The studies I have seen show that somewhere between 15-25% of men under 40 are moderately or more influenced by the manosphere. It is weird to me that we are using such a small minority to paint a brush of what the rest of Men are like.
Honestly, that percentage tracks with my own experience. In college, a similar share of guys were misogynistic assholes whom I didn’t want to be around or associated with. I suspect this is another case of a small vocal minority spewing toxic garbage and becoming extremely visible because that is what social media does.
My parents’ first big drag-out fight was over my mom mowing the lawn when she was very pregnant and my dad getting lambasted by the neighbors over it. (This would have been 1960s.) The problem was that she enjoyed mowing the lawn. As I understand it, she had to lambast the neighbors before this got resolved.
But i agree with you that today if I saw a women mowing the lawn I wouldn’t think anything of it.
When the lawn gets mown, i do it. I wanted a house with land, and he wanted a condo where someone else took care of that stuff. Our agreement was that i could buy as much yard as i was willing to care for.
We got comments from the neighbors at first, but they’ve gotten used to it.
I didn’t mow all last year, and just decided not to care about having a yard with weeds. Maybe the neighbors will stop inviting us to block parties, but I doubt it.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I think for most men, #1 on the list would be virtue, followed by attractiveness. As for career, educational attainment, professional acomplishments, etc. I think (for most men) those are farther down on the list. I’d even go as far to say that most men don’t really care about those things at all.
Okay this may sound strange, but a large part of what my wife and I found attractive about each other is that we found each other attractive? It’s a feed forward. Being validated as attractive (not just physically but inclusive of) is attractive. We want to be wanted. Compatible values was important to get beyond the first few dates but that mutuality was a first bar.
Once again, I’m sure it’s not how it’s intended, but this message keeps coming across as super dismissive of women’s individual interests, personalities and self-fulfillment.
”As long as you’re virtuous” [? I agree with @Alessan in not really understanding what that’s intended to mean] ”and conventionally attractive, we don’t care about what you think or what you’re interested in or what you care about and are trying to accomplish in the world or what you think is funny or what you like to do. You’re basically interchangeable with any of the other virtuous hot women in the world.”
Gee, how romantic, I guess? Like I said, this very utilitarian attitude towards marriage on the part of men was less of a dealbreaker back when more women were thoroughly convinced that they HAD to get a man to marry them in order not to lead a despised and wasted life.
Nowadays, though, I dunno. Maybe if that’s how it is, it could be more satisfying in the long run to be appreciated outside of marriage for the contributions to the world and the professional success and fulfillment and achievement of dreams that the potential husbands are telling you that they don’t give a rat’s ass about?
As a never-married woman with a happy single life but also a lot of respect and appreciation for the marriages I see around me, I remain convinced that many, probably most, marriages are very beneficial for both spouses, as growing and thriving individuals as well as marital teammates. I believe that while marriage isn’t the only good way to live and be happy, it’s often a very good way to live and be happy.
But getting told by not insignificant numbers of men how uninterested they are in the characteristics of their wives or potential wives as individual people tends to undermine that conviction somewhat. Geez, guys, what happened to the concept of “soulmates”?
(Yes, I know that statistically and psychologically speaking, there’s no such thing as The One True Love who’s the only fellow human being in the world that you could ever have been happily partnered with. But isn’t the hallmark of a happy marriage that it makes you feel like that’s what you’ve got?)
[looks around at all the fragments of shattered illusions] Welp, anyway, guess I should start cleaning these up now…
15-25% isn’t a small minority, it’s a pretty significant one. At the top of the estimate, it would mean 1 in 4 men under the age of 40 are at least moderately influenced by the manosphere. Who knows what trickle down affect this has on the rest of the men in that age group.
All that lecturing about how terrible and stupid men are convinced them that they weren’t ever going to find a woman who liked them, so they might as well go for the shallow surface appeal? Or just porn; porn is an inanimate object but at least doesn’t despise you.
Just look at this thread; many people can’t hold a conversation about men that isn’t a long harangue about how terrible they are. It doesn’t even matter if they are right or wrong for this point, because right or wrong the one thing it isn’t, is appealing. Heck, that’s just the gender flipped version of what people were saying about women not finding men who look down on them appealing. Of course they don’t, neither gender does; but gender relations being what they are that’s what both genders often get.
I’ve actually noticed men get very worked up about romance…in stories. There’s plenty of men who like the idea of romance. But in the real world, a relationship with somebody who thinks you are stupid and violent and who blames you for everything wrong in the world isn’t appealing to most.
But ISTM that the men who are describing men’s marital priorities in this utilitarian way are doing so because they regard it as part of the traditionally recognized essential nature of men. Not because they think men’s priorities have recently altered in response to feminist critiques over the last couple decades or so.
Nearly everyone. This is supposedly about “male inequality”, but any time anyone tries to talk about a problem men have there’s a chorus of “that’s actually an advantage”, “they deserve it”, and/or “that’s not true”. This isn’t a conversation that can actually be held on this forum. It’s pretty much The Narcissist’s Prayer repurposed as misandrism.
That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Ah, I see the goalposts have moved from “a long harangue about how terrible men are” to basically any kind of nuanced discussion about the nature of problems impacting men.
What “nuanced discussion”? There’s little willingness to admit that any exist.
Scrolling up, the recent discussion is about how “men can’t attract women because men are bigots”, “men don’t socialize”, and “being a woman is about suffering and injustice”. It’s all about men being the problem, not having problems.
