I've been thinking about the idea of "reality". For instance, if you see someone crying your reality is "this person is sad" but turns out that person's reality was that they were crying tears of joy after finally getting the job of their dreams.

Regardless, just growing up I've realized how much my own reality felt distorted because of locked in stereotypes for men that are being perpetuated even more in this day in age, I'll list some below:

  • Feeling like I had to constantly keep myself in check around women i.e not looking at them, not being a bother etc. Just so that my reality was that "I wasn't a creep"
  • Not feeling like my existence is worth it unless I accomplish something
  • When I accomplish something, it doesn't really matter because I'm told I am a man and I have privilege so what does it matter.

I could go on but the main point I wanted to tackle was that today a lot of women have the capability to rewrite reality to how they feel. This is due to obviously in-group and out-group bias which renders an increasingly amount of guys cognitively dissonant to their reality.

A Woman's Reality

For instance if a man hit on a girl in what society would deem as a respectfully normal way, and the girl says the guy is creepy, it doesn't matter what the guy did, what they guy said or what the standards of asking a girl out is. In the general reality, he is a creep. And he will feel like a creep because of how society forms our reality.

Now this isn't to say a woman's reality can't be true herself. There are many situations where a woman is treated poorly, abused, neglected etc. But we kind of already knew this seeing as these problems are at the forefronts of our institutions and just the general public.

The point being however is it's capacity to alter the general societal reality to a great extent which is the privilege here. We've seen this being pushed to the point where women are quite literally recording themselves to get attention because ironically they're so cognitively dissonant about their own reality that they feel no shame in doing this to another man.

Generally society favours women because there are many incentives to favour women whether that's for their attention, sex, feeling good for helping a "weak" individual etc.

Society's Reality

Generally all of our realities are more or less dictated by what our societal environment generally is. If you grew up around bullies, your societal reality is probably a pessimistic one. In general we tend to obviously want to appeal to our societal environment so that we feel like we belong. In general, men do not have an intrinsic societal value unless they can prove it or get female attention whereas women are seen as something to protect, give life (birth), and we are literally wired for the most part to be attracted to them. And the problem is feminism is quite literally the forefront of many people's societal environment nowadays.

Feminist Reality

From downplaying male struggles to supporting women making false accusations, the main issue I personally have with feminism is that there is no accountability whatsoever among them. On the point of false accusations, they will actively not care whether evidence is trustworthy or if there's any evidence at all and even if there IS, they will still paint the victim (the man who was accused) as someone who's not worth caring about.

Feminism thrives off of realizing, whether subconscious or not, that men are disposable. Society has evolved in a way where man power is taken for granted and that women don't get anything from men intrinsically so why should we treat them like human beings unless they prove themselves as slaves whether physically or emotionally.

A lot of the discourse is also done in a way as well where the meaning behind what they're saying is actively changed throughout a discussion so that they won't admit their hypocrisy.

Language

Language really is what shapes our reality when communicating with other people. An example I saw on twitter a few months ago:

"Men are trash" -> Okay, my reality is I'm a shitty person because of a sex I was born with. Sounds sexist.

"I didn't specifically say "all men were trash", men don't know how to read" -> Okay, my feelings of you being sexist just don't matter, the bar for sexism against men is low, and also I'm stupid

Worst part is social media has likes and will show to your face how many people genuinely have empathy for you or care about what you have to say based on likes. In societies reality online, the girl above was a gender equality hero and the man was an idiot mra. Which further warps the reality of "gender equality" in general. People dont like their realities being "warped" or "not right" and humans will actively fight against anything that says otherwise because it doesn't feel right.

Thus language has different meaning now depending on what or who's being talked about.

​

Phrase Reality
all men are trash good
all women are trash bad
"my feelings are hurt" - man "man child"
"my feelings are hurt" - woman "you deserve better"
"I'm struggling" - man "fix yourself"
"Im struggling" - woman "how can we help?"

Relative to history, not too long ago black people's reality were they were the scum of the earth. A lot of white people were indoctrinated to this idea because, of course, in group bias and wanting to not be a part of the "shamed group". However, a lot of black people realized their truth and their own reality and stood up despite of that.

Truth

I could go on about this topic but its already a lil too long (oops). This isn't necessarily meant to be some annoying "just pick yourself up by your bootstraps" advice but more of a mind dump and understanding my truth and reality has helped me a lot with gender discourse because it validates my feelings as well as removes my emotional well-being from petty feminist talking points.

Your truth is what you experience with your emotions and your interactions with others. As stated before social environment matters, if I'm chronically on twitter chances are I'm going to hate myself because I am a man so how we spend our day to days and who we interact with is important. Self awareness is also key. I know the game of life heavily punishes men, I'm still going to play the game to some extent because I know I want to progress in life.

Someone else will never fully know me as a person and even if they did, they have their own truth, projects, biases etc. As do I, and that's okay but this is my life, my body, my truth.