Since the feminist have discovered the Dog Question. I think we should have the talk.

Foxsayy · 2024-05-31T01:50:42+00:00

Many women I've opened up to have hurt me deeply, often using that information explicitly to hurt me. The men ive known haven't. They've kept my confidence at minimum.

I still want more women in my life I can trust and with which I can share, but it is more challenging to open up to them right now.

OuterPaths · 2024-05-31T03:18:16+00:00

I don't like this "thought experiment," it is a stupider response to an already stupid hypothetical. The point of the original, or at least, the reason it went so viral, was to try to knock men down a peg. The dehumanization was the point. That women fear strange men is not a revelation. They tell us all the fucking time, but even if they didn't, you can pick it up implicitly by just existing as a man in society. "I would feel safer around the largest land predator on planet earth than you," isn't poignant social commentary, it's just another barb.

The women who pay attention to these things already do not care about how we feel in this cultural moment, it is impossible to make them feel bad about their treatment of men, because they earnestly believe that it is impossible to mistreat men, and they have an entire sociopolitical movement that excludes any consideration of men from the Domain of Serious Things, which makes this just look pathetic and impotent, which it is. I'll answer your follow ups though.

Are you more willing to discuss your issues with male friends / male lovers than women?

I'm most willing to discuss my issues with my very close long term platonic female friends. There is no romantic tension and so I can take the masculine mask all the way off. I also probably have more feminine-type emotional processing so I just like the responses I get from them more than my male friends. Or maybe I just prefer hearing women lie to me than a man telling me the truth. Some things, though, you can only talk to another guy about.

What has your experience been with getting things off your chest with a female ex-partner or even your current girlfriend?

I'm 50/50. Half have responded supportively and half have responded with some type of visible discomfort. I lost an otherwise very good relationship to this. As an aside, I wouldn't have been able to predict which girlfriend would've been which way. I dated one woman who had very conservative attitudes about gender expectations and she sat and held me for an hour. I dated another woman who I would describe as outwardly progressive and emotionally intelligent and she dumped me literally the next time I saw her. She said it was because I didn't like her dog enough (I got her the dog). Lol.

I think the most common phenomenon that traces this vein though, is that it is challenging to talk to female romantic partners about negative emotions without them grabbing the conversation, skipping over your emotional state, and making it about how those emotions make them feel instead. Every woman I've ever dated has done this to one extent or another. "I had one problem, I talked to my girlfriend, now I have two problems." Like •hey I've been struggling with this •girlfriend: cries •me: consoles •end of interaction. Makes me feel like fucking shit. Small. Unimportant.

What was her response? Are your male friends / male lovers any better?

Male friends are better at it than female romantic partners, on the average, but good partners are better than male friends. It's my experience, but I've never been belittled by my male friends for saying I'm having issues about things. Usually they are just no better equipped to deal with it than I am. The response is basically always the same, "that sucks; you're just gonna have to get on with it though." Notably, this isn't even wrong. It's true. You are just going to have to get on with it.

How much has it impacted your sense of self? Has it limited your capacity to be expressive? Stifled your ability to convey the problems you are facing to others in your life?

My emotional reality is mostly opaque to me. I do not know why I am the way that I am. I feel repressed, though. When I feel bad things my reflexive response is to remind myself these are not things I can allow myself to feel, much less express. I feel undeserving of sympathy. "Just get on with it" is my resting state. I think that's because there is no utility in indulging these things as men. There's no validation to be had. Nobody is going to make you feel "seen" or as if your problems are of any consequence to anyone but yourself. I'm an animal, I am subject to conditioning. These behaviors are not rewarded. They make other men sad and they make women uncomfortable.

I should also ask the guys who are femme, what about you?

I don't know what this means. I grew up playing 3 sports. I work out. I wear masculine clothes. I have feminine mannerisms. I'm above the average male height. I put on a feminine affect around women. I'm sensitive and feel my emotions deeply. I like talking about people and feelings and relationships. I'm tender in my interpersonal relationships. Most of my friends are women. With my male friends, I am the one who is going to bring up emotions 9/10 times. I hug them and tell them I love them. I am heterosexual. Am I femme? Where's the bar?

rammo123 · 2024-05-31T05:21:32+00:00

Cishet man here.

Are you more willing to discuss your issues with male friends / male lovers than women?

Women, but I'm not sure why. I've never felt the slightest fear that my male friends would mock or judge me for getting emotional. I just don't. Those relationships just feel more superficial, even the ones I consider brothers. Plus I feel like my mates have their own shit to deal with and I don't want to be a burden (yes I know this is pretty irrational).

What has your experience been with getting things off your chest with a female ex-partner or even your current girlfriend?

Mixed bag. She's supportive, but she also cannot empathise with my feelings. I have to spell things out to her even when I feel like it's so obvious that my feelings might as well be tattooed to my forehead. She's also often visibly uncomfortable by it, to the point where I modulate my emotions just to not put any more burden on her.

What was her response? Are your male friends / male lovers any better?

As above.

How much has it impacted your sense of self? Has it limited your capacity to be expressive? Stiffled your ability convey the problems you are facing to others in your life?

Again a mixed bag. It has helped in some respects, but it's also taught me that "talking it out" is not the magical panacea of all ills that it's made out to be. "Talking it out" can, and often does, make things worse.

pomkombucha · 2024-05-31T21:58:11+00:00

Women have been the primary abusers in my life, so I struggle to open up to them and yet still deeply want to. It’s not that I feel safer with opening up to women, but I feel that my vulnerability will be met with a lot more empathy and a deeper empathy than men typically give. However, for that same reason, I find it easier to open up with men because I can expect them to typically respect me emotionally at a baseline and be able to put aside personal feelings to support me. For instance, when opening up about my alcoholism to another man, I can expect that even at my lowest, he’ll never throw that back in my face or weaponize my vulnerability. Women on the other hand, in my experience, will do this and it’s something I have to stay very leery of. I am a trans man. Lived 25 years of my life presenting as a woman to the world and now live and am perceived as a man (I do not disclose my gender identity irl - people assume I’m cis). This has been my overarching experience as a man navigating vulnerability with other genders.

As an anecdote, I had a female friend who I was close with for over a year, and had opened up to her about a LOT of the things that happened to me in my childhood, including being groomed and being severely neglected. I also opened up about how my ex girlfriend had suddenly ghosted me and kept stringing me along by feeding me half assed claims that she was just feeling upset so she couldn’t talk to me for months on end, instead of respecting me enough to just end it and that really tore me up inside. This friend was empathetic in the moment to all of these things, but eventually when she got angry at me, she did the exact same thing almost to a T. Ghosted me for 2 months, then when I asked if she still wanted to be friends because we hadn’t spoken in awhile, told me she was just going through a hard time. A few weeks later messaged me to tell me, out of the blue, to tell me that we weren’t compatible as friends and goodbye and also I had no right to assume she didn’t want to be friends because of her ghosting, because I had asked her not to assume how I was feeling (so she wouldn’t blow up on me over her incorrect assumptions) and therefore me assuming she didn’t want to be friends anymore after 2 months of silence was unfair and we weren’t compatible. No real explanation, just gone. It was a punch to the gut and really triggering for my abandonment trauma, but I didn’t argue and just told her I wished her luck.

Updawg145 · 2024-05-31T21:15:37+00:00

I agree in principle but I'd also be extremely careful of this dog bullshit, for the same reasons the bear bullshit is stupid. Dogs are nice animals but deep down they don't know anything. They "love" you because they literally can't do anything else, they're social species and they've been domesticated and bred to have good traits. Even if you're the biggest piece of shit on earth they'd still "love" you, and that's at the heart of all of these dehumanizing comparisons and attitudes: the fundamental inability or unwillingness for men and women (imo women are worse at this than men) to understand that positive relationships are built on character and sacrifice.

We love dogs because we have to put bare minimum effort into meeting their needs and they shower us in endless praise and validation. If that's the benchmark for healthy relationships we're absolutely fucked.

Global-Bluejay-3577 · 2024-05-31T01:05:36+00:00

I suppose I should preface this by saying I identify as an agender male, since I never felt masculine enough to fit in with men, but not feminine enough to fit in with women. So I don't really care who I talk to about emotions, but I have noticed it's almost taboo for men to be affectionate with each other, and as such men seem to be less affectionate. I also think men try to talk about their emotions, but it always gets ignored somehow. This post sums it up well for me, for the most part

I was raised and socialized as a man and such I probably act more like a man than a woman. I never really learned how to express my feelings or affection. I hear the argument that men need to not be embarrassed to show emotion, it's not only that for me, but I also really struggle to say anything about my problems or show my affection. I've been told I'm a stone wall a lot of times. But I might be an outlier. My family didn't show much affection to me after I was 5-6

To be honest, I don't know how it affects me. I was never greatly in touch with my emotions and am still not. It's very hard for me to look internally to feel and recognize any emotion beyond anger, depression, and contentment. But I don't mean to throw myself a pity party here

Appropriate_Cash_890 · 2024-05-31T14:48:06+00:00

Women don't care. They will say they are glad the men chose the dog because then the men can leave them alone and not trauma dump or whine to them.

This is not an equivalent question. It would work more if you chose dog or man because men often do this to other men.

Sleeksnail · 2024-06-01T00:54:23+00:00

What's the dog question?

NonbinaryYolo · 2024-06-01T04:04:01+00:00

I had this person really push for me to open up, I was deep in depression, I didn't want to put that on anyone, they kept pushing, kept reaffirming me, I let them in.

8 months later I found myself getting smacked across the face for talking bad about myself. This person was a social worker..

Grow_peace_in_Bedlam · 2024-06-02T17:02:11+00:00

Also, feminists have seriously belied that the man versus bear issue is all about safety, since they say "Now you know why we choose the bear" even to men who express unpopular opinions but have shown no signs of being unsafe.

Speaking of which, does anyone else feel that feminists have been trying to promote this idea that any unwanted attention to a woman from a man, or any unpopular opinion from a man (even one that in no way excuses sexual assault), is a threat to her safety? Elevatorgate was a good example of this, I believe.

You'd think that autism awareness becoming more mainstream would make women more tolerant of men's awkward approaches, but exactly the opposite seems to have occurred.

eli_ashe · 2024-06-02T20:54:41+00:00

i've had a lot of women confide in me over the years, and i've always respected them, their feelings, etc... i've had a lot of dudes do the same.

i've had mixed results when i confide my own emotions, concerns, etc... with women. sometimes its been quite directly used against me, sometimes its been used to harm my relationships, sometimes tho its been respected and i've gotten good advice or empathy from them.

but the thing is i can't recall a single time that a dude i confided in used that sort of stuff against me. and i have actually confided in a good number of fellas over the years.

Wauron · 2024-06-05T09:12:20+00:00

To be honest, there was never a person in my life that I felt completely emotionally safe with, man or woman. Not counting therapists, but I have trouble opening up even then because it's so engrained into my brain that I need to wear mental masks to hide myself behind. It was particularly bad in school, where showing weakness just meant both boys and girls will ridicule you because you're a guy (while girls will mostly be supported by both, as they were allowed to cry or be sad and boys would be shamed if they didn't support them).

But what I can say is that I've definitely felt more comfortable in that aspect around men rather than women in my life. Even when it comes to my parents, my dad is usually more supportive when I, for example, vent about something, while my mom typically just replies "What am I supposed to do about it?"

Title	Since the feminist have discovered the Dog Question. I think we should have the talk.
Author	househubbyintraining
Upvotes	74
Comments	29
Date	May 30, 2024 6:19 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1d4am6h/since_the_feminist_have_discovered_the_dog/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/since-the-feminist-have-discovered-the-dog.1520081 https://theredarchive.com/post/1520081

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