This is literally what I teach to kindergarteners and first graders in my brain lessons. Janelle Monae helps me out.
There is a little bit of good/positive stuff, yes. But if you did not see the negativity or the hostility, then we really aren’t in the same thread.
And negative does tend to weigh heavier than positive.
Actually, what I said was that I left here because I was tired of people constantly misrepresenting what others said. And you have done an excellent example of exactly that in misrepresenting what I said. I did admit that I stuck with it longer than was healthy out of boredom.
And you also ignored the entirety of the relevant response to focus on that one bit.
And the problem is is that no one can tell a real nice guy from a “nice guy”, so tend to lump the two together.
I never said that you, in particular, did. However, I would say that telling someone that they should disengage with women and that it’s best for everyone that they do, is incredibly so, and those sorts of comment can be found in this thread.
Who doesn’t know that? And what conversation can you expect to come from it?
The reason is because most men are physically stronger than most women, and most of the time, can overpower them.
There are lots of ways that this could be phrased to have a conversation. For instance, my gf said that she’d rather meet a stranger in the woods than her ex, even when he wasn’t her ex.
She actually gave me a rundown of people and things that she would be most pleased to most threatened to run into. Personally, I learned a whole lot more from that than from any questions about bears.
If that was the conversation, then it would make more sense to expect someone to learn from it.
I disagree entirely. It brings about a reaction of, “Well, what exactly can I do about this?” and the response is to be less threatening.
I actually am not seeing anything anyone can do about it. Women are going to be afraid of men as long as the average man is significantly stronger than the average woman.
No, I don’t think that it makes this problem immediately go away. I don’t think that it will ever make the problem go away, as it doesn’t address the problem or offer any sort of solution.
However, I am not the one that thinks that it will, so I don’t get why you would address this as if I were.
I have no idea where you think this analogy works. I think that everyone should drive safely and wear their seatbelt, and I do so myself. However, I find myself being held accountable for the actions of those who do not.
No matter how safe a driver I am, I can’t do anything about the drunk guy barrelling through the school zone.
Anyway, my blood pressure is higher than it has been in weeks, so I think I’ll call it quits now.
This is sad. You have no clue and are a part of the problem.
Do you know about The Magical Yet?
I love reading this one to my son.
I have reread what you wrote, and while I struggle to see significant daylight between my paraphrase and your actual words, I accept that I did not represent you accurately, and apologize for doing so. I hope you will look at that final paragraph and help me understand how I misunderstood it. I also hope you look at it, and consider how people might take it the wrong way, assuming you did not mean it as an attack on people here.
Careful, this is verging on attacking another poster.
Everyone, keep the hostility dialed low please or the exchange of ideas will not happen.
Moderating
I haven’t heard of that; I’ll have to see if our school library has it. Thanks!
I don’t know what you mean by that. How are you defining masculinity?
To characterize the entire thread as toxic because of a comment or two does not strike me as reasonable.
Apparently, the men who are upset if women act cautious around them, and think that women should treat every strange man as benign until/unless proved differently.
And a conversation about why that reaction isn’t reasonable; some of which I think is happening on these boards.
My immediate reaction is that she didn’t trust her ex even when she was still with him (which may well have been why he became her ex.) And of course a person known to be untrustworthy is a worse bet than someone you don’t know, who may or may not be untrustworthy.
Was that conversation started off by the bear question? Because, if so, then the bear question did what it was supposed to: got you talking about it.
I’ve seen multiple responses in this thread and the accompanying one and that’s only a small part of them.
And if the reaction is purely ‘well, what do you expect me to do about it?’ and not ‘shit, I’m sorry so many women feel that way’ – then I think something is seriously being missed there.
The extent of women’s fear in various situations and in various societies most certainly is changeable. Change the number of instances in which we endure various types of attacks, and the problem will be reduced (or made worse, if the change is to increase them.)
Would you say that nothing can be done to reduce the rate of murder or of non-sexual assault, just because it can’t be reduced to zero? And would you not be more afraid to go outside your house if people were murdered or beaten up daily on your block than if there had been no murder or beatings in your entire county for twenty years?
If you’re at the party they got drunk at, you can take away their keys. If you’re serving alcohol to people who will drive later, you can keep an eye on how much, and/or check that somebody else will drive them home or they’ll stay until morning.
If your friends joke about driving drunk, you can make it utterly clear that that’s not cool.
If your friends talk about driving drunk as if they think it’s acceptable or inevitable, even if you don’t think they’re actually doing it, you can also make it clear that that’s not cool.
If you see somebody weaving down the street, or staggering as they get into their car, you can call the cops.
None of those things are going to apply to every individual incident. But ‘I can’t do anything other than not drive drunk myself’ is very often not so.
What do you think needs to be done?
With an eye towards the the mod note and being as civil and polite as possible:
What do you think boys need that society doesn’t provide them, which society should give them but not girls?
Many men, I’ll add, have figured this out and are quite confident, and women are attracted to that. If that weren’t the case I wouldn’t be married. My husband is the most gentle person, but he’s fierce in his commitments, hard-working and reliable, and while those aren’t exclusively male qualities I think they add up to a different kind of masculinity in him. One that isn’t trying to put on some kind of manly facade but who is just doing what needs to be done. One who isn’t the least bit threatened by challenges to his masculinity because he is so grounded in who he is.
That’s exactly what I want my son to see, to the extent my son cares at all about gender. He still hasn’t figured out who to call she or he. I have a feeling it’s going to result in a lot more open-mindedness in him, in the long run. Boy if you ever want to put a nail in the coffin of gender essentialism just look at my boy. He can’t tell the difference and doesn’t care. Why? Because he does not understand social context and social expectations. Without those inputs he makes no distinction between men and women.
We are developed enough as a society that most of us really can just be ourselves and find someone into that. Maybe that’s overly optimistic but I’m a believer.
One of the big reasons you’re getting flamed on for this is that women have been endlessly socialized to feel and be responsible for men and their feelings and their behavior. A kid is acting up in public? Mom is gonna get blamed way more often than dad will. Woman has a scary dating encounter? Well, she should have chosen a better man then. Woman got raped? WHAT WAS SHE WEARING, WHY WAS SHE THERE, HAD SHE BEEN DRINKING??? Women get blamed for their husband’s misbehavior, if he’s dogging around it’s assumed it’s because the wife isn’t putting out enough. Boys on a playground teasing and harassing girls? Awww, it’s because he likes you and boys will be boys. It starts when we’re very small and it never ends.
Women are not rehab centers for poorly socialized men. Instead of bothering random women, none of whom signed up for this shit, why aren’t men organizing social situations where women are ASKED if they’d like to volunteer to have awkward guys learn to chat them up? Probably for the same reason why there’s never any mention of International Men’s Day aside from guys bitching because it’s International Women’s Day–Men’s Day is November 19th, BTW, but unless a bunch of women do the work there will never be an organized celebration of it. Because men have been taught and have internalized that emotional labor is only for someone else to do, not them. Women don’t get to duck out on that–we’re endlessly castigated if we refuse the role of cruise director/party planner/appointment setter/etc. Men don’t get anywhere near the shit we do for refusing emotional labor and they are apparently never going to take on their fair share–BUT my goodness, don’t they kick and scream when we also decide to abdicate that role.
A very large percentage of women have decided that current patriarchally established gender roles don’t suit us and never have so we’re just saying “NO” to it all. But women saying NO is usually not well accepted by men in general and society as a whole. We’ll see who wins on this one–the fact that apparently the only thing patriarchal men can come up with to get us back in line is to remove our legal rights and nail our feet to the floor with unwanted babies kinda lets us know what we can expect in the future. Nooooo thanks!
You’re correct. We are not Rehab centers for men.
I, as a woman did not take a man on to raise. That was his Mother’s job.
I raised my son to respect and be friendly to women and never harass, bully or abuse anyone. That applies to all genders. He’s an adult, who as far as I know has never hurt a woman on purpose. I’m sure he stumbled around at times. He married a strong-minded, opinionated woman. She is perfect for him.
I would not attempt to raise a grown man. That’s on the man to fix himself.
If disengaging with women is what it takes then that’s fine. Do it.
I think the OP is between relationships and that’s disheartening and painful. I don’t, for a minute think he’ll never be in another.
7 posts were split to a new topic: Raising sons shouldn’t be and isn’t just the mother’s job
Has the OP considered he might be suffering from depression?
There’s toxic masculinity and then there’s the other kind. My opinion is that one of the things boys need are role models of what healthy masculinity looks like. Men who protect the weak, who mentor boys and teach them integrity, skill, how to be a friend to others, how to have adventures without destroying things … men who are honorable and community-minded, who pitch in, who are not selfish burdens on others (mostly women), who notice what needs doing and then just do it. Boys need men like that in their lives.
And boys need to learn early how talk to girls. And listen to them. This seems a vast lacuna in our culture. So many boys get all the way to puberty with a sense that girls are an alien unknowable species that must be somehow manipulated or appeased to get what they want from them. And many go all the way through life that way.
Edited to add: and some women feel the same way about men.
I agree with almost all of this. Positive, non-toxic male role models exist, but they’re often overlooked when it comes to discussions of masculinity.
I try to be that kind of role model for my students (male and female), but I’m also not a super-“masculine” guy. Soft voice, small, can’t throw a football worth a damn, prefer baking to grilling, completely incompetent at carrying on a conversation about sports…
Boys who hold to masculine cultural norms need guys who also hold to those norms and who are fundamentally decent.
Also, the “talking with girls part”, and this goes both ways, is critical. If sex ed is only about health and consent, it misses something important: how do you get your way to the point that you find someone where you both want to consent enthusiastically? The flirting norms that teens can learn about online are pretty fuckin gross, IMO, whether it’s Jordan Peterson’s nonsense or porn’s fantasies or brat pack movies. It’d be helpful to teach lessons like:
- Girls and boys both are likely to want relationships
- There are good ways and bad ways to check if someone’s interested in you.
- Here are some non-creepy ways to find out.
- If they’re not interested, here are some graceful, kind, and rizz ways to deal with the rejection.
My only quibble is with things like “protect the weak”. When this idea is gendered, I think it often leads to bad things, like guys thinking they’re in charge due to their strength. I’d rather rephrase it in a way like, “stand up for what’s right,” and make it a de-gendered value.
You are so right.
Men and women have a lot more in common than different.
I didn’t know I had internalized this until I encountered this issue in my writing where I couldn’t write women. I thought I could only write men because I could only express my anger through men. “I’m not like most women,” I told myself. “I think like a man.” My mother, who was an engineer, raised me with this belief that we were above such things as what other girls liked or did. Sure, we were women, but we were different than those other women.
Learning to write female characters opened my eyes to how conditioned I was to assume women are so different than men. I got over it and now I write women just fine. The key difference is that there’s not much difference, but boy has there been a difference in how female characters are interpreted. My female characters engage in violence and people do not like that, even though the male hero is a hundred times more violent and nobody bats an eye. I wrote one scene where a woman makes a sexual overture toward a man and all these guys are telling me she’s being “manipulative” (a designation used predominantly for women.) She’s manipulative because she candidly expressed a desire for sex? WTF? Then there’s how much women beta readers wanted to give a pass to the men for their shitty behavior. They didn’t like that I had accountability for men built into my narrative. But they insisted on all this extra accountability for women, starting with the fact that, as a woman, she should have forgiven the shitty male behavior right away.
It has been utterly fascinating the things you can learn about gender from writing and getting feedback on romance novels.
This feels like we’re moving off topic. I will spin it off.
Here is the new thread: Raising sons shouldn't be and isn't just the mother's job