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Exposing vulnerability?

savingmatilda

November 28, 2018

9 upvotes

/r/MensRights

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Post Information

Title	Exposing vulnerability?
Author	savingmatilda
Upvotes	9
Comments	5
Date	November 28, 2018 11:36 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/a15flc/exposing_vulnerability/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/exposing-vulnerability.889268 https://theredarchive.com/post/889268

Comments

[–]Hadashi_blacksky 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]MFXS21 point 7 years ago [recovered] | Copy Link

[–]VoxVirilis 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]savingmatilda[S] 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]VoxVirilis 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

I see from your post history English isn't your first language. "Objectivist" has a specific connotation in English as applying to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I assume you didn't intend to invoke that as the counter-viewpoint of social constructionism seeing as Rand's work tends to focus on politics & economics and social constructionism is found in psychology & sociology.

At the risk of over-simplifying, I understand social constructionism to be that school of thought within the aforementioned disciplines that ignores or disregards biological and evolutionary factors relating to human behavior. I don't know of a specific label for not excluding those factors. Incorporating biological and evolutionary factors are, in my mind, necessary for understanding this vulnerability issue you raise.

How do gender expectations influence the judgement of exposing feelings, imperfections or vulnerability?

"Expectations" is the operative word here that leads me to see social constructionist thinking behind the question. It seems to presume that society's expectations of men are the primary driver or cause of men's exposing of vulnerability (or lack thereof). This is wrong. Mass media is constantly spewing the virtues of male vulnerability. "Open up", "share your feelings", "talk about it"; men are bombarded with this.

But it isn't "expectations" that drive men's behavior, it's experience. If a man follows the script and does what he's told to do by society, what happens to him? People (women, mostly) use his vulnerability as a weapon against him. If he is vulnerable with an intimate partner it makes him less sexually desirable to that partner. (These phenomenon are caused primarily by evolutionary factors) So, over time a man learns that, in spite of society's expectation of vulnerability from him, his vulnerability is a liability. It doesn't attract women and it will be used against him.

Is it more acceptable for women?

Biology and evolution dictate that a woman is more valuable to a tribe/culture/society/etc. than a man. A simple thought experiment will illustrate. Imagine two tribes nearly wiped out by an illness. The survivors of one tribe consist of 10 men and 1 woman. All that remains of the other tribe is 10 women and 1 man. The tribe with more women will be able to produce more children and in a generation or two conquer the other tribe.

Because women are more valuable to a society, society is more concerned with the well-being of any given woman than it is with the well-being of any given man.

This would lead to thinking it is more acceptable for women. A counterpoint might be that women weaponize each other's vulnerability as much as they weaponize men's. I'm not a woman, I can't speak to that.

Can men do such things without being humiliated or feeling ashamed?

Throughout human history, men and women spent drastically less time in each other's company. The men went out and hunted the mammoths and the women tended the camp. This meant that men built bonds with each other much stronger than we tend to see among men today. Within those deep friendship groups men could be vulnerable with one another without that vulnerability coming back to bite them. That's mostly gone today as modern society saw fit to encourage women to invade traditionally male-only spaces. (women in the military, girls in the boy scouts, shut down gentlemen's clubs, etc.)

Can men do such things without being humiliated or ashamed? Only in the company of a close-knit group of other men. But good luck finding that in this day and age.