Men Are Waiting to Share Some Feelings (2018)

By pure rational thought many young men have accepted to treat women like equal human beeings, just as many women have understood that the traditional division of gender roles might not fit all social encounters.

The issue is, that understanding and doing are two seperate things and switching between the old and the new paradigma when it fits us seems to be common place.

So many men end up getting the worst of both worlds: they are not the strong leader of the family any more, but they were still raised in a way to hide their feelings, just like many women are expected to be strong while they might not always have been raised in that way.

The thing we aim for as a society here is defintly worth it (I could experience for myself how amazing a relationship of equals between man and woman can be), but there are many people who struggle with this and it leads to all kind of societal side effects like depression, suicide, drug abuse and violence.

To be fair in times when the man had to be strong this was also a problem, because there are always people who simply don’t fit the role society wants them to take and if you force them into it bad things happen.

Communicating your own feelings is important for mental health. Anyone who struggles with this: get help. Write letters to a person that you never send — writing will help you to think and reflect.

I do thoroughly enjoy reading when people constructively disassemble an upvoted article with well reasoned logic and solid prose.

An organization that was once called "Boy Scouts" is no longer catered only to young boys. And yet the Girl Scouts remain female only.

Not entirely. Not every woman is attracted to the strong silent type, and not every culture has always favored that form of masculinity. Historically, the amount of emotion and intellect a man was permitted to display has depended more on social status and class than genetics. "Gentlemen" and "men of breeding" used to write poetry and sonnets and kiss one another on the mouth and women would still swoon over them. Letters written by soldiers to their wives during wartime often display a great deal of tender emotion and passion.

Also, not every man is primarily attracted to looks. While it probably is true that men are more focused on that than women, it's certainly the case for women as well, and often for men it's a sign of immaturity, but men do mature.

What can we do? First, accept that we're not mere automatons running sexual algorithms - sexuality is far more subtle and variant than the stereotype of "men like strippers, women like cowboys." I don't know at what point some men seem to have decided that "masculinity" is entirely biological and immutable and that they are doomed to be slaves to their primate urges, but it simply isn't true. Almost everything about the human condition is fluid, and masculinity like femininity and gender is at least in part a social construct and internalized complex, both of which can be changed.