Truth is the second option one is just a normal ass guy. Everyone has emotions and needs. The fact is it’s still taboo to be a “man” and have emotions.
Like honestly tell me any other option on there is preferable to someone with emotions… She acting like women don’t require the same thing? Gtfoh. It’s not even a bad thing. It’s just a human thing.
What she’s referring to isn’t the same as having emotions. She means the people who expect everyone around them, especially their romantic partner, to manage their emotions for them. Plenty of women do it, too.
I don’t know anyone like that. I do know we are plenty of people who are drama queens.
But that’s not really the same thing as having emotions people with functional emotions are actually fine, it’s the ones that don’t have emotions but do have an awful lot of opinions that are the problem.
No, that’s the narcissist. She’s referring to having to help someone with their emotional needs. Sounds moreso like she needs to work on her own if it’s laborious to support her partner emotionally.
Expecting your partner to be your personal therapist is not cool but it’s also not necessarily narcissism.
Ah, so they key is to have your own therapist, and a partner that doesn’t give two shits about your emotional well being. gotcha.
cuz being an emotionally supportive partner means becoming their personal therapist. cool cool, you sound fun
Who said anything about that? You can share your emotions with your partner in a way where you don’t expect them to be your personal therapist. Generally, it’s healthy to have a support network, preferably not just one person and especially not just one person who isn’t even a professional.
When you share your feelings with a therapist, that exchange is in one direction, you should never have to emotionally support your therapist. That is however not how it should be with a partner, in a romantic relationship both people should be able to share their emotions and receive support, and that isn’t possible if one person is treating the other as if they were a therapist and not giving them the space to share their emotions in turn.
Most things in life are about balance, just because you don’t agree with something all the way one side (e.g. there is no way to create an unhealthy relationship dynamic by sharing your emotions, regardless of how you do it) doesn’t mean that you agree with something all the way to the other side (i.e. you shouldn’t give two shits about your partner’s emotional well-being).
in a romantic relationship both people should be able to share their emotions and receive support
Expecting your partner to be your personal therapist is not cool
I was replying to someone up there who was shitting on men with emotions. Because they equated having them with being a bad partner. My point is that emotions are normal and wanting an emotionally supportive partner isn’t the same as treating them like a therapist.
Who was shitting on men with emotions? I haven’t seen that at all.
wanting an emotionally supportive partner isn’t the same as treating them like a therapist
We agree on that, you can do one without doing the other.
She’s referring to overly emotional men, who need extra attention; guys who can’t handle failure or rejection, who have a bad day at work and then can’t help around the house at all at night and who expect their partner to take care of them, regardless of how their partner’s day went. I know the type of dude she’s talking about and I wouldn’t want my daughter to bring one home. Dude needs a mother not a partner.
Nope this is a list of all the men available, like she said. She’s painting all emotional men with the same brush. There are good men and bad men in each of those categories she listed, but she thinks we’re all bad.
So I cry and need a hug sometimes? Emotional labor. I can describe the full range of emotions I feel to a partner and deal with them in a healthy way? Gross.
You have a victim mentality. You are looking for this stuff and you’re finding it. The post does not say that.
“As we seek so shall we find.”
I know who I am. I’m just reading what she said. That’s the dating pool.
Let me ask you this:
How could a decent man possibly respond to a post like that without being lumped into it, like you just did to me?
They could not respond, just be present at home with their family.
Yes, I suppose we could just become more silent and withdrawn, couldn’t we?
Let me try a different tack. I know I have issues. I’ve been working on myself for years. As men, we mostly experience negative reinforcement with emotional growth.
But if we are trying to get healthy, how are we supposed to respond to that kind of invalidating talk, inside our own heads? What if the woman saying that kind of stuff isn’t just venting her frustration onto the internet, what if she’s saying it to us, in a relationship? Does that kind of talk inspire us to improve or push us into darker places? Is complaining about us like this in any way helping to improve the way men and women interact?
Once again you’re making it the woman’s job to help you improve yourself. You’re going to see and hear things that put you in a dark place. That’s life. Bringing yourself back to a middle ground of contendedness requires constant self work.
I’m sorry you have problems. Not everyone breaks the wheel.
one of the main points and benefits of a relationship is being able to share problems with someone else and have someone that could cheer you up or to share excitement with
‘emotional labor’ is for actual jobs, especially customer service type jobs
Yea, but if you’re trauma dumping on your partner every time you see them that’s not healthy or fair to them.
Oh so that’s why relationships feel like jobs.
Relationships only really feel like jobs in this way when you feel your effort is not being reciprocated. Doing emotional labour for your partner is not exhausting if you feel like you are equally pulling each other up.
So she wants a guy with a low sex drive, who she doesnt have to have any emotional attachment to, but who emotionally invested in her, that doesnt have any self confidence, and doesnt know any feminist theory so he cant tell he’s in a toxic relationship and doesnt treat her like “shit” (an equal)
is it too much to ask for?
So just a vibrator and a dozen Facebook huns.
When did she say she wanted a man with low sex drive? Being a porn addict doesn’t mean you have a high sex drive. It means you’re addicted to pornography.
When did she say any of what you wrote? Have you heard of being an even-tempered man who has sex with women but doesn’t degrade them or neg them in order to do it, who doesn’t need to trauma-dump on their gf because they’ve already worked through their shit? Your inference into what she posted tells us more about you than her.
Hmm I think you might be some of the red flags she’s talking about especially the manipulative one.
She literally said she doesn’t want a guy who is sensitive and doesn’t want a guy who is emotionally distant. Make it make sense.
I’m not saying I agree with the meme, but that part makes sense to me. Am I really the only one who has met both types of dysfunctional people? Some people are extremely emotionally demanding, where they need constant reassurance and support, and others are completely detached, so that there’s hardly emotional connection at all.
Being healthy is almost always about achieving the mean between extremes.
I thought the last one was just conservatives making stuff up until I joined Lemmy.
Don’t get me wrong, the woman in the tweet is awful, especially the part about hating men who dare to have emotions, but I’m responding purely to the last thing on this list.
A lot of Lemmy users seem to think all they need to do to be immune to misogyny is to be leftist. It’s just been getting real tiring for me browsing this site seeing men be praised for things they at the same time put women down for. Not that men shouldn’t be praised for these things, but the double standard here is immense.
The major one I’ve noticed is putting down women for having a preference on height or even dick size, but men are allowed to only want big boobs or petite women because it’s “a natural expression of human sexuality.”
There’s also that I’ve seen several times men on here complaining when women are given safe spaces and resources specifically for them, like job fairs and such, and the comments being filled with how it should have been open to men as well because not doing so is sexist, meanwhile being totally ok and even ecstatic when a resource is opened specifically for men.Like, I’m trans. I’ve lived on the other side of the coin. I’m glad men around here have a safe space to display their frustrations and discuss men’s issues that in most places you’d be crucified for even mentioning. I just wish this could be a safe space for both genders, not just the one who holds the majority. There are a lot of times I feel straight up unwelcome on Lemmy simply because I’m a women.
the woman in the tweet is awful, especially the part about hating men who dare to have emotions,
What tweet are you reading?
I hope it’s not rude that I checked your profile and saw your explanation. I can see how I might have misinterpreted that. The way I interpreted the “sensitive men” and “emotional labor” part was as reinforcing the toxic masculine stereotype that men are supposed to just “man up” and not show emotion. Unfortunately, that’s an aspect of toxic masculinity upheld by women just as much as men.
The major one I’ve noticed is putting down women for having a preference on height or even dick size, but men are allowed to only want big boobs or petite women because it’s “a natural expression of human sexuality.”
I see men being constantly shamed and catching blowback for those preferences. I mean we can’t hope to succeed in shaming women into wanting short men or poor men, etc. but shouldn’t the same rule apply to men? More insane is that wanting a tall man is more “legitimate” than wanting big boobs or athletic build in women. The rules are constantly altered to justify all women’s preferences and demonize men’s.
Also as a man you can be banned from Reddit not for saying “no trans woman” but just for saying “I want a cis woman”. Feminist subreddits will go for your head, too. (Don’t get me wrong if one of my kids is dating a trans person I will support them totally also.) I’ve gotten the vibe that you risk your account here over that, too.
You are correct that in most environments, it is the other way around. In most places, women wanting tall men is considered normal and acceptable, but men having any preference at all is not. My point was not about how things are in society as a whole, but how things are on the larger Lemmy instances. However, even that seems to have rapidly changed since I made this comment. There was a thread about men’s issues I saw recently that didn’t devolve into “this is why women are awful” and actually stayed on topic, and that was really nice to see.
What I was frustrated about was that there was no space where both men’s and women’s preferences were respected, and also not resorting to body shaming when people do not meet those preferences. Lemmy is primarily dominated by men, which naturally makes it easier to talk about men’s issues without being shamed for it, but it did lead, for a while, to women’s issues not only being overlooked, but also often being intentionally ignored or outright shamed, mostly because men could not understand these issues they’d never experienced, so they didn’t feel as real (which is largely the same reason women often have trouble respecting men’s issues.)
I’m guessing it has to do with Lemmy’s population finally growing again and new perspectives being thrown into the mix, but I’ve noticed a lot more empathy about gendered issues lately, which is nice to see.
As far as whether you risk your account for only wanting cis women, probably depends heavily on the instance. A shocking amount of the time people use preference as a cover for bigotry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some mods are heavy on the trigger finger when it comes to that. Not that there’s not legit reasons to not want to date trans women. We can’t provide biological children and a large portion of us have no desire to “fully” transition, which are both reasonable reasons to not want to be with a trans woman (and of course that’s not an exhaustive list of every valid reason.) It’s just often people who say that mean they don’t view trans women as actual women and don’t want to date them because they’re “not gay.”
You are correct that in most environments, it is the other way around. In most places, women wanting tall men is considered normal and acceptable, but men having any preference at all is not. My point was not about how things are in society as a whole, but how things are on the larger Lemmy instances. However, even that seems to have rapidly changed since I made this comment. There was a thread about men’s issues I saw recently that didn’t devolve into “this is why women are awful” and actually stayed on topic, and that was really nice to see.
I used to be a MRA until Trump happened and the gender loyalism just got too much to handle. I can’t put up with gender jingoism (“my gender, right or wrong”) nonsense from either side. I had to part ways for good when they started saying the 19th should be revoked. “This is why wo/men are awful” is basically saying one sucks at vetting people without actually saying one sucks at vetting people.
As for women wanting tall men, or men not wanting fat women for that matter, the ramifications of said preference leaves a lot of men and women out in the cold, but what can you do? Freedom to choose who you want to be intimate with is sancrosanct. Depressing (I got a 12 year old son aging into this shithole situation) but can’t be fixed because it isn’t biology, it goes way deeper than that, it’s spiritual. What can and must be fixed, though, is the shaming: shit like “Fat shaming month” or women walking up in bars using measuring tape to see a guy’s actual height. The “fat women / short men kill yourselves” shit that sometimes flourishes unchecked in social media before admins step in and nix it long after it has hit a ton of eyeballs.
There is a prevalent culture of shaming someone for what they can’t help or can’t easily help and then acting like they are the problem when you cause them to have insecurities related to that. Full scale industrialized cultural-level gaslighting without apology. We need to end that… but how? It’s like it’s also part of our spiritual zeitgeist. I mean some of us are aware and awake, but overall? Might as well say everyone stop being human. But it’s also spiritually embedded for those who are awake to refuse to stop fighting the good fight. That windmill will see no peace from my lance.
As far as whether you risk your account for only wanting cis women, probably depends heavily on the instance. A shocking amount of the time people use preference as a cover for bigotry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some mods are heavy on the trigger finger when it comes to that. Not that there’s not legit reasons to not want to date trans women. We can’t provide biological children and a large portion of us have no desire to “fully” transition, which are both reasonable reasons to not want to be with a trans woman (and of course that’s not an exhaustive list of every valid reason.) It’s just often people who say that mean they don’t view trans women as actual women and don’t want to date them because they’re “not gay.”
I have a special pile of beef for the whole “you’re dating a trans woman hahahaha you suck” mentality. Mods and admins being trigger happy af about trans issues is an affront, but so is that. I’m buying plenty of lances for tilting against that windmill, too. Break one, I come back with another…
The major one I’ve noticed is putting down women for having a preference on height or even dick size, but men are allowed to only want big boobs or petite women because it’s “a natural expression of human sexuality.”
That’s not the way I remember it. I remember being told that men having or expressing physical preferences in women was a terrible thing to do, being called a sexist, shallow pig, etc. This has been a female talking point basically my entire life. Then I remember being rejected for being 5’7". You know how we live in a world with 5 websites, each one is full of pictures of the other 4? I think I saw a Facebook post of a Tweet on Reddit that said [woman]: Grey sweatpants are for men with DICK, not men with peepee. [man]: But if I said tight jeans are for girls with ass, not long backs, I’d be the asshole.
I find that level of sheer hypocrisy is pretty effective at eroding my capacity for empathy.
Want another example? How about this cycle:
- How dare men rely on only their romantic partners for emotional support. Men should support each other goddess dammit!
- Men create spaces to gather and share activities. – If activity is not socially acceptable, I’ll use the example of tabletop gaming in the 80’s and 90’s: “EWW look at the nerds and their pathetic nerd shit! Get lost, losers!” – If activity is or becomes socially acceptable, and especially if it starts building money or prestige, I’ll use the example of video games in the 2000’s and 2010’s: “This environment isn’t suitable for women! I demand you change it to accommodate my needs and tastes.”
- Why the fuck don’t men make and keep friendships with other men? I just don’t fucking get it.
And for some reason they expect me to automatically give a damn when the Republicans take their rights away?
Women are very vocal about not being on my side. So guess what? I’m not on theirs. Gasp.
If you feel unwelcome on Lemmy just for being a woman, as far as I’m concerned you can go somewhere else.
Your concerns for a lot of your life experiences are completely valid, but when you make the jump from “a lot of women have been assholes to me” to “women are assholes”, you fall into the same pitfall people are criticizing in this thread. There are a lot of women who are assholes. There are a lot of men who are assholes. Let’s criticize those behaviors, and make society a little bit better insofar we’re able to, rather than join their ranks.
Based response.
Jesus Christ, dude. Learn some empathy
Everyone is shallow, that’s not exclusive to any gender. Some people are shitty, others can have hard-line views due to experienced trauma. Doesn’t mean you should generalize, men and women are not monoliths. Just trying to understand the lived experience of the other side goes a long way.
I find that level of sheer hypocrisy is pretty effective at eroding my capacity for empathy.
Jesus Christ, dude. Learn some reading comprehension.
Judging by how the votes in this thread are going, my lived experience isn’t worth considering, so I now have no intention of considering anyone else’s. Fuck empathy. It’s not worth trying.
Oh grow up, what are you? An angsty teenager?
Life isn’t that hard.
You’re talking about the most shallow, vapid women out there. The women i’ve met have generally never talked like that. So no, you don’t get a pass to hate on women just because you saw some FB memes that hurt your fee fees…
And for some reason they expect me to automatically give a damn when the Republicans take their rights away?
I give a damn about Republican douchebaggery because I’m not like those kinds of people, I don’t want to be a monster like them. I want to be able to look in the mirror and see someone who’s better than that. How women react will never affect me acting on my morals, they don’t control me.
My 2c on this, I wish people would understand that a lot of women have similar struggles, same for men, and having spaces for those experiences to be shared with people who understand is really important.
I think the issue is it feels pretty othering when I’ve had experiences similar and feel like I’m not allowed to share them (without a lot of angry stares) because I’m not the correct gender.
I know there have been cases of women’s spaces being taken less seriously, but I don’t remember any specifics. Do you have any examples that come to mind?
It’d take me ages to find the post, but a while back, there was a post about a job fair for women getting overrun by a tidal wave of men. The comments were filled with people trying to justify it, such as saying that it was illegal and sexist to host a job fair for women only, and people even the slightest bit upset that a job fair for women was overrun by men abusing the legal loophole that they technically couldn’t be kicked out got down voted way to the bottom of the thread.
I found the post https://lemmy.world/post/6206801 and here https://kbin.social/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/508848 Yeah I guess you have to see it firsthand. I’ve heard tons of comments like “women just aren’t built for STEM” etc which these events are trying to show is wrong. It is probably a little unfair to the individual but good for society as a whole when talented women don’t see a field is 90% men and decide it’s not worth dealing with the boys club.
I do wanna point out, the most upvoted comments seem to have the same sentiment of this actually is important and a good thing to have for women. Definitely quite a few with a high score that say the opposite though…
“women just aren’t built for STEM”
Comments like that are utter trash. Only an incel believes in that BS. It’s as if they never knew that one of, if not the first programmers, was Ada Lovelace.
That is the post I was talking about. I did forget about the few higher pro-woman comments. I guess I tend to remember the bad more than the good.
Still unpleasant how many people around here are completely ok with stuff like that though, but I suppose it’s worth focusing on the positive.
That wasn’t a loophole, what that event was doing was open and naked gender discrimination and their ban on men was legally unenforceable. The law was on their side. What women should do in retaliation is bum rush those men’s clubs where all the power decisions are made by the top 1% of men. Fun fact the dean of my uni’s computer science dept was a woman, and decades later it still is. THEY have a crucial role in recruiting women students, it begins at the start of the pipeline.
That seems a bit hard on the dudes.
It’s kinda exhausting seeing progressive language constantly used to rag on men. I want men to be anti-racist / feminist / LGBT allies / etc. I get that there are a lot of problems with many streams of masculinity and people who have been hurt by those have a right to complain, but goddamn. I would not expect lots of women to be attracted to a movement that constantly complains about women.
That’s why a lot of people oppose third wave feminism. It stop being about uplifting women and about pushing men down to achieve the goals. It forgot that the original goal was to raise the standards for everyone to equality.
A lot of males face issues that women face as well. But when there’s a portion of people basically saying you’re scum for being born a man… It’s very tiring and eventually it starts to feel like “well if you don’t care about me, why should I keep caring about you?”
when there’s a portion of people basically saying you’re scum for being born a man
There is no way of changing these people’s minds, they invariably tend to be zero-sum absolutionists. Any attempt to prove them otherwise will only trigger their victimization complexes.
The only effective strategy is to not engage in the first place, to avoid having anything to do with them even if they are blood and especially if they can be easily avoided.
Unfortunately, this attitude is also held by the vast majority of vocal feminists… which, if you are actively dating, ought to make this one of the first red flags you should be looking for to make women self-select themselves out of contention.
After all, you don’t want to be with someone who hates you for what you are. Leave those venomous vipers on the branch, where they belong.
And yes, this entire strategy works equally as well in the other direction, for women. The difference is that women are far more effectively avoiding men with these red flags than men are at avoiding women with these red flags. Far too many men are far too thirsty to think straight where women are concerned.
you’re scum for being born a man
No people in the real world say this. This is something that exists purely in social media and the anonymous Internet.
This whole thread seems filled with people who view men as victims of something. They aren’t.
A man can be a victim, sure.
Men, as a group, are not general victims of anything they didn’t choose.
No people in the real world say this
I’ve heard similar things from women when I was in college, and not someone joking around or being ironic.
This whole thread seems filled with people who view men as victims of something. They aren’t.
This is a thread of men supporting each other emotionally, and venting about how society largely disregards any problems that affect primarily men. There are a few shithead bigots who are gonna try to shove in their vile opinions, but they’re all pretty down voted and a small minority. All the top level discussion seems pretty reasonable to me, and venting about the very thing you’re doing with this statement.
Men, as a group, are not general victims of anything they didn’t choose.
I don’t think the young men in Russia who were forcefully conscripted and sent to die in the Ukrainian war (or a Russian prison) chose to do so. You can’t just generalize the struggles of an entire demographic and brush them aside as their fault. It reminds me of the rhetoric of women being sexually assaulted because they dressed a certain way. It’s extremely sexist and gets us absolutely nowhere, only pushing people further into extremes.
Men, in general, have higher job mortality rates, higher suicide rates, shorter life expectancy, and higher homelessness rates to name a few things. None of us “chose” this. However, because the problems affect men they’re often swept aside.
You can benefit from a system in some ways while still being a victim of it in others. I completely agree that much more work needs to be done for women and people of color, and that there are much worse/more skewed injustices that they face (which is why that’s where society’s focus is/should be right now). However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge the struggles men face when they’re brought up.
If men feel like their struggles are not being acknowledged enough, all they have to do is acknowledge them. I mean, we do live in a pretty patriarchal society.
Men are not a monolith. Many men would like their struggles acknowledged, while other men verbally abuse them for doing so.
Someone, somewhere, says this unironically. If you want to avoid pedantic arguments about the meanings of words, use “virtually no one in real life says this.” When you say “no one says this,” two or three examples of people saying it is evidence against you. When you say “virtually no one says this in real life,” those two or three examples become evidence that it’s hard to find people actually saying it
Well, that post is a straight flush of red flags.
Thinking that someone else having emotions is work is definitely a major one.
Also I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, if I’m emotional I’m bad, if I’m cold and distant I’m bad, what she want?
She wants you to be emotionally available for her, but not to be emotionally available for you. Avoid these people, men or women, for anything you’re not absolutely forced to.
I think she’s talking about people who need to be constantly emotionally validated, which can absolutely be emotionally draining, especially if you’re working through shit yourself.
Like, if your partner has BDD and you have to have a
conversationargument with them multiple times a day defending them from their own self loathing, that’s exhausting after a few years.
Easy, just go bi and date other women. You still have the option for men.
Edit also it’s unfair to say what she’s saying anyways. I almost feel like your dating pool options or choices are more a reflection of you than other people. Or idk, maybe some people get unlucky.
I have lots of female friends and from their stories in the dating scene, this is not far from reality. Of course, it’s meant as a sort of social-commentary joke, so there’s exaggeration and oversimplification, but there’s a substrate of truth to to it.
What’s best about the post is the second part. That personality-profile to social media link is spot on LOL
Lemmy wins again. This time it’s the dating game!
I bet women are more emotional labour than men. My ex completely exhausted me. And she didn’t even want to stop calling me after she dumped me
Meanwhile the dating pool for men contains the following:
Crickets
“No one wants to date me, it must be their fault.”
That comes with other connotations so we’ll say it’s just a joke for right now.
Awknowledging men don’t have many options isn’t the same thing as blaming women for the situation.
1, 2, 5 - all me. Gotta be strategic about it, the more pools I appear in the higher are my chances.
Started to post cringe memes on Linkedin, recently. Anyone got tips on how to get on Insta? Do I really have to hit the gym?
Learn to cook and post food pictures. Would probs work instead of the gym. Oh and keep a super clean kitchen and wear a bunch of joke aprons.
I mean knowing how to cook well is definitely an attractive trait in a spouse.
Uhh you can switch the genders and it wouldn’t be a lie. Except the last part would be “still treats other races like shit”. In my experience many “woke” women are covert racist, especially against Asian men. Even some “woke” Western Asian women can be pretty racist against Asian men.
Even some
“woke”Western Asian women can be pretty racist against Asian men.FTFY.
My wife is Asian, and has seen this in her own female relatives and community friends who have immigrated here or have been born here. None of them would ever debase themselves that far to be with an Asian man unless he was loaded AF.
And my BiL has only ever had one Asian woman take any interest in him, despite being one hell of a handsome man… last time he visited China, he was frequently mistaken for a movie star or a model.
Thats weird, where im from Asian women overwhelmingly date asian men.
I hate that I’m the second, and so aggressively that it’s hurt relationships before
if i tried to comfort you about it, though, wouldn’t that just perpetuate and enable the problem?…actually no, i can’t even joke about it. I’m sorry people left you feeling emotionally abandoned, bro. It’s not fair that you get put under this double standard. The fact is, everyone needs emotional labor. Another word for emotional labor is goddamn fucking empathy and SOME PEOPLE don’t want to show any toward men.
THOSE people don’t matter. The kind of woman who would look at you as a burden would, in fact, be a burden upon you.
You are worthy of love. You are worth the investment of psychological and emotional energy. You have value even above and beyond intrinsic value as a human being. And if you were here, I’d be taking us both out for tacos and/or ice cream right goddamn now.
I think this statement about emotional labour is being misinterpreted and knee jerk reactioned. People are getting angry and jumping to conclusions about men not being allowed to have emotions, but that isn’t it.
Of course partners are supposed to support each other. What this is talking about is someone who prioritizes their emotional needs over the other person the majority of the time to the detriment of the relationship. Your partner is there to be your partner - the role of full time therapist is above their pay grade. And I’m wondering whether this is highlighted as an issue because men are less likely to seek therapy where needed and rely on their partner for this. Helping your partner through issues is one thing but sometimes it’s healthy and necessary to zoom out and get perspective from a professional. This happened in my relationship and I had to honestly and kindly say I don’t have the expertise to help you with this issue. I’m willing to hold space for you and sit with you as you navigate it but you do need the help of a professional to unpack this.
Have you ever had a friend who every time you hang out with and the whole time it’s them talking about themselves and their issues to the point where they don’t even show any interest in you. You’re effectively acting like that person’s therapist 100% of the time.
I had an ex brother in law like this. He had many mental health challenges but everything was 100% about him all the time for the whole family. His likes, his dislikes, his issues, his interests. He’d ask a short how are you and dive right into all his shit. If the event or conversation didn’t revolve around him, he would leave and disengage. It sucks the air out of the room and it’s fucking exhausting for everyone.
The reason people are responding negatively is because, regardless of what she MEANS, she did not say it with any hint of deference what so ever. She isn’t being nuanced. She isn’t painting a line where men can be emotional and accepted. She’s just whining that the available men that aren’t in the other camps are too much emotional labor.
That conveys literally nothing positive to men. Everyone understands lopping off bad parts of toxic masculinity, but people need to remember that men NEED that emotional support, especially if they’re only just getting out of toxic masculinity: they won’t have many tools to healthily deal with immature emotions.
While it is absolutely reading in to it, she is clearly leaving the room there for that interpretation by only speaking negatively of men in genral. She’s literally only shitting on all single men, and people are surprised single men aren’t happy with that message??
If people are going to Twitter expecting nuanced, perfectly balanced and fleshed out essays then that’s an internet literacy problem. Men give all sorts of opinions on the internet about how women should be, dress, look, have sex, etc - I don’t see how this is any different.
I’d agree with her opinion in the context that it’s the same for any friendship, or relationship honestly. If you are so sensitive and vulnerable with me all the time that it’s unbalanced and I have no room to have and express my own emotions then it is not a friendship that is worth keeping. It’s not black and white be a stone or be a puddle. It’s that relationships are built on empathy and empathy is an exchange. Just as I hold space to help you through your issues, you too need to hold space for me.
There was a post on I saw on Lemmy a while ago of an OP asking for friends in a local community because they lacked friends due to a laundry list of baggage and mental health issues - they felt that friendship could solve those. The issue is why would anyone see that and be like wow that is a fun positive person I want to be around, I’m totally equipped to handle all of that. No - the solution was why doesn’t that OP go to a therapist or support group and work on those issues first where it is possible to find community related to those particular issues.
The basis of any relationship can’t be one party constantly being the pump-up person and emotional cheerleader for the other party, which is a role that women fall into A LOT. This goes both ways obviously no matter what your gender, but women in my experience tend to spread out their emotional support needs across a larger network - friends, family, therapists etc. It’s actually become something my sister and I have noticed with our guy friends - they like hanging out with us because we do talk about our emotions, and they feel freer to talk about theirs. However, no one person monopolizes the conversation.
I have another friend who every time she shows up to a party she talks about all of her past trauma. It’s a lot. We have sat with her on multiple occasions but the friend group now has to move her along from talking about it because it can easily spiral and become the basis for the whole night. This person needs therapy in a big way and we have encouraged this. But if the relationship is one sided and you’re not having fun and getting anything out of it, what do you do? How do you proceed if this person won’t also follow through to do the work on themselves? A quote that struck me lately: “Mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
If men are getting out of toxic masculinity and are not equipped to be in a healthy relationship they need to seek therapy for help with that. It is above any partner’s pay grade to shepherd them through that alone if they do not also have the support of a therapist.
How many times on the internet do I see “Your wife/gf isn’t having sex? Break up with her!” There could be many reasons for this. If there is a libido mismatch, if there’s something mentally or physically wrong. If the non-sexual partner isn’t willing to do the work on themselves to arrive at a compromise, isn’t seeking outside help, and then wants the sexual partner to do all of the work 100% of the time, then yeah what exactly do people expect the sexual partner to do other than break up?
Another word for emotional labor is goddamn fucking empathy and SOME PEOPLE don’t want to show any toward men.
The very people screaming the loudest about “toxic masculinity” being a problem in men, are invariably the ones imposing it the most fiercely upon men, as this woman is doing.
You have no idea what is meant with emotional labour. I wish people would at least try to look something up before just reading into it whatever they like. This comment section is unhinged.
The dating pool for young men is literally
-OF models
-“Sensitive” girls you have to perform constant emotional labor for
-Narcissistic (if not sociopathic) insta models
-Emotionally abusive manipulators
-Spambots
Add gold diggers to the list
Gold diggers are not in the pool for non-rich
Well, if we’re generalizing THAT much, the dating pool for guys is just as bad.
We’ve got:
-women who will go out with you just for a free dinner date, then never talk to you again
-women who are looking for sugar daddies
-women obsessed with their socials (IG, TikTok, etc)
-women so unnatural you question they can still be considered human (lip fillers, butt lifts, boob jobs, have you ever heard of the term “Bimbofication”?)
-all of the above
In reality, there are so many more people in this world that don’t fit any of these categories on the men or women side. It’s just that a lot of the “dating pool” she’s talking about is centered around dating apps. The real world is so much more diverse.
Your forgetting the “I have sex” girl.
Having sex is basically her whole personality.
How about “astrology and crystals are my personality”
I was with a girl in her room and when she started teaching me about astrology, I just bursted out laughing with how dumb it was. Basically, what you just said before but 10x worse with this girl, there were rocks fucking everywhere. I’m suprised Hank from Breaking Bad didn’t show up.
Jesus Christ Marie, they’re minerals!
