Both of which are part of those “traditional roles” which, as Kimstu already mentioned, aren’t all that traditional.
Any day now I expect to see President Trump talk about Florence Nightingale as if she were alive. Bet he won’t be able to pronounce her name right, too.
…or responding to a transgression (whether inadvertent or deliberate) by escalating rather than de-escalating. IOW, the kind of shit that gets you an arrest record (or gets you killed) because you absolutely refuse to let the other guy make you look like a pussy in front of the world. Watch a few episodes of COPS, and you’ll see plenty of instances where people (mostly men, but a fair number of women too) turn a simple misdemeanor into a felony because they refuse to let a police officer tell them what to do.
I was thinking about this, and my take is that it’s socially acceptable for men to show emotion - all flavor of emotion - as long as it’s big emotion painted in simple broad strokes. They can be sad when their parents die, They can be angry when their girlfriend cheats. They can be happy about that new job.
It’s highly nuanced emotional thinking that is branded as feminine. Stuff like “I went by my old job yesterday, I’m still really angry at how I wa treated but I miss being there sometimes. I really cared about some of the people there, I’m happy to be rid of that place but sad about losing those friendships. I really regret the way I handled some things but I’m proud of the work I did there.”
I think women engage in and express this type of emotional analysis way more than men do, and when men express thoughts like that they come off as being overly feminine.
And it’s their failure to engage in that type of analysis that gets them branded as shallow.
That’s possibly a bad example, because it’s a complete load of rubbish. Remember that men have traditionally been defined by what they do. Male dopers have often spoken of great former colleagues but bad former managers.
I’m one. I was happy to hand in my resignation for my last job but I miss working with most of my former colleagues.
I feel obliged to point out that there are rational reasons for that behaviour. Sure, that shit will get you in trouble with the cops. However, not doing that shit will get you killed dead from either an ambitious client or an eager competitor. A mere hint of weakness can be a death sentence for a drug dealer. That added with the “snitches get stitches” factor means that mouthing off the cops is actually a survival technique in a business that can and will kill you.
:dubious: I think you might be missing Ann Hedonia’s point about the highly nuanced emotional thinking. What you said was a pretty straightforward binary contrast of simultaneous emotions: happy to leave but missing co-workers.
The example Ann Hedonia gave was much more layered, with the speaker describing simultaneous feelings of angry and missing and caring and happy and sad and regretful and proud.
I think it’s not unreasonable to say that that kind of multilayered analysis of emotions tends to be coded “feminine” in our society. Men’s references to their emotions are more likely to be limited to just one or two at a time, as yours was.
Anyway, if that was Ann Hedonia’s point and you did miss it, I think it’s interesting and relevant to this discussion that you missed it so completely. Didn’t even notice the subtlety she was talking about: just apparently interpreted her remark as meaning something like “Men don’t express emotions about their work situation” and jumped in to contradict it.
Actually, on rereading the whole exchange it strikes me that Quartz’s interpretation seems to have been more along the lines of “Men only express one emotion at a time”. I still think Ann Hedonia’s argument was more about the relative degree of complexity vs. simplicity and how that gets gendered, but I recognize that Quartz’s example does indeed illustrate men’s expressing more than one emotion at a time.
I could have gone on and expressed more emotions - for example pride that one of my trainees has gone on to do very well for himself - but I deliberately left it at two as being more than one.
Sure you could have—I doubt anybody here is making any argument that men are somehow innately deficient in ability to express multiple emotions—but the question is whether, if you had, that kind of more nuanced analysis would have come across as seeming more “feminine”.
However, that makes three posts where I’m trying to explain Ann Hedonia’s presumed argument based on no evidence beyond her initial post, so I think I’ll shut up now and let Ann take over if she wants to.
This is an interesting point. It may come across as being confused or unsure, of having an unresolved conflict–and men are supposed to be rocks, right? Conflicts should be resolved, right? Confidence and certainty are to be valued.
Men are allowed to have nuanced reactions as long as they do it by breaking up the thing they’re reacting to into discrete parts and have only one reaction to each of them Having a complicated emotion about a single thing, like being both glad and sad that your tiring friend has stopped calling you, is simply right out.
I’m sorry, but who is “disallowing” this having two reactions at one time? Is there some sort of “Real Men Judgement Crew” going around and chastising men?
Do you really not understand what begbert2 means?
Well I thought I did, and just didn’t agree. Maybe I don’t. He says “Having a complicated emotion about a single thing, like being both glad and sad that your tiring friend has stopped calling you, is simply right out”
To me, saying something is “simply right out” implies it’s not allowed or something. Which implies someone has laid some rule down.
Maybe I don’t understand this entire topic. Or maybe I just hang around a different set of people.
Gotcha.
Sociocultural pressure is a very real thing. We take on messaging from birth about how we are expected to behave. Some of that messaging involves gender roles and behavior. Any time someone says “he cried like a little girl,” for one minor example, a message is sent that crying is A) only for girls and B) inappropriate for men.
That sort of messaging occurs all the time, all over the place. And the broad strokes–for all of my lifetime and well before–have said that men are expected to behave in certain ways. We are expected to be “tough,” “in control,” unemotional. It is acceptable to “settle things like men,” and not be a “pussy.” Correct behavior includes “manning up” and “growing a pair.” Work hard, play hard, *be *hard…or give up your “man card.”
That’s changing, thank Kdapt, if more slowly than I might prefer. But the messaging is still there, and still powerful.
So you’re right: there is not cadre of Masculinity Authorities enforcing rules. But my reading of begbert2’s post assumed quotation marks around the word “allowed.” Of course being different is allowed, of course not adhering to the broadly “accepted” forms of masculinity is allowed. But the pressure against remains heavy.
And just because I want to share this as often as I possibly can: Ten Responses to the Phrase “Man Up”.
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But that’s just it. I don’t find that pressure heavy. And nobody I know finds it heavy either. It’s funny. I spent over twenty years in the military (AF), and I can’t remember anyone telling someone to “man up” or “don’t cry like a girl” Maybe the other services are different. If somebody saw me crying during “This Is Us” and told me “Stop crying like a girl!” I would simply tell them “Whatever, man. Why the fuck do I care what you think?”
Not sure why more people don’t do that.
In some cases they probably fear further ‘correction’ - shaming, mockery, get beat up. Kids can be nasty, and parents with masculinity complexes can be rather direct in their approaches to correcting behavior.
If you managed to get through all your childhood and a stint in the military without anybody criticizing the testosterone level of your behavior, perhaps you live in a halcyon world of egalitarian tolerance - or perhaps you’re just naturally manly.
:shrug: Fish don’t find water to be wet.
I think it’s more that I just naturally don’t give a shit what strangers think 
But sure, I used to get criticized for, say, not liking to watch sports on TV. But so what? I’m not going to start watching some boring shit just to please some guy I don’t even know.
Plus, kids I can understand. Adults who supposedly can think for themselves, that I don’t get. However, I cannot imagine how my daughter would feel if I told my son “Stop acting like a girl”
Based on my own childhood experiences as a girl of hearing boys get told “stop acting like a girl” or disparagingly being called “girls”, I can imagine how she would feel, and the answer is: not good.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask your daughter if she’s ever heard boys (or adults) using the word “girl” as a disparaging slur to other boys, and how it made her feel.
In the meantime, I’m not sure how to understand your repeated insistence that you personally don’t find toxic masculinity to be a problem. Are you looking to be congratulated on your personal strength of character in resisting societal gender expectation pressures? If so, okay, congratulations.
Are you trying to deny that these pressures have serious negative outcomes for lots of other men and boys? If so, then I don’t know why you’re deliberately ignoring the documentation of this phenomenon presented very early on in the thread, e.g., in posts #6, 14 and 22.
Otherwise, I don’t really know what you’re trying to accomplish with your “Gosh fellas, what’s the big deal? Why don’t you just be more confident and independent-minded, like me?” attitude.