Three Hundred Ways It Can Hurt to Be a Man — Category 7.4
CATEGORY 7.4: Ways in which men’s ways of relating to their own emotions and their expression thereof, can be hurtful. [13 items]
[This post is part of a longer series; see the Index for an overview.]
CATEGORY 7.4: Ways in which men’s ways of relating to their own emotions and their expression thereof, can be hurtful. [13 items]
Women have less to fear in lusting for their man ‘too much’, than men have to fear in loving their woman ‘too much.’ Few men will feel overwhelmed by women desiring them a lot, whereas more women will feel overwhelmed by men loving them greatly and fully, especially if e.g. the relationship is still new.
It’s commonly remarked how hard it is for women when many of her male friends crush on her and find it hard to handle being rejected. Much less legible, but surely equally deserving of sympathy, is when men crush on their female friends and would be perfectly able to handle getting rejected, but instead get the friendship broken up by the woman in question because she, given her past experiences, doesn’t trust that a male friend crushing on her can end in any positive way whatsoever. Men who are perfectly capable of handling rejection, are made to suffer from negative stereotypes saying men can’t. (Of course, sometimes these stereotypes may be sourced in one’s own lived experience, but as a culture we’ve very strongly decided that personal experience is no basis for group-based discrimination… except, it seems, when that group is men.)
Men’s emotions are experienced by women around them as being inherently more coercive, because of the power differential. This fucking sucks. Men aren’t trying to coerce people, they’re trying to feel and express their feelings like healthy human beings.
Positivity and happiness are a worse look on men than on women. Men find happiness in women attractive, whereas women don’t seem to find happiness in men particularly attractive, and instead prioritize feelings such as pride, ambition, power, etc. in men. In other words, women’s attractiveness to men is based on them knowing what’s good for themselves and incentivizes women to do exactly these things; meanwhile, men are incentivized to accomplish things and gain power, which is merely a proxy for what’s actually good for them. (The saying, “be careful what you wish for,” single-handedly upholds entire genres of literature; “I accomplished so much, but am only now discovering that none of it makes me happy” is an entire (often male) character archetype.) It is surely not set in stone whether what makes one happy is better for oneself than what makes one feel pride, but we usually use ‘happiness’ as our guiding principle for what’s good for people, so let’s default to that here, too.
Many men straight-up do not physically know how (and indeed have from a young age been culturally robbed of knowing how, and feeling safe) to cry, causing much of their sadness and pain to remain locked up, sometimes even on a physical, embodied level, within themselves, rather than be expressed and, through this expression, processed and subsequently released.
Attachment trauma (in the form of e.g. being needy, desperate, insecure, etc.) is sometimes viewed as expected, and indeed regularly as attractive, in women, whereas in men these are viewed as extremely unattractive traits.
Archetypically: hurt men hurt others; hurt women hurt themselves. (For example, men are more likely to ‘act out’, ‘lash out’, and generally make their pain other people’s problem, whereas women tend to prioritize social harmony and instead express internal frustrations, towards themselves.) In both cases, the hurt that was originally received may be equal, and the hurt that is dealt out may be equal, but that method of unhealthily expressing pain, that comes more naturally to men than to women, is the one that is far more stigmatized and far more harshly punished. This is despite the fact that in many cases, particularly when it comes to nonphysical harm, it is not clear to me, and indeed often seems false to me, that harming oneself would be more moral or more useful (even on a societal level) than causing minor harm to others. A society full of hatred for others is certainly bad in clear, legible ways; a society full of self-hatred is extremely bad too, but in less legible ways.
Female joy is viewed as desirable and attractive, whereas male joy is viewed as worthless, often even negatively so. A man enjoying nature, food, videogames, sex, and so forth, will do far worse in any kind of media depiction of him, than a woman enjoying those things will. With men in particular, there’s often a sense that when they’re enjoying themselves (e.g. by playing videogames) but not adding to the world in the process, they’re wasting their time and/or people’s resources, whereas female joy is viewed as a valid and worthwhile end unto itself. In a similar vein, men’s hobbies are often much derided. It is said that women are human beings and men are human doings; what society seems to want from women is that they enjoy their lives, whereas what it seems to want from men is that they benefit society.
Fragility in men is mocked; fragility in women is protected.
The following point would be ironic if it weren’t for a disclaimer I wrote above this list. Progressive circles tend to intentionally frame pretty much all talents, skills, positive personality traits, and interests, as being inherently ungendered, but proceed to frame problems that women suffer from, and ways in which women suffer from the people or world around them, as being inherently related to women. Many, many archetypically women’s problems generalize to some, if not many, men (e.g. being excessively agreeable, having anxious attachment, being the victim of unconsensual sex, and so forth), but there is a consistent refusal to frame such problems in ungendered terms. In this way, many men are excluded, invalidated, and erased. (In fact, the only problem I can think of that women face much more often than men, for which there is enthousiasm within these groups to frame it in an ungendered way so as to include men, is… the menstrual cycle.)
There is unique value in being emotionally vulnerable with people of your own gender, and it is much harder for men to let themselves be vulnerable (and know how to be vulnerable) with other men, then it is for women to be vulnerable with other women.
“Why is it overwhelmingly women’s sexuality which society seeks to suppress,” goes the old question, “if women are less sexual?” Let’s question another great cultural story: “Why is it overwhelmingly men’s emotionality which society seeks to suppress, if men are less emotional?” In truth, below our surfaces, I see amazing sexuality in women, and amazing emotionality in men. There are many spaces nowadays for women to explore their sexuality; there are far fewer spaces for men to explore their emotionality and vulnerability.
Men are often accused by others, including frequently in this post by myself, of hiding their emotions from others, when in fact there’s good evidence (e.g. in the experiences of transgender people who have undergone hormonal transition from either sex to the other) that on average, men’s emotions really are, biologically, not as strong nor as multifarious as women’s. Culture’s demands that men talk about their emotions, often misses that for many men there just may not always be that much to talk about.