"men aren't men anymore"

Njaulv · 2023-02-21T17:24:10+00:00

Very good point about these people being against the idea of gender being a social construct while saying there are things one must do outside of being an adult male to be a man.

Ogsted · 2023-02-21T19:35:38+00:00

Remember men are human doings not human beings hence why there’s multiple sayings basically going “a woman is, a man becomes” and others along the lines of that. Proven further by the fact that becoming a woman is by going through and completing puberty(of which female puberty does sound rough I won’t take anything away from that.) Becoming a man takes more than just going through puberty and reaching your 18th/20th/21st birthday because it’s partly measured socially and your achievements are also taken into account.

BKEnjoyer · 2023-02-21T17:57:59+00:00

I’ve even seen this with the “conservative communist” types and the trad leftists- to me it’s so stupid. They’re all like “capital wants to feminize men so they’ll spend money and all” and I’m like we still have feelings and problems, traditional masculinity is still not the way to go for a lot of things (even though it is still necessary in some areas)

HeForeverBleeds · 2023-02-21T22:33:47+00:00

That claim is generally aimed towards wanting men to act in a masculine manner.

I don't think men should have to act in a masculine manner of course, but those who have strict ideas of gender and gender roles - where men are masculine and women feminine - do believe that. Such folks make up a very large percentage of those in society, and not just on the "right," but also on the left. Conservatives hold to strict gender roles due to it being traditional and "natural" in their view, while many on the modern "left" hold strict gender roles when many of them do things like - for example - act as though a cisgender man who acts in a feminine manner must secretly be a woman and should consider themselves as transgender.

They only say this for men, never women.

I have seen plenty of people say this sort of thing for women as well as for men, personally.

The kinds of people who call out men for not being "manly enough" are often the same kinds of men who actively praise women with "traditional values" and basically want women who will be stay at home moms with feminine attitudes and behaviors that they feel match well with men who have masculine behaviors.

Men don't owe anyone anything. As long as someone identifies as a man, they're a man.

I would argue this should apply to anyone, regardless of gender identity. Nobody should owe anyone else "anything" based on social stereotypes, we should be judged as individuals.

Women have a sense of community within themselves and I think men could learn something here.

I agree with you that this is a problem for men, but men tending to be more competitive and less cooperative overall is a hard nut to crack. The same things that are strengths for me as a man also make me less likely to want to cooperate with men beyond a surface level, but if society didn't constantly act like close male friendships and such made you "gay" or "weak" or whatever else then maybe people like me wouldn't be so averse to such things. I have close male friends, but it takes a lot of work to get to the point of having a "sense of community."

2023-02-22T03:23:59+00:00

Feminists want THEIR man to be masculine, but every other man to be subservient.

Narcissists usually think they’ll be an accepting to the rule.

PsychoPhilosopher · 2023-02-21T20:35:37+00:00

So there's another thing here.

When going through my counselling qualifications I had to do a section on transgender stuff.

Which I struggled with, because I'm cis, and generally aligned with stoic/pragmatic philosophical thinking which doesn't really give me a good theoretical grounding for "this thing I feel about me disagrees with my physical reality in a way that is important"

So I did some work.

I explored my own gender identity. A bunch of exercises like "what female characters from media do you identify with and resonate with you?"

What I found was that there for sure was a mismatch between my identity and the way I was presenting and living. I was being more 'feminine' than I actually am.

My lived identity as a cis man is more authentically me now. I'm more masculine in my activities and my presentation. Oh! And I feel a lot better about my empathy towards trans/non binary folks so that worked to!

Which is to say that I think a lot of men are like me. We're not being authentic in a gendered way. That's partially a consequence of social expectations, pressures etc.

...But mostly it's because we don't have the time or space to be ourselves because the economic pressure is a constant weight crushing us into beige genderless meat for the corpofascist horror of the modern world.

Enzi42 · 2023-02-21T16:48:17+00:00

So...I always feel a sinking feeling when these sort of topics come up because I wind up defending the right wing side of things and I hate that 🤮.

I think the rights "men aren't men anymore" and love affair with traditional masculinity is a very nuanced and gray issue where it isn't just traditional old fashioned men trying to drag down men who just want to be free.

Traditional masculinity which the OP masterfully summed up as self sacrificing, unyielding and protective is championed as an ideal because it worked. In times past, this model of what a man should be was very helpful to the survival of communities and was therefore looked at as a universally good thing. If you failed at being this ideal, you were broken and defective and thus a drain on the community and needed to be beaten into proper shape or discarded. Harsh but this was survival and tenderness or ethics had nothing to do with it.

The other aspect of traditional masculinity that I don't feel is discussed a lot is that it was supported by its counterpart of traditional femininity. Women did the work that kept things running in the domestic sphere while men did the "heavy lifting" and front facing activities.

The problem is that now, for better or worse, those roles are falling by the wayside. Personally I don't think they are bad, just another way of living life. But they are not mandatory anymore and this is causing chaos among those who grew up when they were.

I see people who angrily push traditional masculinity not as bad guys but more tragically misguided. They see their way of life, the ideal which they aspired to, falling apart and in a lot of cases demonized as backwards and evil. And so they push back and try to forcibly propagate it as a way of keeping it alive.

Want to see something really upsetting, that is as heartbreaking as it is infuriating? Tell a very traditionally minded man that women are not going to automatically fulfill their support role just because he extends himself out there as a protector and shield. Odds are, the man. In question will acknowledge this fact, but insist that he needs to act in that role regardless because it is "the right thing to do".

It shows me just how deeply it is etched into those people that they have to fulfill their purpose even when they know they are being used, because it is synonymous with their worth as a human being.

That was kind of a ramble, but I was just saying that i feel pity for men like that more than I do disgust or anger.

CzechoslovakianJesus · 2023-02-22T23:08:52+00:00

There's no incentive to be a "real man" anymore, and that's what a lot of these trad types plain don't get. Most people aren't self-starters who work hard just for its own sake; they need motivation. Perhaps it's pressure from parents and peers on a child to exceed academically, perhaps it's the allure of a luxurious lifestyle that attracts a man to a stressful but high-paying job, or perhaps it's a desire for a relaxed and simple life that has men settling in a lower-paying field.

What does the today's world offer men? Are you really going to start a family with some frigid careerist who won't even consider having a kid until she's over 40? Are you going to buy a home when even meager offerings are instantly snapped up by the likes of Blackstone? Are you going to work hard, long hours to get a promotion at a job that treats you like crap and pays even worse? There's nothing left to strive for.

2023-02-21T22:44:54+00:00

The right constantly bring down men for whatever reason. The right don't value men

This encapsulates what I have been thinking. The fanatical self-destructive paleo-conservative takes on masculinity are completely unhelpful in fighting systemic misandry, and may in fact have been a leading cause behind its origins.

zaph239 · 2023-02-22T16:52:06+00:00

The problem with your post is it ignores biology. As a rule I look at what people do, not what they say.

Feminists can say gender is a social construct until they are blue in the face but when it comes to dating they still prefer men who fit into traditional gender norms.

My point is this, if patriarchy exists, it is enforced by the actions of women, just as much as those of men.

HeForeverBleeds · 2023-02-22T03:33:05+00:00

I agree, and I believe the idea that a man must conform to conventional standards of stereotypical masculinity is not necessarily helpful for men's issues. Especially since some of these stereotypes can contribute to the marginalization of male victims (especially of sexual abuse or domestic violence from women, which guys are stereotypically not supposed to be bothered by)

Some men are conventionally masculine and some are not, but no man should be shamed for not conforming to these gender roles. And when people say things like "men aren't men anymore," it's usually to shame men for not conforming. Whether it's something meaningless and cosmetic like a Harry Styles wearing a dress/k-pop boys wearing makeup, or something like guys not having the goal of becoming a provider for a family/not being willing to sacrifice himself to protect a woman

2023-02-22T14:26:36+00:00

And when asked what kind of man they want they list traits that they don't see as manly lmao. The reason women have community built into their DNA is because naturally many women share the same man. Only few men can be alphas and they kill/dominate their competition, women don't really need to do that because they are part of the harem/family and protecting each other is in their best interest since they all serve the same man.

BreakThings99 · 2023-02-21T22:10:38+00:00

If right wingers care about men, they should speak against wars and workplace deaths. ut somehow. in 4 years of Trump, I never heard him trying to dismantle the horrible military-industrial complex.

And fuck Putin too for sending men to die for no reason.

OppositeBeautiful601 · 2023-02-22T16:41:42+00:00

Men don't owe anyone anything. As long as someone identifies as a man, they're a man.

Well, they have to survive childhood and youth. But yep, that's it. A man is man. There are only real men. Imaginary men, definitively, don't exist.

BloomingBrains · 2023-02-22T07:01:16+00:00

They only say this for men, never women.

I've heard plenty of people say this for women too. My sexist grandfather is always ranting about how much he hates women in politics, and women voting, and then in same breath mentions "how women aren't women anymore". Suspicious, that...

But yeah, I find it pretty hilarious whenever conservatives attack men for not wrestling bears and working in coal mines or whatever ridiculous self destructive near-slavery type shit it is they think we're supposed to be doing. Isn't a sign of how far society has come, and how far we've advanced, and how good times are, if men aren't restricted to intense labor/fighting roles anymore? If I can afford to not be "strong" and work some kind of "soft" desk job, doesn't that mean I'm fortunate? Wouldn't anyone rather do that that chop down trees all day? I call bullshit on these people. They're just angry that they had to chop down trees all day to build a world where I didn't have to.

You know eventually, technology will advance to the point that all labor and fighting are automated, meaning there will no longer be an evolutionary need for testosterone/physical strength and humans will likely unevolve it, like how fish in dark caves with no light eventually lose their eyes. I mean this is already probably why testosterone is going down every generation already. Instead of acting like this a bad thing, we should be celebrating the fact that society is getting safer, more prosperous, and more advanced.

Men don't owe anyone anything. As long as someone identifies as a man, they're a man.

Hell yeah. And honestly, the group that needs to hear this the most is the radical LGBT activists. In my experience being gender non-conforming, so many of them have tried to convince me I'm trans. Apparently the idea that a cis guy can like wearing a dress is as crazy to them as it is to the right.

Baldr-throw · 2023-02-21T15:52:20+00:00

Being a "man" varies from culture to culture. Masculinity doesn't have any objective meaning.

Rottery57 · 2024-04-19T21:33:35+00:00

They exist they are just far from liberal men which is what you are talking about.

Pukaza · 2024-06-04T05:08:22+00:00

Real humans build each other up. Broken ones don’t help others. A real man is a good person. A real woman is a good person. I think people are just getting shittier nowadays bc it’s easier to get away with it. Being mean is more common, more rude comments, online arguments from people hiding behind digital screens. People don’t keep their word anymore, it isn’t as strong. People back out of commitments. I think humans like to label it as a “feminist” problem or “toxic masculinity” because they like labels. Labels help us identify things around us. But really people overall are shittier as a social society, but it’s always the “other” who is to blame. We must look inward and fix ourselves before we judge others. No one is perfect, and we must strive to be better in our lives.

lastfreethinker · 2023-02-21T15:55:48+00:00

No, these people are confusing gender with biology. Like a lot of people on the left do as well. There is biology, and there is gender. Today's societies use gender interchangeably with sex which would get you marked down in biology. They were never onboard with the idea of someone being a different gender.

They are talking about the emasculation of men in modern times and frankly you see it everywhere. It is the current idea of toxic masculinity. However, they are hyper focused or sensitive to everything. Where they interpret a crying man, or normal behavior as an emasculated male.

They do claim there are attempts to undo women.

They don't value traditional masculinity, they claim they do. They value fodder, just like the left does. You are all over the place and fail to see the simple connections. The right has never valued the disabled, nor has the left to be frank. The disabled are never counted because of their lack of numbers and inability to do useful work (in the mind of ideologies.) My wife is blind, and the ADA was signed into law over 3 decades ago. She still has to fight to proper ADA compliance. Why? Because no one cares.

One thing that women do well is the connection they have with eachother. Women tend to stick up for eachother and value eachother more than men. Women have a sense of community within themselves and I think men could learn something here. Men need to care for eachother, not bring eachother down unless the individual man has done something wrong.

No, they don't. That is as sexist as you claim the right is. Men can, do, and will stand up for one another but it isn't on the pure grounds of our sex as a connection.

This screams weird rambling about male issues from someone who doesn't get them.

Sydnaktik · 2023-02-21T20:42:15+00:00

One thing that women do well is the connection they have with eachother.

Men can do this very well too. If you feel that it's not the case for you, then you need to start taking steps to make it happen. Having a supporting connection with other people is a two way street and if you're not proactive about it people interested aren't going to reciprocate.

Don't get me wrong, feminist rhetoric has had a massive influence on men's inability to support eachother and on helping women support eachother. But you should't let that stop you.

yet claim certain men aren't actually real men. They only say this for men, never women.

Traditional social conservatives complain about women not being feminine enough all the time.

these people usually claim that gender is not a social construct

They do, and it's for two reasons. They see gender as being inherently linked to biological sex. So 1) they want to push back against progressive social conservatives who are making it more difficult to identify people's sex. 2) They benefit from promoting an ideology that considers gender a universal truth directly linked to biology because that's the social construct they want to preserve.

As long as someone identifies as a man, they're a man.

That statement is absurd on so many levels. I'm just going to quickly gloss over the circular logic of it and skip to the interesting point:

You don't get to define what a man is. Gender, being a social construct is defined by society. And, like it or not, traditional social conservatives are a very large and influential part of that society. So they have a very big say in what a man is, and they say a man is a male that does X, Y and Z.

Men don't owe anyone anything.

There's 8 billion people on this planet and that only works because we're highly organized. And it's a real jungle out there and each pocket of civilization can only survive if it can defend itself against the other ones (through, force, diplomacy or other means).

The point is, if everyone just does what they want, everything falls appart. Societies are structured to prevent that and as a results expects it's members to contribute to that structure. These are the things you "owe" society.

Traditional social conservatives set a different set of expectations for men and women. In practice, progressive social conservatives do exactly the same. Both set of expectations seem quite corrupt in that they seem to include a hell of a lot of stuff that's not really needed for the well functioning of society.

On a almost completely unrelated note. This talk on gender has reminded me about a tv series called Mr. Robot. Superficially it seems to be commentary about capitalism and anarchism. But it's true plot and message...>! is on transgenderism. The message being that the only real way to transition genders is to recreate reality such that you were born of the other gender. Which is what the villain of the show did.!<

And another note on gender. While it is true that gender is socially constructed, I believe that presenting it in that perspective is disingenuous because it sort of masks the indirect put possibly most influential thing that affects how people end up constructing gender: biology.

It's true that technology has taken away much of biology's influence. But IMO it's still the king of gender. At least for another generation or two.

UpstairsPass5051 · 2023-02-22T04:46:01+00:00

Men disagree.

Banake · 2023-02-21T15:40:16+00:00

Castration anxiety and projection. Honestly, I would feel bad for them (as I think that men have the right of feeling anxiety) if they weren't derailing the conversation.

PanikLIji · 2023-02-21T15:01:55+00:00

Well you see that sense of community means connecting with those very men that say men aren't men anymore.

Quix_Nix · 2023-02-22T00:52:40+00:00

"being a man that's kinda girly bro"

Moist-Quiet-647 · 2023-02-24T17:10:37+00:00

There is an ambivalence within the right-wing manosphere about masculinity. On one hand they say feminists are castrating us and trying to build a wimp society (if only! As a wimp I can only dream), on the other hand major manosephere figures appeal to males who are "losers" in the traditional sense (physically weak, no gf, shitty job or no job at all, etc). Even macho caricatures like Tate do offer superficial comfort and encouragement to his followers.

I think that deep down the vast majority WOULD LIKE masculine gender norms be taken down, but they know that in today's world you unfortunately have to be a "manly man" to exist.

Jordan Peterson is the best example of this ambivalence of the right-wing manosphere. On one hand he offers some much needed comfort to male losers and he often gets very emotional about in interviews and he himself went through a lot of shit in his life. On the other hand... well, he's a tradcon, a capitalist, sees inequality and competition as a good thing, and his advice is mostly just the usual bootstrap shit, packaged in weird jungian jargon. I can relate to the man, but not to the public intellectual.

That being said, ambivalance and hypocrisy of the right on tradcon masculinity is mostly just a mirror reflection of the ambivalance and hipocrisy of feminists towards the same issues. Feminists claim they're against tradcon masculinity as well, yet they're working to establish a world where this is our only option...

UpstairsPass5051 · 2023-03-12T23:16:42+00:00

This does nothing to help men. From the time they're born, males are slightly more autistic. They are less interested in people. They are less interested in and capable of inferring a person's mental state from their facial expressions or body language, and similarly less interested in expressing their own mental state for others. So clearly connecting with people the way women do is, for most men, of no use or interest to them. So it'd be great if you'd stop insisting men be more like women. It will not help, and will in fact make things WORSE because most men don't like feeling weak or people feeling sorry for them. What men want is to win. If you want to help them, help them win. That's the only way around it.

Hot-Gap1198 · 2024-01-03T14:29:30+00:00

You got everything correct except not being vulnerable. Being connected to ounces heart is important. Being stuck in emotion is not. A man who can lead can still have vulnerable conversations, but by the end of that, once the woman holds space for him, he needs to go back to leading or else the woman will have to do that. Men’s and women’s roles have been switched in today’s society. Some women are still feminine. But most are out there focused on the doing, planning and action of providing and we don’t have a man to help us in that area. Society is going downhill and fast. Guys watch porn and play video games and smoke weed. All which are terrible for long term relationships and are testosterone killers. All leading to males who don’t become men. It’s so hard to watch.

Title	"men aren't men anymore"
Author	boomboxspence
Upvotes	139
Comments	82
Date	February 21, 2023 1:11 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/11832y7/men_arent_men_anymore/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/men-arent-men-anymore.1153038 https://theredarchive.com/post/1153038

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