Discussion: how has your upbringing and/or cultural background shaped your thoughts about gender?

dakru · 2016-04-04T00:24:16+00:00

My upbringing had a large role in how I approach questions of gender, in particular my skepticism of feminism.

I'm from Canada. Although there are some pockets of gender traditionalism here (especially for people raised in religious households/communities), the overall cultural consensus is very much on the progressive side when it comes to gender. (Our right-wing party was in power for a decade and even they didn't make any real effort to make abortion illegal. It was barely even brought up.)

For me the big result of this is that I simply can't relate to a lot of the claims I've heard made by feminists about cultural attitudes to gender. We live in a culture that hates women? Men are taught they're entitled to women? Certainly not from anything I've seen. Here's a particularly colourful description of patriarchy, the society we're said to live in, by influential feminist author bell hooks:

Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence. [htttp://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf]

I just can't relate to any of that. Places like Saudi Arabia? Sure, that's plausible. Maybe even places like the American South. Maybe. But very little that I've seen in my life has suggested that this is anywhere near the case for my own country.

KrispyMcSockington · 2016-04-04T09:23:48+00:00

I am a South African, so a lot the things American feminists are yelling about on the internet seem like #firstworldproblems to me.

My parents have been married for going on 50 years and have a rock solid relationship.

I was brought up mormon with the expectation that I would get married and stay home with the babies while husband works. That's not how my life worked out and I am very ok with the fact that I am building a career and not having kids or a husband.

I am a feminist because I live in a country where its not considered a problem for a man to rape a woman he knows, cause friends right? Or its ok that the man raped the 13 year old girl, cause he bought her crisps and gave her R30 after so he really shouldn't be punished.

I am a feminist because here its the mothers who fight against their sons being put through a "manhood" ritual that is life threatening, because its the way its done.

I am a feminist because women in our rural areas need to learn how to grow food in a sustainable way to feed their families, so their kids can concentrate in school and break the cycle of poverty.

I am a feminist because women should get to say I don't want a kid now before I have finished studying so that I don't have to stay poor forever. And it shouldn't just be a man's choice.

I got here I think because a TRP's rant about feminism made me pissy so then I found TBP and then this subreddit. I find it interesting to be reminded often that my reality is not the same as the reality other people experience.

hakosua · 2016-04-04T00:21:19+00:00

I grew up in a household where my mum made all the money and my dad worked part time and stayed at home. Eventually I realised this is the opposite of what's normal, traditional, whatever. At the same time, the "just be yourself" message from wider society clashed with my mum's more realistic advice of "you have to change yourself to be successful in life." As an idealistic teen I believed the former but as I grew into an adult I embraced the latter.

I think both of those things played a part. Growing up in the household I did got me curious about different models of gender roles and learning to adapt for success got me interested in RP and self-improvement in general.

I'm really just still a kid trying to find his way in the world.

coratoad · 2016-04-04T00:27:30+00:00

Grew up in very conservative religious family. My mom was RP but my dad wasn't. I didn't get along with my mom very well and instead took after my dad. He was very beta so I think that's why I have a preference for beta men.

I was always pretty insecure about being a woman. I took teachings from the Bible too literally. I thought that God created me to be lesser than men. But I found relief from this in science. In science everyone is equal. In additional science was a way for me to get respect from men since I was relatively good at it.

I guess TRP initially attracted me because it claimed to be be scientific, but also showed a lot of disdain women. It was threatening to me for this reason. I wanted the equality of science and the approval of men.

Then I figured out that RP men didn't really hate women at all. They wanted our approval just as much as I wanted theirs. Then I became more pro RP, in as much as it is pro male. When it starts being anti-male, then it loses me.

hakosua · 2016-04-04T02:01:34+00:00

I'm a lot older than nearly everyone here, raised working-class in New England by a pair of old-school Democrats. Dad grew up in a big working-class Eastern European family; Mom grew up in what would now be considered extreme poverty on a subsistence farm in Oklahoma. The women on both sides of my family have always worked. We have never been able to afford housewives. Some of the women on my mother's side used their beauty or feminine charm as an escape route from poverty and while my mother understood why they did it, it really rubbed her the wrong way. She made damned sure that my sister and I grew up with strong work ethics and the kind of education we would need to always be able to support ourselves without selling ourselves for our looks, as she thought of it.

I've got a Ph.D. and have spent my whole career in a male-dominated field, surrounded by men who are very high achievers. None of them have ever given me the slightest bit of crap for being a woman. (Although plenty of them have yelled at me just as much as they yell at their male underlings.) These guys don't care if I'm a man or a woman or a Golden Retriever as long as I know my stuff.

PPD is interesting to me because much of it is a window into a world I'm not terribly familiar with, and the perspective can be fascinating. Although the recent proliferation of garbage posts from people who have apparently never picked up a history book has been somewhat discouraging.

Interversity · 2016-04-04T06:30:50+00:00

Liberal upper class upbringing in Massachusetts. Nonreligious parents led to my atheism. Mom and Dad separated when I was about 9. Dad was a very angry and emotionally distant person, and I blame that in large part for my own Nice Guy syndrome.

I was a very weird kid. Excelled in school, but truly terrible social skills. Didn't care about fashion or hygiene. Complete social outcast, got creep-shamed many times. I recall a time in 7th grade where we had to write a paper on any of a few topics, one being experience as a social outcast. Teacher called on me to ask what I wrote about, I said it, and you could have cut that awkwardness with a knife.

Luckily I slowly improved through high school, upgraded to high beta by the end, hooked up with several girls, although I never understood or had any LTRs. Found the manosphere generally around junior year, that helped me understand what I had been doing wrong and how to make it right.

The creep-shaming I received is a large part of the reason I identify with TRP now. I very much understand why young men would be so horrifically angry with women, as I experienced the kind of cruelty and crushing awfulness of them for years. And no, it wasn't just people being shitty because they were young. Guys left me alone, and once I started lifting (junior year) I got a lot of respect from even the popular alphas as I ended up being one of the most fit people in my class.

I grew up in a very rich town with lots of high powered dads, leading to lots of alpha guys. I started seeing a lot of things the manosphere talks about - the extremely confident guys who treated girls like children were by far the most successful despite not necessarily being the most attractive otherwise.

I also identify with TRP due to lashing back against attitudes perpetuated by teachers. I recall one health class I had wherein I asked about incels (not using the term as I didn't know it, but basically people who couldn't get sex despite wanting it). The female teacher got very upset and basically acted like I had said something extremely rude and that that didn't happen. I am still angry about this. That teacher denied the existence of an entire subsection of hurt and pain that people experienced. At that point I was still rather unsuccessful with girls, so it hit me personally. In general I am a rather sensitive and deeply-feeling person, so every negative experience got played over many times and analyzed and re-suffered again and again.

That experience, I think, catalyzed my realization that women largely do not empathize with weak, broken men, but find it almost surprising that they exist. Two experiences with the friendzone further emphasized this.

I thank my lucky stars that I was intelligent and aware enough to break out of all that idiocy and I am doing better now. Got jacked, started being diligent about hygiene, worked on my fashion despite no help from my dad (who never cared about fashion), and I am finally starting to piece together some semblance of confidence and game. No More Mr Nice Guy and Models are helping to me to break out of the nice guy paradigm, and now my main obstacles are approach anxiety and being an idiot around attractive women. Much better than not brushing my teeth and wearing sweatpants that were two inches too short.

Why am I here specifically? TRP the subreddit is full of ridiculous moronic comments and hateful diatribes that just make me feel like shit to read. TBP is even more hateful and vindictive than TRP. PPD is where people who actually want to talk about things and understand them deeply go. I've experienced a fairly large shift away from full redness during my time here, so I figure that's a positive sign that I'm properly re-evaluating my beliefs.

That felt really good to type up. Thanks for the post.

GridReXX · 2016-04-04T18:44:35+00:00

I'm black American, where for the most part, though there are plenty of exceptions, even the educated guys who end up as I-Bankers or Lawyers and Engineers... have a sort of swag.

For example three of my guy friends from college went straight to get their MEng and are now all very successful in engineering/finance fields.

One looks and acts like David Banner and swims in vagina. Always has. And I say that to mean David Banner is just average facially, but makes up for it by being this very masculine swaggered man.
One is a musician/rapper/singer. In a frat. Looks like a young Michael Ealy. Smokes a lot of weed. But works out often. Very emo.
The other one was just always the life of the party and making everyone take shots on shots on shots. He's slightly more nerdy (wears glasses/skinnier frame) than the other 2, but dresses like a male model. He's only 5'7. Never had issues dating or having sex either.

I repeat. They were engineering majors. At an Ivy known for having an intense AF engineering program.

So I guess, when I stumbled upon TRP and then TBP and finally PPD, I was more shocked than anything that people actually used "being smart and having a lot of studies" as an excuse to be a lame.

I know I'm coming off harsh, but I honestly couldn't relate.

Those were my initial thoughts in the beginning.

Now I actually get where they're coming from. They just grew up in different cultures and different communities.

This sub has helped me better come to terms with how atypical my upbringing was in the broader scheme of things.

TL;DR

I started frequenting here because I didn't relate to people using being smart or being FTO'ed as an excuse to be anti-social and/or not care about how they're perceived sexually, platonically, etc... Now I better understand and I continue to frequent because you heauxs have grown on me.

daveofmars · 2016-04-04T00:19:43+00:00

I want to understand people. It was why I got a degree in psychology. Gender and sex are big parts of the human condition which should be better understood.

My undergrad was even-handed when it came to sex similarities and sex differences. However Political Correctness at the time wanted to disqualify all mentions of sex differences. It was that denial of reality that (among a few other things), which eventually turned me from Feminist to the shitlord you see before you today.

I took up TRP before it was called "TRP" to understand more about sex and gender. That "college" focused more on sex differences rather than similarities. To be honest, I think there's more informational value in learning about differences than similarities.

"We're all the same" = no more to study.

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impossibleworlds · 2016-04-04T00:38:18+00:00

Two words: home schooled. Says it all, right there.

[deleted] · 2016-04-04T00:36:26+00:00

I was raised by a working STEM industry mom and a stay at home dad. They later got divorced, in part due to underlying gender issues. I studied a great deal of Anthropology while getting a degree in linguistics in college. I then shocked everyone by becoming a gasp housewife and later a homeschooling mom. There's a lot of hate out there for housewives! This prompted a great deal of reading on the subject of gender studies, and it's not cut and dried, black and white. So I started out very blue in life and got some sprinklings of red along the way.

gasparddelanuit · 2016-04-04T01:48:16+00:00

I vaguely remember watching a Girl Writes What (GWW) video on YouTube, and learning that it was a reading of a response she wrote in some place called Purple Pill Debate. So I clicked on the link and here I am. None of the issues were new to me however, because I had already been reading about gender for over 10 years; initially feminist material, then masculinist stuff.

I was initially a blooper and feminist leaning, but with more knowledge, experience and greater utilization of my own rational ability, overcame my early indoctrination and parted ways with my earlier self.

Mainstream media i.e. movies, TV, magazines, papers, adverts etc., unquestionably had the biggest impact in my early socialization, followed by books, with biology mixed in there somewhere. The general picture was very favourable towards women and more negative towards men, which I was fine with and accepted as reality. It took more reading, more critical thinking, more understanding, more knowledge and more experience to see things more clearly and all the contradictions, before breaking free of mainstream orthodoxies.

YaBoiTibzz · 2016-04-04T01:56:49+00:00

I came from a very stereotypical white Christian middle class household deep in the South. Fairly religious family in the sense that they went to church every Sunday and often dragged me along. Unlike a lot of my generation I actually appreciate the time I spent in church and some of the lessons there, the youth groups and such really gave me some fellowship at times when I really needed it.

As far as gender, I am very short, and was so socially awkward at the beginning of high school that I barely had any friends, never mind girlfriends. So I started far behind and have mostly stayed there with respect to relationships. Everyone around me seemed to always be in relationships and dating like it was totally normal and was something that just happened to them, but not to me. I heard the usual "just be yourself" but again unlike a lot on here, I kind of smelled bullshit on that one from the start, even when I was very young. My problem was that I was unattractive, in both looks and personality, and I knew it. Some people on TRP treat it like this devastating illusion that shaped their whole existence (hell their sub is built on that Matrix reference) but it wasn't like that for me. I always had a sneaking suspicion about a lot of stuff I first saw being said openly on TRP, that sub (and other online spaces) just confirmed my suspicions.

Being a middle class socially outcast male and wasting time on the Internet go hand in hand, and it never stopped eating at me that literally almost everyone else I knew IRL had so much more relationship success than me, so it was only a matter of time before I found spaces like this board.

Princeso_Bubblegum · 2016-04-04T02:12:10+00:00

this ended up larger than I thought

I live in North East of PA, which is an interesting place for being close to PA, yet also being rural, its a nice mix cultural wise. My family is I guess conservative leaning, but that was mainly because of economic policy, my parents are pretty open socially compared to other Catholics.

Growing up my mother was the definitive breadwinner, both were nurses, but my father was a few levels down in pay because he only did 2 years of college. When I was younger, he spent most of his time into making Hobby Stores which all failed, during those years he functioned as a pretty much stay at home father. When he did go to work, we were dropped off in nursing homes next to elderly and senile people, slowly dying, I was like 6 at the time, so that effected me a lot (I have a dark cynicism about humanity).

Despite all this, my father was very insistent upon "making a man out of me," by teaching me how to do mechanic work, move stuff around, and even fix the electricity in the house; which was a complete disaster, I never absorbed anything, and was very bitter that he never did any such thing to my sister, who was pretty much a spoiled princess. He also took away dolls I played with which is still a hurtful memory. I also spent quite a bit of time with my Great Grandmother, who did pretty much the same thing.

It quickly became apparent in school that I did not function like other boys, I was bullied ruthlessly, and when we all kind of reached self awareness in the 2nd grade, the girls thought I was weird for always hanging out with them, and ostracized me. I pretty much spent the next 10 years being the outcast. ._. (this also made me even more cynical to society)

In my teens, I started to develop gender dysphoria, which persisted and grew until I came out as transgender. I got on hormones and transitioned, and glob, there have been the fucking best years of my life, I can just be who I am, its fantastic. Looking above, I imagine someone is going to twist it into some nonsense, "young boy has weak male role model, becomes trans," or, "after being oppressed by gender roles, male becomes convinced that he is a woman," but you know what, I don't fucking care, I know what I am, and how I got here is irrelevant from my POV.

I am here mainly out of morbid curiosity, a lot of the stuff red pillers say is absolutely disgusting, however, I also like to argue with terfs (radical feminists who hate transgender people, boat load of fun), and if I can work with those nuts, I can work with pillers. Its also nice to get out of my echo chamber and see other views.

wombatinaburrow · 2016-04-04T02:31:04+00:00

Came from a traditional family with dad working full time and mum working slightly less paid hours but doing all the household stuff while dad relaxed with the newspaper and didn't do "womens work" or "snotty kids". My brothers were encouraged to live, strive and make their way in the world, whilst my sisters and I were encouraged to be decorative, do as we were told, and find a husband to look after us.

scallopkid · 2016-04-04T03:11:31+00:00

I spent too much time on the internet when I was a kid. I still do, but I did then, too.

1MillionTinyHorses · 2016-04-04T04:44:10+00:00

My aunt is a professional academic and published feminist. I have watched her emotional abuse her male son, my cousin, for his male privilege, disrespect her male husband, my uncle, who despite it all loves her and pays for everything including her education, which allowed her to be an academic, and her publishing, and all the while propagating her spoiled brat daughter to fuck up her life because it is her choice and she can do no wrong. My cousin did not get to choose his gender, and yet she punishes him for this. It is much easier for her to blame her problems on men, than admit she may have a drinking problem.

Thanksgivings are fun.

She and her colleagues make money of off perpetuating theirs and others misery. I am all for respecting people of all backgrounds who respect me. Discrimination and prejudice based sexism exists, and the feminists I have come to know, my aunt and those in my own academic career, are some of the biggest advocates of such sexism.

One could say I am bitter, and yes it is personal.

jonascf · 2016-04-04T10:00:21+00:00

I grew up in a rural environment with an no-good father and a mother that tried to give me a strict religious up-bringing. One thing I learned from this is that manliness comes in many forms and that people take gender roles seriously.

As a teenager I got involved in leftist and environmentalist politics and picked up a lot of feminist ideology of the social constructivist kind. Some of it made sense and some of it was way over the top although I didn't criticize it much back then.

Later in life I began to question the notion that sex and gender are just social constructs and if people were really happier acting on that belief. I guess I would say that my interest in gender is a result of the issue being brought to my attention a lot and the fact that I think relationsships, sex and flirting are interesting and fun.

KrispyMcSockington · 2016-04-04T13:00:33+00:00

I am a South African. I grew up in a religious environment, but am not religious myself. My mom was raised by her grandparents and my dad by his parents. They had a more traditional outlook, but both my parents worked while I was growing up. My mom became a SAHM mom by choice when I was in high school, but her attitude towards parenting wasn't the greatest. In her view, a man being nice and compliant was valuable, which created the impression that that's what women wanted.

My parents also had lots of power struggles, which wasn't healthy for the home environment. As a result, I grew up thinking being nice would work. I didn't want to be like my parents and I thought being a nice guy meant I would get a nice girl and have a happy marriage. Boy was I wrong. I had to learn to grow a spine and stand up for myself. It wasn't easy because every time I had expressed myself as a kid, I was told to be quiet.

As an adult it made me scared of being angry, which made me angry, which I was afraid of and so I had this cycle of anger, fear and having to swallow those emotions with no outlet. I also got the distinct impression that no one cares how men feel because when they spoke about it, they were collectively told to be quiet in one way or another: cowboys don't cry, we're all misogynists, women are better, patriarchy, etc.

For years I was a feminist. I believed that women were not equal to men and needed a hand up. Then someone asked me what rights men have that women don't and I couldn't tell them. I even studied feminist philosophy and feminism in the media and bit by bit I started dismantling my beliefs. First, standing up for yourself is not misogyny. Second, feminism is about women's interest first and any benefit to men is a byproduct, not the intended result. Thirdly, you can believe in equality and not be a feminist.

I ended on this debate sub after reading blogs, reddit and the occasional news article about things like men's rights, the red pill and the manosphere. I even read things like Ladder Theory to understand women better. I don't think there's a global conspiracy against men, just that men don't understand women and women expect men to understand them regardless. So both sides end up frustrated. After a few years I found purplepilldebate. I haven't been a feminist for years. I quit it because it seemed like anything masculine was seen as bad (toxic masculinity) and that women could do no wrong.

Things like lighter sentences for female criminals, the way men are represented in the media, the wage gap myth, and the unending demands from feminists led me to believe something was wrong. I read some quotes from noted feminists that just seemed like spreading hatred. Quotes such as:

"To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo." - Valerie Solanas "I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." - Andrea Dworkin. "In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group are not strong enough to give meaningful consent." - Catherine McKinnon.

The feminist view is that women are weak, the opposite of what they preach, because women need men to give them a hand. Problem is, the victim mentality just gets them more power because they claim they need it because of their default powerless state. Asking men for help then berating them makes no sense. Also, why must men solve all of women's problems? For example, feminist berate the lack of support some female sports get, but there is nothing stopping women from supporting female sport or establishing sports media companies run by women for women. Men are under no obligation to go to the games, just as women are under no obligation to attend the games played by men.

What irked me the most was the "No True Scotsman" fallacy feminists employed when talking about these issues (no true feminist would hold this view etc) and the fact that feminists were not arguing among each other about these concerns. The one about heterosexual sex is rape blew my by surprise because, unless these women were lesbians and hated the thought of heterosexual sex, I couldn't understand how women would consent to any sexual encounter with a man then.

I finally adopted the view that women desire a strong, dominant man but in different ways. Some want physical strength, others mental, or at least someone with ambition. This doesn't mean he is abusive, just that she would lose desire for him if he was too nice than if he stood his ground more often than not.

I then married a woman who is not feminist and I've been happy ever since!

Christian_Kong · 2016-04-04T14:35:36+00:00

My mom was a all too positive, everyone is special great, etc person. My dad was mostly a beta provider. My parents never pushed much gender stuff on me, though they dressed me in boys clothes. Most all of my opinions come from real world experience.

I ended up in this sub, and TRP(which I often go to for laughs more than knowledge) because I said that females don't often care to play boardgames. I also said the cause the thread, which was a indygogo fund to help female board game designers get money, was stupid because kickstarter has made funds available to good ideas of all peoples. Then I got accused of hating women, talking down to them, not wanting them to enjoy the hobby and so on by a bunch of white knights and shitheads. I enjoy both PPD and TRP because it's often filled with both enjoyable and ridiculous discussion.

The real world has taught me about gender and while I feel men and women have embedded differences in their minds and bodies, there are gendered things that exist that do not necessarily need to be that way. I feel transgender stuff is often stupid and the way the way it is being approached by the psychiatric community is lazy and overall unhelpful.

[deleted] · 2016-04-04T14:41:11+00:00

My mother is from a German-French family with Spanish branches dating back to the late 17th century. My father is Basque. For the record, Basque people do have a reputation for traditionalism, but they also had traditional laws that allowed women to inherit,control over their own money and to act as the heads of their houses, as far back as 11th century (at least). Go figure.

So the idea of women as property is alien to me. As alien as women wothout agency, in fact.

energyvolley · 2016-04-04T17:29:10+00:00

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TheChemist158 · 2016-04-04T18:40:29+00:00

I grew up in a very atypical household. I'll spare the details, but gender wise I didn't have any real male role models. I had my unliked uncle with a temper issue, and my brother, with a host of mental issues and unpleasant personality. The females I grew up with, my mom, grandmother, and aunt were all hard working women who supported themselves and their kids with little help from men. They were tough women and didn't allow for crying or skipping out on responsibility. And this view of women is the standard I hold myself and other women to. It baffles me to think of letting them of because they are women and it's normal.

lady_baker · 2016-04-05T15:33:59+00:00

I'm a 32 yo married white woman, from a rural background.

I wound up here at the end (or maybe midpoint?) of a rabbit hole begun in trying to work on my marriage. Someone on talkaboutmarriage responded to my OP with the recommendation that my husband read the MMSL primer. From there, I found the larger manosphere, and eventually Reddit/TRP.

As for why I am red and not blue - reading that Primer was like coming home. I cannot overstate how powerful it was to read that he should lead. You see, I was raised very religiously, in a church that was (as of 2000) not at all feminized, still preached biblical headship in marriage and did not water down Paul's words about women. Even with that, though, it was a roles approach, not a servant/master or superior/inferior.

So after having gone secular and lived and married and tried to be egalitarian and having a marriage that was unhappy and not being attracted to my husband for several years, but valuing my vows and being unwilling to leave... there was hope. I probably sound pretty cringe-y compared to the edginess we get in here but realizing that this is what I really do need, and experiencing major progress in my marriage once we embraced it...

Plus most of us Western women really are entitled, privileged twits and I never even for a moment identified as feminist. Just a natural fit.

Title	Discussion: how has your upbringing and/or cultural background shaped your thoughts about gender?
Author	hakosua
Upvotes	7
Comments	67
Date	April 3, 2016 11:38 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/4d8j2s/discussion_how_has_your_upbringing_andor_cultural/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/discussion-how-has-your-upbringing-andor-cultural.275298 https://theredarchive.com/post/275298

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