Comment by someguynamedcole on 15/02/2025 at 01:03 UTC*

14 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)

View submission: Men, Women and Social Connections - Roughly equal shares of U.S. men and women say they’re often lonely; women are more likely to reach out to a wider network for emotional support

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• people exist in context. Scolding and blaming men for not having all male support systems while not acknowledging the lifetime of macro level social messaging (often coming from women, who make up most caregivers, teachers, pediatricians, nurses, etc in addition to being the target gender of potential partner for most men) that discourages the emotional functioning that creates these support networks is just as inane as blaming individual college graduates in 2008 for not easily finding lucrative work in their field. Put simply, in order to have a friend someone has to want to be your friend. In order to have a job someone has to want to give you a job.

• relationships of all kinds are two way streets. Complaining about providing emotional support to friends and partners is just as inane as complaining when your job wants you to work a full shift.

• as my mother used to say to my father before they divorced: “If I care about you, and you care about you, who is left to care about me?” If you want people to care about you and your issues then it’s in your best interest to do the same towards them.

• it’s always quite interesting how people criticize the “lift yourselves up by your bootstraps” mentality when it is deployed against other minority groups, and claim that insisting men are the fixers of everything is “toxic masculinity” - and then turn around and tell men to shut up and lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Not to mention that “men” are seen as a monolith and not deserving of the same nuanced intersectional analysis that women receive. E.g. disabled men, gay/bi/trans men, poor men, poc men, immigrant men, etc. exist. The majority of men are not wealthy, straight, powerful, and white.

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Comment by Four_beastlings at 15/02/2025 at 10:20 UTC

18 upvotes, 1 direct replies

it’s always quite interesting how people criticize the “lift yourselves up by your bootstraps” mentality when it is deployed against other minority groups, and claim that insisting men are the fixers of everything is “toxic masculinity” - and then turn around and tell men to shut up and lift themselves up by their bootstraps.

But minority groups literally had to "lift themselves by their bootstraps"! No "minority" group sat around doing nothing and demanded that the "majority" group fixed things for them. That's what being criticised about *some* men: they complain about something but their answer is to blame women and put the onus on them instead of organising to make things better just like every other group did.

Comment by meat_tunnel at 15/02/2025 at 14:54 UTC

9 upvotes, 0 direct replies

That you interpreted any of this as a scolding is quite something.

Comment by MyFiteSong at 15/02/2025 at 06:15 UTC

24 upvotes, 0 direct replies

it’s always quite interesting how people criticize the “lift yourselves up by your bootstraps” mentality when it is deployed against other minority groups, and claim that insisting men are the fixers of everything is “toxic masculinity” - and then turn around and tell men to shut up and lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Not to mention that “men” are seen as a monolith and not deserving of the same nuanced intersectional analysis that women receive. E.g. disabled men, gay/bi/trans men, poor men, poc men, immigrant men, etc. exist. The majority of men are not wealthy, straight, powerful, and white.

It's not a bootstraps thing. Women literally can't fix this for you. Only men can fix this for other men. We're not demanding you individually fix yourselves. We're saying you need to try to fix each other.

Men need to learn how to emotionally connect with other men, and we can't teach you how to do it, because we're not men.