Eh… Hot pink was very popular among males and females alike in the 80’s. I wasn’t even aware that they make hunting gear with hot pink instead of orange, and a lot of other people probably aren’t aware either. Besides that, they’d need to do a bunch of field testing to see how the deer react to it before any serious hunters would consider it. Even with field testing, there are a lot of hunters that don’t want to wear orange.
This headline could be re-written as “Additional colors approved for visibility while hunting in select states”, but that doesn’t have conflict built into it, which generates clicks and engagement.
As a former hunter, I was intrigued, so I did a bit of searching. Most of the articles suggested that the testing had been done and that hot pink might actually be superior to blaze orange. It’s supposedly more visible to humans and less visible to the main big game animals.
Men started treating me like their guy friends, which was exactly what I wanted. What I didn’t know is that male friendships aren’t as deep.
That is also my experience - never could emotionally open or connect to my male friends. While (from time where I learned it) not having the same problem with women in relationships or friendship. I feel always a bit on guard with other men, always a bit performing. But at the same time I never made an negative experience with opening up being emotionally vulnerable.
The theoretical steps are rather clear, it’s just a different “vibe” I have with men and women (therefore I guess most of my friends are women) - sure in the end I just need start doing it, but as with all emotional things it’s easier said then done.
never could emotionally open or connect to my male friends
My bros and I are very emotionally open with each other. We’ve had sit-downs where we listen to each other and help each other through problems, hug each other when we cry.
Sure, I’m not going to do that with someone I just met 5 minutes ago, but once we know each other a bit we are very supportive and open.
Men started treating me like their guy friends, which was exactly what I wanted. What I didn’t know is that male friendships aren’t as deep.
He’s a fool if he thinks he’s going to form deep connections with other men in a short time period, especially as an outsider. Men make 4 friends in junior highschool and decide that’s enough for the rest of our lives. Men are also very tribal. He’s going to have to wait for years, or even decades to find the deep and meaningful relationships he’s looking for. That’s just how men operate.
I get what you’re saying (I hope ;-) ) and agree that women are allowed to do things that men aren’t.
[TW: Suicide, violence] I also think there are important differences between male privileges and female “privileges”. Male “disadvantages”* are generally still in the control of males. Military service is (or at least was) something that men (as a class) did to themselves, because they were the rulers. Prohibiting women from working or having a bank account was not something women had control over. Men commit suicide more often than women, but a suicide is still something that is ultimately in your hands - being murdered by your (ex-)partner or some stranger in a park isn’t. Of course it isn’t really that clear cut: how much control do you have when you are suffering from depression? And how much are you to blame for not seeking help when you’ve been trained you’re whole life to be “independent” and not show (or even feel) emotions?
But while it’s definitely not clear cut, I still think there are enough systematic differences to make distinction useful. Especially as the male privileges are much more in tune with what our society values: people get praised for getting shit done (be it fixing cars or shooting them into space), nation wide stories about being a good listener or friend are much rarer. You can amass insane amounts of money, and people will actually admire you instead of calling you greedy, while at least in Germany people start to have prejudices if you have more than two or three kids.
(*english is not my native language so I’m not as nuanced as I’d like to be)
Maybe, we as men, not so much society start pushing that, instead of waiting for others to do it for us.
We need to counter Lad Culture with telling them that talking about their feelings isn’t a pussy action. That we don’t have to wait for a wife to use as a therapist and surrogate mother.
When you see men pushing the toxic policies of “suck it up” on other guys with no cares to the background information, we need to call out the toxicity.
Things won’t get better so long as we enable the worst
Friends and family are the best, or at least the first therapist you should see. An actual therapist is required when the other two failed. That’s how a sane family or group of friends should work at least.
Another thing that we as men don’t want to admit (generalized statement,) are that traumas we suffer can often come from a familial source, and that distrust can poison our attempts to reach out to others.
Worse, those traumas can give improper perceptions about how a family works, and give frustrations due to finding out that your previously assumed normal life was in reality quite damaging for viewpoints when confronting how all the easy lessons we were taught were dead, decayed, and buried by 1970, if not earlier, and we’re working on tertiary information from unreliable sources that are grasping to the past to maintain control in their own lives.
It’s not a maybe, that’s literally the entire point of the message. Unknown men are all too often kinda shitty because we have zero systems in place to teach men how to be good people and many systemic ways in which we’re told that we’re automatically better. We’re generally physically bigger, generally stronger, and, for the most part, taught to be entitled to a woman we happen to fancy.
But yes, you’ve read it correctly and we shouldn’t be getting upset but instead working on making ourselves more trustworthy. And it won’t happen in our lifetimes but it’ll be progress.
My experience is always different than anyone else. Everyone else in my ward wound up loving it and saying how it was the most important thing and it’s a great place.
For me, I never had a constant therapist and was swapped around with no one keeping notes. It was all group therapy and I hated repeating myself all the time. Everything felt like a cash grab. Most of the therapists and people there seemed to have to take on a lot of work. I was lucky in that my insurance was paying for it all but the bills were insanely high.
It was all group therapy and I hated repeating myself all the time.
My experience was similar.
You go to therapy to be listened to, and instead you end repeating yourself 100 times because nobody is fucking listening. It was legitimately more frustrating than not going, because I was literally paying money to have someone listen to me and they still couldn’t fucking do it.
It seems like the author cannot reconcile that positive masculinity cannot simultaneously mean to be a good person who has a satisfying, meaningful life.
Where young women are encouraged to seek out positive role models for their own good, young men are frequently encouraged to seek out positive role models so that they treat women better.
Meaningful connection. A lot of these people are in these places because that's what they lack and think they've found.
Similarly to cults, few people escape these mindsets without somebody reaching out to help them.
The truly terrifying thing is, as the article shows, a lot of them are already retreating from their loved ones. After that, who is left to be able to help them out?
Am I only the only one who thinks comes off like “men arent like women, and therefore broken”?
Not having to spend an hour discussing my feelings is actually one of the things I like about my friendships. I don’t want long deep hugs, they make me uncomfortable. And I definitely don’t want someone opening up to me about their life struggles. That’s not the kind of friendship I like or want.
I wouldn’t call you broken, just as I wouldn’t call an asexual broken. I do think there are men out there who wish they could be more vulnerable though, and if the current culture stops or hinders that I think they deserve to say something too.
I tried therapy to figure out how to express emotions and the male therapist said I was fine and keep going the way I am. I can’t cry and can’t really name my emotions or have awareness of what they even are. It’s so ingrained that this is the way we are supposed to be that even the professionals aren’t always aware.
Find a new therapist. Part of what makes dealing with mental health issues so hard is that you sometimes really need to shop around for a therapist, which can be especially hard when you’re dealing with what you need help with 🫤
I mean it does because those things only make you uncomfortable because you’ve been conditioned your entire life to feel that way just because you’re a man.
Eh, I think it is more the fact that men aren’t willing to open up about shit when it is bothering them and they want to share. I don’t want to have a 30 minute share session at the start of all conversations, but it should be normalized that when a close friend asks how you are that you can say “Honestly not good because of X, Y, and Z and this is how I feel” without being made to feel like a freak.
As a human I have to say if you don’t recognise the negative issues you suffer because of our long history of social problems and messy biology then you’re absolutely delusional - men and women.
Sure: Read the article and reassess what you think it’s about. I for sure didnt walk away with the same impression you did, but I could see why I would if I read the headline and headed straight to the comments section.
At least read the article before you criticize it, because it’s nothing like what you seem to think it is.
I did read it and it’s riddled with shit I would never, ever want, and yet he presents it like it’s a bad thing. Here’s a choice example:
When traveling or running errands, and I saw a parent dealing with an exhausting kid, I could help and not be stared at like a creep.
I can’t imagine ever wanting to help with a strangers child. Not because I might be treated like a creep, but because it’s just none of my business. I would even go so far as to say that assuming they need help is problematic in itself. But he doesn’t address that; no, apparently men don’t help because we’ve been broken by society.
All my best friendships have been 99% ripping into each other and telling funny stories. Like I don’t tell shitty stories about work because I lived it once and I don’t want to live it again. No one else does either. Unless it’s to vent about someone because I’m angry. But I do tell funny stories about work.
Having said that even in the most masculine environments when anyone has had an issue or been pushed too fair the guys always rally and pick them back up.
Day to day shit is your own problem. The once in a month or few months is our problem and I’m here for you.
You boss was mean to you. You want to bounce other careers around or see if I can find someone to hire you? No, well grow up everyone’s boss is shit. Either leave or deal with it.
Your misses just cheated on you. Right come on I’ll get the guys and we’ll go to the pub, she’s a cunt you’re better off without her.
Also hand shakes are fucking great. I usually go for a shake and a quick hug. But the handshake is better.
@Rodeo interestingly, I'm learning a lot from this interaction. Like about how men normalize day to day misery and disconnection. So I'm very glad that this thread exists; thank you for being honest.
I find it toxic when people go on and on about minor problems that are in no way relevant to the people in the conversation and there is no way they can help.
All it is doing is bringing unneeded negativity into an environment. That’s toxic.
You want help? Yine I can help how? You want to ruin my free time when I’m trying to de-stress by going on about people and things that have nothing to do with me and I can’t help? Go away.
DeVille had formed a relationship with Simon on the subscription platform for two years, chatting with him regularly — often daily. She helped him bring his sexual fantasies to life but also discussed his everyday life, his hobbies, and his terminal cancer diagnosis.
“He’d request videos of us saying, ‘Fuck cancer, we love you,’” DeVille said, referring to herself and other creators Simon interacted with on the platform.
In May last year, a few months had gone by without hearing from him. DeVille searched for him on Google and found out he’d died.
I knew this article was going to be sad. But not this kind of sad. Come on! You can’t hit me with stuff like this!
Ultimately, I believe this is a direct result of the capitalist capture of feminist aesthetics into the sort of shallow “pop-feminism” that rose to prominence over the past couple of decades. For young men who’ve only ever seen this hyper-sanitized business driven take on feminism (one that notably does not make room for them), it’s easy for them to see it as an extension of the broader trends that leave them disenfranchised.
This is why manosphere influencers are able to amass such a large following seemingly overnight, and why they seem to have such success in accelerating this trend. A lot of young men simply do not have any experience with the broader feminist tradition.
I feel like often when even good ideas reach mainstream, they become corrupted by people who only understand and therefore care about the form rather than the underlying concepts.
This really resonates, mainly because it’s so true. I think a lot of men these days are feeling lost, sad, lonely, and angry. Some of us think it’s because we have forgotten what it means to be a “real” man, and the answer is more bravado, more machismo. But maybe what we actually need is to start learning to communicate with each other on a meaningful level, to redefine manhood in a way that allows us to express emotions in a socially acceptable way, and start forming real, close friendships with other men.
It’s an important topic that is often brushed off due to the individuals that tend to bring them up. The problem is though, that the problems these individuals have are in part caused by the lack of emotional support men receive socially.
I’m not defending any of the macho know-it-all “gurus” that I’m talking about, but I’m just pointing out that it’s important for women as well as men to care about this issue and try to change it in their daily lives, because aside from being toxic to men, it also creates more problems and worsens the existing ones.
How do you try to change it? Just open up more serious conversations with men, talk about feelings, even if they look at you weird at the beginning.
I write in the book that there's a weird combination of entitlement and inadequacy. You're entitled as your birthright as a male to women's bodies, you're entitled to power, you're entitled to glory, you're entitled to this heroic position. But you're also never going to meet it, so you're always going to feel shame and inadequacy. That combination makes is like a perfect storm for this resentment and emasculation.
This is interesting, Ive never thought of it that way. Tell men they have a right to a particular way of life, then make it next to impossible to achieve and finally feed off the resentment that perceived failure breeds.
I have actually never felt entitled to these things. What I mostly feel is a responsibility. If something breaks I'm supposed to know how to fix it. Because of this I have become good at fixing things. If we are lost I'm supposed to find where we are, so I study maps before I go somewhere new. If a decision needs to be made, again, eyes turn to me, so I need to know a little about everything, and never look indecisive. If an unexpected expense comes up, I need to have money saved away for this purpose. The punishment for failing things like this is not disapproval from other men or feeling less masculine. The punishment is that I'm viewed as less by my girlfriend. This is how I think things go hand in hand. By helping women get empowered, we can share responsibilities. By women helping us feel valued for ourselves, worthy of love, desired as we are, we don't need to constantly fear being seen as less... then, I don't know. Maybe it would also lead to men feeling safer to be better human beings. The impossible dilemma now, for me, is that I'm still expected to be successful in the traditionally masculine things, while at the same time not being successful in the traditionally masculine things. No way to win.
Yes, because men are entitled to these things (ie that is their purview) they are expected to automatically excel in those areas. Then when they fail to live up to those expectations, they feel badly about themselves.
I think your experience sums it up perfectly, as long as you don't get too hung up on the word "entitled."
Maybe I am hung up on the word, but I feel more forced into it. I don't feel bad about myself for failing to live up to that standard, it's more feeling unvalued as a person, as myself. It's an external invalidation.
Wow the only sane comment I found in this thread so far.
The issue isn’t masculinity or how it can be toxic (to even suggest it is insulting imo).
The issue is:
Society does not value men!!!
That’s it, it’s not complicated at all. It’s not this weird problem with masculinity.
Society does not value men inherently like women (as in for just existing), it values the benefit they can provide.
This has been the case in all of human history. The difference now is that we no longer prepare most/all men to be able to provide the most value they can.
I always thought the solution was to value men inherently too. But that means saying a “you go bro” to incels and other “low value” men.
Absolutely captivating read, I almost backed away just from the sheer length of it but now I’m sending it to others lol. Vivid and powerful, you can really feel the knot twisting around in her stomach. Interesting too that it was written so long ago, and looking back at her perspective now seeing how the social phenomenons she wrote about have evolved
Yeah, it seems the guys that heard this and just said "yeah, that tracks" have already done the thought process/critical analysis that this movement is trying to evoke
You can feel sad. I'm also unhappy about how I'm often viewed as a threat.
But it's not personal. They're not looking at me, jjj, and saying I specifically scare them.
Maybe you meant something else by "take it personally"?
Like there's a difference between not being allowed into the bar because it's full and because you got drunk and smashed a chair last time. The second is personal.
depends - as a related question - do you feel sad about locking your door because thieves exist and people didn't lock their doors until about 80-90 years ago?
would you and do you leave your door unlocked as a sign of solidarity with the victims of theft?
like with the original question I'm not literally asking you - I'm saying there are accepted norms in society that change.
I dont think this question really explores a lot of global or historical context either. Do women in the 1890s in Africa feel safe alone with men? What about women in 1620s France? 1200 Roman empire? 200 BC Jordan?
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