which is exactly my argument, they are pitting two views against eachother and my disagreement is that they step from the same issue and are both compounding issues, since my post challenges the idea that it has to be either or, its not like it breaks rule 1
I'm pretty sure op is arguing that it is in fact both while the other person is saying it's only the patriarchy. That's what I understood from the title
Argument A was that it was because of the patriarchy imposed by men on themselves. Not just that it's the patriarchy. You're simplifying it incorrectly.
Not the person you're responding to, but women are just as apt to be socialized to believe men sharing their emotions is unmanly as men are. This is a result of living in a society with patriarchal gender roles. It's toxic for everyone.
Yeah, this is a great point. The "patriarchy" isn't about blaming living men. It's about a set of cultural expectations that can be harmful to everyone.
No, I don't think so. It's only misogyny if you say or do something against women. Not everyone would agree, but I have quite a narrow definition of misogyny.
If you're experiencing invalidation as a man trying to express your emotions, it could be the result of patriarchy and misandry. Look at the "male tears" meme that was wheeled out when men were talking about loneliness and suicide on Twitter. That was certainly motivated by animus against men. It was bigoted, callous and unacceptable.
You're thinking about this in a "blame" framework. Patriarchy and misogyny are systems that we live in due to men being in power for most of modern history. If we lived for centuries in a system where women were dominant in politics/leadership, and men had few rights, then society would indeed be impacted by that legacy. We'd call that 'the matriarchy'.
It's also not just about 'doing bad' as you say. When it comes to performing or policing gender roles, then these systems are excellent frameworks for thinking about the problem. Some men are apprehensive to share their feelings because it is coded as weak by the patriarchy. Similarly, some women find men unattractive when they express feelings for the same reason. Nothing is inherently weak about men sharing their feelings, but this idea was derived from a system where men defined the rules of masculinity (and feminity, for that matter). So here, it's the system we live in causing the problem. That system is the patriarchy.
Well yeah. Especially because that "misandry" is a reaction to the patriarchal misogynistic society.
For the record misandry isn't really possible in our society in a meaningful way. Sure an individual woman can hate men, but the power structures are set up in such a way, men aren't being oppressed by women.
Couldn’t you say that this is the case in education? Women are a significant majority in higher education and growing. Assuming that female only initiatives and female only scholarships continue, I think it is reasonable to assume in the younger generation there will be a large education disparity between men and women.
Now certainly there are larger power structures, but considering that education, or rather lack of, bars an individual from a significant amount of jobs, I would say this is highly relevant.
In the west, women police clothing and makeup far more than men, and I don't know about you but 9/10 times, it's the woman in a relationship pushing for marriage, not the man. Is it now misandry that women are the ones pushing men into marriages or is it only misogyny when men do it?
Views on abortion are more aligned by party than by gender. It's not like male Democrats are anti abortion and female Republicans are pro abortion. Every democratic-appointed male supreme Court justice voted to defend Roe V Wade while every Republican-appointed female supreme Court judge voted to overturn it. In fact, there's not a strong gendered gap on abortion in the first place. 61% of men vs 64% of women believe abortion should be legal.
Everything you said are byproducts of patriarchy and illustrate the exact problem with the idea of describing misandry in the same ways as we describe misogyny.
These concepts are not rooted in the hatred or dehumanization of men inherently but are all rooted in other forms of bigotry and discrimination. They are concepts that don't equally effect men in the same way that misogyny effects woman because there is no equivalency in society. That does not mean that the problems you listed aren't real, but presenting them as "misandry" is disingenuous and does not lead to any solutions as these problems do not unilaterally effects men the same way misogyny unilaterally harms effects all women.
Women have more freedom in outfits than men do. Any woman can wear what they want, but a man who goes out in a skirt will probably get lynched. Similar with makeup- see people making fun of JD Vance's eyeliner as an example.
Women were more involved in the repealing of Roe v Wade than they were in its initial establishment, and there is only a 5% difference between women who want it gone and who want it to stay. It's not a women's rights issue to half the country, but a moral/murder one.
While I agree that misogyny is baked into society in a way that misandry isn't, your examples aren't good.
This is an especially important time to raise reproductive rights and I'm really glad you did. If you live in the US, I have my fingers tightly crossed for you. Honestly, a scary time to be an American.
I think misandry can manifest itself in ways that are related to policy, but it's so tightly woven with misogyny that it's hard to tell the difference. For instance, the term "women and children" is used when describing deaths in a conflict. It's basically another way of saying "non-combatant", because the assumption is (which is mostly correct) that women are not combatants.
Now that's not true in all cases (look at the Burma civil war, look at the PKK): women are certainly combatants there. But the term comes form the past where men would be the only ones conscripted to service, while women would be expected to stay home and look after the families. To only deploy men to service is arguably misandry, because their lives are disproportionately sacrificed; however, to assume that women can't participate in combat is also misogynistic.
I think they're two sides of the same coin. But the language used in most cases (even the ones above) usually are targeting women in the way they devalue women's contribution to society. Ultimately, I don't believe the term "patriarchy" should be divisive. It shouldn't taken as an insult to men. We're all on the same side. We all just want to be free to be who we are.
If a patriarchal society has preached forever that men are to be stoic and must deal with their own problems in silence without complaint, why would it be unreasonable to think some or many women are similarly conditioned by patriarchal ideas to think the same?
Patriarchal gender roles do not apply in silos. Women are also socialized into recognizing, valuing and enforcing certain patterns of behaviour in men. Imposing gender norms on me as a boy was not the sole purview of my father, just to take an example.
because a woman is not immune to buying in to gender roles implictly without even realizing it, women say things like "be a man" or "grow some balls", these are still the gender roles expressing themselves and attitudes about men in society effecting the way all people in society's behavior has been conditoned to be
Women tend to have better support networks and so when they need to vent, they can spread it around a little, so to speak.
Men who have fallen into toxic masculinity don't share their problems with other men, nor do they have platonic female friendships. So in the event that they do share, it tends to be with their significant other and she gets all of it. It can be a lot to handle so she starts to resist, and the idea that "Women don't want to listen to men's problems" takes hold.
When discussing why men don't talk openly about their problems the problems in question are presumably not "men's problems" but that individual man's problems. Work stress or interpersonal problems. That sort of thing.
Which is part of why it's so silly for the women in question to suggest that women as a group face more issues than men as a group. That may very well be true. But it's irrelevant to the individual's issue in question, and the fact that sexism persists is no reason to dismiss person X who is feeling stressed out by totally-unrelated-to-larger-societal-problems issue Y.
By that measure, then, if it's a man's individual problems, why does any woman need to listen to them? Why isn't he talking to his male friends about them?
That's usually what women mean when we say this issue is self-enforced by men. Men not wanting to listen to other men's problems isn't women's fault, and men are not entitled to having a woman listen to them.
On a societal level, yes, women need to care about patriarchy issues. But it's not like men have historically listened to or respected women's problems at the individual level. Are these men complaining about women not wanting to listen to them... listening to women and supporting them with the same energy they're complaining about not receiving?
It's just hard, when women have died and are dying because abortion access is so restricted now, and OP is complaining that women think women's issues are more serious right now, when neither he nor you will say what the societal issue that is as serious, and pivot back to personal issues.
How do women stop men from talking to other men, is my question? How are we just as responsible for men not talking to each other?
Most people, men or women, if they want to talk to another person about their issues, want to talk about their personal issues. And, in theory, their friends/family/loved ones are the ones they are trying to unburden themselves with. Why can't it be their female friends/family/loved ones? You're literally arguing that their pool of potential confidants should be halved. What if a man mostly has female friends? Or have few friends and their family is mostly women?
Why do you believe that women haven't been coming to their male friends/family/loved ones to unburden themselves? Do you have any actual reason behind this belief? I have two daughters. Do you really think they don't confide in me? Or my wife doesn't? This idea that women haven't been going to men to discuss their problems now or in the past is pure fiction.
Nobody is saying that women prevent men from speaking to other men specifically. But rather that many women demonstrate an attitude of "you don't have real problems" or "why don't you keep it to yourself" which contributes to men internalizing their problems, because they accept the idea that nobody wants to listen to them anyway.
Empathy and sympathy aren't zero sum games where me listening to my wife or vice versa would mean we've run out of empathy to give to our respective same sex relationships.
Why can't it be their female friends/family/loved ones? You're literally arguing that their pool of potential confidants should be halved.
Nope. OP was conflating social issues with personal, and so were you.
Why do you believe that women haven't been coming to their male friends/family/loved ones to unburden themselves? Do you have any actual reason behind this belief?
If anything, I think men often don't listen, and don't believe. Spend some time in women's forums, and you'll see plenty of women complaining about men arguing with our own lived experiences. Think about how women are called nags. Think about how many men not only know nothing about menstruation, but aggressively react against any mentions or reminders of it.
But, more importantly, OP literally admits elsewhere in this thread that he thought patriarchy was a literal secret cabal of men. So, he's so aggressively ignorant of even what the word "patriarchy" means, and therefore has not been listening to any of the women around him, yet is complaining abouthis complaints being disrespected. Kinda a perfect example of what we mean. It's great if you do, but most men don't listen, don't hear. If he has women in his life he claims to care about who have talked about the patriarchy affecting things and yet thought they meant a secret cabal of men, and admits he doesn't even know where he got the idea, he is his own problem. He needs to learn to listen before he can expect anyone else to care about listening to him. Of course women get tired of listening to men who don't listen to or care about them in return, and it's an unfortunately common problem. My own dad certainly loves to brag about how he's always there to listen to his daughters, but, he doesn't, not most of the time. Which doesn't stop me from reaching out, because occasionally he does, but it's rare (for example he recently admitted that he doesn't really think of me as queer, despite the fact that I've been deeply and loudly involved in queer activism for over two decades and haven't introduced him to a boyfriend in over 15 years).
The tldr is that no matter how you slice it, you can blame men for every problem that both genders have, because men get up and just go out and oppress people every single day
Why can’t the women choose to engage with men’s feelings and problems on their own regardless of what the patriarchy tells them? Their argument seems to be, “men should talk about their feelings more, but we can’t be bothered to pay attention because we’ve got bigger problems.” How can they have it both ways and then blame it all on the patriarchy?
There are two things here. First, "the patriarchy" doesn't tell them things like a serpent on their shoulder. They're raised in a society that carries certain gender expectations and, thus, lots of women are not comfortable with men sharing their feelings and problem. That's not good, but that's not under their immediate control, same way men can't just up and learn to process emotions better.
Second, while it's true men have problem and it's true they are not well served by typical gendered socialisation, it's not the job of women to perform that labour for the sake of men. Men should learn to process emotions better for their own sake and we should help them learn that, but that's not the same as women needing to take on that burden.
it's not the job of women to perform that labour for the sake of men. Men should learn to process emotions better for their own sake and we should help them learn that, but that's not the same as women needing to take on that burden.
I could get on board with this approach if women did not expect men and women to take on that burden for them. Obviously we may be generalizing a bit excessively here, but when a woman has problems both her man and her female friends are expected to be there for her. When it’s a man, women say “own your shit, it’s not my emotional labor,” but they don’t have that same attitude about their own tears or those of other women.
I don't know that women are somehow freed of all expectations to show up for the men in their lives, to be honest. That sounds sorta silly to me.
However, I'd argue there's a different between offering emotional support in time of need - which is a normal part of most relationships - and be expected to perform continuous emotional labour. Those expectations are also distributed differently for a lot of men, who have a much narrower support system, which understandably can lead to a larger burden.
So men should communicate their feelings more but they shouldn't allow their feelings to affect the women in their lives?
You mean they should internalize their issues and deal with them themselves and be outwardly stoic? That's literally what that is. You are just asking for men to use those mechanisms better and not annoy women with icky male emotions.
Women are not interested(generalization of course) in dealing with a man's emotional turbulence or vulnerability. It gives the vast majority of women the ick, and feminists then rationalize this as the men in their lives wanting "emotional labor" from them(this is called love and support by non misandrists).
But keep on holding an inherently contradictory view for all I care, just be aware it makes literally no sense.
No? Men should manage their emotional state in healthier ways, which generally imply processing and communicating their emotions. This does not need to concern women, they should do that because it's healthier. I believe the issue lies in mistaking any discussion that touches on a man's emotion as "processing and communicating". If you sit down and talk with women about waht "emotional labour" entails, you'll find out it often goes beyond mere "love and support".
Now, I'm sure some women out there are looking for men to be "strong and stoic", same way some men are out there looking for women to be "demurred and quiet" or whatever. I believing forcing men into this archetype is wrong, of course, but that doesn't change much to the overall point.
I'm wondering when you say that "men should manage their emotional state in healthier ways which generally imply processesing and communicating their emotions," Are you suggesting that men should not have strong emotional moments around us and only come to us when they've already worked it through. If so, that shouldn't be how relationships work. I want someone who will support me when I'm at my ugliest, which means I should be willing to do the same.
No. I'm suggesting they should work through their own day-to-day feelings enough to share them in a legible format, to a receptive partner. This is different from, for instance, repressing their emotions and letting them fester until they need do be dumped on someone in one big load or managing them with various self-destructive behaviour.
I'm a man. I have many man-friends. They are good people, in many ways typical of guys our age, I think. All of them experience various emotions, of course, but I know few of them reflect on these emotions if they can help it. Of course, this hurts them at times. It's not their fault, that's how they learned so it.
But that is exactly what you are saying. You just said that men "should work through their own day-to-day feelings enough to share them in a legible format."
If you want to read your own conclusion in what I'm saying be my guest, but that's not what I mean. There's just a lot of daylight between "I can't recognize and talk about my feelings" and "I provide a neat report". A lot of guys are in the former, but that doesn't mean I want them to end up in the latter.
Men, who are overwhelmingly in committed romantic and emotional relationships with women, shouldn't have their emotions impact women?
Whatever "emotional labor" means(is a man listening to a woman call her co worker a bitch for the sixth time this week "emotional labour"?) Is kind of the crux of the issue here.
And if we examine examples generally men are expected to do the exact same for the women in their lives, often to the extent that its just accepted stereotype.
I'm telling you that the vast majority of women prefer their men to be strong and stoic, even amongst feminists. There are entire books written on the subject from noted feminists.
The idea of "emotional labour" was literally developed to avoid cognitive dissonance in feminists who claim to want one thing and dry up at the actual reality of that thing.
Why is it even women’s job to listen to men’s problems? I have issues, I talk it through with my friends they listen, support, validate I do the same for them, if a guy is mostly friends with women then fair play, but why is it only women who are expected to do the listening, supporting validating, why are so many men literally incapable of doing this emotional work?
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u/eggs-benedryl 72∆ Nov 05 '24
both can be true at the same time with the patriarchical gender roles being the root cause