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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#891

Post by irdc »

dghughes wrote: post #679
orasis wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t learn how to parent, you learn how to live, in a wholehearted way, and you model that for your children. Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.

My parents were married in 1966 ages 22 and 23, two children the next two years, a house three years after married. Dad was a high school dropout although his Dad my grandfather had a painting business. But my grandfather died aged 52 just as my Dad was beginning his life with Mom. So yes he did some growing up fast I really forget how hard it must have been for him and Mom with all that happening all at the same tim…

> Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.

Or how immature they really were?

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#892

Post by space_fountain »

haswell wrote: post #837
space_fountain wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo I think this comment would have had more weight behind it for me before recent political events and before Roe vs Wade was overturned. I don’t believe in easy answers and I don’t claim to be able to experience life from the other gender, but cat calling is still common in the US. Women still get payed significantly less than men. Women still have much higher risks of sexual assault. We just decided to roll back c…

This is not a zero sum game. We can acknowledge that there has been regression or no change in some areas without any bearing on the negative outcomes of over corrective attitudes towards men. Food for thought: the types of men who are likely to rely on macho masculinity and the abuse of power dynamics are the least likely to be phased by an undercurrent of anti-male sentiment. Sensitive men, the men who are not prop…

I agree with much of this especially the lack of zero sum games, but a problem is this conversation takes oxogen away from bigger issues. We’re literally commenting on an article talking about how we still treat boys and men like they don’t or shouldn’t have emotions and thus don’t need emotional support and all the top comments are about how attacking toxic masculinity has gone too far?

Like the problem here is seeing some sort of bio-essentialism or just a form of masculinity that is unhelpful, and unhealthy in very much the kinda way that some feminist thinkers believed for a long time. Yes, I very much don’t like rad fems for a lot of reasons, but for every one of them hurting society there are 10 women and men afraid society is going soft. Do you know what the most popular source of news in this country is? Have you seen polling.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#893

Post by zpeti »

skrblr wrote: post #810
zpeti wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basically ultra-masculine gym bros I don't think that's ultra masculine. At least people around me like that are self obsessed, appearance obsessed but ultimately fragile men. I also know because I was probably almost the same. I had a beard and looked like a lumberjack. Was I a real man? Not really. I'm not saying I now know what a man should be, but it definitely isn't an ultra masculine gym bro. It is someone wh…

> someone who can create a stable, responsible, potentially loving environment for a family, someone who can endure a lot of strain and responsibility while still holding it together How is this different from a woman's role?

Your question floored me for a few hours, it’s a good one, but I think I’ve worked it out.

This goal applies to both men and women, but a man needs to do this in terms of protecting his family from the outside, and create the conditions that this can happen within any harsh world, whereas it’s the woman’s job to actually do it inside the bubble that the man created.

Obviously these are broad strokes and there are overlaps. But to me a man and a woman are both nothing really without a family, ultimately that’s what all this is about, it’s just how do you create that family and maintain it that’s different slightly.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#894

Post by screye »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #550
screye wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birth rates are plummeting everywhere. I'm with you. We can have fewer people on earth. But, that means 2-ish generations will have to do 2x-the-work per capita while receiving 0.5x the care when they retire. Our social welfare and economic systems are not built to deal with decreasing populations, let alone halving of population every 2 generations. I am approaching 30. I very much feel like the generation that is g…

Interesting that we may get to be test subjects for: What will be prioritised when there aren't enough workers for all the current positions? - necessities for everyone - luxuries for those who can afford exorbitant prices It can be both, to some extent, but with any luxuries will come a sacrifice of necessities, and a sacrifice of necessities will increase the prices. The best of people will tend towards being paid…

> What will be prioritized when there aren't enough workers for all the current positions?

I'll give you the politically incorrect answer.

Until recently, a large population of old people oppressing a slighter smaller population of young people (by majoritarian voting patterns) meant violence.

Humans have eliminated the 3 main uncertainties that ensured some level of demand-supply elasticity : unprotected sex, starvation and violence.

So now, instead of society promptly reacting to a disgruntled workforce, we instead get slow but perpetual decline because the workforce cannot retaliate in any real manner. They can't vote out old people. They can't enforce violence. In any other world, bored-young-people would be having tons of unprotected sex and brute force replacing the old population. But, contraception allows people to engage in their most primal instinct (sex) without the resulting rise in work force.

Now, I am a 100% not suggesting that we need a return to older times. But, we need an awareness that the removal of these avenues means that history might not repeat itself and nature might not heal on its own.... because we have conquered nature.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#895

Post by za3faran »

rich_sasha wrote: post #769

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

> We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying.

Perhaps in an American/European centric view of the world. I would heavily challenge/reject that assumption across the globe.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#896

Post by ziml77 »

haswell wrote: post #884
jncfhnb wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree. “Sensitive men” are acutely aware of the behavior of “toxic masculinity men”. It’s not a behavior that exclusively affects women. It affects everyone. I can’t say I’ve ever felt threatened by this concept as a guy. Semantics get messy and people can use terms however they want but the basic to me feels obvious and just. It is no surprise that such men don’t have their emotional needs met. But there are…

> I don’t agree. “Sensitive men” are acutely aware of the behavior of “toxic masculinity men”. It’s not a behavior that exclusively affects women. It affects everyone. I agree with this, and I'm not sure on which point you disagree. My point was that the broader cultural anti-male rhetoric that arose as an (understandable) response to toxic masculinity tends to have the least impact on the worst perpetrators, and the…

The combination of the depictions of nerds vs jocks in 80s and 90s media plus this huge overcorrection on toxic masculinity really fucked with me hard. I thought that nerd and jock was a hard line, that I had to actively avoid anything sports related to not be one of the stupid jocks who were all woman objectifiers. I was also convinced that women wanted nothing to do with sex, hated getting hit on, and would consider any physical contact without explicit verbal approval to be assault.

Now I know that's all a load of crap. Nerds can and should play sports for the health and social benefits, women absolutely have sexual desires, and all physical interactions with someone are contextual. It just would have been great to have had that realization way sooner than my late 20s!

There must be a middle-ground somewhere that discourages being disgusting to women while also not making men feel like they are inherently disgusting. Something that lets a wide spectrum of both masculinity and femininity be considered valid and acceptable.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#897

Post by brailsafe »

globular-toast wrote: post #882
escapedmoose wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, women have been barred from pursuing education, from voting, from making their own medical decisions, from holding political/academic/religious/scientific positions of power, from controlling their own finances, and from participating in the majority of careers, among many many other examples. Lack of access to these things necessarily constrains one’s autonomy. And some of these restrictions persist ev…

[flagged]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#898

Post by jlawson »

rich_sasha wrote: post #792
boringuser2 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well, this I think is hard to argue against. Historically, women had much fewer options in life. Basically, marry someone they don't pick, give them babies and look after the house. Poorer women had to work super hard, wealthier women less so, but were subordinate to the husbands whims, physically if nothing else. Where voting was a thing, they couldn't vote. They were often not in control of their finances. They wer…

The original comment said, "hostile" to women. What you're describing isn't being 'hostile', otherwise one would have to say society is 'hostile' to children or old people.

The goal posts have moved to 'equal rights'.

But of course by that measure nobody had equal rights. A man couldn't do things that were just for women, and vice versa.

The argument you need to make is that women had it worse overall than men at the time. (Not worse than women now, or worse than men now.)

This is not obvious, given the brutal ways men lived and died in those eras. Being disallowed from e.g. fighting in a war doesn't sound so bad when fighting in a war means getting conscripted to be stabbed to death on a muddy field. Being disallowed from industry jobs doesn't sound so bad when industry jobs means choking to death on coal dust to earn enough food to eat for yourself and family.

History was brutal for everyone.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#899

Post by bradlys »

k0k0r0 wrote: post #664
_xnmw wrote: post #593

OK, this is going to sound extremely controversial, but as a person who lived for many years in three different worlds: 1. The Western world (born/raised/educated in Canada) 2. The Arab world (lived for years in Jordan, have Muslim/Arab roots) 3. Eastern Europe (currently living in Ukraine for many years, now volunteering in the war) My observation is that 1. has an overly effeminate culture and harmfully stifles mas…

I am polish, but was raised in germany. I can confirm the observation about eastern europe, at least regarding poland. Man are man, and Woman are Woman. In general, (non-trans, non-homo and somewhat binary people) seem to have a healthier relationship with their core-gender identity. People in western societies certainly should take an example when it comes to modern gender roles. I would not glorify the situation th…

I find this weird. My interpretation of Poland and of a decent amount of folks who came from Eastern Europe is that both sexes actually exhibit more faux-stoic and vaguely masculine behaviors than other western countries. There is an idea that many people in Eastern Europe are stoic but then the rampant alcoholism and other such behaviors would make it clear that they’re not actually stoic… whatever they’re dealing with actually is troubling them (which it wouldn’t to this degree with a stoic).

Poland has plenty of issues… and wiping the whole lgbt-free zone thing under the rug seems quite negligent.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#900

Post by skrblr »

zpeti wrote: post #893
skrblr wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who can create a stable, responsible, potentially loving environment for a family, someone who can endure a lot of strain and responsibility while still holding it together How is this different from a woman's role?

Your question floored me for a few hours, it’s a good one, but I think I’ve worked it out. This goal applies to both men and women, but a man needs to do this in terms of protecting his family from the outside, and create the conditions that this can happen within any harsh world, whereas it’s the woman’s job to actually do it inside the bubble that the man created. Obviously these are broad strokes and there are ove…

:)

I think society would be better off if all people were raised to focus on creating stable, responsible families and being resilient to adversity, regardless of gender. Roles within the relationship should be negotiated based on individual strengths.

I say that as a woman without children in a very equal marriage, working in software, who worries regularly about the impact of having children. I dread being expected to take on a less "worldly" and more "homemaker" role.

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