Does it have to be women who rescue men from their loneliness? Can men not find the courage to disavow this aspect of toxic masculinity and do for one another what women do for our friends?
Can you clarify this a bit? I have the feeling that I agree with you, but I’m not sure what you’re saying. My male (and female) friends would listen to me and try to help. Rescue, no. Sit with me and let me know they were there for me, yes. The friends I’ve had have been a true gift. They supported me through the long periods of loneliness. My wife did rescue me from loneliness to a great extent. It wasn’t something I was owed, it was a gift.
I suspect we do agree. I’m just responding to the post saying that the problem with the video’s proposal* that women should fight toxic masculinity by letting down our armor is that men would interpret the lack of armor as sexual interest. I don’t disagree that, when women try to treat men with the same care and compassion we treat one another, men often interpret this as romantic interest and can lash out when they find out otherwise. (See “getting friendzoned” and “emotional tampon.”) I’m asking why we should be expected to shoulder this burden at all. This manifestation of toxic patriarchy–social disapproval or lack of recognition of non-romantic male friendships–is not something women are doing to men. It’s something men are doing to each other. When women are hurt by patriarchy, we have to fight tooth and nail for what is ours, often against men who don’t want to give up their privilege. But when patriarchy hurts men, apparently men and women take it for granted that women need to step in and save men, when this isn’t even our doing. And the only objection anyone’s raising is “oh hey we’d be happy to, except for the fact that when we do, men take it as a further opportunity to be jerks”?
Enough already. I’m happy for you that women have been nice to you. I’m sure you were worthy of it. But as you say, it’s not an entitlement.
*I watched the video when it was posted and didn’t actually catch her saying this. I might have missed it, though, because I tried to skip over the part where she was just reading the trans guy’s tweet aloud.
Hear, hear.
I have a lot of repair work to do with males. As a sissy femme I didn’t particularly wish to emulate the rest of you, and you folks cast me out in disgust. But we’re all reacting to a situation not of our own making. We should learn from each other, be supportive, and listen to each other.
I don’t know what’s brought on this rant, as you started by agreeing with the preceding statement.
Let me put it this way:
I accept that most women are aloof to men they don’t know well most of the time. I completely understand why. Men are potentially a threat, and before you know a man well you don’t know if he’s going to take the hint and leave you alone.
(And the aloofness doesn’t actually bother me personally, as I’m a quiet person, who can turn on a socializing switch if I need to, but most of the time I’m content with people leaving me alone)
But yeah, if a woman that I hardly know seems to be taking a lot of interest in me, I will take it as a hint that she’s attracted to me, because that’s been the case more often than not. I don’t see how this makes me a jerk, as it’s not as though I am taking it as some silent contract to be my girlfriend.
I respond to friendliness with friendliness, only, it makes no difference if it’s an attractive woman or an elderly man. It’s just a clue that I can notice.
I know it’s aways up, but I just read your post and I want to compliment you on how clever a metaphor you created. Thanks and I’ll likely steal it at some point! 
Its not just that men react with sexual interest, its also that women who people decide are “thirsty” face pretty significant social costs. Men are very quick to decide a woman was “totally hitting on me” when they don’t intend to act on it. Afterall, it’s unfalsifiable, and an ego boost. Like, look at all the men who are convinced a wedding ring is a chick magnet (now that I am married, women hit on me ALL THE TIME). What is really happening is that now 1) women aren’t quite as millitant about making sure to not send moxed signals and 2) there’s no risk anyone will expect the married man to test that claim.
But this sucks for women. If the men in your orbit percieve your friendliness for sexual interest, it makes you a terrible person. Just being seen as thirsty makes you a slut if you are attractive an an object of scorn and mirth if you are not. And if ypu are married or a married man decides you were making a pass, you have no character.
I hate that the world is like this. I have male colleagues and acquaintances that I would love to be friends with in the way i am friends with my female co-workers.
I guess what I am saying is that when a woman if friendly to you and you assume that means she wants to haul you into bed, you are likely on some level diminishing her, especially if you or she are married/in a relationship. Its the fear of that, as much as the fear of someone actually assuming i am inviting advances, that keeps me aloof with men. I’ve heard guys tell these “fish stories” about women who they say were “totally hitting” on them. It can be very mean.i think they quit actually talking like that past college, but I feel the sentiment remains.
That all makes sense, but we’re talking different things I think.
I was referring to the aloofness towards male strangers. In that situation, the risk is high (even if 99% of men are fine, the cost/benefit of risking that 1% chance just for a minute of smalltalk is not good), but there is zero social cost as you have no mutual acquaintances as far as you know.
Conversely in something like the work environment, yes you have that social risk, but also “aloof” has to take on a different meaning, because you can’t be entirely aloof. There’s a certain level of friendliness that’s just assumed in a work environment.
I don’t envy that particular aspect of being a woman – that just from being “work friendly” to colleagues in general, some minority of men then pester you with social talk too often, in a way that strongly suggests romantic interest.
It’s a kind of harassment but maybe too “light” to want to report.
Right. And this a perfect example of what’s called a microaggresion. It wears you out.
If I’ve been hit on since I’ve been married then I’m glad I’m oblivious to it. I’d find it a bit annoying.
In addition to what MandaJo said, there’s what I alluded to about the “lashing out.” Men who believe that a woman has been hitting on them can become nasty if she then rejects his advances. I’ve had men scream in my face, follow me home, and otherwise terrorize me for supposedly leading them on. Not all men, of course, but just like not all chambers have a bullet in Russian Roulette, it’s a chance I don’t care to take.
But it’s telling that you characterize my post as a “rant” and focus on the part that offends you, about men acting like jerks, instead of engaging with my point about the sense of entitlement in the assumption that women need to be responsible for men’s feelings. Here we are, still debating the validity of a woman trying to protect herself, instead of talking about how that’s enough of a burden without her also having to make up for the ways patriarchy hurts men.
It’s because the description seems to be needlessly black and white.
I am sorry to hear about the awful experiences that you have had with aggressive men. But I dispute that any man that takes friendliness as a potential signal of a woman being interested is being a jerk or claiming that women need to be responsible for men’s feelings.
I don’t doubt that some men are jerks or have a bad attitude, I’m disputing that it can be inferred just from that.
Because, like I say, IME as a man, if a woman I don’t know shows more than a token level of interest in me as a person, there is a strong chance she is attracted to me. That’s just how it’s been over my lifetime, I don’t make the rules. But I don’t take it as a green light for anything, I wouldn’t care if it turns out to not be the case. It’s just something I can internally notice.
I don’t know how I can be any clearer. I’m telling you that this is a risk women face when interacting with men, and since we can’t tell which men will be jerks, we have to protect ourselves from all of them. And you keep telling me that not all men are jerks, which I never claimed they were. Again, just because I don’t want to play Russian Roulette doesn’t mean I think there’s a bullet in every chamber.
ETA: the part about women being responsible for men’s feelings is a separate but related issue. That’s where we’re expected to console and reassure the empty chambers, and maybe agree to play after all, because the empty chambers insist on takong our self-protection as a personal insult and can’t even turn to the other chambers for comfort.
My last three posts explicitly said I understand why women need to be aloof around men, that men are a potential threat and that some men are jerks. So let’s just say we’re talking past each other and leave it at that.
But you said it was needlessly black and white. She’s telling you that, no, it’s needfully black and white. Jerks don’t wear a sign around their necks that flashes Jerk Jerk Jerk.
Your experience and my experience, as a man, are very different. I’ve been friends with lots and lots of women, where the question of attractiveness in either direction just never entered the equation.
Do you just not meet women outside hook-up-type situations? Like, shared hobbies, or shared music taste or that kind of thing? Hell, a lot of my female friends were just people I met at uni. But they damn sure are all interested in me as a person. And I in them. And it’s not like I didn’t also meet people I was attracted to, or who were attracted to me, in those same settings, so they’re not entirely a-romantic settings.
Or are you always evaluating even those kinds of friendships for signs of attraction?
I don’t think chronic male loneliness is caused by the aloofness of strangers. For one thing, passing interactions with strangers are such a small part of our lives. For another, that’s not limited to men: pretty much any minority in a majority space becomes invisible, as do the disabled, as do women over a certain age. Yes, it’s nice that me and the cashier can make small talk, but I don’t think that’s the critical issue that the writer of the twitter thread was talking about.
Work is probably a much better example. The women where I work are, by and large, friends. We are all friendly with each other, and we have friend groups. I have a group chat that I would be utterly lost without because we keep each other up to date on relevant work stuff, we check on each other when people are having family illness or other issues, we communicate our little successes and frustrations. We also spy for each other: our boss is a liar, and we know it because we compare notes. I don’t know if the men I work with have that. They may be friendly with each other, but I don’t think they worry about each other, or have each others’ back. They don’t even know what they don’t have, because we have a toxic male culture that doesn’t allow men to have those sorts of relationships.
Again, it’s not just that. It’s also that if those perceived sexual signals aren’t wanted or are inappropriate, it’s also very bad for a woman’s reputation. As I said above, the whole Incel Ideaology is that women don’t have to deal with the shit men do: we don’t need sex in the same way, and if we do want it, we can have it any time we like. Another aspect of that is the idea that if a man is perceived as expressing sexual interest in the wrong context, he can be labeled a creep or even face disciplinary action. What I am saying is that women have to deal with that possibility too. People are awful to women who are perceived as teases, unfaithful, or even just sexual in general. So even if I did feel perfectly physically safe with a particular guy, my ability to be friendly is still constrained unless I can really trust him not to go tell his friends I was hitting on him just because I stop and talk to him for 5 minutes most days.
I think I need to clarify that I am not saying that it is women’s responsibility for men’s feeling, and neither to I believe that the woman in the video felt that.
As I see it here is what I think she is saying.
In the original post a transman was surprised by the difference in emotional support she received as a man than she did as a woman. In particular she noted that women were more aloof to her as a justifiable self defense mechanism, and men were aloof towards her because men engaging emotionally with other men shows weakness.
The woman in the video says that this is a toxic situation that was bad for everyone. And she tried to think of what she could do to counteract it. She wasn’t saying this because she felt that it was women’s job to fix this, she was seeing a bad situation and trying to decide what she could do to counter it as an individual who happens to be a woman.
She wasn’t specifically clear what her recommendations were but it seemed the idea was to be as emotionally open around men as they would be around other women. Under the assumption that most men weren’t inherently jerks who try to force unwanted attention on uninterested women it would make the world a better place for everyone.
I was arguing that it wasn’t quite that simple, that since under the current situation men were used to everyone being emotionally guarded around them, a women breaking the norm in this way would be seen as remarkable, active decision that likely indicates a desire for intimacy with the man. This will open her up to unwanted attention even by non-jerkish men since they would misinterpret her openness as an invitation for attention.
Again I’m not saying its woman’s fault or women’s job to fix this, just saying that it is an intractable self perpetuating problem. That the current situation of emotional distance being the norm makes it dangerous for women to try to fix it in the way proposed in the video.
Dude.
I think you didn’t read my post fully, or have otherwise misunderstood the context.
The majority of my friends are female. And I’m often introduced to women (and those women will usually be friendly, as we’re already friend-of-a-friend).
Very obviously none of that friendliness means anything attraction-wise.
I was purely talking about a “cold” situation, of exchanging smalltalk with someone who is either a complete stranger, or very distant social circles. If she’s more than token friendly, and seems to genuinely be taking an interest in my background and interests, yeah it tends to be a signal.