skaldish, who is a transman, shared an interesting perspective on being male. Cisgender men most likely do not even realize this is happening since it’s all they have know in their life:
Source: skaldish
What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments below! (This site is LGBTQ+ friendly. We will not tolerate any hate speech, discrimination, or bigotry in the comments. Thank you.)
this was really interesting, thank you
This is pretty much why men invented the philosophy of Stoicism: this problem cannot be solved so we might as well learn to deal with it in a calm manner.
Did we read the same thing? One of the obvious solutions is dealing with creepy men and predatory behavior towards women as it also affect other men, the other is normalizing male friendship and openness.
Yea good luck with that… can you affect an entire gender of a species? can you ask women to ‘stop all women from cheating’ per say? just one of those things you can talk about, like going for a run on the moon without technology… sooner people realise this the better..
Good luck with that. Can you or anyone affect an entire gender of a species? Can you stop all women cheating, for example? its just one of those things that is speakable but ultimately futile, like talking about going for a run on the moon with no technology. Sooner people realise this the better..
I have learned to be afraid of other men and have trouble relating to the machismo that they express to point where they may as well be another species. In my youth I would have said I was bi but violence and rape has turned me very much away from expressing myself as such.
Some women are like that to me and some aren’t(and I’m not including family or ones I’m already friends with), so it’s clearly not a universal thing. I think it’s really just how they perceive the man in question. Also, I’m pretty sure men can be friends just fine nowadays, like they were before the 20th century, it’s just the ones who’ve been brought up thinking it’s weak or gay, who aren’t able to.
What utter garbage and a total over simplification and mis-understood interactions leading to wild and derogatory assumptions. still think you are analysing with the female brain with no real understanding of actual male thoughts. Massive general over simplification. Easy to just insult and project a ‘perceived lack’ instead of understanding the actual happenings. Thats what i find most sad about this.
As a straight white-cis-man, I see absolutely nothing here that’s invalid.
This is stupid. The experience they have isn’t male. It’s a trans experience. They probably don’t feel camaraderie from other men because they aren’t perceived as male. They don’t behave as a male because they don’t know how. They are having a TRANS experience of isolation from men they will never understand. None of what they said feels accurate to the male experience and just sounds like bitterness over lack of acceptance.
For those saying that this experience is off because they’re trans, I’m a white-straight-cis man, and there’s nothing invalid here. By every measure, I should be more than welcome in male circles. If this is what you call camaraderie you can keep it. I’m going to hang out with the trans-dude.
There’s no denying that some cultures teach boys to be tough. And part of that is not being emotionally vulnerable. Add in a culturally cultivated fear of appearing homosexual, where boys and men won’t tell each other they love them or casually exhibit a level of openness that could be confused for it, at least not on the scale that women do.
I think this contributes to the “friendzone” misunderstanding as well. If a man is taught that they need to be tough, and the only can let down their guard around their significant other, then being emotionally available with a woman is effectively putting her in that role. While among women, it’s much more common to be emotionally available to each other, so it’s just seen as a sign of friendship. So a man and a woman who are platonically emotionally available and supportive feels like a normal friendship to the woman, and a proto-relationship to those men. They may even resent that they did the “work” of emotional support without the “payoff” of a relationship or physical intimacy.
This strikes me as very true, especially among some cultures of men. And those cultures are the ones most likely to have an emotional response and deny it, because they have not frame of reference to recognize that truth.