"Men should open up about their problems and show more emotion" is disingenuous and downright awful advice.

OddSeraph · 2023-12-26T04:15:46+00:00

"Men should open up about their problems and show more emotion"

It's weird because this treads the line between being horrible advice and good advice. Honestly I find that being able to openly talk about my problems and open up emotionally to someone is great.

However, and this is a big however, what this saying always ignores is that there are far too many people (mostly those telling us we need to open up) who aren't capable of emphasizing and understanding men who open up. Hell I'd argue a large portion don't even want to empathize with men opening up.

Maffioze · 2023-12-26T10:01:32+00:00

I always find this hilarious. These same people telling us to open up literally can't handle it whenever you say anything critical of feminism.

White_Immigrant · 2023-12-26T05:22:47+00:00

Everyone, where appropriate, should open up about their problems and show emotion. However people in general, not just feminists, seem reluctant to let men experience our full range of emotion, going so far as to criminalise those who lose the energy required for the emotional labour of self suppression.

Hostility to a hostile environment is a valid reaction, rage, fury, anger, resentment, wrath, lust, hate, envy, these are all valid parts of the humen experience. The trouble is when people say "we want you to express your emotions more" they mean sadness and guilt, maybe with a bit of crying, not the inconvenient emotions they don't like.

They fear us, that's why they put so many of us in cages. And they have little to no comprehension of the emotion labour required to interact with their sterile and restrictive world.

jacobspartan1992 · 2023-12-26T11:36:31+00:00

Over the course of the last decade I have become my problems. What started as social awkwardness and anxiety ballooned into 10 years of unemployment, social faux-pas, broken relationships and public humiliation. There isn't really any path towards resolution now, I've simply accepted that most people operate on assumptions that offer me no chances.

A lot of my issues were basically down to being undiagnosed autistic until I was 28. A man, a demographic no one cares about, with autism, a condition no one cares for. That explains it. And all the wretched stereotypes and prejudices.

Johntoreno · 2023-12-26T14:25:17+00:00

Men should open up about their problems and show more emotion

The problem is that we did and we got abused for it. How do you convince someone to touch a stove after they've been burnt 100 times before?? You don't convince them by saying "just do it", you turn off the stove and remove all the gas pipes to reassure that there is absolutely NO Way for you to get burnt again.

Its just a virtue signal, they don't want to help Men, they just want the brownie points of being pro-male without doing anything. Because to really help men is to change how society treats men and that's hard work, telling men to "show emotions" is easy. Or in other words, they're not turning off the gas supply to stove and are just repeating "its okay to touch the stove, its okay to touch the stove".

BKEnjoyerV2 · 2023-12-26T23:54:17+00:00

This phenomenon becomes even worse when it’s applied to romance/dating- it’s always “open up” but “women are not therapists or safe people for disaffected men”

Delicious-Tea-6718 · 2023-12-26T10:46:50+00:00

Also manbaby a man that shows his feelings as much as your average woman will be called a man baby who needs to grow up and take some responsibility 😉

Major_Constant_6014 · 2023-12-26T09:34:03+00:00

It's not bad advice, as long as the person you're opening up to is your partner and is emotionally mature enough to handle it (frequently this is not the case)

Many women think that because they talk about their problems with their friends all the time that they are somehow like counsellors. But then when their male partner truly opens up to them they aren't able to handle it and the response ends up being either: a.fear b. mockery c. dismissal and downplaying in order to deal with it. d. Anger

I've seen this a lot in many relationships with women in the past as well as what my male friends have said about their partners. Luckily I'm with someone who doesn't do a. through to d. now.

Although, the other possibility is that narcissists and manipulators can use it against you once you've opened up, that's a well known tactic. And many of those kinds of people like to hide behind groups such as religious groups, or sometimes feminism - almost any group actually.

It's not so much opening up that is the problem, it's who you're doing it to.

Buckowski66 · 2023-12-26T15:19:48+00:00

Men shouldn’t base how they live their lives according to feminism anymore then women should base their lives on the edicts of traditional masculine ideals. Anyone with an agenda to shame, reduce or control you as a human being is not for you as a human being.

hendrixski · 2023-12-27T12:52:03+00:00

Ironically the reason that many men don't share emotions is because women find emotional men to be unattractive. So when faced between dying alone and unloved or bottling up ones feelings, the choice is clear.

random_sm · 2023-12-26T21:11:34+00:00

Men will open up when society will be willing to listen and act.

BloomingBrains · 2023-12-27T08:09:11+00:00

You hear it ad-nauseam from feminism: men are only hostile because they do not open about their problems.

In the logic of feminism, it's so incredibly hostile to suppress your emotions (even though hostility itself is an emotion), but the people attacking men and making them want to protect their emotions in the first place? Nope, not hostile at all.

Describing men protecting their emotions as hostility is like describing abuse victims being mistrustful of others as abuse.

Typically, if people are protecting themselves from something, there is usually a good fucking reason.

Delicious-Tea-6718 · 2023-12-26T10:43:40+00:00

I've been saying this for years it's wonderful that it's getting said aloud like this and creates discussion.

Jeez LWMA needs to be a youtube channel, I personally wouldn't be infront of the camera but I'll gladly do the editing and other cowardly behind the scenes thing.

(Sorry I'm getting a degree in a new field now and I like to still have job prospects if the channel blows up)

Om I went twenty miles from the topic sorry!! 🤣

CatacombsRave · 2023-12-27T11:55:28+00:00

The thing is, we do open up. We just don’t usually open up to women because of their tendency to not really care and to use our feelings against us in the future.

ArmchairDesease · 2023-12-26T11:52:42+00:00

Thing is many of our problems stem from issues we perceive in the society we live in.

And you can be sure feminists don't want to hear about THOSE problems.

MAVP1234 · 2023-12-26T08:52:22+00:00

Feminism (1st wave) was all about liberation from gender roles and that included men and women. However, feminism is and always has been, a failed social movement. Women lib types (feminists) decided very early on to abandon the male side of gender liberation equation. And they shifted their focus to the liberation of women only. They also realised that women's liberation needed to be in contrast to some other force. How can we know cold if we do not have hot, light if we do not have the dark, health if we do not know sickness. Thus they began to attack men, focus on men and used men to leverage their own causes. Rather than looking at the synergy between the sexes they focused on the differences and demanded equality. However, over 7 decades they have derided and attacked and diminished the role of masculinity in society. In 2023, being a cis white male is like the worst of the worst. And its acceptable to treat these men as scum. If you were born in the 1960s and 1970s and been paying attention, as a white man your identify has been demoloished for the durtion of your your entire life. Men need an outlet, but they will not find it in a female feminsit counseller or psychologist because men ARE (according to these helpers) the problem. Men in my opinon need to seek out support and help from other men, and not organistaions that claim to be for men because they are funded by the government and the government has an anti-male agenda etc. Avoid relationships australia, mens line these are underpinned by feminsist ideology. If you are for mens rights, you will be labelled as angry, outdated and bitter and unable to "accept" the loss of patriarchal power (BULLSHIT). Its a narrative they love to create. Its all crap. Guess what, men have rights too and its ok to defend your rights as a man and father in this world. Remember, women generally hate men, most think we are uneccesary and would be happy for us to be wiped from the earth. e.g Clemintine Ford, Valarie Solanas et al. Unless youre in the 1% then youre the best kind of man.

Tevorino · 2023-12-28T01:11:59+00:00

I think a large part of the problem here is that when a person speaks about their own problems as an individual, or the problems of their immediate family, it tends to be perceived as "whining". The Oxford English Dictionary defines this sense of "whining" as "complaining in a feeble or petulant" way, so it makes sense that complaining about the problems of a group of people that includes the speaker, the speaker is going to come across as "feeble" since they lack the power to solve their own problems. If the speaker is demanding that others change their behaviour to accommodate this group, and by extension the speaker, then it makes sense that the speaker will also come across as "petulant".

While this should apply equally to both men and women who do this, there seems to be a double standard where women are less likely to be dismissed as "whiners" when making the same kinds of complaints. If I try to speculate about what causes this standard to exist, all I can consider is that when a man, or a woman to whom I am not more than marginally attracted (i.e. most women), engages in what I consider to be whining, it causes me to think less of them and have less interest in being around them. If a woman, to whom I am seriously attracted, does the same thing, I still think less of her, yet I will tolerate her whining if I'm single and have a realistic chance of sleeping with her. Even though I am not currently single, I still find myself being more inclined to let such women get away with whining like that, even though I would think better of them if they didn't do that. At some level, I still want such women to have favourable attitudes towards me, even though I am in a happy relationship.

The linked video clip illustrates another important dimension of this. The man is not directly accused of being a "whiner", yet the audience laughs at his stories of being abused by his partner. The host does an admirable job of trying to appeal to a basic sense of human decency in the audience by pointing out that they probably wouldn't find it funny if it were a woman experiencing these same things, yet I don't think they were laughing at the abuse itself. Rather, they seem to be laughing at the idea that a woman would ever do this to a man (i.e. they think women are morally superior to men and that the idea a woman would do something like this is laughable), and/or they think that an ideal man is sufficiently strong, capable, aggressive, and even violent, to be able to easily overcome any attempt by a woman to do such a thing, even if that woman is physically larger than him (the video doesn't show him and his partner side-by-side, but she does look like she is somewhat bigger and stronger than him). Basically, this is male hyperagency and female hypoagency at work, and these concepts, when internalised, make the idea of a man being the victim of physical abuse, at the hands of a woman, hilarious. Nevermind the fact that if he had used violent force to overcome what he says his partner did, he would most likely have gone to jail while his partner would probably be seen as the victim, even if she were to admit to the police that she initiated the violence (look at the definition of "dominant aggressor" in this official police policy). Basically a man, who is faced with violence, can either fight back and face possible criminal prosecution and demonisation as a result, or not fight back and be seen as a "wimp" who is worthy of mockery. Demonisation or derision: take your pick (I choose derision).

Any advice that men should open up about their problems, that fails to acknowledge and address this double standard, is beneath consideration.

Motanul_Negru · 2024-01-01T17:31:15+00:00

Men should absolutely never show vulnerability to feminists, that's just asking for it at this point

WinningAndSpinnning · 2023-12-28T23:32:04+00:00

I went and read the comments on mens rights sub and I understand why mens rights is seen as misogyny. I don’t understand how anyone rational wouldn’t think that reading those peoples comments.

zoonose99 · 2023-12-27T00:06:23+00:00

I’m old enough to remember when MRA was about parity in family custody cases, educational opportunities, and safe working conditions. This culture war bs has us so twisted up that men unironically think therapy is a feminist plot, and who benefits from that? Maybe therapy is unlikely to fix anything, but treating your own emotional development like a venomous snake guaranteed won’t.

KnifeWieldingRoomba · 2024-01-03T00:47:12+00:00

Common misunderstanding. "Men should open up about their problems and show more emotion so we can hurt and humiliate them more easily" is what they mean to say.

Title	"Men should open up about their problems and show more emotion" is disingenuous and downright awful advice.
Author	Dashing2025
Upvotes	188
Comments	40
Date	December 25, 2023 3:54 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/18ql6h1/men_should_open_up_about_their_problems_and_show/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/men-should-open-up-about-their-problems-and-show.1241512 https://theredarchive.com/post/1241512

Comments