This piece is inspired by an article (not a full answer to it) published in the New York Times on April 4th, 2016. It’s written by Andrew Reiner and entitled “Teaching men to be emotionally honest”. You’ll find the original article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/education/edlife/teaching-men-to-be-emotionally-honest.html?_r=1
So, this article gives me mixed feelings. It’s seems to be written by a feminist-indoctrinated man who has started seeing cracks on the feminist wall, and makes a few interesting remarks, although he generally sticks to the narrative. I’ll give you a few thoughts here:
The article basically makes a case against the emotionally crippled men in our societies, describing how we are taught from an early age to swallow our feelings and how bad that is for everybody. It draws from Michael Kimmel and explains the toxicity of the “Bro Code” in which our young men are developing.
The author wants men to cry more, to express their sadness, their frustration, because he considers that to be a desirable personality trait for all people, including men. He notes how men are falling behind girls in education, but he blames it on this “male code” that compels every boy to be more brutish than the guy next to him, in order to feel validated by his peers. He also notes that there are no resources focused on men in campuses, but he vaguely blames that fact on “men and women alike”, who challenge and protest the need for those resources. He doesn’t name feminism, the main detractor of men’s issues in college.
To sum up, the article tells us that men need to change. “It’s for their own good and for the good of the society”, the author tells us. Let’s go and share some thoughts on it:
1: The author says that men need to be more emotional. If that is so, it must mean that women are already “emotional enough”. It logically follows that men need to be more like women. This only proves that he considers women to be the “default” in terms of emotions, and that men need to look more like them. “To be emotionally honest”, as Hannah Wallen put it a while ago, actually means “to be more feminine”. The author feels that emotionality, open and uncontrolled emotionality by means of crying (in particular) is a good and desirable trait for everybody. If he had read a bit of Tom Golden, for example, or even if he had just paid close attention to the men around him, he would know that men are deeply emotional, but they express it in their own way. Men tend to express feelings indirectly and through action. They don’t usually meet just to talk about their feelings and cry on each other’s shoulders. The usually meet to play football, go fishing, or just play some video games, and while they are doing that, they will often start talking. At the same time, they are bonding; through cooperation and friendly agonistic competition. That’s how men usually relate to each other. You won’t hear our deepest thoughts if you force us to look into your eyes and ask us directly. The author seems to believe that men are ashamed to feel emotions; that they are forbidden to express them, that they constantly wear a mask. He can’t grasp that men DO feel and DO express their feelings, they just do it DIFFERENTLY. And that’s OK. Considering that anyone who does not react to situations like you do is emotionally crippled is just a self-centered way of thinking.
2: The author puts no value whatsoever in stoicism, the concept of controlling and mastering your own emotions, in letting you channel your feelings in a certain way, in order not to be driven by them. Overcoming pain and fear means nothing for him; he wants people to cry and complain. But he doesn’t tell us that crying and complaining have never brought anything to men, anything but scorn. And it’s not a “bro code” thing: women enforce this as strongly as men. The author doesn’t understand that men are powerfully attracted to women, to such an extent that they will do whatever they want them to do, or to look like. If all women suddenly felt honestly attracted to emotional men, tomorrow we would see flocks of red-eyed, sobbing men. But women are not naturally attracted to complaining, crying men. So men compete between each other in order to perform the best they can, according to women’s rules. Sexual selection works in most species (including ours) through male competition and female choice. That’s nature. Pretending that it’s “a male thing” is just cowardly.
3: The author also mentions male underperformance in education, but he blames it on “society’s norms about masculinity”. As we see, no mention of affirmative action in favor of girls, no mention of the changes in the education system to make it more suited for female students. It’s just a male thing, and we need to take care of it. We need no help, we just need to man up and cry a bit more (as crazy as it may sound). Although the surface of the article seems to be in favor of “men as victims”, the author is putting the responsibility solely on men’s shoulders. So it’s actually “men as victims of a few things they created themselves”. Not cool. He doesn’t take into account the obvious influence of mainstream feminist thinking in education. If we agree that men are oppressive, evil and worthless beings, then why should we allocate any resources for their specific education? Why would we care about role models for them, if they are inherently broken, a lost cause? In such a desolate environment of carelessness and contempt, it’s just natural that boys and young men resort to more primitive/basic/tribal versions of brotherhood-bonding. That is a phenomenon that is going to happen no matter what we do, it’s the way we are wired. Whose fault is it that young men turn to crime, gang activity, binge drinking, video games pick-up artistry and the hookup culture (activities listed in the article) in order to find validation from other men? Is it their own fault, because masculinity is toxic? Or could it be that we have stripped them out of every other system of validation?
4: So men need to change and be emotional, but they somehow still have to take care of the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks in society. They need to change and be emotional, but they somehow still need to be dominant in order for women to feel attracted to them. They need to change and stop their sassy and flirtatious attitude towards women, but they are still expected to initiate contact with them. That is virtually a law in male-female interaction: women give clues, but it’s up to men to risk losing face.
5: Why should we teach men to be emotionally honest, if we disregard and mock their issues anyway? As one commenter of the article wrote: “Men decide not to show their feelings as soon as they see how they are treated by everybody”. What good is it to men to cry in public, if they will still have no domestic violence shelters, no male-oriented grants (thank God for Milo and Margaret!), if they will still be fucked over in family courts? That is what pisses me off the most in this article: it complains and demands and shows disgust for inappropriate male behavior, but it does it from a safe place, and it feels no need whatsoever to look at the bigger male picture. It complains about the smoke stains on the walls and wants them cleaned off, but doesn’t ask who lit the fire in the first place.
El Ratel ha presenciado el auge de las estupideces políticamente correcta, el lenguaje inclusivo y la ideología feminista en su país natal, España. Tras entrar en contacto con las ideas del Movimiento por los Derechos del Hombre y el antifeminismo, sus intentos por hablar de ello fueron recibidos con desdén y desprecio. Por eso, tomó la decisión de adoptar una identidad secreta y hacer lo que mejor se le da: difundir información a través de la escritura y la traducción.
- Los maricas están oficialmente fuera (del bando progresista) - November 16, 2016
- Sword and Glory – A game about male disposability - November 15, 2016
- Guía para dummies para que las adolescentes respeten a los chicos - November 14, 2016
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I was going to make a video about this – I don’t know if I will be able to get to it done or not – I was going to call it “Male Tears” Like Alison, I suffer from Anxiety also. I can’t make a video unless I’m all by myself and I’m having a problem with privacy in my current situation. Anyways: I’m not a very manly man. I have long hair, I don’t like sports. I’m not into Ooh-Rah stuff. But I am a man and like most men, I DON’T CRY. I think this needs to be talked about. There is nothing WRONG WITH ME. For many years I thought something was wrong with me because I don’t cry. Turns out that most men do not cry. Some men do, but most men don’t. Just like, some men have hair on their chest and some men don’t, it’s normal. We are not more of a man if we have hair on our chest and we’re not more beautiful if we don’t. Most men, when we reach puberty, something turns itself off so that when we feel emotions our tear ducts don’t react. In the Navy you live in tight quarters with others. If one of us was to cry, we would all know it. There was one guy who cried at the drop of a hat. But most of us didn’t. If we don’t cry, we’re not less of a human, we still feel things, we just don’t show it, it’s like a built in defense mechanism that makes us look tough to others, but we are just as weak inside as women. We feel things just like they do. Men who cry are not healthier mentally or physically, they’re just different. The guy that cried all the time, we protected him. And me, I’m smaller than most men, refused to go to boy scouts when I was a boy and want nothing to do with sports. People just think of me as a deep thinker and I was always protected as well. Trust me, on this issue, the perception and the reality is very far apart. I’ve seen big giant tough guys break down and cry and I’ve seen little men beat up big guys. There was one guy who used to pick on me all the time, he was discharged before me. When he got his discharge papers and I would not be in trouble for fighting him. I said to him, “You got your discharge papers, good, let me show you how little I am.” I jumped on him, took him down and started punching him, and to my surprise he would not fight back, puzzled, I just let him go. So in reality, he was the small guy but made himself big by always picking on me. Things are not always as they seem. People are people and we’re all different and different is good. And those people who want to put us all into cookie cutter shapes. If we don’t fit the mold we don’t meet their expectations. They make up all kinds of BS to convince us, Fuck-em. In reality, they are the small ones, the weak ones. They attempt to be strong by gaining power over us. We just keep being us and just ignore them and we don’t give them the power.
“Turns out that most men do not cry. Some men do, but most men don’t.”
My grandmother never cried in front of me or anyone else that I can think of. When she got word that her brother had died, she went off into the other part of the house to have a moment, as if it were something to go to the bathroom for. The other women in my family all treated crying like any other biological function – no big deal, we all cry, get through and carry on.
when are you going to stop LYING to the public and finally debate manhood academy, you lying piece of shit karen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajIn4o331w
https://youtu.be/BY13wp1GZm4 -Some men don’t cry, some men cry some and other men cry all the time. It don’t mean nothing. We’re all human, people are people. All people, men and women are soft on the inside.
My hair looks awful.
It works though. Don’t be hard on yourself. You look good in that shot.
“2: The author puts no value whatsoever in stoicism, the concept of controlling and mastering your own emotions, in letting you channel your feelings in a certain way, in order not to be driven by them. Overcoming pain and fear means nothing for him; he wants people to cry and complain”
This gets interpreted as gendered in our deformed culture, but it wasn’t always so: https://www.honeybadgerbrigade.com/2015/12/15/stoicism-is-a-feminine-virtue/
Domestic cats retain the baby-talk of the wildcat and add the language adult wildcats use.
this gives them a larger vocabulary than some of the higher primates.
You may be talking about the same thing with the rise of the girly girl and princess culture.
The Virgin Mary could be another example of stoic femininity, at least in examples like Michelangelo’s Pieta, in contrast to Luis de Morales’ portrayals.
Warren Farrell’s turn from feminism was from his men’s groups where he was teaching men to live in the Brave New World of feminism. One of them finally got the point across to him that he showed a pattern. He wanted the men to open up about their feelings. When those feelings included resentments he bullied and ridiculed them out of that talk. They clammed up. Then he criticized them for stonewalling. He finally saw the pattern.
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I saw a funny take on this in a 1980s comedy sketch. A guy swaggers up near a couple dames at a singles bar and demands “Whisky! That’s a man’s drink.” The babes move off.
“Hey” says the bartender, “Don’t you know that fake macho bit is out? Fake sensitivity is in“, and hands him a book on the subject promising that by reading it, “..in 6 weeks you’ll be laying pipe like Alan Alda.” The last scene is the scoresman at the bar weeping to a woman abut a painful experience and her taking him back to her apartment for some comforting. The bartender breaks the 4th wall and makes a mail order sales pitch for the book.
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Both of these incidents were from the 1980s and 1990s. . Andrew Reiner is at least behind the times. (But I suspect something more devious.)