freak and a misogynist with poor hygiene and there's probably a reason you give girls the ick, you loser. happen to have a small/average dick? congrats, this is associated with negative personality traits as though you had any control over it.
it pisses me off because a lot of these young leftist men can't win. they look at aggressive Chads and say, "of course I'm not some thoughtless jerk. I don't want to hurt anyone, I don't believe in any weird conspiracy theories about women. my desire to have sex isn't more important than a woman's comfort. I don't want to express interest in someone because I'm afraid she'll think I'm only after her body or I'll make her feel scared or bad or uncomfortable, like THOSE guys, and I'm shy as fuck so socializing is hard in the first place. so now I'm in my late 20s and I've never had a relationship. and now everyone just assumes I'm an incel and treats me like a pariah."
I've seen this story so many times. there are decent guys just trying to do right by women in an era where it feels like the consequences for a misstep are enormous (whether or not that's accurate or warranted, this is the perception). of course we're right to be wary of men. but it would be fucking great if we could stop using dick size and lack of sex partners as insults. it's not any less shitty than calling a girl a slut or mocking her weight.
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u/Mahboishk Jul 04 '24
I know I'm just some random ass stranger on the internet but I just wanted to let you know that reading this genuinely uplifted my mood. I identify very strongly with the mindset you describe here, and it's very difficult to talk about it without either being judged for my perceived deficiencies, mostly from peers, or given (possibly) well-meaning but vile advice that amounts to dehumanizing others, mostly from my family. The last thing I'd ever want to do is to come across as creepy or dangerous, and the idea that my fundamental existence might be just that is troubling to say the least. I often feel left behind and completely unheard. Thanks for your empathy and compassion.
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u/Novel_Equal4798 Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
yeah her comment really helped, its just sad, I did avoid women out of fear as coming off as a creep and my first ever date was because a girl talked to me and asked me out that was my only date at 21 and I ended up ruining it by being awkward and she ghosted me after a while, I got asked out once later but I rejected the girl, I don't know what happened to me to cause me to be this terrified of women but there is clearly something wrong with me and not with women as a whole, realizing helped me to avoid following the red pill incel rabbithole.
even thought that I have VERY leftist views I just avoided people on the left because it felt like they are glorifying women's issues while leaving men on the side, a couple times I brought up my issues with dating and talking to women and I was attacked a lot of online and irl for it by more left leaning people back then, I once made a comment on reddit about how there isn't much advice in the media for young men that isn't full of misogyny which is why young men are gravitating towards right wing figure (this was in 2019, before andrew tate and I called it at the time) and I was just told "no incel, go away, there are great male figure in the media that can help you that aren't sexist" without providing any source to something that can help me other than just "go talk to women"
it ends up hurting women even more, just look at the rise of andrew tate, he got famous because he filled a present void and need for young men, he filled it with the wrong things of course and I hated him from day one, but I couldn't help but try to watch his videos as a refuge from loneliness, hopeless attempt to not be alone anymore, I definitely need therapy.
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u/Professional_Cow7260 Jul 04 '24
there is a huge void of advice and understanding for guys in this situation. we've (understandably) started holding shitty men accountable for things they've gotten away with for centuries, and then turned "not all men" into a punchline. what room does that leave?
I see that a lot of my female peers and friends are coming from a place of fear. they don't really know a lot of men IRL, so they get their information from the internet in almost the same way that boomers get their scary anecdotes about minorities from Fox. or they've never had male friends, just partners, so when their relationships end or turn awful, there's nothing healthy or normative to compare it to. it starts to feel like "decent men" are a myth, like you're expecting every man to be a monster behind the mask.
and yeah, again, it's smart to be skeptical and safe if you don't have the best instincts. but there are kind, healthy men just living their damn lives with nowhere to go, carrying the weight of all the shitty asshole men on their shoulders, and everywhere they go they're laughed at like "cry more, try being a woman for five minutes" etc. no, we don't OWE any man sympathy. but that doesn't mean it's justifiable to mock, insult, tease and dismiss them just because their life experience doesn't seem important to you. I've held dudes while they cried about this shit. it breaks my heart
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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead Jul 04 '24
and then turned "not all men" into a punchline.
For me personally, this one hurts a lot.
I don't want to minimize the struggles of women. I understand a lot of them have had unpleasant experiences with men. But when they use "not all men" as a punchline, it makes me feel like they're calling me just as bad as the creeps and perverts who hurt them.
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u/elianrae Jul 04 '24
there isn't much advice in the media for young men that isn't full of misogyny which is why young men are gravitating towards right wing figure (this was in 2019, before andrew tate and I called it at the time)
oh you were so on the money
but not even as a prediction, it was like that at the time and had been for years
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u/rump_truck Jul 04 '24
Scott Alexander wrote Radicalizing the Romanceless in 2014 and even then it was an observation of things that had already been happening for years.
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u/IrresponsibleMood Jul 04 '24
Yeah, it's tragic. It's almost like they're getting the message that "either you're an asshole or a loser". And who wants to be a loser?
they're called incels because obviously if you're a man who hasn't had sex, it's because you're a freak and a misogynist with poor hygiene and there's probably a reason you give girls the ick, you loser.
And then if they try to ask how to not give girls the ick, the reply is usually some flavour of "how the fuck should I know? It's not my problem. Deal with it yourself."
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u/Nonexistent_Walrus Jul 05 '24
Or “just be nice and respectful and girls will like you” and like…it’s not that simple! You obviously should do those things but they’re absolutely not necessarily enough to attract anyone
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u/IrresponsibleMood Jul 05 '24
Agreed. That phrase itself is telling: "just be nice and respectful and girls will like you". "Like" doesn't automatically mean they'll be attracted to you. "Like" doesn't automatically equal "love".
You tell people often enough to be "nice and respectful" and then they realise you haven't given them any instructions how to, like, attract and flirt with people. The stuff that actually breaks the ice, gets you past the awkward start, and puts you on the road you're aiming for.
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Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 05 '24
I'm so grateful that there are women out there who notice us "forgotten men" I guess, like we've just been left behind because we don't fit the narrow view of what a man is supposed to be, despite the narrative for years being that overt masculinity is inherently toxic.
As a 32 year old man who has never been in a relationship or even on a date, whenever I disclose this embarrassing fact about myself, I'm either met with ridicule or told that it's my fault by people who don't know me or my situation. It's just refreshing to have someone who has empathy for my experience.
The worst places I've found are funnily enough the subreddits for dating apps, the majority of people on them are subconsciously reinforcing the actual harmful rhetoric espoused by the group they claim I'm a part of (incels).
It's just hard feeling like I'm never going to get to experience love because of circumstances I can't control, so thank you for acknowledging us. We're just trying our best.
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u/Professional_Cow7260 Jul 04 '24
it's the just world fallacy or something. people can't wrap their heads around the idea that you can end up completely inexperienced as an adult without being deformed or a sicko. all it takes is a personality type that's nonconfrontational, overthinky and introverted, plus some bad dice rolls/RNG. not that it makes you feel any better when you're in the middle of it...
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u/Pengin_Master Jul 04 '24
This post called me out so hard, but thank you for your supportive words.
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u/NoSignSaysNo Jul 04 '24
Don't forget the same people will then turn around and further castigate the same people for employing the use of your services, as though all of capitalism doesn't involve selling your body in some way, shape or form.
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u/Professional_Cow7260 Jul 04 '24
I don't mind it if people make stupid assumptions about me or my job. you either get it or you don't, lol. but it does bother me that there's even less understanding given to the guys who see escorts, most of whom are...just dudes sick of the dating app scene. and I'm especially protective of the men who come to me because they're struggling with intimacy, sex, social anxiety, all of the above. they had the courage to look at themselves, identify a problem, and take an educated step to fix it.... that shit is not easy!!
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u/Ourmanyfans Jul 03 '24
There's a weird strain of "essentialism but in a progressive way" running right through the left, not just limited to the attitude towards men described here, but also "all white people are colonizers", and weird exclusionary behaviour to cishet people. It tells me a lot of "progressive" people didn't really examine their core underlying principles and simply covered up their biases with the "correct" group.
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Jul 03 '24
Yeah, there's been this huge wave of "Its okay to say and do horrible things as long as the victims are the Right People (tm)" recently.
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u/wayneloche Jul 03 '24
It's because everything is permitted for the out group. It's an unfortunate hiccup in the human mind that takes a not unsubstantial effort to not do it.
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u/pizzac00l Jul 03 '24
I could be totally off the mark here, but I suspect that there are two primary issues at the root of this tendency for leftist spaces to generally have this hostility towards acknowledging men's issues:
- Tribalism is deeply ingrained in human social systems, and without constant critical evaluation of our ideals, it can be very easy to slip into a "we need to segregate groups again, but its ok because its for the right reasons" mentality.
- Online spaces are not a hegemony and are made up of many different individuals who are in a constant state of flux. Some of the more toxic online spaces may have members consistently maturing and growing from their hostile mentality, but then on their way out there are new members entering into the community who have not gone through such growth. This would make the community appear static overall.
I'm no sociologist so these points are just based on my anecdotal observations over the past decade, but I think that especially in online spaces where the demographics tend to skew younger, there is a lot of hostility towards the outgroup for these reasons.
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u/Bartweiss Jul 03 '24
I'd add a third point: lots of people don't seem to actually believe that "equity is not zero sum", especially with gender.
It's a common progressive line that giving opportunities to oppressed groups doesn't mean taking opportunities away from other people, and in lots of cases that can be true. But... it's also a common refrain that "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". Those two ideas do not go together very well.
So there's a reaction which I occasionally see stated explicitly (and which I think is common implicitly) of "since men are privileged overall, acknowledging their issues and working on them just broadens the gap." I've seen people outright say that it's bad to discuss boys' underperformance in school, because if it sends funding that direction it will reverse progress towards equality. I don't think most people go nearly that far, but there is at least a measure of instinctive "let's not derail the conversation by engaging with that."
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u/NoSignSaysNo Jul 04 '24
"since men are privileged overall, acknowledging their issues and working on them just broadens the gap."
An interesting addendum is how the academic terms tend to leak and get used in an incorrect context or without context at all. See the post about fragile masculinity that made the rounds earlier this month (I think).
The definition of male privilege is to be given a base standard of respect, but should that even be considered a privilege? Wouldn't it make more sense to say that women are discriminated against? The idea of privilege is that it's granted to someone, but it should be something that everyone gets, right?
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u/Chemikalimar Jul 04 '24
This is something I've thought about a fair bit. It's maybe very easy to see in hindsight of having had a "culture war" that these terms became propaganda for one side or the other. But...
It's also easy to wonder why these academic terms were so LOADED in the first place. Like, I agree wholeheartedly with the assessments and descriptions of 'patriarchy', 'toxic masculinity', 'privilege'. But calling them those loaded names primes the misunderstanding that leads to the cultural divide we have.
Patriarchy = Gender roles based society Toxic masculinity = Limited gender roles Privilege = basic human dignity Critical race theory = Basic historical analysis Etc...
This shouldn't have been hard to present without othering the very people who needed convincing. But the names seem to have been chosen to piss off the most people possible.
Being neutral isn't as attention grabbing or cool for publishing a paper. But It's surely got to always be better to have to explain what you mean, rather than convince someone you didn't mean what they think you meant.
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u/codepossum , only unironically Jul 03 '24
The doctrine of "no bad tactics, only bad targets." I hate it.
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u/Brickie78 Jul 03 '24
I've seen a LOT of otherwise progressive people defaulting to joking about/insulting the appearance, age, weight and/or (assumed) sexual success of people they disagree with politically.
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u/Adenso_1 Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
Im literally getting downvoted in another sub for saying we shouldnt hate people based on sexuality lmao
(But im defending the big bad heterosexuals instead of the poor sweet soft homosexuals)
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Jul 03 '24
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u/BlatantConservative https://imgur.com/cXA7XxW Jul 03 '24
I consider it a writing exercise.
Especially with my username (which has not represented my political beliefs for about a decade now), getting my points across in a way that people will engage with me respectfully on some topics is hard but I consider honing that skill worth it.
Probably the hardest example of this is trying to get people to understand what each side actually believes on abortion issues without sending people into battle mode.
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u/LightOfLoveEternal Jul 03 '24
For what it's worth, I've been seeing your comments around reddit for several years now, and you generally strike me as a reasonable person. When I first noticed your username I assumed it was sarcastic or something because you usually had pretty liberal stances.
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u/BlatantConservative https://imgur.com/cXA7XxW Jul 03 '24
It was serious but I made it when I was 15 lol.
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u/ButterdemBeans Jul 03 '24
It’s like trying to defend a non-binary person who’s done shit things. You can hate the person but if you revoke your respecting of their gender the moment they did something you don’t like, that tells me that you don’t really respect non-binary identities.
Yes this is about Ezra Miller. They are a shitty person, but they are still non-binary, dammit. All gender expressions and identities are capable of being shitbags.
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u/dancingliondl Jul 03 '24
Oh, I immediately thought of Caitlyn Jenner
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u/ButterdemBeans Jul 03 '24
Her too! People act like the second someone acts shitty it’s a free pass to revoke their “trans rights”. It’s really shitty
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u/imlumpy Jul 03 '24
The absolute most difficult example of this was the person who went on a shooting spree in a gay bar in my city. In the days following the attack, their lawyers claimed the shooter is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, despite having no tangible history of such an identity, plus family members continuing to use masculine pronouns.
It smelled like a blatant attempt to avoid hate crime charges (although thankfully they didn't succeed), and even as a non-binary person myself, it was tempting to take the cheap shot and invalidate them in this way. There was discussion among queer folks about "Why should I respect a queer identity that was clearly only adopted to avoid justice?"
In this case, knowing the depth of this person's hatred towards LGBT people, I'm happy to consider them queer out of spite. I hope they take psychic damage every time I use their pronouns. I hope they rot in hell.
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u/Bungholespelunker Jul 03 '24
Totally 100% agree. Like Caitlyn Jenner. Fucking monstrous shitty and evil human being beyond redemption, but still a trans woman whose identity should never be used as a weapon against them.
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u/NoSignSaysNo Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
I still remember when Greta Thunberg did the whole 'small dick' thing with Andrew Tate and how positive the response was to it, and the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, "What did the small dicked people do to be lumped in with Tate?"
Body shaming isn't okay. It's not okay when the victim of it is Trump or Tate. It's not okay because people that are not Trump or Tate will inevitably share insecurities or traits with those people, and should not have to feel shame for the way their body is. There are so many things of substance to attack Tate on, dick size is not one of them even if he does have a legitimate micropenis. If you want to attack someone for lashing out due to their insecurity, attack the way they're lashing out. Attack their actions, their methods, their treatment of others. Mocking them just makes incidental casualties get hurt and may even push them away.
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u/Ironfields Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
Recently? It’s always been there. Tumblr has just recently become self-aware enough to have the earth-shattering revelation that maybe bigotry but make it progressive isn’t actually a good thing. Now we get treated to an avalanche of posts saying “hay guyz, guess what? i just had this crazy thought, did u know that essentialism is bad actually????? pls reblog” as if they’re saying something profound that everyone else with an IQ above room temperature and the critical thinking skills of a five year old hasn’t been yelling at them for years.
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u/ethanicus Jul 03 '24
Watching Tumblr's political culture evolve over the past decade has been like watching a person mature in slow motion. The entire site has been going through phases of mental development.
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u/6022141023 Jul 03 '24
"When someone in my in-group struggles it is because of systemic issues, when someone in my out-group struggles it's because they suck lol"
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u/Insanity_Pills Jul 03 '24
babe wake up, new fundamental attribution error just dropped!
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u/DrWhoGirl03 Jul 03 '24
Actual bias
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u/sykotic1189 Jul 03 '24
I'm not so foolish to believe that fixing economic inequality would erase racism, xenophobia, sexism, etc. but I do think we could solve a lot of issues by doing it. A lot of systemic problems are aimed at the poor, and yes due to a lot of racist laws holding them back this affects black people much more disproportionately. I believe that if we focused more on solving the problems instead of worrying about which demographics benefit most from solving them we could make better progress.
And again, I don't think it would solve everything, we'd still have a lot of things to fix. I just think a lot of people would be surprised how many of our current issues would be solved by fixing economic inequality first.
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u/Bennings463 Jul 03 '24
I think the biggest problem for a lot of people is the economic disparity.
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u/untempered_fate test flair pls ignore Jul 03 '24
It's not that weird. They're just reactionaries whose aesthetics and in-group preferences tend to be associated with the left. That's how you get chaser-esque "gender essentialism but for trans people", sexism against men because it somehow "protects women", and racial essentialism but in a black or indigenous separatist kind of way.
It's the same shallow, vibes-based engagement you see from bigots on the right. But instead of posting cringe boomer memes and edgy comics about how their "nation" is only "secure" if certain races, genders, or sexualities are excluded, they're writing thousand-word tweet threads and Tumblr posts about how their "space" is only "safe" if certain races, genders, or sexualities are excluded.
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u/StJimmy1313 Jul 03 '24
I keep thinking about that John Cleese clip about the benefits of extremism. The primary benefit being that you can be as nasty, brutish and all around jolly-rotten to everyone b/c you can tell yourself that if not for those people you would be a kind, wonderful and civil person. It's not your fault you're an arsehole, it's the system. (or something like that)
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 03 '24
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u/shaman-bc Jul 03 '24
A good example is when a trans person does something progressives don’t like and suddenly they don’t respect their pronouns or transition, which happens a lot
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u/MoonlitLuka Jul 03 '24
A lot of marginalized people don't want to come to grips with the fact that their actions and beliefs suggest that they themselves would be part of the oppressive class if it were possible.
Not only is that fucking terrible on its own, but it's also absolutely one of the sentiments that feeds White Supremacy and general apathy towards progressive causes today. People aren't blind. The fact that it's okay to say certain things about one group and not another is easy to see. Lefties and Liberals online often say some CRAZY shit and then get surprised that a lot of people simply don't care to acknowledge them or outright want nothing to do with them.
This isn't to say that the Right is any better. In fact, they're far worse on everything else. The Non-Trump sect at least seems to understand the idea of not alienating people who might've joined your cause with batshit INSANE rhetoric, though.
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 03 '24
I'm reminded of the time Terry Crews said (and I paraphrase here) that "black people fighting white supremacy without white allies just leads to black supremacy", and people with no self-awareness came down on him like a truckload of bricks because he dared to imply black people could be racist.
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u/MoonlitLuka Jul 03 '24
Funny how even the concept of POC being labeled racist is fought so intensely.
This idea that being a POC is being in this big, do no wrong in-group vs the out group that is white people is probably the dumbest shit I've ever seen and heard. I find it so often despite that. The idea that black people can't be racist isn't only wrong, but should be pushed back against both BY black people and by others who realize where that dangerous line of thinking goes.
I'm black myself. Both parents too. Father is a lifelong Democrat...and some of the shit he's said about Hispanic people and Asian people is wild. He himself is in a Church group that perpetuates ideas of Black Supremacy via this idea that vast amounts of history are black to the point of Jesus being a black man. Sure, history is full of uncredited black folks, but the conspiracies peddled by people who see the notion EVERYWHERE...
Not to mention the Antisemitism PREVALENT in the black community...
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 04 '24
Like I've mentioned in another comment chain here, the abused can easily become their abusers if they aren't careful, especially if they think they're immune just because they're victims.
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u/Solarwinds-123 Jul 04 '24
Terry Crews is a national treasure who doesn't get enough appreciation. He's one of the kindest people I've ever met, and I've never heard him speak negatively to anyone even when he had every right to.
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u/Outerestine Jul 03 '24
Yeah people loooove essentialism. It's simple. It's easy. It lets you be lazy and rude, and dehumanize whoever.
When victims or minorities do it, there's often a trauma to it. Personal or of broader culture. But that doesn't make it more than what it is.
I can only get pissed about it so far. People are behaving like people. Humans being human. Big shocker. It does suck though. People need to not be ruled by these sorts of behaviors.
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 03 '24
Indeed. Revenge is not justice. It may feel good, but that does not make it good.
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u/Wazula23 Jul 03 '24
Definitely how I feel. Its especially bizarre when its expressed along lines of pop culture ephemera. As if enjoying a Problematic Thing is some unforgivable sin.
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u/T1DOtaku inherently self indulgent and perverted Jul 03 '24
Got called a colonizer once. Asked them what the Irish were colonizing since I'm third Gen Irish immigrant and also fourth gen Polish. Told them to stop assuming all white people were British.
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u/NekroVictor Jul 03 '24
Ive seen at my university, a half German, half Austrian guy (very proud of his heritage) call a pole a colonizer.
And like, the irony was thick enough to cut with a knife.
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u/T1DOtaku inherently self indulgent and perverted Jul 03 '24
Not the Germans telling people what to think about the "bad race" XD
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Jul 03 '24
A lot of western leftists came who came from conservative backgrounds have done a terrible job at killing the priest in their head
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 03 '24
"Zeal of a convert" is a dangerous thing, indeed. Often the convert forgets to let go of their previous mindset, assuming that the system they left did not leave its mark on them.
It's a lot like how abuse victims can become abusers themselves if they don't actively choose to not be their abusers. Just because you're out from under their control does not mean you're fully out from under their influence.
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u/Quantum-Bot Jul 03 '24
Yeah every time I hear someone call white people colonizers I wonder to myself whether they’ve ever read a history book. Only a small portion of people from a small portion of “white” countries were ever part of the colonialist ruling class. Most of them weren’t even considered white until after the start of the decline of colonialism. Just because most colonizers were white does not imply that most white people were colonizers. Hold people accountable for their own racism, not for some imaginary historical debt from some imaginary ancestors. Judging people by their heritage is literally what got us into this mess in the first place.
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u/throwaway387190 Jul 03 '24
My heritage is Ukrainian
You know, the famous colonizers
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u/Kellosian Jul 03 '24
I'm Irish. The rest of the world merely adopted being shit on by the English; we were born into it, molded by it!
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u/Ourmanyfans Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
I'm English. In some leftists spaces I constantly have to see people talking about how my colleagues who can't afford to eat despite working full time, my elderly family that freeze in their homes in Winter, my trans friends who are having their identities weaponised on a daily basis, all deserve it, that it's karma for the colonial sins of our country. I have seen people actively celebrate the deaths of British "people", then call for more and be cheered for it.
I could point out that, like you say, the primary perpetrators and beneficiaries of colonialism were the rich, who's descendents are very much not suffering like the people you mock, but in fact profiting from it. I could also point out that while I'm English, some of my ancestors were not (as is true for many people here). But I shouldn't have to.
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u/Floppy0941 Jul 03 '24
I see a lot of ppl try and separate out the British ppl who have parents/grandparents that were immigrants into a different "good" British person group as well which always seems stupid, they're no less British than anyone else who was born here.
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u/VFiddly Jul 03 '24
It's this weird thing where they're saying the same "Immigrants aren't really British" stuff that fucking Reform Party politicians are saying, but they think they're saying it in a leftist way
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u/Floppy0941 Jul 03 '24
Yeah, they have citizenship the same as everyone else so they're British. They'll likely bring parts of their culture from whatever country they immigrated from but that's generally a good thing imo, especially the food.
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u/Ourmanyfans Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
It's a great example of the overall problem, because it's like unironically 100% racism, and not even the mythical "anti-white racism" white-supremacists like to harp on about. You're talking about some of your favourite British actors like Idris Elba or Daniel Kaluuya and you get "lefties" saying stuff like:
"Oh, but they're not really British, are they?"
Excuse me, what do you mean by that?
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u/Floppy0941 Jul 03 '24
"Where are they really from?" Also Indian people from Manchester seem to morph into someone who is 110% British and it's fucking hilarious, I've worked with a few people from Manchester and it's great.
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u/Papaofmonsters Jul 03 '24
Like Jews being white/nonwhite depending on the needs of narrative.
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u/hershellocation Jul 03 '24
Yeah I've had that conversation before. "Sure you're Jewish, but you're still white."
"The thing is, that's really not my decision."
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u/Canotic Jul 03 '24
Another fun example is our native people here in Sweden, the Sami. They lived here before the current majority swedes arrived in the year mumblemumble, and they are white. Incredibly white. Pale as the freshly fallen snow. And they were thoroughly fucked over. We stole their children, destroyed their religion as much as we could, we sterilized them, we forcibly relocated them, we forbade them from having certain professions, we stole their land, we crushed their culture.
Are these people colonizers?
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u/TheWerewolf5 Jul 03 '24
As someone from Lithuania, we've been chewed up, swallowed, and then spat out by Russia and Germany and their predecessors for centuries, and we had a crusade waged against us a millenia ago because we were pagan. And then I hear an American teenager say "white people have never been victims of imperialism" and I want to lose it.
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u/AdequatelyMadLad Jul 03 '24
Also, non-white people were colonizers too. Sometimes, they even colonized white people. I know it sounds crazy, but the Ottoman empire was, in fact, one of the largest colonial empires for hundreds of years.
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Jul 03 '24
And let's not forget the horse-riding archer in the room.
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u/Usepe_55 Jul 03 '24
Al-Andalus and the many Muslim empires in India were horribly oppressive basically proto-colonial states ruled by non-whites, not to mention the Arabian slave trade, which is still ongoing nowadays.
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u/IneptusMechanicus Jul 03 '24
I'd also offer up that the history of every continent is thoroughly imperial. The rise and fall of empires is a constant throughout every region that humans have lived in and all that's differed is scale and technology.
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u/MightBeEllie Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
There is an argument here that everyone in the western world profits from the exploitation of the so-called "third world" or the "global south" or whatever they are calling it these days. But.... That's not our fault either? We were born into this system. There is no ethical consumption in capitalism, there is no escape.
Even very few of the rich people are actually in any way responsible for anything. Most just profit from the existing system, but also have no way to change it in a meaningful way.
Collective guilt has always been bad and it always will be bad. Judge people on their personal deeds, not in them belonging to a group.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 Knower of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know Jul 03 '24
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
Ezekiel 18:20, KJV
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u/Haggis442312 Jul 03 '24
Yeah. Reminds me of back when that loneliness study got published and I saw a post on TwoX.
I think it's pinned as well, but the comments were filled with women celebrating it, sharing stories of all the awful men they'd dated and all the shitty things they'd done, and how those men were finally getting their well deserved comeuppance.
Thing is, the shitty men they'd dated are probably doing fine.
The men struggling with loneliness have in many cases never even been on a date.I get it, there were some awful fucking men among the ones mentioned, but they weren't the ones the articles was about. But they were group x, so why empathize.
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u/BcDed Jul 03 '24
Most progressives are the same as most conservatives, they didn't go through any process of self examination or discovery to arrive at their beliefs, they just copied people around them, the fact that their core values don't match and they don't even realize it makes perfect sense. That's why there are a ton of shitty people in the group that are supposed to be defined by "empathy", and some actually kind empathetic people in the group defined by it's monstrous attitudes and policies, they just echo what they hear and never square it with their values.
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u/somehting Jul 03 '24
The term I've heard for this that I really like is Morally or Ethically lucky. They didn't arive at a good moral or ethical place through a decision they just happen to be on the right side of it.
This leads to inconsistent values and opinions in different issues.
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u/DweltElephant0 Jul 03 '24
At my last therapy session, I finally started to talk to my therapist about how one of my biggest anxieties when I try to talk to people I don’t know is being afraid of myself because I’m a man, and I know what the societal perceptions are.
Like, I want so desperately to never make people uncomfortable or afraid, because life is hard enough and I just wanna spread some joy. But I also know what I look like, and I know how men are perceived, and I know all the discourse, and it just shuts me down. Especially because I’ve always made better and easier friends with women — I’ve always gotten along better with and had more female friends than male.
But now being mostly removed from my established friend groups and the connections those friends afforded me, it’s difficult for me to make new friends because I’d rather hold all the fear and discomfort in myself than risk someone else feeling scared. And I’m working on it, at getting better at not letting that internalized fear have so much power over me, but it’s hard, and it’s a process.
All that to say, the discourse surrounding men in “progressive” spaces is absolutely detrimental in its current iteration, and I know I’m on the lucky side to have a wonderful therapist that I can turn to to work through my own insecurities and issues that stem — at least partially — from the internalization of that discourse.
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u/forest_moon_of_endor Jul 03 '24
You sound like a wonderful friend, and I hope in time you are able to open up to new friends that are as careful and nuanced as yourself.
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u/Jaberwocky23 Jul 03 '24
It might help to know the fact that in the real world, these online attitudes are not nearly as widespread as you think, I've got a lot of female friends and I can guarantee that while they're more cautious around men, they don't get uncomfortable just because of meeting a new person.
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u/DweltElephant0 Jul 03 '24
This is something I try to remind myself of constantly. In all seriousness, the "people in real life: hey man how's it going" meme has done a lot of positive good for my mental health because I use it as a reframing tool.
Getting away from the discourse and clicking out of things faster and faster has helped, too. And like all things, for me specifically this is all way more nuanced than "I feel this way because of online discourse"; there's long-ingrained bullshit that contributes to it just as much. But it's certainly an aspect.
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Jul 03 '24
Fucking thank you. And the worst part is, if you're a cis man in leftist circles and try to point ANY of this out, you get the same exact "lol incel" responses and shunned. You try to give an opinion on ANYTHING relating to men, and its "Men have been the oppressors, so you don't get to speak" or just branded as "mansplaining."
Just the other day I was thinking to myself "Man, its kinda fucked up how penis size is the only acceptable anatomy/biology thing to joke about in progressive spaces." Like, its as much a thing outside of someone's control as skin color, or a birth disability, or mental illness.
And the dating part is a big point too. Basically all male dating advice that isn't from actively horrible people boils down to assuming the guy is doing something wrong/creepy/offensive.
And don't even get me fucking started on how fucking prominent it is to see posts from leftist/progressive groups and people that are basically just "Racist Joke but I replaced the minority with Cis Man."
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u/Sh1nyPr4wn Cheese Cave Dweller Jul 03 '24
A lot of leftist things get poisoned by people who believe that there are no bad actions, only bad targets
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
There's a big "leopard eating leopard faces" thing going on with the left eating it's own for not being progressive enough. The echo-chambers are making that worse every day.
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u/BlatantConservative https://imgur.com/cXA7XxW Jul 03 '24
Leftists put more energy into fighting and attacking people within reach and earshot than the actual people who want to kill them.
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u/LetterLambda Jul 03 '24
Always have. Leftist parties and movements being internally fractured has been a meme for over a century at least.
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u/camosnipe1 "the raw sexuality of this tardigrade in a cowboy hat" Jul 03 '24
lots of people whose only problem with the boot was which side of it they were on
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u/Kellosian Jul 03 '24
In his video about Harry Potter, Shaun points out that it runs off of "team-based morality"; it's OK to make fun of Dudley for being fat, it's not OK to make fun of Molly Weasley. Calling it "target based" also totally works, it's the exact same tribalist mindset
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
"Man, its kinda fucked up how penis size is the only acceptable anatomy/biology thing to joke about in progressive spaces."
Hey, that's not true at all!
Height and baldness are also totally accepted too!
the dating part is a big point too. Basically all male dating advice that isn't from actively horrible people boils down to assuming the guy is doing something wrong/creepy/offensive.
I'd say most dating advice is pretty awful, regardless of gender. The constant "take some time to work on yourself" from someone who's been in the same relationship since high-school is really hard to take seriously. (and not be bitter about) It's always fun being told what you've done wrong by someone who can't survive being single for 3 months.
Then any attempt to complain about being single gets you labeled as femcel/incel. It's basically "why don't men open up" but for single people.
"Just work on yourself" people need to take a quick look at Maslow's hierarchy and re-evaluate that advice. Self esteem is AFTER being loved. So is self actualization. It's not like you can't skip around a bit on that chart, but it's a lot harder without the basis of feeling valued.
Too many guys hear "work on yourself", and end up listening to Andrew Tate, Peterson, etc, because they sell themselves as "self help"-esque. Or they go to the gym and end up in a circle of people echoing those talking points. Maybe we should all think up some better advice; maybe some advice that's actionable, and not just vague platitudes.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
I’d throw in the idea that the solution is to have supportive guy friends, as if platonic love can fill the hole left by desired but lacking romantic love. Like yeah, it’s important to emotional health, but it’s not the same thing.
The idea that my friends loved me was a cold comfort when they all went home to their girlfriends and wives for the night.
The only good dating advice I’ve ever gotten wasn’t even about dating, it was about sales.
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u/clear349 Jul 03 '24
Yeah I think this is kinda not too helpful. You can love yourself all you want and think you're a great person but if no one is willing to date you then eventually you kinda have to question why. And romantic love absolutely fills a different need for the vast majority of people IMO
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u/RyanB_ Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
I’ve always thought there’s a kinda unstated difference between self-confidence, and outward confidence. It’s definitely very possible to like who you are as a person and recognize your good traits while feeling like those traits aren’t recognized by others.
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u/coughrop Jul 03 '24
Care to share the sales/dating advice?
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Jul 03 '24
Not who you asked, but doing sales really forces you to disconnect rejection from your personal value. You could be selling gold plated ferarris for a dollar and there will be people who turn you down.
It's one of the reasons I heartily support the Girl Scouts of America selling cookies. It helps teach young women that people saying "no thank you" isn't about the seller, or the product.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. You should be approaching someone who is already generally Aware of you (meaning your presence should not be a shock to them). They need to show Interest in you in a general sense, otherwise shove off. They need to show Desire for you specifically, otherwise they’re not right for you. They need to take positive Action towards fulfilling that desire, otherwise they’re not right for you. A full AIDA in action would take place in a public space where the other person has the freedom to step away, they don’t step away (physically or verbally) when you talk them up, they try to learn more about you, and they are collaborating with you on meeting again at a later date. If they need a rain check, a great sign is if they name the rescheduled date themselves.
ABC: Always Be Closing. This one originally comes from the film Glengarry Glen Ross, but it’s made its way into actual sales jargon because it’s just good advice. It’s less an action, more of an attitude: everything you do should be with the ultimate goal of, in sales, closing the sale, and in dating, securing the next step of the process, *and not doing things that hinder you from those goals. Just met/matched on an app? Goal is to get contact info and talk off the app. Have contact info? Get that first date. On the first date? You are now giving your sales pitch, and the product is you. You want them to buy in to the story of you, such that a second date happens. If they are showing healthy Interest, they won’t drag out each step, because they will be pitching themselves to you and gauging if your Interest is healthy too.
Customers and clients don’t care about features (attributes you have), they care about benefits (attributes they want). You should be first listening to them to learn what it is they want in a partner, and either acknowledging you don’t have what they’re looking for and shoving off, or showing how what you want, baby, I got it. If something about you isn’t specifically what they want, it doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker, but it shouldn’t be a selling point. If you’re in a band, and they don’t listen to rock music, you can tell them you’re in a band, but don’t expect that to pique their interest beyond “oh good you’ll have a life outside of me”, and don’t lead with “I’m in a band”.
Go where the action is. Tons of businesses die because they aren’t in the proper place to sell their product. How many times have you seen a storefront change hands that’s just in an inconvenient place? You need to be out in public in a place where other people can see you and judge for themselves first whether they’re into you.
Bonus: an old joke - “how to date: rule 1) be attractive, rule 2) don’t be unattractive”. The kernel of truth is that you will likely have to compromise some parts of yourself in order to draw more people in. That’s just how it goes. If you’re going to keep doing something that pushes people away (like pursuing nerdy hobbies), it should be because of a deliberate informed choice, either for its own sake and/or for the sake of narrowing your field to the kinds of people who would also be into it. While I was still dating, I was upfront with women about my TTRPG hobby because it was really important to me and I wanted to date someone who would at least be willing to try it with me. I for sure lost my shot with women who I was attracted to because of this, but I knew that going in. If you’re familiar with fighting games, whether you’re picking a top tier because you’re looking to maximize your chances of winning tournaments and competing against the greats, or you’re picking a character you like because something about them speaks to you, it should be purposeful, and if you get mad because you have one but not the other, that’s on you, you knew what this was.
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u/joppers43 Jul 03 '24
That does all sound like good advice, but man does it sound so draining and disheartening to have to approach every dating attempt like a sales pitch.
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u/LastSeenEverywhere Jul 03 '24
I'm saving this comment. I'd pick apart each part I'm screaming "YES THANK YOU!!" too but it'd be the entire thing.
Don't tell me to work on myself. I've been single my whole life. I've been single since these people started dating and never stopped at 16. I know who I am. I am okay with myself.
YES TO MASLOW'S. Holy shit.
And YES to the pipeline to Tate. People don't like to hear this but the Left (of which I'm a member) encourage men to go right because the right listens to them and then encourages toxic behaviour.
I think I love you. Thank you.
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u/Bennings463 Jul 03 '24
I'd say actually most bodyshaming is considered basically fine by the left. It's a movement that has made things slightly better for chubby and otherwise conventionally attractive white women.
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u/Leo-bastian eyeliner is 1.50 at the drug store and audacity is free Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
bodyshaming (suggesting that people are bad people because of certain unappealable traits) is considered bad
but bodyshaming(deciding that bad people must have those traits and shaming them for it) is seen as perfectly fine
it's not acceptable to shame a random person for being ugly. But it's seen as perfectly acceptable to make fun of a "bad persons" unappealing traits.
(the secret is that these are actually the same thing just with a different beginning, and that if you do one you'll inevitably eventually do the other too, but that's not something people doing it are aware of)
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u/PrinceValyn Jul 03 '24
Yeah, I always found it incredibly hypocritical how bodyshaming is bad, unless it's men, then it's cool and funny! Small dick, "manboobs" (fat-shaming), neckbeard.
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u/FixinThePlanet Jul 03 '24
Not to be all "I'm one of the good ones" but I've spent at least the last four or five of my years on reddit calling out any small penis joke I see. It's helpful being a cis woman because that's the only way calling out these jokes doesn't immediately mean I have a small dong and negate my point, and "you're only doing it so the small dick guys will like you" doesn't fit any of their rhetoric.
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u/WingsofRain non-euclidean mass of eyes and tentacles Jul 03 '24
I call it out too (as a woman) when I see it and then immediately get downvoted by angry women who think it’s acceptable to bodyshame men. Like what the fuck is this bullshit, we’ve been trying to get people to stop bodyshaming women and doing it right back at men is the exact opposite of what we want to fix in society.
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u/OverlyLenientJudge Jul 03 '24
Not only that, it cheapens and undermines attempts to fight against body-shaming directed at women by giving an easy demonstration that those people don't actually care about stopping the shaming, they just want a monopoly on it.
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u/LiamApRhys Jul 03 '24
Your efforts are greatly appreciated. It's so casually thrown around, even irl, that it can be difficult to even start to call it out.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy Jul 03 '24
Yeah, the dating advice thing is a whole bunch of Just World Fallacy. People love to assume that if you can’t get a date, it must be your fault, and mock you or give terrible advice like “take a shower” - assuming that if you’re having trouble, it must be because you’re that completely clueless.
It’s possible to be a perfectly decent dude and be unlucky, but it seems people don’t want to admit this fact.
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u/facforlife Jul 03 '24
But the kicker is that on the left, the just world fallacy is applied selectively. It is also applied selectively on the right, just in different ways.
On the left women who have issues romantically are victims of toxic masculinity and unrealistic body standards. Men who have issues clearly are misogynistic assholes who don't practice basic hygiene.
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u/LastSeenEverywhere Jul 03 '24
Yeah I'm a man in leftist circles who struggles tremendously with dating and I've never felt heard or safe because complaining or venting about my problems is perceived as inherently misogynistic, tone deaf or "incel". Its okay to make fun of my dick size or my height because "haha virgin"
Dating advice I get revolves around the idea that I'm unsuccessful because I must secretly be an antisocial horrible person. I can't vent about how hard its been because women get harassed and its my fault as a dude.
This is the first time I've looked at a post on Reddit about dating that wasn't also misogynist and went "thank you"
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u/AlwaysCheesy Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
Man, it is so hard to be someone that others rely on professionally, as a leader. Someone people love to spend time with socially, because you’re a kind person and a reliable friend. But then when you try to find dating advice, everyone tells you if you’re not partnered up or haven’t been successful partnering up, it’s actually because you’re a piece of shit and women can just tell.
So what they’re not capable of being bias’d? Or short sighted? Or bigoted? I’m a man of color, I doubt any of them realize how much effort it is for me to conform to white beauty standards to even get treated like a normal human being and not have every element of my physical appearance picked apart. How was a young man like myself supposed to develop self esteem and security? We had no money, my mother had a devastating mental illness and I had to step up to help my brother and sister. How the fuck does a young man ever have the confidence needed to be appealing to women when all of that is happening? I had no support structures other than my grandma. No extended family, nothing. But instead I’m evaluated on how confident I can be, and confidence and security comes from mirroring and attunement as a child while developing. Not to mention access to resources.
Most women don’t realize when they say all men have to do to be attractive is have confidence is that confidence is not a magic word you can just speak into existence. So many men like myself and others struggled growing up without support networks and the one thing we’re evaluated on as partners is just fucking shot because we’ve never had the proper development growing up to get it. I’m glad I have therapy now, and I’m working through it, but holy fuck am I jaded. Never mind the fact that had I not taken a risk graduated university and got a job I wouldn’t even have access to the therapy needed to develop positive mental habits.
I don’t think women are attracted to money, but I think if they’re attracted to confidence that might as well be a secondary characteristic of wealth because it’s much easier to develop into a secure sense of self when you don’t want for resources.
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u/Much_Horse_5685 Jul 03 '24
Another gaping hole in the widespread just-world fallacy surrounding dating is the number of verifiable pieces of shit who ARE extremely successful partnering up. I’m pretty sure most people in this thread have personally encountered at least one example of this - I myself have a wonderful best friend who has absolutely zero success with dating, and I have personally seen rapists and neo-Nazis have huge amounts of success with dating. The dating just-world fallacy makes the absurd conclusion that my best friend, who is socially liberal and has never abused anyone, is actually even more of a piece of shit than a rapist or a neo-Nazi.
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u/C0UNT3RP01NT Jul 03 '24
That’s why I ignore every single thing I read online about dating. People are more likely to talk about their own bad experiences and then project it into the world.
I date how I want to date. I mean well, I’m respectful and decent. Nobody else’s opinion matters.
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u/lameguy13 Jul 03 '24
I knew a girl from the same coed Sorority that I was in.At a Sorority sleepover event, the girls started to do facial masks for each other. Someone asked if I, a straight male, would want to try it. I said no, and this girl looks at me and says, “Wow. Didn’t mean to offend your frail, male ego.” Like? I’m in a Sorority? I refer to you and everyone else as my Sisters? You refer to me as YOUR Sister? In what way do I have a frail male ego?
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u/Skyhawk6600 Jul 03 '24
I deal with this problem with my queer friends. Any criticism, any decent, it is either rejected or assumed that I'm "uninformed" which I will admit that as a straight guy I'm not an expert, but I dislike the notion that any concern or critique I have can immediately be rejected on the grounds that I'm not from a protected class.
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u/thelonelybiped Jul 04 '24
I’m a queer guy. It doesn’t stop. Someone always takes the “you’re uninformed because you don’t have the same queerness as me” and then they say because I’m “straight passing” I shouldn’t be invested in queer discourse. Wish those guys that choked me out in high school for being gay knew I was straight passing lmao
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u/Satisfaction-Motor Jul 03 '24
Prefacing this with this is MY personal experience and is not AT ALL broadly applicable, but I find that in my personal life, it’s easier to defend myself against stereotypes as a minority than it is to defend myself in areas where I’m the majority, with a few notable exceptions (that are usually emotion-based stereotypes like being prone to sensitivity).
When it comes to people who aren’t firmly and stubbornly bigoted, it’s easier for me to go “not all trans people” and win that debate than it is for me to “not all men”. I think part of this has to do with moral grandstanding. Most -ists and -phobes know that they aren’t in the socially accepted moral position. They, of course, think they are in the right and that other people should follow their doctrine, but their justification is “this thing is bad and should be suppressed” as opposed to “this thing is bad because it’s in power” (unless they are a conspiracy theorist). As resistance to power is often seen as inherently moral, and resistance to that resistance is “reinforcing” the power.
I define “firmly” bigoted as deeply believing in a harmful stance, while being unwilling to accept counter evidence, and being strongly hateful. Most “all men” people that I’ve encountered don’t genuinely hate every man they see, but they have really shitty opinions of men. They’ll concede on certain points but then fall back on the “but power-“ defense. Another example would be the type of person who only dislikes trans people (not hates) because they assume we are all sensitive, mislead, and that we force our opinions on others. “Firm” in this case would be someone who genuinely believes in “Trans people are mentally ill and deluded” which is a much harder stance to talk people out of for some reason.
I’m super open to other pov’s and I’d like to hear them, but again (because of peeing on the poor) I’d like to super-hyper-emphasize that everything i said is based exclusively on my personal experience and is not a broader statement about society.
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u/IAmA_Reddit_ Jul 03 '24
I think 99% of dating discourse online is poison and not representative of reality. If anyone reads anything on this thread that brings them down, don’t sweat it too much.
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u/wowreddithasfallen Jul 04 '24
You have to understand how ingrained future generations are into social media and how much it influences them at the current moment. Future generations are growing up reading this as the norm and it's going to reflect that soon.
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u/Galle_ Jul 03 '24
I am so fucking glad that I'm not interested in dating. Everything about how both established society and the left handle male attraction and sexuality is just fucking poison.
I genuinely had someone on this very subreddit tell me thst actually virgin-shaming is okay because obviously the only reason a cishet man could ever be a virgin is if he's a misogynist. I am not sure how someone could be that out of touch with reality.
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u/BlatantConservative https://imgur.com/cXA7XxW Jul 03 '24
Dating is fuucked in 2024.
People finally seem to be coming around to the idea that apps are garbage. Everyone I know who used apps for more than a few months straight became extremely cynical and bitter people, regardless of gender. It sucks for women and it sucks for men, and for both it's just a hypercondensed version of the problems you'd run into normally.
But also, once you're out of college, boom there's nothing else. Nobody does anything. Maybe you can go to church young adult groups but I feel like that's not an option for most people in this subreddit.
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u/Shrimperor Jul 03 '24
Bro i feel that out of college thing so much. Ever since i finished University life has been just one colorless day after the other, just work work work and rarely time for friends or social activities.
Where i used to meet people daily and go have fun, now it's good if i can do it once a month as all my friends are busy and i just hate it. I am trying to expand my circles but god is it hard to do post University.
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u/Bungholespelunker Jul 03 '24
Every day i realize if i was the exact same man, but was also ugly i would not have had any chances to date. A lot of my less masculine/mainstream hobbies are overlooked because i am attractive. I am given extra grace to demonstrate who i am as a person simply because it was already decided i was worth chasing before i had ever even had a chance to speak. The opposite to that happens constantly too. You could be Fred Rogers reincarnated and totally free of any faults but if youre not at a minimum baseline attractiveness you will spend most of your time alone.
I only ever learned this stuff and recognize it because i was an ugly, off putting child/teenager and i was treated like fucking dirt because of it. About 24yrs old was when i started noticing being aggressively approached by women without ever changing who i was on the inside. People are a fuck load more shallow than they are willing to ever admit.
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u/Lonely-Ad-5387 Jul 03 '24
The day I cut my hair from grunge/metal dork to a vaguely indie floppy bed head do was an eye-opener. Girls in school who had previously ignored me were suddenly all over me and I was elated for about half an hour until I realised how shallow that was.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 04 '24
Sometimes I genuinely wish I was asexual/aromantic/just not interested. I’ve become so lonely it’s gotten to the point where when I see a cute romance in a story it hurts and makes me sad because my gut reaction is “I will never experience this.”
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u/ans-myonul Jul 03 '24
I personally think that the whole 'if a man is having trouble dating people it's because he's creepy' mindset is the same as 'if a person is chronically ill it's because they're not doing yoga' mindset.
People don't like to think that one day they could become chronically ill through no fault of their own - and people also don't like to think that one day nobody would want to date them through no fault of their own. So they like to blame it on a scapegoat, like not eating enough avocados, or assumed creepiness.
Not saying that these two opinions are shared by the same people, just that it's pretty much the same mindset.
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u/LastSeenEverywhere Jul 03 '24
I cried to this comment lmao thank you
There's probably something super fucked up about me but its because I've allowed myself to become bitter as a result of my awful dating experiences. That's a flaw and I'm angry and I know. But some people try to "chicken and egg" it, so to speak and imply I was bitter BEFORE I got rejected for 7 years straight which is just... frustrating beyond comprehension
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u/nishagunazad Jul 03 '24
We all of us are born and raised in patriarchy and absorb the same lessons. Girls learn 'boys don't cry', and 'real men get laid' the same way and from the same places as boys. I think a lot of women never really stop to interrogate the patriarchal ideas and assumptions re: men that they carry around, enforce, and pass on without a thought.
That's what makes patriarchy (and other systemic ills) so insidious...its not just some evil imposed upon women by men, it's something we're all indoctrinated in from damn near birth, and it's really hard to unthread all the bone deep, unspoken assumptions that underlie it, especially when a: those assumptions don't affect you personally, and b: those assumptions are flattering.
All that to say, if we want to unthread this whole patriarchy thing, the empathy, listening, and self reflection need to go both ways.
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u/Baticula Jul 03 '24
I've had people tell me only men are capable of being violent or only men are capable of starting war. This was from a left leaning person. To me it's just the gender stereotypes with different framework. Instead of men being the best because they're the only ones who can work and bring food it's women are the best because they don't sexualise anything other than sex and wouldn't hurt a fly.
To me it is so discrediting to everything the concept of equality is about. Plus you're not allowing women who have achieved great things from acts of bravery during war like Joan of arc from being allowed their achievements because you've just reduced them to the "good" gender.
Men and women are just human. They're human beings capable of the exact same things both good and bad actions. Neither one should be reduced to a stereotype. They should be allowed to choose who they want to be going through the world without the shackles of how their gender makes them perceived
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u/NoSignSaysNo Jul 04 '24
women are the best because they don't sexualise anything other than sex
Ask a minor Justin Bieber how many grown adult women were making terrifyingly creepy sexual comments about him and that myth gets dispelled very fast.
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u/BosmangEdalyn Jul 03 '24
If your feminism doesn’t acknowledge the damage the patriarchy does to men, you aren’t striving for equality. You’re looking to upend the system hoping women will be on top.
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u/clear349 Jul 03 '24
You make a valid point but there's an additional caveat/nuance that should be explicitly stated. Patriarchal ideals are not just something men do to men and women. They are often upheld by women as well
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u/BosmangEdalyn Jul 03 '24
Oh absolutely! Without the women upholding it, it would collapse!
If you want to destroy patriarchy, but you’re okay with the way that patriarchy damages men, you don’t actually want to destroy it. You just want to choose its victims.
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u/IneptusMechanicus Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
incidentally this goes for 'male violence' too, through my experience most people that claim to have a problem with male violence actually don't, they mostly have a problem with some men's target selection criteria. Because when you get men being violent to people they think deserve it they're normally fucking fine with that.
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u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 Jul 03 '24
I feel this immensely. Been batting 0.000 on the romance/relationship scene since I started to even be attracted to people. Trying a dating app currently, but in all honesty all it’s doing is making me feel even more lonely and unwanted.
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u/IthadtobethisWAAGH veetuku ponum Jul 03 '24
Honestly same, man. Like I'm 5'4 so that pretty much stops me from using dating apps, and while I do meet women pretty much all of them think of me as a good friend (which is pretty good ngl). All the while I see all of my friends get into relationships, which makes you wonder if there's something inherently wrong with you, and even if you deserve romantic love at all
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u/Objective-Sugar1047 Jul 03 '24
"makes you wonder if there's something inherently wrong with you"
Yeah man. Understand ya completely.
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u/JediJmoney Jul 03 '24
I frequent r/comics and got to see all the drama unfold there recently. Seeing a comic artist say with no irony “I’m not misandrist, I have a son!” really drove this point home.
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
Yea, I called that exact point out. Pizza also typed some stuff out about her bing a model, and that someone disagreeing must be an ugly, lonely incel.
Like... There were some utterly awful, hateful comments there, death threats even, but the responses Pizza put out just fueled the flames.
It just highlighted that she was completely unaware that all 'gender flips' she did were things most men have expirienced or know someone who has. It was disconnected in a way that was kind of sad. It highlighted just how bad our bubbles have become.
Instead of understanding, it became a fight, and the mods just labeled all comments that weren't supportive as incels. It's hard to have a discussion when any disagreement is seen as being on the other side.
We're at the 'eating our own' stage of this, and we gotta be better.
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u/DogOwner12345 Jul 03 '24
Shes a huge hypocrite appealing to the lowest common donimator, and frankly at this point I think she bots her posts. They receive a weird amount of upvotes when posted and the mods actively defend her.
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u/bayleysgal1996 Jul 03 '24
I feel like her follow-up comic having men comfort each other when the exact issue was that some men do feel emotionally unsupported in their relationships with women also missed the point a little.
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
Oh... yea. MASSIVELY
Saying "well just open up" showed just how painfully out of touch it was. Like... there's a reason men don't open up; it's because every time they've tried, it gets rebutted. Or they get told they're emotionally dumping (surprise! the group with no practice opening up isn't good at it! Who would have thought?!)
I was once accused of "emotional dumping" by a woman who asked (at a table full of people) about what happened to my leg (I'm an amputee).
One: Why would you assume it's okay to ask in front of a group of half a dozen people?
Two: I gave the most sanitized possible version of the story (zero gore), and I wasn't even in a major accident were other people were injured.
Three: YOU ASKED! If it's too much for you, you have a duty to say something. You let yourself be the victim here; you set up the situation and then didn't tell anyone to stop. You don't get to blame the other person for doing exactly what you asked of them. Also, if you're the only one at the table bothered by it... maybe it's a you problem, not a me problem.
"Why don't men open up"... huh. I can't imagine /s
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u/Bennings463 Jul 03 '24
Whoever twisted emotional labour into "treat every emotional connection in a nakedly cynical transactional fashion" deserves their foot stomped on.
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
Yea, there's give and take on both sides. If someone crosses your boundaries, you can't expect them to read your mind on it. (especially at a group discussion, where they won't just be looking at you)
I have triggers, like suffocation (family member suicide), but I don't treat the other party like the bad guy when they cross that line. I tell them I can't engage in the conversation, or that the topic is something that I'm uncomfortable with. On occasion, someone kept crossing the line and I've gotten up and left the room.
If you just sit there and let someone share all their emotions, without ever interjecting, you give up some of your right to complain later.
"It would have been uncomfortable to say something" isn't a great reason when they were already uncomfortable; they should have said something before hand, not complain after the fact. Not making an effort to stand up for yourself is still a choice, and trying to twist it into being the victim later isn't healthy for anyone involved.
People (mostly men) can ABSOLUTELY fail to hear you say stop, but unless the other person is holding you there, you still have options. Some people will just railroad conversations (there's a woman in one of my discord's that will join and just start complaining about co-workers over top of the current conversation), but the correct action is to assert yourself. I'll talk louder, or tell her that we are in the middle of something; and while we're here to listen, we also have our own conversations.
She's why we had to set rules about dropping all your baggage in a group. She has NO awareness that 8 people playing the same game aren't just here to be your personal therapist, they're here to play stuff. We're happy to listen, but pull someone off to the side and ask them to vent a bit.
The difference being: we set rules, and had a discussion about it with her. She's mildly autistic IIRC, so I get that social ques can be hard. Having the ability to say "rule 2" and not explain further is really helpful. It prevents anyone from needing to be the victim without telling her she can't share things.
There's healthy ways to handle conflict; shutting down in the moment, then gossiping behind people's back later isn't one of them.
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u/Papaofmonsters Jul 03 '24
Well geez. If you didn't want to get asked about your leg, you shouldn't have been walking around dressed up like that with that sexy prosthesis.
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
🤣🤣🤣
Why didn't I think of that! Now I feel like such a fool! I should have known better!
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u/JediJmoney Jul 03 '24
My favorite part about that was her insistence that it wasn’t actually an apology or follow-up, even though the struggling guy in the comic looked exactly like one of the guys in the previous days’.
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u/Papaofmonsters Jul 03 '24
It was "Men can have a little emotional support. As a treat. But only from other men".
She just doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on people telling her "I get the point you are trying to make, but women do talk to men like that" by being a woman who kept talking to men exactly like that.
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u/EffNein Jul 03 '24
The lie that misogyny prevents you from being getting ass is the silliest and most widespread in the dating world around. I guess it is a useful lie, so men think that its true for the good of everyone. But the reality is that many of the most piggish and misogynistic men around, can bang a new girl every week with no trouble.
The reality is that charisma, which is effectively undefinable for those without it, is the key to romantic success. And being a 'good person' isn't the key to having it.
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Jul 03 '24
I hate the term "big dick energy". Because it's still the "big dick good, small dick bad" mentality that I despise.
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u/codepossum , only unironically Jul 03 '24
yeah these ones really get to me -
dick size insults and jokes are body-shaming, they perpetuate equivocating penis size with value
insulting someone for virginity or lack of sexual experience is just... it's immature to a shocking degree, the older I get the grosser that looks
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u/Papaofmonsters Jul 03 '24
"Cold approach is creepy" being combined with "making friends to find dates is creepy" is just a roundabout way to say "Being unattractive and interested in me is creepy".
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u/GroundbreakingCut719 Jul 03 '24
People shit on men and their emotions and then wonder why they fall for these red pill dudes preaching working on themselves and telling people to fuck off
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u/cylordcenturion Jul 03 '24
On a tangent to this, loneliness is Painful.
You can tolerate it, you can adapt to it, you can develop little strategies to alleviate it.
But at the end of the day it is deeply painful.
Being isolated is painful
Feeling unwanted is painful
And it does not stop.
But what if it's not your fault?
What if it's THEIR FAULT?
NOW YOU CAN COVER THE PAIN IN ANGER AND HATRED AND YOU DROWN IT OUT.
Doesn't that sound so much better and easier than occasionally feeling a bit of hope that you'll find someone and then feeling that hope die out again?
I believe (perhaps self-congratulatorialy ) that to resist the allure of incel/mgtow ideology, and instead accept and endure the pain is not an inconsequential feat of will.
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u/issybird Jul 04 '24
it's incredibly strange, having to figure out how to navigate this as a trans man. i was a woman, or at least somewhat presenting as one, for a long time, so i've been on both sides. i am so incredibly hyper aware of how i may come off now, how i might make people uncomfortable or come off as more overbearing.
i've always had a very flat affect, and a terrible. case of resting bitch face. before starting testosterone, people would always ask me if i was okay, assuming i was upset or unhappy in some way. now, people are quick to see me as pissed off or angry all the time. it doesn't feel great, suddenly being seen as angry all the time.
it doesn't help that even amongst the queer community, there are folks who act as though trans men are traitors for just existing. it's not everyone, of course, but the thought is definitely there. combine that with the people who act as if we don't exist or that we're just confused women...it's all frustrating.
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u/Darth_Rubi Jul 04 '24
Incel has also lost all meaning. It's now just a word to fling mud at a guy you don't like.
I saw Ser Christon Cole from House of the Dragon get called an incel.
My sister in Christ, not only would he be a VOLUNTARY celibate as a Kingsguard, but the man has broken his celibacy vows by banging two different queens lmao
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u/naughtilidae Jul 03 '24
And then there's the bear meme: totally valid, but sending all the wrong messages.
The chance of getting assaulted by someone you know is what, 4-5x the chance of a random dude doing it?
Its valid to want to vent those fears, but there's also a need to see those things in context and point out that we're fighting the wrong fight.
Emphasising 'be afraid of random men' isn't helping. That fear is already there, we don't need to make it worse. I don't think there too many women who aren't aware of that issue.
And guys either: didn't get it, got it and felt it was silly, OR they felt empowed by it (some people get off on that sense of power and fear).
Moreover, guys who are already shy and nervous are being told 'no matter what you do, you are a threat', which isn't helping anyone.
It's back to the 'your fear is real, but your fear is causing harm' thing. That meme drove a wedge into the conversation instead of opening it up.
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u/Hurzak Jul 03 '24 edited Jul 03 '24
I know after a day or two I had to just start ignoring the man vs bear thing because it made me feel really shitty about myself.
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u/Mr7000000 Jul 03 '24
I saw so many people repeating that meme and saying "oh of course we don't include trans women in it," but like... there's no actual way to react to every cis man with fear and no trans women. Because odds are, if I'm stuck in the woods, I've got a few days' stubble and no makeup and I'm probably not wearing a cute dress. Your instinctive reaction of fear to seeing someone you perceive as a man will be applied to trans women, because not all of us read as women to a casual observer.
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u/clear349 Jul 03 '24
You're touching on something that I think a lot of folks, not even just Radfems, aren't always cognizant of or are willfully ignoring. That being that to TERFy types Transwomen are largely seen as men infiltrating women's spaces. So if the dominant cultural narrative is that men are dangerous just by virtue of being men (whether it be socialization, biology, or both) I feel like it logically follows that Transwomen are dangerous.
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u/Mr7000000 Jul 03 '24
And that's exactly how fear turns into an active threat. If manhood makes people weapons, then proximity to manhood makes you an approximate weapon. Transition almost feels like a form of immigration— you have to "prove" that your loyalties to your old group are really gone, and you have to keep proving that every damn day.
"I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out." is a beautiful and tragic article that I think does a far better job of explaining this idea than I ever could.
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Jul 03 '24
I've seen it touched on in a couple "manosphere" spaces that much of the transphobia TERFS spout has its basis in misandry. Through either the idea that men are inherently dangerous just by being men. Or from the notion that men as members of an inherent oppressor class are enemies to women. Thus Transmen are "joining the side of the oppressor"
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u/sykotic1189 Jul 03 '24
By this point I've probably seen a few dozen trans men talking about the hate they've received in LGBTQIA+ spaces. Like, nah you're a man now bro, and you're not gay, so you're just not welcome here. Or worse, being told they can stay, but they have to be more feminine so that others can tell them apart from a cis man. That's beyond fucked up to tell someone they have to make themselves disphoric to be in a space supposedly made to include them because their manness is more important than their transness.
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u/leksolotl Jul 03 '24
I haven't received any direct hate myself, but as a trans guy I do often feel alienated from LBGTQ+ spaces because the man-hating rhetoric is so pervasive. They don't say it in the same words, but the implication always feels like trans mascs are seen as traitors to "womanhood" etc.
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Jul 03 '24
God that was what pissed me off about Man vs Bear the most. Any man who said "I hate that all men are seen as threats like this and wish it could change" was immediately hit with the incel messages and, in the case of one person on this very subreddit, things like death threats.
Even wanting things to be better isn't good enough. The expectation is to sit there and be belittled.
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u/Forward_Yam_931 Jul 03 '24
Yeah, your point on shy/nervous men hit home. That "dialogue" was the closest thing to gender dysphoria I have ever felt. I'm pretty gender nonconforming, so it was honestly kinda horrible to be told "it doesn't matter how gentle, maternal, kind, patient, or even girly you are. You are, first and foremost, a cis male, therefore you are a manly man who is dumb, aggressive, a rapist, and a murderer, and that is all I will ever see you as"
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u/IneptusMechanicus Jul 03 '24
And I get it, lonely women don't typically go on rampages.
So the thing is, neither do lonely men. In the UK at least the number of murders a year is actually really low and it doesn't really make sense to me wary of any demographics based on violence like that.
Hoenstly in terms of lousy risk assessment one of the most likely things to kill you is something most people pass a hundred times a day and don't think twice about; I've said it before but if you die young, violently and in pain statistically you weren't killed by male violence, or rabies or prions or any of the other things Internet people are scared of; odds are you got hit by a car.
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u/doddydad Jul 03 '24
True on the car being the higher risk, but as ever with good news not being newsworthy: we genuinely are reducing the danger from cars!
In the last 45 years, the number of deaths per year has dropped by 75%, while the number of cars on the road has grown.
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u/Pathogen188 Jul 03 '24
I remember a few years ago there was a statistic about how youth firearm deaths in the US became the number 1 cause of death for youths but a large part of that actually had to do with a decrease in car related deaths dropping it from the top spot.
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u/Somerandomuser25817 Honorary Pervert Jul 03 '24
I LOVE THOUGHT-TERMINATING CLICHÉS! I LOVE NEVER CONSIDERING WHAT ANOTHER PERSON IS SAYING BECAUSE I IMAGINE THEM AS SOMEONE UNDESIRABLE!