The more I hear people talk about it who aren’t cis-het men, the more I hear criticism about the concept. But so far, I’ve only heard people say that it’s stupid, that it’s not a thing, that it’s men’s own fault etc. But I’ve yet to understand where that criticism comes from. I don’t want to start a discussion on whether or not it’s real or not. I just want to understand where the critics are coming from.
A lot of people can’t see things from any perspective beyond their own limited worldview. If they don’t experience a problem, it doesn’t exist or it’s not that bad and everyone should focus on their problems instead or if they are experiencing something it must be happening to everyone. I think this is causing a lot of the conflict around this issue. There is also the fact that a lot of the men complaining about this issue come at it not so much as “I’m lonely” but as “I’m not getting laid”. Which loses them a lot of sympathy.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
I had no issue with connecting with most people I met 10+ years ago. But now it’s a struggle to even have a polite conversation with anyone under 50 for me, because their brains are so warped and they can’t take anything as is. I’ve had so many innocuous comments blow up in my face by younger folks who just leapfrog to the worst conclusions. For example I love reading classic literature… a lot of older pre 20th century stuff. That used to be something people admire. Now I get a lecture about how it makes me racist/sexist because the authors back then were all racist and sexist and if I am reading it i’m endorsing those views.
It’s insane. All the sudden my harmless hobby is now evil. I am also into cycling and I can’t talk about that now without being lectured or told how problematic it is for me to enjoy it. 10 years ago people would go ‘oh, that’s cool’. Now everything is a ‘problem’.
Or it’s more about the inability to form community/family units that are so essential for human flourishing. For men and women both. And yet we have created all these biases and expecations of each other that handicap people from connecting.
100% that is the root of the loneliness epidemic and I agree that there is a problem. I was just trying to stick to answering OPs question about why we see opposition to the concept.
On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.
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that would be acknowledging that men and women are different and that’s bad in 2025, apparently.
Men, by and large, create toxicity within their own circles. Male culture has a lot of issues and a lot of unrealistic expectations are put in men in US society. Some external, but the majority come from inside. The whole alpha male culture bullshit that permeantes it. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT of good that can come from healthy male culture. But right now it’s like men have a branding issue where the loudest among them are also the worst (the Andrew Tates of the world).
I’d say there’s some unavoidable bias there. If we judge the dominant masculine culture by the degree to which people emphasize masculinity then of course the loud ultra masculine people will seem like the representation.
Lots of men out there just being men
Lots of men out there just being men
True. But nobody cares about them because they aren’t bothering anyone. But they do get lumped in with the controversial men.
Like I don’t have much of a clue about Tate or any of that stuff. But if I tell people that then I’m guilty of ignorance or something and I need to ‘educate’ myself about that stuff so I can… denounce it? Because apparently just not knowing or caring is complicity or something.
It’s true that men as a broad group have a duty to confront and correct that behavior within their social groups and families etc. and that might be where that sentiment is coming from, but we live in a world where people can and do live in bubbles.
No. We don’t. We don’t have a duty to do anything anymore than women do.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my obligation to fix. It’s their own. I am not responsible for other people’s behavior and anyone who blames me for it is an asshole. Guilt by association is a fallacy.
If you’re not calling out that kind of behavior when you encounter it among your social group then you are definitely complicit. Is it a morally corrupt position? Not necessarily, but you’re complicit and you’re enabling it.
Calling out shitty behaviour gets you shitcanned from the group. It doesn’t change the behaviour. Do you socialize much? You don’t make friends or get popular by calling out bad behaviour. You get ostracized. The rest of the group calls you an asshole and circles the wagons and enables the behaviour further.
ok, keep your asshole friends and be associated with them I guess? point proven?
I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.
This right here. But even for our parents this is true.
I remember back when we could easily get some beers and sit at the local park or at the riverbed. But now? Everything’s private property and the bars are way too expensive to spend 5 hours in. I don’t know the last time I played Billard - or even have seen a pool table itself.
In the 2000s I could go out drinking for an entire night for like $20. Or I could hang out in a cafe with a sandwich and a coffee for $10.
Now two beers is $25 and that’s an hour if you nurse them slow. Wanna hang out for 2+ hours anyplace? Goign to cost you probably $50-100. Even bowling a frame is now like 75/pp in my city
I’ve seen three sides to it.
Side 1: “boo hoo nobody will fuck me because I don’t think other people should have rights”
Side 2: not having strong friendships/relationships because our society is built around capitalism, cars, and social media (this obviously applies across genders, this side therefore is a generalized loneliness epidemic, not a male gendered one)
Side 3: men get socially punished for being vulnerable
In my mind only the second & third side is worth listening to.
Side 2 has not actual relevance to the problem itself. These societal tropes are not why men are having a hard time finding women. It’s just a societal trope posing as an explanation.
Side 3 is the only relevant issue. Men are constantly told they need to be more vulnerable or their masculinity is toxic, and yet when they express themselves vulnerably, they’re punished for it.
The issue, as I see it, is that some advocates of the “toxic masculinity” narrative often don’t fully acknowledge the ways in which women can also reinforce those same patterns.
A deeper concern is that many feminists present themselves as speaking on behalf of all women, when in reality most women don’t identify as feminists. As a result, what’s being represented is more of a particular set of progressive gender beliefs than the broader experiences of women in general.
To be clear, I actually agree with many feminist perspectives overall. However, I find that the movement’s messaging is often counterproductive—it can come across as unnecessarily divisive and, at times, dismissive of men. Because of this, even when the arguments are largely valid, they struggle to gain wider support.
feminist has never been a coherent set of beliefs of messages. it’s a clusterfuck of viewpoints. many of which are contradictory.
especially 3rd/4th wave stuff that is mostly about social norms. earlier feminist was focused on political goals.
Side 2 is very relevant. If you are lonely you get easily into very terrible sides of society and mindsets. I speak from experience. If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self, but then come people that tell you to have a part in their group because of race, religion, nationality, or any other extremist reason.
If you dont have a sense of belonging you also have no sense of self,
Not sure I agree with that. I don’t have much sense of belonging but I know exactly who I am. If anything that’s why I usually feel like I don’t belong.
Fair enough, I should have been clearer. I recognize that social isolation has deleterious effects on people. The part I was dismissing was the attribution to capitalism. Capitalism does not cause this effect. Other factors are responsible.
Would you accept “under-regulated capitalism” or “capitalism treated as an ideal rather than a tool” as a more specific root cause?
No, because it’s just not related to capitalism at all. Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything, and you see it in every bad thing in the world.
Capitalism does though. Atleast to an extend. Car centered city though that kills social connections a lot!
No. That is not an effect of capitalism. That is just a fact of rural living. God, Lemmings love to blame capitalism for everything.
What made the car industry big? What convinced them to tear down everything and make everything cardepended? Why does the oil and car industry lobby so hard and spread missinfo about public transport and closer living together?
I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.
I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough
I think what’s happening is:
40% of men are good people
40% of women are good people
The remaining 20% are pieces of shit that demonize and demean the other sex, which has caused the 80% to become scared and reclusive.
Social media makes it seem like the percentages are flipped but they are not!
The numbers are made up but you get my point.
they both exist. but the male one makes people angry so it gets more engagement. it’s also framed as ‘men are losers who need to do better in life’
the female one is often framed as ‘women are too successful for men’.
the truth is there is a huge gender disparity emerging in certain demographics. my own included. most single women I meet in my 30s/40s are living radically different lives than the men. and frankly i haven’t had a relationship in half a decade because none of the women I meet anymore have anything in common with me, and often they view our differences in a very negative light. 10 years ago those differences were seen as positive.
there are also no common spacers for us to mingle anymore. esp not as equals.
I felt all bitter like you did but I met a girl recently who completely stole my heart, they do exist for sure
Very good point about common spaces. The best we got in north america is basically just the mall at this point
Also there are no safe spaces for men outside of wilderness and AA meetings hahaha
Modern online incel and radfem movements were created to pit them against each other and prevent them from uniting and creating positive social change.
Created by whom? I’m actually curious.
I can’t prove anything, but:
- There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
- Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
- There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
- There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.
What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.
But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.
Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.
And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.
Woah, I thought you were talking about a conspiracy of wealthy people that are pitting the sexes against each other. That is interesting and I want to study this some more.
Somehow you ended on wealthy people hating on minorities. Let me make this clear. This happens all the fucking time. Even our POTUS is guilty of this multiple times with instances like the Central Park Five.
I mean the whole anti-woke movement is just a bunch of rich racist assholes pushing a toxic message.
I’m not the original person you were speaking to but this is a good example of systemic issues. You don’t need individuals to be racist or sexist or conspire to do bad things if there’s a systemic trend that people in powerful positions are a homogeneous class with their own relatively aligned interests and social circles.
Billionaires don’t know poor people, billionaires are usually white men, billionaires have similar self interest. Billionaires wield a huge amount of power. BOOM. systemic racism and sexism without requiring everyone to scheme and coordinate.
This is why liberals fixate on gender and race representation in higher positions, and this is why I and other leftists just want to dismantle unbalanced power structures that give billionaires everything and allow them to exist.
Eliminating billionaires would do far more to harm fascism than all the DEI initiatives combined.
100%, liberals won’t let go of the root causes of the problems and will keep patching and reforming and patching and reforming all the while every little crisis brings fascism back from the shadows
themselves
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Being a man is tricky. Full grown males can be physically dangerous and I think there is a subtle undercurrent of worry with all men they may be dealing with a hostile moron, or a worry someone may try to assert dominance. Men are organically closed off past a certain age because of this.
Men also experience allot of these weird power dynamics growing up. Both men and women kind of seek to control and bully youger boys and men until they come into their own…and suddenly they are grown and terrifying in some respects and everyone magically backs the f*** off. The threat is gone but the history is still there and it closes men off emotionally.
As a cis het man, the “male loneliness epidemic” is more a collection of symptoms of multiple problems without one source.
Those who claim a single source usually point to women because they’re a misogynist grifter looking chasing clout or to sell a scam course / supplement.
So without further ado, here’s my non-academic (and probably ill-informed) reckon based on conversations from online and IRL, lived experiences, and perceived societal norms. Have your large pinch of salt on standby.
- Both men and women have been socialised that the only emotions men show is anger or laughter. Men have been socialised that the only emotion they can express in front of other men is anger and laughter. This means the amount of emotional support men can use from their support network is limited, they’re not practiced on how to deal with them, and either have to figure it out by themselves, be lucky enough to have a friend or partner whom they feel emotionally safe to express these feelings, can afford to seek professional help, laugh the problem off with self-depricating humour to repress the emotion, or turn it into anger usually as a result of succumbing to one of the aforementioned grifters.
Understandably, women have been socialised that if a man is showing emotion then that could turn into frustration and anger and so then they either have to risk taking on unpaid emotional labour or remove themselves from the situation. So sometimes you get this scenario where women want men to be more emotionally open but then recoil when they do because subconscious alarm bells start ringing that “you’re in danger” because there’s a decent chance that they could be.
Thankfully this is changing with younger generations, but it will take a generation or two.
- Male support socialisation is centred around problem solving, not listening. Even if a guy has friends he can lean on emotionally, the conversations are usually focused around fixing the problem rather than providing a listening space and reassurance that those emotions are valid.
This is the main reason I pass off an “I’m fine” to friends and family because they’d try and suggest solutions to the problem rather than just listen.
Again, this is changing in society but these kinds of changes are slow.
- Loss of third spaces. This affects everyone, not just men. But these third spaces where people can socialise without being forced to spend money are key for building communities. When people had disposable income or access to lines of credit it didn’t matter that there was an expectation that you had to pay for parking, food, drink, ticket(s) for the activity. Now, that’s less of an option for many people.
This hasn’t improved and will likely only get worse as late stage capitalism squeezes out anything that is unable or refuses to make more and more profit per quarter.
- The lack of third spaces has moved friendships, courtship, and dating online. Whilst this has meant many people have made connections (platonic and romantic) that would have gone missed, the big tech companies have realised that anger and loneliness are good for business.
The social networks get far more engagement from posts that make people angry and therefore their advertising revenues increase.
Similarly, the dating monopoly Match Group, has realised that having more men than women on the platform means these men will spend money on these platforms for a chance at matches. So they purposely profile men who are likely to pay for things like “super likes” etc. and do nothing to make the experience more pleasant for women.
This isn’t anything new by the way, it’s the same reason some clubs make guys pay on the door and women get in for free, and it’s the same reason why there’s more female sex workers than male sex workers.
Men are willing to pay many and women don’t have to, but women have to put up with a lot of entitlement from the men who have paid for matches / to get into the club and be constantly fending off attention from men they don’t wish to reciprocate the attention to.
Without third spaces for general socialising, the only place to interact with potential partners is paid and will therefore skew financially in favour of women at the cost of their peace-of-mind.
- This is more of a personal sentiment but others might empathise: I don’t want to feel like I’m harassing women.
I’m not cold approaching anyone when I go out because I don’t want to interrupt their precious free time they get in between the grind of life. I don’t want to interrupt them socialising with their friends or be creepy on the dancefloor by getting in their personal space, or even glancing over too much.
So I stay at arms length, avoid eye contact, and only approach or get close if I’m getting multiple very strong signals large enough to land an Airbus A380.
- This is definitely just applies to me, but I have exceedingly low self-confidence, self-esteem, and low opinion of myself from a deep rooted depression. That’s a straight-up non-starter for trying to be with anyone else because nobody, man or woman, likes an emotional anchor dragging their mood down. I’m working on it but without paying a lot of money for therapy (the NHS waiting list is a joke), I’m stuck trying to work it out myself (see points 1 & 2).
So until I’m fit for socialising in that way, I’m purposely isolating myself in that regard.
Oh and for added flavour, I don’t want to be around watching society collapse as the world continues to burn not can I distract myself (or be ignorant enough) to not pay attention to it.
To be honest, right now my mind is telling just to wait for my mother to pass away then withdraw all my money, disappear abroad, burn through it in pure hedonism then off myself once the cash has run out. At least this way I can enjoy a shorter life rather than suffer a longer one.
I’ll be your friend; you can actually discuss things well 💜
There is one source.
I recommend reading nurturing our humanity. Primates have two observable social systems. And they both exist in all societies along a spectrum.
Domination and partnership.
The more domination based a society, the more everybody suffers. Including those higher in the social hierarchy.
Working class men, they are in a strange place because they have hierarchical status based on gender but not based on economic class. This makes it difficult for them to find solidarity with women. And thus more lonely in a system of loneliness.
Communists would blame capitalism of course, and they’re not exactly wrong because capitalism is a domination-based system. Marx called this phenomena alienation.
Feminists would blame patriarchy, and again they are not wrong it is a domination-based system.
So on and so forth, but we can take a step back and look at ourselves as apes and see domination is the problem. The will to power.
Buddhism calls this energy Mara, and would call the partnership energy Buddha nature.
It’s all the same thing, it’s a strategy apes use to relate to each other and survive. Partnership is a better strategy. Assuming your goal is the health of society and the planet rather than personal gain.
I have no idea but thought I’d throw out that, as a 58yr old cis white guy I’ve never been lonely in my life, i have literally no idea what that’s like and don’t get involved in hypotheses about it all because I have nothing to bring to the debate. I do find human behaviour interesting (and mostly bizzare) though.
The more time I spend with people the more I crave being alone but that’s a different thing.
I now live on the edge of a tiny village in the middle of no where Australia and lived in a small cottage off grid in the bush for 10 years previously bit alos loved in an apartment in the sky in a largish city.
One thing I noticed, I found the car free existence ina city bought me into contact with people all the time, even walking you’d see people people and say hello. Stop at a crossing and have a small conversation occasionally etc. i even said hello to women and was never called a pervert ;)
I can only suggest reading some of “The Way We Never Were”. It’s a look at society and how it actually was vs the manufactured versions people today use to weaponize the whitewashed past as some sort of ideal. It’s not a psychological book or a deep analysis of society at all, but one of the things that struck me about it that relate to social circles and how it applies to men in particular is the loss of “the village” and the damage “self reliance” - the isolation of the American Family Unit by making it the Family Vs The World - has done to society and the ability of people to form steady social groups outside of work. This, and the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.
Good, succinct explanation. There are some people dropping their life stories in this post, which should be a barometer for just how lonely everyone really is.
But yes, this. It’s all socio-economic. It’s capitalism ruining our world by forcing us to serve the system instead of having a system that serves us. It has been like this a long time, but if unmanaged, allowed to grow and consolidate beyond just the interests of a few companies here and there and allowed to turn into an all-consuming monster that takes away our politics, our social lives, our hopes and dreams, you end up with a very miserable population.
Yes, it’s “divide and conquer” on a grand scale. Because we don’t have groups we’re never strong enough to rebel.
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The only thing essentialist about us (and the only other explanations are essentialist) is that we’re highly social creatures, the point that we literally die without social contact like a goddamn lovebird or guinea pig.
The primary thing that’s gotten in the way of our social life of the past is the rampant increase in “luxuries” such as single-family homes, personal cars, computers that keep us inside, and the vast array of conveniences that let us survive with clicks and phone calls with strangers.
At its heart, it’s not complex. We buy things that are sold to us to give us the illusion of comfort, but comfort is not good for us, having community is what’s good for us and makes happier and have more balanced perspectives, and we’re suffering massively and experiencing national divisions because we don’t have a sense of community broadly.
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communist regimes
Already lost me there.
There hasn’t been a real “communist regime” there have just been a lot of dictators and despots using the label, and if you know history you should know this, otherwise it’s weird that you think the only alternative to life-destroying capitalism run amuck is straight up cartoonish, hollywood-invented, jump-suits and tank-parades-communism.
However I have traveled the actual REAL world and there are many, many countries where people do not prioritize throwing money at corporations and care about their communities and each other and they are much, much happier with less distractions, less luxuries, fewer stressors and more social engagement, and in many of those places they also have free healthcare and public transportation. You know, socialist policies that help people not have to struggle so hard to survive every day so they can spend time with their friends and family.
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No, that’s a dumb fucking reply. I am saying that people were not happier under dictators, that’s not exactly gymnastics. Meanwhile, there are countries here and now on earth that have higher happiness levels who are more focused on community and culture and have social safety nets to back it up. That’s my point.
the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.
That’s a great point.
Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?
I’m a very fluid person. So I think I have great inside in the differences between genders and sexualities in loneliness.
A lot of it have to do with “be approached”.
As a woman presenting person a get approached a lot, a lot of people I don’t know want to talk with me. It’s ridiculously easy to make new acquaintances and friends. Everyone wants to talk and be around you.
As a male presenting person I also get approached a lot when I’m in “gay spaces”. Again it’s impossible to be alone unless I voluntarily would want to.
Yes, these two have the handicap that a lot of approaches are “sex related” of by people wanting sex. But not all of them, among so much approaches there’s always some that doesn’t just want sex.
Then, as a male presenting person in not gay spaces and even more so in straight spaces. I don’t get approached, never, at all. Zero people talk to me just because they want to be near me. If I want to meet somebody I always have to be the one initiating the approach.
In my experience this is the root of the issue. And the experience that most people complaining about “male loneliness” are talking about.
There are other type of loneliness. As a Queer I’m quite familiar with loneliness related to being different, and people literally hating you for what you are, or not accepting you. But that’s a different thing. The male loneliness is that feeling of having the burden of all your relationships in your shoulders, knowing that if you don’t go after people people won’t ever go after you. And that can be devastating with time. Because your self worth get tanked, specially if you are introvert and have a hard time approaching people.
I suppose it won’t end until it get normalized to approach cis men the same way it’s normalized in the other situations I talked about. The reason of why people don’t approach cis men as easy can be discussed, I get that there’s a fear/danger factor in approaching a cis male, specially after being approached by so many menacing people in your life. But still, I do think the root of the issue is that. And there’s also de commodity of knowing that you don’t need to approach a cis man because some will approach to you regardless, so you don’t even need to try. I’m the first guilty of it. I don’t approach men either, I always wait for them to approach me, because I know they will, so why bother approaching? I suppose there’s a great imbalance. Maybe if men would go into strike and refuse to approach people the balance would be restored, who knows.
The male loneliness is that feeling of having the burden of all your relationships in your shoulders, knowing that if you don’t go after people people won’t ever go after you. And that can be devastating with time.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it put so succinctly. Maybe this isn’t everything, but it is the root of the feeling for me. I’m constantly reaching out and checking in and it’s more rare for the reverse to happen (though it’s really important to notice when it does, which is something I’m trying to do more now).
Yep. It’s also incredibly draining to have to do all the work. Nobody will ever reach out to you first. You must always be reaching out.
I gave up on romantic relationships mostly, because I was doing 90% of the work. And if I wanted a break, I was told I was being a ‘not a real man’. I bought a house and got pets. My pets don’t demand I do all the work for them. They actually communicate and appreciate.
After reading most of these comments I’ll have to say this comment resonated the most with me. It’s exhausting to always be the one who needs to put in effort to talk to new people, and then you need to maintain it pretty much one sidedly as well, you end up just giving up on it and looking more for good friends to rely on than romantic things.
I’ve heard from female friends that there are women also dealing with this so it’s not a uniquely male thing, but social norms have sadly made it so and it really gets to you as a guy when you’re not also being pursued by people. I’ve seen some nice clips tangential to this asking women when was the last time they bought flowers for a guy and some of them couldn’t think of an instance.
It’s rough out there, and unless you’re at the top of your game (mental health wise) it’s a huge struggle, and with the economy as it is a lot of people people sadly are having a tough time dealing with it, but as you say women are usually better trained to work together on this stuff, whereas guys largely aren’t and suffer alone as a consequence.
I’m lucky to have some good male and female friends I can open up to, but I definitely feel like the exception on that.
One of my female friends bought me a cake in college for my birthday.
Only person who ever bought me a cake for my birthday my entire life (other than parents a s child). No other friend, or girlfriend, ever did that for me. Most of my girlfriends ‘gifts’ to me was usually something they wanted for themselves, like buying me fancy towels so they could use them in my bathroom.
This is so incredibly accurate
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No, that’s not it. You are seeing your experience (and the experience of people around you, all living in the same society at the same time) and extrapolate that to the “very human nature”.
Just go back 50 years and you have all these structures making it easier for men to keep contact. You had fraternities, churches, unions, clubs, associations and so on, all designed to pick up young men, give them structure, give them contacts and help them being part of something bigger. All that failed some time in the 70s or 80s with the individualism movement that valued individualism over every kind of group.
If you go back even further, social structures were even stronger, with even things like arranged marriage being commonplace in many societies. In societies where that was common, there was no expectation at all that a young cis man would have to approach women at all.
Don’t extrapolate your experience to all of human-kind. It is almost never correct.
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Certain = most. And you might have misunderstood what survivorship bias means.
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Human nature is evolutionary.
Never say never.
Evolution is not our friend. Evolution favours reproductive fitness, not happiness. Happiness is just one of many tools in the toolbox for getting us to reproduce.
The current situation with low birth rates due to the availability of contraceptives is a temporary blip. Right now you can witness a wide range of forces arrayed against that status quo. Note that for humans, evolution operates not only at the genetic level but also at the cultural level since parents can pass their culture on to their children.
We’re witnessing a major backlash and reaction against secular liberalism, a return to authoritarianism and a revival of religious membership. Religion has always been one of the most powerful of evolution’s cultural weapons for increasing reproductive fitness.
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Hey look at this guy! He’s met every human that’s ever existed, ignored all the times that humans have been good and caring, and has decided that we’re completely cooked!
But for real, I get that misanthropes are “in” right now, but if you look for the helpers, you will generally find them. Most people in the world are not out to cause pain - actively malicious people are rare. We just focus a shit ton of our attention on them.
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Is saying “not everyone is shitty” toxic positivity? I’m not denying the presence of malicious humans, but the first step to becoming a bad person is believing that everyone else is too.
What’s your end goal here - what are you trying to communicate? Just that the world is bad and people should agree with that fact and do nothing?
I don’t really mean to say that you can’t express your feelings on the Internet or that they aren’t valid, but I do just want to kinda poke people who seem to be in this “people are awful” mindset and point out that our psychology and our information ecosystem are all heavily biased towards the negative, but it’s not the complete picture.
I think its pretty hypocritical for anyone who isnt a male to have an opinion on the validity of an experience they cant possibly have unless they transitioned.
Its like me having an opinion on have a period.
Particularly when so many trans men who have lived as women previously have come forward to validate how much more isolated men feel.
On the other hand, belle hooks’, The Will to Change, is one of the most compassionate and understanding takes on the subject.
So she has an opinion on the validity of the experience, and it is that capitalism and patriarchy is alienating for men, just like it is for others. Especially working class men.
Nurturing Our Humanity, co-written by a female author, uses system science and primatology to validate what men experience in domination based societies.
I know your point was more long the lines of critics shouldn’t criticize things that they don’t understand, but there are a lot of feminists that do understand and have an informed opinion, because they study how these systems of domination affect everyone, not just women.
I’ll disagree a little here.
My wife’s had surgeries from men that know waaaaaay more about her period than she does.
That being said, they went to school for a decade and have another decade of experience learning specifically about a topic. They aren’t just some random business student that dropped out 2 weeks into semester one and writes their theses via comments.
Small but important caveat. Otherwise 100% agreed. I have no ideas on periods because I’m not a woman or a Dr.
Yeah I also disagreed, I’ve read some very compassionate takes on men’s situation written by academic feminists.
Bell hooks the will to change for example. Women can be experts on gender, and how systems of domination effect everyone. Men included.
I’m more of a comma or interrobang kind of guy‽
And yet, your sentence ends with…
duly noted, fixed!
but I know who I am (or at least so I think) so now it just looks weird to me.
deleted by creator
Yet, men have dictated women’s bodies for centuries. Nah, you can shove that view up your ass.
I reject your opinion. Men shouldn’t be dictating women’s bodies and women shouldn’t be dismissing men’s feelings. Two wrongs, etc etc, I shouldn’t have to explain this to an adult.
Agreed, but as long as countries are ran by old white men, it’ll never change.
Germanys longest chancler was a woman, Merkel. The EU is lead by a woman The head of the UK and Commonwealth was a woman and lets not forget PM Thatcher or Ms Salad Truss Italys PM is a woman, so is Denmarks and latvias Germanys parliament president is a woman The leader of europes biggest fascist partys in italy, france and germany are all woman.
What gender one is doesnt matter. Its the policies. Though yes woman get the short end of the stick by old peoples preference of leadership.
Also why bring the colour of the skin into play? For europe alone: guess what ofc its mostly going to be “white” people running their nations. Same in sub saharan africa its all black people. And guess what japan is run by japanese.
Though i am guessing you are american and therefor segregation by race runs deep in your mind since childhood.
Agreed.
brb going to use this as my defense for being an asshole to women. It’s expected of me.
You’re cleared to grab 'em by the pussy, chief.
“MEN IN THE PAST DID BAD, SO ALL MEN FOREVER GUILTY”
What a well reasoned argument.
It’s original sin, just by gender. I think people underestimate the harm in painting all men with the same brush. Once the conversation morphs from “I hate this thing some males do” and changes into “I HATE MEN” you can’t have a productive conversation.
Its the classic negative feedback loop.
All you hear about is bad people, doing bad things, because normal, sane, respectful, law abiding people don’t make news because who is going to make headlines like “NORMAL PERSON RESPECTS OPINION AND DOESNT HAVE A TANTRUM OVER BEING DISAGREED WITH”
So people with low critical thinking skills and an aversion to regular thinking just leap to “ALL X ARE BAD, NO EXCEPTIONS”
people who think that all men are underdeveloped cretin sex-monsters. they don’t acknowledge that they are people/individuals.
only women get that status in their minds. Increasingly, as a man, i find it harder and harder to find people of any gender/sex who don’t want to lecture me about my maleness and how evil it is. Shit’s weird. fewer and fewer people care to see me as a person.
especially on the dating market. holy moly… the horrible hate so many people have towards men there is wild.
Current men are bad.
Fixed that for you.
Generalisation of a such large group of people. Love it.
What would you say if i say “black people are bad”? Because there are also a lot of bad black people out there
If you were to say “black people are bad” then the rebuttal typically becomes “due to established power structures, white men can’t be oppressed, therefore I can say what I want about them”.
I think it’s hard to have a reasoned discussion where you say “all men do X” because for every X, there’s probably a bunch of exceptions. There is a great amount of variance in male behavior.
Exactly
I am currently a men, am I bad?
Are you a men? Are you bad because of it?
If not, by virtue of being a not-men are you good?
And that gives them a higher position?
Taking your argumentation into another context but keeping the same intention: europeans had colonialised africa for over 100 years, means they cant critisise the africans nations politics?
“X did z to y so y can talk freely about matters that affect only X but x not about y”
Who says this? I am not a cis-het man and have not heard the criticism. I thought it was a known thing? Are you literally hearing it doesn’t exist, or is it more like they need to suck it up and/or that they are losers that need to go outside?
If it’s the second, that’s sexism. That’s where it comes from. Illogical ideas about men. Believe it or not, we have not overcome that yet. People have very twisted ideas about how men and women should behave and feel.
