• @candybrie
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    3 days ago

    Women thinking men are icky when they express emotions is because they’re taught from a very young age that expressing emotions is feminine and feminine, especially feminine men, is bad. This wasn’t a reach to blame on the patriarchy at all.

    The patriarchy isn’t “men are harming people all by themselves.” It’s the gender roles and gender hierarchy that both men and women perpetuate.

    • @[email protected]
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      3 days ago

      I have to push back here and say that I think that the “emotions are feminine” explanation doesn’t give the whole picture. There’s also instrumentalization of men.

      We’re all familiar with objectification, the tendency of (some) men to ignore women’s agency, and treat them as objects for their own use. On the flip side, in my experience, (some) women instrumentalize men. That is, treat men as agents to be used as tools to achieve their own goals. As a result, I think that (some) women use men as a bulwark against the stresses and existential terror of human existence, or sometimes even literally, like a bodyguard, or the one who has to deal with the spider in the house.

      You want your vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt when you pull it out of the closet, and then disappear quietly back in there once the job is done. You don’t want to have to change the bag, and clean the motor, and replace the belt every time. More metaphorically, you don’t want to find out that your emotional ramparts against a scary world are built on sand, and that’s what kind of happens when (some) women find out that their partner has fears and weaknesses, too.

      I’ve heard the same story many, many times from men whose partners begged them to open up emotionally, only to flee once they found out that those emotions included fears and self-doubt. It doesn’t make sense that they’d do the first part, if emotions were unattractive, per se.

      (Edit: Missing word.)

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days ago

        I think you’re quite correct in this analysis as well. Historically, women have often had to depend on a husband for financial security and to be this instrument of protection. This archetype of the provider and protector husband is still baked into our patriarchal culture and leads women who don’t deconstruct this attitude to treat their male partners as you describe, and men in straight marriages to feel this burden alone. I’ve seen it often lead to insecurity and self doubt among husbands who feel they can’t live up to this impossible expectation, who also for the reasons widely discussed in this thread don’t feel able to express this insecurity and doubt, or are punished for doing so because it goes against their culturally-prescribed gender role of the strong male protector.

        • @[email protected]
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          43 days ago

          It could also be because they view their husband/partner as a means to an end, rather than a person with feelings.

          At some point, the individual needs to take responsibility for their actions, society is made up of individuals after all.

    • @[email protected]
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      153 days ago

      If patriarchy is the cause of literally everything in gender interaction, it’s not very useful as a concept.

      • @Windex007
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        93 days ago

        That’s like saying the road is the cause of all car crashes.

        The road is the context in which all (mostly all) crashes occur, its contours or grading maybe contributed to the crash, but it almost never would be the sole cause.

        Most people who just wave their hands and say “patriarchy” are parrots who just know they get a cracker when they say the line. It’s resulted in trash discourse.

        It’s resulted in people just tuning out when they hear the word, too.

        Kinda sucks, because it’s a really useful foundation to talk about society through a certain lens. It’d be hard to talk about traffic if I didn’t understand what a road was.

        But, I admit, many people who pipe up with “patriarchy” don’t really want to talk any farther, and that does make dealing with those people pretty frustrating. Like if a cop showed up at every crash and excitedly pointed out the existence of a road and then left.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 days ago

          I am biased because I own (small) parrots who genuinely love crackers, and any reference to that cute behavior is positive for me. But I believe this would be a great metaphor even if I weren’t biased in favor of parrots.

      • @candybrie
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        63 days ago

        It’s just the broad description of the gender roles/hierarchy present in our society. Being aware of them and how they negatively impact gender interaction seems fairly useful to me. Usually it’s helpful to understand the current structure of something and how that’s causing problems to make any meaningful and positive changes.

      • @[email protected]
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        -23 days ago

        On the contrary, the term is performing exactly as designed - blame men for men being shitty (toxic masculinity), and blame men for women being shitty too (internalized misogyny).

        • Enkrod
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          02 days ago

          How is “women are also perpetuating and engaging in the patriarchy, this is a problem” blaming it on men? “The Patriarchy” is not blaming stuff on men, it’s a descriptor of the gender-roles-system we live in and people of all genders can be perpetuators of its toxic aspects.

          • @[email protected]
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            2 days ago

            Because “patriarchy” isn’t just a neutral, ivory-tower descriptor of a system of gender roles. Just look at Twitter, or Reddit - the number of feminists using the word patriarchy on a daily basis to blame men far outnumber the tiny number of academic feminists that (supposedly) use the term without misandrist intent. Words’ meanings are determined by their use, and going by its use, “patriarchy” is a misandrist term that is used to blame men for all of society’s ills, which has resulted in demonstrable negative societal outcomes for men and boys. It’s naive or disingenuous to act otherwise.

            And even among more academic feminist circles, it’s naive to think the term “patriarchy” isn’t being used in a misandrist way by a significant percentage of feminists - radical feminism, just to target the low-hanging fruit, is entirely organized around mistaken and harmful ideas of “male supremacy”, and as a result most of feminism’s terminology is also entirely organized around men being the oppressor, and women being the oppressed.

            This is where we get the real brilliance of feminist thought: “academic”, “neutral” terms like “toxic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny” ensure that all discourse about society’s ills are entirely framed around oppressor/oppressed language (where, of course, men are always the oppressors and women are always the oppressed), which, as discussed above, ensures that the public at large will blame men for literally anything that goes wrong. And, of course, this is exactly what we see on social media, from both men and women. It’s a brilliantly designed system. Horrible, but brilliant.

            The consequences of this inherently misandrist philosophy have been felt throughout society for decades. There are practically no domestic violence shelters or rape resources for men, even though men constitute almost half of rape victims. Men having lower rates of graduation from both high school and college (and of course all of the feminism-funded scholarships are for women, even though they’re currently approaching 60% of graduates - gEnDeR eQuALiTy). Generations of boys having now grown up internalizing this misandry, being told that they’re inherently aggressive rapists and being forced to take re-education classes. The results of this widespread, societal internalized misandry are clearly visible here in this thread.

            And, of course, as mentioned above, the incredible brilliance of the system is that all of these failings (and countless, countless others) are conveniently deemed due to the totally neutral academic term “patriarchy”, and not due to feminists pushing misandrist policy for decades that have had demonstrable negative outcomes for men. So, out here in the real world, men get blamed for women’s problems, and they get blamed for their own problems as well.

            Feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on gender equality, as much as people claim it does (“If you believe in gender equality, you’re a feminist whether you like it or not!”). Feminism is fundamentally built on decades of misandrist philosophical baggage, and it’s time we threw it all out, burned the system down, and started over with a philosophy that’s actually dedicated to gender equality, from the ground up.

      • @candybrie
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        333 days ago

        Pointing out shitty behavior is systemic doesn’t absolve the person of their responsibility for that behavior. It helps illustrate the issue is systemic and not just some crazy one off occurrence. It also gives an angle of attack on solutions to the systemic problem.

        The patriarchy is just as much a men’s lib issue as it is a feminist issue. The gender roles and hierarchy harms men. Women being shitty to a guy for expressing emotion is an example of just that.

          • @[email protected]
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            283 days ago

            This wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up.

            There wasn’t an invitation for you to speak up either. But you chose to speak up so you should expect some push back. Looking at how you’ve presented yourself so far I seriously doubt you’ll listen to me, so I’ll just put my argument very plainly. Nobody should listen to you because you refuse to listen to anyone else.

            You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said. All you’ve pretty much done is try to put words in their mouth so you could counter an argument that was never made. There’s no discussion here, it’s just you screaming into the void and the other person wanting to believe you’re a normal person.

            • @Impassionata
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              -193 days ago

              But people are listening to me.

              You haven’t addressed anything the other person has said.

              So?

              My point is about the nature of their statement and how it centers women in a topic that is about how when men speak about feelings women center a feminine perspective.

              Just because you’re not listening doesn’t mean others aren’t.

              • @[email protected]
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                163 days ago

                But people are listening to me.

                I’m going to assume you meant listening (and agreeing). Because there are people listening and disagreeing, for example me. But how do you know anyone else is agreeing with you? Do you have anything empirical to show that would indicate what you believe or is it just something you want to believe?

                My point is about the nature of their statement and how it centers women in a topic that is about how when men speak about feelings women center a feminine perspective.

                And if you were listening instead of just screaming you’d notice that their statement does not center around women. Their argument is that patriarchal beliefs can be adopted by both women and men and in this case the patriarchal belief is that men shouldn’t express their emotions and in the image it is a woman perpetuating that belief by refusing to accept what was said.

                • @candybrie
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                  153 days ago

                  He’s not going to accept the concept of patriarchy as anything other than a feminist idea that centers women.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    103 days ago

                    I like to imagine they’re one of those “I agree with what you’re saying as long as you don’t mention socialism” kind of people, except for them the big bad taboo word is patriarchy.

                  • @Impassionata
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                    3 days ago

                    Why shouldn’t feminist ideas center women?

                    I’m not saying that patriarchy centers women, I’m saying its invocation here centers feminism in a topic about a masculine issue, which is to, say, it’s rude and counterproductive.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    133 days ago

                    Getting upvotes on my main points.

                    And yet every reply is in disagreement and almost every follow-up reply made by you is heavily downvoted.

                    People who disagree with me right now are still in a backlash phase. They’ll either listen and think about it and accommodate the obvious truth that feminism isn’t a panacea for men’s issues because that’s just stupid.

                    Another argument that was never made. You’re the one who brought up feminism in the first place and nobody said feminism should solve men’s issues.

                    I’m not screaming, I’m lecturing.

                    The lecturers I remember would address questions instead of ignoring them.

                    The centering of women in a topic about men’s feelings being undermined by women centering their perspective is an obvious problem. It’s not that difficult to understand that if a woman were talking over a Black woman’s experience to talk about patriarchy instead of racism, that woman would be out of line.

                    So if it was another woman talking over a White woman’s experience that wouldn’t be out of line? It wouldn’t be a patriarchal issue if the person talking over had been a man instead of the woman?

                    The argument you’re refusing to address is that the gender does not matter when it comes to patriarchy.

                    Your patriarchy concept isn’t working. You can’t reach men by talking about the patriarchy. Joe Rogan doesn’t talk about the patriarchy. It’s not that complicated, you just hold to your ideology hoping that if everyone nods their heads and says “yes the patriarchy is to blame” the problem will get fixed. That’s stupid.

                    Just because the vast majority of people are unwilling to question their beliefs does not mean the concept is wrong. That’s like saying socialism is wrong because the large majority of society is taught “capitalism good, socialism bad” so they wouldn’t question capitalism and would view socialism as something bad.

                    And once again, nobody said if everyone agree patriarchy is to blame that would solve the problem. It wouldn’t, but it would at least be a step in the right direction because people would at least acknowledge there’s a problem.

                    Anyway. I’m done with your comments. As I said in the very first comment, you’re not here to listen. You just want to get on a soapbox and scream about your deeply rooted personal beliefs you refuse to question. I feel I’ve made my points about how you don’t listen and your points are nonsense and I really have no desire to talk to you because you won’t actually address the core arguments anyone is making. You’ll just pile on irrelevant information to try and shift the discussion to something adjacent and it’s just not worth the effort.