Help me understand rhetoric surrounding men emotionally "opening up"

geeses · 2022-07-20T21:47:07+00:00

It's a not particularly clever way to victim blame.

Feminists tell men to open up, but make opening up useless or negative.

Men realize this, and don't do it.

Feminists say "your problems are because you don't open up, stop trying to blame it on other things."

If they came out and said "we don't care about your emotions or problems", it makes them sound like assholes.

This way, they can pretend to care without doing anything and still sound like a good person.

SpicyMarshmellow · 2022-07-20T23:14:13+00:00

Re-adding my comment

It is absolute junk, imo, and one of the first points of internal contradiction that got me doubting feminism in the first place. I'm just going to candidly state that I think their perspective on it is cold as hell. It makes out relationships to be incredibly transactional and emotional isolation to be a normal expectation. I also don't think they really believe it and are performing a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify putting men in an impossible double-bind where they always have one or the other side of the contradiction freely available to attack with, and that they don't do the same to women.

It's also ignorant, classist, and authoritarian to assume that everyone has equal access to therapy (cost/location/schedules), that therapy benefits everyone equally, and that the mental health industry treats everyone equally.

I also posit that it renders their complaints about emotional labor incredibly hypocritical. Because shouldering emotional burdens in isolation, and silently carrying them through a daily grind to provide material support to those close to you without even being allowed to talk to those same people about what a struggle it is **is emotional labor**.

devasiaachayan · 2022-07-20T21:43:36+00:00

First let's just say that Men who "open up" are seen as very unattractive by the society. You should only open up to someone who actually cares for you and not random people because of this. Opening up means you should fully open up. Even though I hide a lot of stuff, I do open up to my girlfriend about all my traumas but she also insists me to do it. She genuinely cares for me and hence won't see it as a negative that I am opening up too much.

The rhethoric that men should open up more mostly seems bullshit anyway because for most men, no one will listen to them opening up. Most women find such Men pretty unattractive too for some reason. Also many feminists in general don't have much of an objective line about stuff, the line between opening up and trauma dumping will be drawn anywhere they like depending on the Man Or person in general.

BloomingBrains · 2022-07-21T00:31:45+00:00

They are interjecting fake nuance into the conversation that isn’t really there. Either you want men to open up or not. It’s pretty straightforward, no? But this is how feminism is. A never ending chain of one talking point to cover up the holes in another talking point and so on and so on ad infinitum. That is why they eventually fall back on “academic” feminism. Unless you’ve read fifteen 300 page feminist manifesto papers you’re “not educated on the subject”. It’s all a trick so that no matter what the man is the the wrong.

SuspicousEggSmell · 2022-07-21T05:24:48+00:00

I remember reading somewhere that many women feel it’s their role or “natural disposition” to be the caring and nurturing one, or the one that is kind and healing, all that wacky gender role shit. Anyway, the writer went on to say that when these women are confronted with a reality where their partners emotions are a) not easy as emotions tend to be, b) are outside their realm of comfort, and c) they may be part of the issue, it tends to conflict with their identity as the nurturer. So some women may like the idea and performance of men’s emotions, but not the actual reality of them. Idk how accurate that actually is, and of course it’s not 100% true all of the time and there’s more to it than that, but I think it’s something to mull over.

I also think people think that sort of reaction has to come out of some Disney villain esque character when really a lot of people aren’t as good with emotions as they’d probably like to think they are

ActualInteraction0 · 2022-07-21T00:39:27+00:00

Therapist propaganda would (if it exists) try to discourage people from helping each other.

Maybe those accusations of trauma dumping are coming from people who are actually trauma shaming and lack empathy or lack empathy for a specific group they are prejudice against.

2022-07-21T07:14:00+00:00

I've had it drilled into me so often that men talking about emotions to women is "emotional labour", that I find it hard to talk about ANY emotion with ANY woman, even the ones close to me.

Then I inevitably get asked, "why are you so emotionally distant?"

thereslcjg2000 · 2022-07-20T22:14:43+00:00

[permanently deleted]

hottake_toothache · 2022-07-21T12:43:32+00:00

When they say "open up," they mean "say things that are pleasing to us."

geodesic42 · 2022-07-21T12:52:31+00:00

This language isn't unique to men, but they absolutely do preferentially direct towards them.

I can guarantee you the person who called that "trauma dumping" is Gen Z or a young millennial, and a specific subset that likes to leverage real issues that don't apply to them personally, but apply more broadly to their demographic, to further bolster themselves. For some fucking reason, that generation has malappropriated numerous words and are committing a clear case of the redefinition fallacy. Examples include:

Gaslighting. No, calling someone out on their bullshit once, disagreeing with them, or dismissing them if they're being unreasonable until the cortisol has left their body isn't gaslighting. Gaslighting is a serious, ongoing form of emotional and mental abuse with the intent to make someone question their world view and personal experience. It mainly includes making them believe real events didn't take place, fake events happened, or that their perception of something (e.g. someone else's anger) was incorrect. Moreover, all of this needs to be on an ongoing basis.
Love bombing. <5% of people have NPD; ~20% of people are anxiously attached. It's 4x more likely they met an anxiously attached person or someone who scored high in agreeability in the big 5 traits than a narcissist. Love bombing is deliberate manipulation to get someone to love the bomber and comply with their wishes; mirroring and being agreeable is a technique anxious people will use because they don't believe themselves to be worthy of love. It's genuinely mean to refer to that behavior as love bombing, and for a group who supposedly cares about feelings so much, they do a bad fucking job of empathizing.
Trauma dumping. Talking about your issues isn't dumping. If that's all you ever did with a friend, and all you used them for, then yes you're trauma dumping. A friend trauma dumped on me. I literally only hear from her when something is wrong in her life, and she talks to me about nothing else. I've drifted away because I just don't fucking care anymore and was getting used. But if you have good times with a friend and then have a heavy moment? No, you're not trauma dumping, you are opening up. Calling it trauma dumping has cropped up with a misuse of:
Boundaries. Needing time to self care or expressing your genuine preferences is good and healthy; never helping others because it's slightly inconvenient and wanting everything on your terms isn't setting boundaries, it's being narcissistic (not in the sense of the disorder) and selfish. Refusing to listen to a friend when they're going through a rough time because it's emotionally taxing isn't setting a healthy boundary, it's being a shitty friend.

I've walked out on dates when it was implied I use my female friends to trauma dump because men can't open up to each other and because I have many close female friends. People with this mentality are just bad people looking to use gender issues to gain more power when they already have it. The people who talk about power dynamics the most are usually the ones with more power than they want you to think. People who misuse terms to guilt people into acquiescing to what feels good to them already have more power than they'd admit. All of this is just greedy, and people who say that shit have narcissistic tendencies.

Suffice it to say, the people responding to you are chronically online pieces of shit. Don't worry about opening up to your female friends. If they're actually friends, they'll listen. <3

webernicke · 2022-07-21T13:37:31+00:00

So far the answers haven't really been satisfactory to my eyes.

Because this isn't supposed to be satisfactory to men. It's supposed to absolve women/society from having to hear about or take any responsibility for men's problems, per usual.

rochesterslim · 2022-07-21T03:10:56+00:00

no you got it. nothing to understand. these feminists do not care about men at all and open up stuff is a way to show they care when they don’t.

AnxietyLogic · 2022-07-21T19:05:45+00:00

God, thank you for this post. I’m not insane. The original thread made me feel like I was going mad.

I agree with everything you’ve said here. But also, the comments on the original thread are incredibly confusing to me. Contradictory even within the same comment, and just strangely…cold? Unempathetic? Transactional? I’m admittedly not very experienced with romantic relationships, but I don’t think relationships are supposed to feel like you’re trapped in a Catch-22, constantly walking on eggshells, trying to perfectly walk the tightrope between sharing “too much” (because then you’re trauma dumping and probably also being abusive) and being too closed-off (because then the relationship is shallow, and also you have bad mental health and you should open up more.)

Are romantic partners especially only supposed to share asinine small talk because anything deeper than that is trauma dumping and using them as a therapist (hell, one comment suggested that if your trauma is bad you should be careful even talking to your therapist because that’s trauma dumping)? If your partner comes to you with something that’s bothering them, are you supposed to just coldly shut them down with a canned response because they shouldn’t be using you for emotional labour? (I have RSD though, so maybe it’s just me reading a lot of those responses as cold?) How the hell are you supposed to “open up” when there are all these rules and breaking one makes you an abusive asshole? That thread has no good answers.

I’m a woman, but I’m also autistic and that’s probably a factor - I must just fundamentally not understand this concept because that thread was making worry that my reading comprehension skills had suddenly tanked for some reason, I literally do not understand what is being said. Social interactions already feel like high-stakes chess to me. That thread makes we want to just avoid people, because no matter how I handle my emotions, I’ll be doing something wrong. Either too intense or too emotionally distant. I guess there must be a middle ground, but it seems like it’s a very fine line to walk, very nebulous and slippery and almost arbitrary. I’m too socially incompetent to be dealing in anything this nebulous.

All of the responses that make sense to me on that thread have been downvoted into oblivion. I thought this was just another social game that I’d been unknowingly floundering at because I didn’t even know I was supposed to be playing, but people on this post seem to share a lot of my thoughts, so maybe it isn’t just me.

EDIT: This comment makes no sense. I’m just venting I guess, all of the comments that sounded sane to me on that thread were being downvoted and it sent me down a spiral of “God, am I accidentally abusing everyone I care about? Am I a burden? Maybe I should stay single forever, this is too complicated.” Sorry for the trauma dumping, I guess.

SexEleven · 2022-07-21T15:00:58+00:00

The rule for many pop feminists is this: if the “opening up” makes me feel good, then it’s good. If the “opening up” makes me feel uncomfortable, then it’s bad.

Valoxity-_- · 2022-07-21T13:31:12+00:00

Funny thing is, and im sorry if this sounds too cliche, but they would never accept it the other way around. If a guy straight up told his gf who was on the verge of ending it all to "talk to a professional" he would be treated like scum, and honestly anyone who does this to their partner is a fucking dickhead imo who should be in a sugar daddy-sugar baby type of relationship because in their mind they are quantifying every little thing and measurring everything done by both parties which is such a transactional way at looking at, and treating relationships.

iainmf · 2022-07-21T02:07:29+00:00

How to understand feminist rhetoric:

Feminists make things up to gain power.

See my post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/vit6rn/feminists_say_their_theories_are_not_meant_to_be/

Your average feminist is not aware that academic feminists are coming up with bullshit to gain power. But those average feminists take the bullshit on board and repeat it believing it is true.

Even if I am more chartable to feminists, they have no basis for understanding men. There understanding of men is based on looking at women's experiences and extrapolating.

The truth is, there is not a problem with men refusing to 'open up'. When a man trusts someone, they will 'open up'. The problem is men don't have people they can trust.

From my own personal experience, I have only found a couple of people I would be comfortable really talking to. I think the underlying factor is that I felt they believed in me and anything I said would not shake that belief.

Interestingly, they were both somewhat religious people, and I think beliefs like God loving everyone, and, everyone having a purpose, contributed to their belief in me. Oddly, I did not experience this when I was religious.

lingdingwhoopy · 2022-07-21T16:54:26+00:00

What the fuck is even the point of being humans existing together if we don't open up to each about our emotions?

darkstar1881 · 2022-07-21T17:29:26+00:00

Look at it this way. Before the women's rights movement in the 60s, the popular philosophy that dominates culture is "utilitarianism". "Utilitarianism" in short means that your only value as a person is what you can provide to society. When the feminist revolution happens in the 60s, women push back against the idea that they are just baby-making housewives.

Men have never had a gender revolution, so many, many people still believe that a man's value is only based on what he can provide others. Since many "arm chair" feminists only know of the women's right movement from the rhetoric of women taking their freedom from the patriarchy, they don't see how utilitarianism affects everyone.

So when people talk about men "opening up", it is from a "faux" feminist motivation that the reason women want men to open up is to try to avoid what happens when men don't open up, which is usually frustration, anger, and violence. It's not really about the well being of the man opening up, its is about the safety of others.

The other issue is that culturally we tolerate emotional and verbal abuse from women. Many men have experienced emotional and verbal abuse in their relationships, so them "opening up" about what is going on distorts the rhetoric that women are always oppressed and never can be the oppressor.

DifferenceThat8887 · 2022-07-22T08:18:05+00:00

Its a way of basically blaming men for their own suffering. Misandrist feminists use it to basically shut down any discussion of men's issues. Most women don't have much perspective on men's experiences so normal non-misandrist women assume that what misandrist feminists say about men's issues being caused by men refusing to 'open up' is true. Including this pretend sympathy for men who struggle to open up helps convince normal women that misandrist feminists don't hate men which allows them to get more support for their ideas.

Of course misandrist women generally have abusive personalities and so if a man does open up to them emotionally they will treat him like shit for daring to inconvenience her by wanting to be treated like a human being. Misandrist women will frame it as the man using her as a therapist. Again most normal women are not very aware of men's experiences and only know their own experiences with abusive men who really do put unreasonable emotional demands on women, so they wrongly assume that misandrist women are talking about that because they don't realize the same thing happens to men.

So much of misandrist 'feminism' revolves around trying to make sure normal women don't become more aware of men's experiences and how men actually think/feel because if they did they would be more able to empathize with men and misandrist/abusive women would lose their advantages.

Over-Can-8413 · 2022-07-21T14:42:20+00:00

It sounds like they're attempting to frame a stereotypically feminine behavior (complaining about minutia with the goal of receiving emotional validation rather than a solution to a problem) as a universal moral obligation. When the rubber meets the road, so to speak, stoicism will likely still take precedence as the preferable masculine trait.

xhouliganx · 2022-07-21T13:43:09+00:00

I think at the end of the day human beings suck sometimes. Most people don’t actually like dealing with the difficult parts of interpersonal relationships. People will drone on and on about mental health awareness, but as soon as someone actually exhibits the ugly parts of mental illness they’re gone in an instant. It’s all performative. Ideologies like Feminism bring out those worst sides of people which is why so many Feminists are like this.

InspectorSuitable407 · 2022-07-22T15:48:25+00:00

Don’t take them at their word. Trust people as best you can in individual cases. As it stands, men are still not allowed to open up. It’s just PR.

sexismisbullshit · 2022-07-24T20:45:34+00:00

sorry for the late post, I think I have a unique perspective on this because I suffer from schizophrenia. this type of "don't trama dump" shit goes waaay beyond just demonizing men for opening up, its full on putting on a progressive bow and using the language of mental health to advocate against the rights of people with mental health problems, and for me personally thats significantly more triggering than the blatant sexism and the sexism by itself is pretty triggering.

"For example if you are suicidal you should really speak to a professional"

1: nearly every suicide awareness and prevention organization says that the first and most important step you can take to help is personally reaching out to someone who you know or suspect is suicidal and encouraging them to talk about it and what their going through and generally being a safe and supportive person to someone who very likely doesn't have one. so they literally advocated against suicide awareness and I got a big problem with that

2: the second step that nearly every suicide awareness and prevention organization says to do is get that person professional help, but to also still be there and be supportive for them. you need professional help AND personal help and the fact that I see so commonly in online discourse that people try to erase the needing personal help scares me.

"“opening up” does not equate to trauma dumping"

it kinda fucking does actually. theres no easy way to talk about depression, theres no easy way to talk about schizophrenia, theres no easy way to talk about abuse you are facing or have faced, theres no easy way to talk about being suicidal. all of these conversations have inherent weight to them and if your uncomfortable with these conversations its because these conversations are inherently uncomfortable. sorry, not sorry, but these conversations need to happen and you need to listen.

-

another thing related to this is that you see people with mild depression or mild bipolar say stuff like "i'm going through too much stuff to help out other people" and I have never once heard of someone with severe depression, severe bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. say or think things like that because they actually know what its like to constantly deal with internal pain and they want to protect other people from that in a way that people with mild depression have just never experienced.

-

another another thing, and this is prolly the most important point, saying that people dealing with real mental illness and pain should go see a therapist is nearly identical to eugenicist and quite a few modern day rightwingers saying that people dealing with real mental illness and pain should go into a fucking asylum (pro tip, dont go into an asylum, not fun), and it fucking scares me so much seeing that type of rhetoric coming from people who are supposedly pro mental health. I've tried to bring this up when I was still browsing these types of places but it always got censored or ignored.

beeen_there · 2022-07-22T18:44:13+00:00

Complete waste of time with 99% of people, unless you want to see how fast friends dump you. I was the same once, listened to everyone, tried to help everyone, invested stacks of emotional energy all over the place. It was not reciprocated, that's for sure. So I stopped doing it except for one or two close friends.

Its like all the r/thanksimcured depression bullshit. Superficial crap. Most people have nothing to offer but platitudes.

craite · 2022-07-25T17:57:34+00:00

I believe this idea that opening up about real issues is "trauma dumping" and that all your personal issues should be delegated to a therapist, is what drives many men into depression and suicide in the first place. Sure therapy can help but it's not meant to be a replacement for emotional support by your loved ones. The feeling that you can't rely on the people close to you when you have problems and only on a paid professional probably causes trauma in and of itself. We humans are social creatures, what the heck is even the point of close relationships if you can't expect their support in difficult times?

adam-l · 2022-07-21T03:44:55+00:00

Have you seen Mars Attacks?

Don't run, we're your friends!

AdobiWanKenobi · 2022-07-21T12:03:49+00:00

I think I got banned from r/AskFeminists

papabherd · 2022-07-23T14:43:24+00:00

If said in good faith, it's a wonderful thing. However, good faith is arguably the rarest resource today.

Title	Help me understand rhetoric surrounding men emotionally "opening up"
Author	oncothrow
Upvotes	140
Comments	94
Date	July 20, 2022 9:32 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/w3y59l/help_me_understand_rhetoric_surrounding_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/help-me-understand-rhetoric-surrounding-men.1209314 https://theredarchive.com/post/1209314

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