Men are not people.
Comment on There Is No Male Loneliness Crisis. What’s Actually Happening Is So Much Darker.
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
Fully agree that poverty plays a significant role in loneliness, or at least, the analysis adds up in my view. I've also found that in many cases where some other societal denominator is mentioned as a reason for people being worse off, poverty plays a significant, often more significant, factor.
What worries me is what is addressed in the first few paragraphs - the way the male loneliness epidemic, real or not, is talked about in an almost mocking tone, and that just being accepted by society at large as normal. I also know that men are much more likely to die by suicide, and the supposed male loneliness epidemic has often been brought into connection with that. If it's not that, what is it? I mean, I have my guesses, but that's another story. I just wish the author would have looked at that angle a little closer, because I feel there's a significant piece of the puzzle missing there somewhere.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Brace yourself for downvotes, but this comment rings true. I don’t agree with all of your takes by far, but this one is fire.
I’m wondering how many more hundreds of years it will take before men can be humanized and seen as people and have a place within so-called “egalitarian” society.
The answer to injustice isn’t to reverse the playing cards, and as long as people act like it is we’ll be in this endless battle between different demographic groups. Hold individuals responsible for their part in the injustice, but blaming an entire group of people is the definition of prejudice.
griselbrandalf@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Adding to this, and with a side note that this is not my field of expertise, my reading of a few articles from the “tsunami” of articles about male loneliness is that they don’t just focus on quantitative but also qualitative differences of social connections between men and women at large. There’s this hypothesis that close female friendships tend to be more intimate than close male friendships. This is also supported by anecdotal evidence I heard from trans-men, that the absence of love and caring in their new male-male friendships hit them like a truck after socially transitioning, compared to previous (perceived female-female /) egg-female friendships. So I don’t know whether self-reported data like number of close friends is a good metric, or if it would be more informative to ask “how many friends do you have for whom you know the names of their parents” or “how often did you talk to a friend about your feelings this month” or whatever. Again, this is all anecdotal, but this is a vibe I’m getting from other reports on this topic that I was missing in this article. Still, very good article with many valid points, particularly in the second half.
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
The qualitative aspect is also something I was wondering about. I wouldn't even say that men don't have intimate friendships. Men can have very intimate relationships, but they're intimate in a different way. I could also well imagine that men have less of those intimate friendships.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
that’s true. male intimacy is activity based and less talk-based, and it’s devalued as such.
this also has a lot to do with male mental health. men improve their mental health by doing things, not by talking about feelings.
but our therapy industry/culture highly values talk therapy and regards intimacy as primarily verbal.
when i tell people, women specially, about what I do to maintain my mental health. they immediately dismiss it, because it’s not talk-therapy. if I’m not in talk therapy, I must be mentally ill, if I don’t have ‘deep’ talks about my feelings with friends, they can’t be real friends, etc.
you are entirely right, it’s a massive massive mismatch in expectations and definitions of what these things mean.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
men improve their mental health by doing things, not by talking about feelings.
What a stunningly obtuse thought terminating belief.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
it’s not male-male relationships.
it’s every relationship.
HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago Also you've got some kind of agenda in these comments buddy, the dog whistles are screaming loud.
Unless you win the lottery and have a family or partner who doesn't view you as 'man'.
Please see a licensed therapist. You'll be giving them a run for their money with all they'd have to unpack but, if you don't have anyone in your life you can talk to openly, a therapist can be that person.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Yeah, the self-reporting was a glaring issue I noticed as well. Like “less men than women report feeling lonely.” No shit, are we all just going to pretend that the previous paragraph didn’t just mention how men are more reluctant to open up about their feelings?
And don’t blame men as individuals for their reluctance. That’s socially conditioned and enforced, just like so many social expectations that people complain about women facing and being forced to conform to.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it seems like we’ve reached a point in society that mocking men for any reason is just seen as acceptable, and if a man doesn’t like that or complains about it then people just double down on him harder. How is that any different from the traditional “be a man, suck it up, don’t be so emotional” mentality?
This article was pretty good, but it could have done so without starting off by dismissing the common reality of loneliness that a lot of men seem to experience. I for one, as an isolated and lonely man, feel like I’m being gaslit when people badger me about how there’s “no loneliness epidemic” and it must be all my fault.
Maybe women experience loneliness too, but at least they get to talk about their problems and nobody verbally abuse them over it. And anybody who would give them shit for that anyway is likely a crazy right-wing fascist, and who cares what they think? But men who talk about their feelings get bludgeoned by the right-wing crazies for being too “weak” or whatever, and they get bludgeoned by everyone else because berating men seems to be the cool thing to do or whatever.
But we just can’t talk about it. And even articles that are dedicated to loneliness frame it as “there’s not really a male loneliness epidemic… but wait look there’s a loneliness epidemic that many men just incidentally happen to suffer from.”
Like, people can talk about issues that women face and everyone’s like “yas, preach.” But when people talk about issues men face everyone becomes dismissive and it’s either “everyone has those problems” or “women have those problems too.” But, well, men always get left out of those conversations. So why can’t we have our own?
It’s like, women’s spaces are totally fine and normal. But if a space is designated for men then suddenly there’s a moral outrage about the exclusion of women.
I’m tired, boss…
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It is kind of offputting how it’s phrased as “We make fun of men for being lonely, right? I mean, look at them. PFFFHAHAHAHAHA! But it might be an actual problem because it effects women too.”
homik@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Yeah, the amount of rampant sexist BS around this is incredible.