Male Bonding

meehaja · 2022-01-06T21:09:15+00:00

I climbed a mountain with a guy I barely knew. We barely spoke and when we did it was limited due to wind.

The shared experience of fear, exhaustion, excitement, both being overwhelmed by the view. Those quiet moments of shared experience are the ones where bonding happens for me.

AdamChap · 2022-01-06T21:44:32+00:00

Males bond differently. We stand side-by-side and look out at the horizon and talk about things. Women stand face to face and talk about things.

Obviously this manifests in different ways but like you say, bonding whilst playing games is popular whether sport, videogames or board games.

Cfox006 · 2022-01-07T03:28:31+00:00

Women don’t know what it’s like to be men. It’s sickening seeing how they think they know how life is like as a man and puts words in our mouths essentially gaslighting our experiences.

One incredibly infuriating example of this was on twox where they essentially made fun of men for saying “we don’t get compliments” with femcels saying “well doesn’t your mom compliment you” and “these men are lying, what else is new”.

It’s so mind numbing

gabrielcoronel_ · 2022-01-06T21:05:37+00:00

Radfems hold the sexist view that all men are emontionless machines. They say those things (men need to cry more often and blah blah blah) because they don't think men already do those things.

As you said, male bonding is real thing already, but these women think it isn't because they've talked to a boy/man very few times. In other words, they don't know anything about men.

LordMandrews · 2022-01-07T00:48:53+00:00

You hit the nail square on the head, especially with the bonding. I feel like the memories you recalled could have been plucked from my brain.

The root of the problem is somewhere else, as the OP mentioned - material conditions causing anguish, and bonding that isn't recognized or communicated easily.

While therapy and physical displays of affection have their place, they are a miniscule sliver of the solution. The key point is there is a problem to be addressed, the symptoms of which are thrown into the catch-all phrase 'toxic masculinity'. I think it's up to us to identify the issue for ourselves and to decide how to approach our own betterment.

sake23456 · 2022-01-07T07:52:21+00:00

"men should seek therapy" this is why feminism is anti-male.

First of all, it projects men as internally flawed beings. Secondly, men should be the ones to seek therapy, therapy shouldn't be provided to them like it is provided to men.

This propagates a message that most government funding and schemes should be directed at women and men should fend for themselves.

xhouliganx · 2022-01-06T20:56:59+00:00

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I believe there is an agenda to feminise men.

matrixislife · 2022-01-07T03:27:49+00:00

A very good point here. Men have different ways to connect than women have, and have different ways of expressing emotion. Having said that, I only really connected with my Dad late in his life once we had it all out and hugged at the end, but I suspect that if we'd been closer early on it would have worked out like you described.

What I'm trying to say is that I think there's room for both, but that your version will be much more natural and welcome to other men and boys.

BloomingBrains · 2022-01-06T21:32:58+00:00

the notion that the real issue with men is that we don't hug each other enough, cry in front of friends enough or that to bond we should cuddle each other, hold hands and show more physical affection towards one another

The solution to loneliness: just be gay.

So in other words, they are implying being gay is a choice. Sounds like homophobia to me.

Imagine people telling the same to a woman. Oh wait...I forgot political lesbianism already exists.

NewfieBadger · 2022-01-07T17:52:59+00:00

It's weird, I can't label it, but men have a very specific way we bond. We don't go out for margaritas and say "You're my best friend!" We wake in the dead of morning with sleep in our eyes and we forge fellowship and understanding through what's most often hardship. Yet the inexplicable part is, some experience feature no challenge, and yet they bond us just as tight, going to the beach with your father for example. We men just do it differently I suppose, and the fact that feminists seem to think they own the rights to bonding and friendship is nothing less than insulting. It's the equivalent of men telling women they're too emotional, only in this instance it's reversed, and no one seems to recognize it holds the same sexist value.

fkyrwkness · 2022-01-07T20:10:20+00:00

I'm gay, so the issue of male bonding has been fraught. Often I've just wanted to enjoy a low-simmer sense of masculine fellowship, without making anybody uncomfortable (including myself).

My best experiences of this came with my first few years of international backpacking, particularly in developing countries. It was a different world back then - no cellphones, not even the Internet. It was easier to strike up conversations with strangers, then finding yourself traveling together for weeks, even months, then parting ways graciously. Those were my only lasting sources of friendship with hetero guys in my adult life.

the_bass_saxophone · 2022-01-07T20:15:15+00:00

This claim that we are all toxic stoic, mindless drones that need to hug our problems away comes from where exactly ?

Its a quick and sloppy response to a system of socialization that wanted to make mindless drones out of men to build and defend the nation, and for the most part, still does it to serve the market economy. One is not good because the other's bad.

And yes, fluffing men off with stereotyped feminine responses is bad. For one thing, pets make better cuddle buddies than your male friends. (But pet ownership needs stigmatizing too. Only big dogs for men. Because only the most conforming, archetypal behaviors can be reinforced without exacting a social cost to make up for the cost to society when people fail to conform.)

We do suffer from an assumption that "real" male bonding is about sharing hardship where you don't help each other or talk it out, just lump it and learn by example. This, as OP points out, is far from the whole story.

We're taught to be interchangeable for the sake of units and organizations. We're taught to be nonverbal so we can hear leaders' commands. Except too many of us end up living interchangeable, unspoken, unthought lives.

(And the real feminists - the ones that care and aren't just grievance grifting - are humanists. They want what's best for humans. It gets tiresome hearing that they're the whole problem. It softens us up for misogynist propaganda.)

Bluebird_North · 2022-01-07T22:26:30+00:00

https://usmenssheds.org/

Title	Male Bonding
Author	AngoPower28
Upvotes	100
Comments	29
Date	January 6, 2022 8:25 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/rxo27u/male_bonding/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/male-bonding.1094272 https://theredarchive.com/post/1094272

Comments