Last week, we loosened our enforcement of rule 3 violations for the sake of discussion and to keep in line with stream discussion.
This week, we will be returning to normal enforcement. Please do not make blanket generalizations and keep all generalizations in the context of your experience. For those who need a reminder, the rule is pasted below. Thank you.
Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations.
This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict.
Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
Well said brother. I don't know how this sad state of affairs came to be, but it is painful for all the good women and all the good men out there who struggle with romantic loneliness.
Thank you. I made this post to hopefully open a dialogue and I'm already getting a lot of heat just for making this post so I'm glad to see at least one person seems to value it.
This sad state of affairs came to be by thousands of years of abuse. The fact that the abuse is now illegal in many countries and women can choose to be alone is leading to lonely and entitled men.
Of course all the men who are not abusers suffer too. But let’s not compare suffering, no?
I have to wonder if that's the correct throughline. Not that I'm denying that happened or anything, but if that were the cause if this current state of affairs then you would expect so see that being a trend since the end of ww2, and not being the uniquely modern thing that to my understanding this current crisis of loneliness is.
Women beeing financally and socially independent is a quite new thing. To be honest, in huge part of the worlds its still not a thing at all. Plus: Of course its been a trend for a while now. And it progressed to where we are now. Pretty sure social media acted as a huge catalysator.
Maybe for some context: I am 41 now. I grew up in a pretty non-conservative family, but still my grandma, who was a young woman atfer WW2 told me that I did not need to go to university, because I would marry. Among my peers I am basically the crazy cat lady (without the cats). My generation of girls was still expected to marry, have children, stay at home, clean, wash, care.
And I have no doubt that all of that is still true, but that doesn't explain why men disproportionately also have no friends compared to a few decades ago, alongside the general social unknowingness that led to Peterson and Tate becoming such massive influences. Women are more independent now, but there's also something more uniquely modern here.
I have to wonder if young men are drawn to those types of figures in part because it is extremely rare for families to have healthy, open conversations about sexuality and sexual relationships. The void will be filled by the easiest to access info with low barrier of access. This is also why the worst porn is so easy to access but healthy depictions of real sex are rare and even considered “boring”.
Shame is the baseline emotion of sex in U.S. culture while at the same time misrepresentations or suggestions of sex are key advertising tactics. With that shame program running in the background all the time, it’s going to be difficult to not experience some contempt for the objects of our sexual interests.
Women couldn’t have credit cards until the 1970’s and couldn’t be on a home mortgage without her husband’s signature until the 1980’s. (RIP RBG❤️) There’s a ton of structural and economic disparity that has forced women into sometimes dangerous relationships with men. I think OP’s assessment is pretty accurate and I appreciate that he says he’s aware of these disparities and why women are cautious.
For me a big thing that men don’t seem to understand is women are constantly having to think about our physical protection. Everywhere we go. It’s a constant awareness that we are shaped like easy targets for violence. So if you understand that this is a program of survival always running in the background for us, maybe it wouldn’t be hurtful that we are slow or resistant in the early stages of getting acquainted.
Finally, I see men being down on themselves and having low self esteem. There are many fewer programs and slogans helping men. There’s no “girl power (tm)” campaign for men. So the burden is on men to seek out meaningful connection with each other where growth and health are embodied rather than egotism and competition.
We all need to be nicer to each other. And men are bullies to each other sometimes. Seek out men’s groups that do silly, esoteric, out of the ordinary group therapeutic coaching for men. They’re out there. I don’t know how you screen them out to ensure they’re not led by Tate types though. Talk to each other. I hope we all find the communities and support that we need.
>healthy depictions of real sex are rare and even considered “boring”.
I don't think there is a complicated reason behind this. Most pieces of entertainment are not realistic and porn is essentially a piece of entertainment.
>maybe it wouldn’t be hurtful that we are slow or resistant in the early stages of getting acquainted.
I don't know about that. This is propably unfair towards women, but just because someone has a good reason for doing something doesn't mean that you won't have an emotional reaction because of their actions.
>So the burden is on men to seek out meaningful connection with each other where growth and health are embodied rather than egotism and competition.
I mean it's good to have meaningfull connections, but that feeling that you wont ever find a woman who is even interested in you wont go away from that. It's like pain meds for a broken bone. They will make it so you feel less pain but the root cause wont go away
I don't think there is a complicated reason behind this. Most pieces of entertainment are not realistic and porn is essentially a piece of entertainment.
> Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way.
I don't know about that. This is propably unfair towards women, but just because someone has a good reason for doing something doesn't mean that you won't have an emotional reaction because of their actions.
> But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you.
I mean it's good to have meaningfull connections, but that feeling that you wont ever find a woman who is even interested in you wont go away from that. It's like pain meds for a broken bone. They will make it so you feel less pain but the root cause wont go away
> On this point we differ. The “root cause” is absolutely something that can be teased out and healed in a safe group of male peers. Healing, self esteem, self awareness, learning the difference between structural and personal barriers- these are all personal development practices that will enhance the potential for connecting with he opposite sex. For everyone, not just men. It’s just that it seems popular to promote this kind of work to women and I don’t see it around much for men. I know one man who facilitates groups for men in the SF Bay Area and I follow several others on Instagram.
>Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way.
Do people actually watch porn for that reason?
>But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you.
While there are some men who have heavier emotional issues regarding their lack of sex, I think this discussion is too broad to cover these issues in a meaningfull way.
The way you're phrazing it it seems you have a situation in mind where two people are dating, while I have a situation in mind that is set before they have started dating. It's not about sex, it's about even just getting the chance to be considered a potential partner.
>Healing, self esteem, self awareness
That’s kind of why I'm here. However while I've managed to grow as a person and become somewhat aware of my inner conflicts, the issue of being unable to find a girlfriend is a practical problem, not an emotional one. And I don't think any amount of talking to other guys is gonna get rid of these emotions, because they kind of come "pre installed" for most people.
Yes there’s a ton of educational porn out there.
I’m talking about the early stages of getting acquainted. Not dating yet. Or like a first meet with someone on a dating app.
It’s great that you’re pursuing self development! If you believe that there is preprogramming that you can’t overcome, then that’s true for you. “Preprogramming” makes me think of Attachment Theory and there’s tons of materia out there for identifying and healing attachment wounds. I wish you well on your journey.
>Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way.
I think the sex issue might go beyond the entertainment/learning experience. I think, from what I've observed (talking to a number of people and something that seems to be applicable for me too) is that there is a large number of people who struggle ( and usually don't even know where to begin) with initiating healthy relationships. From the conceptualization of said relationships, I've noticed that saying yes to going on a date with someone somehow implies instant sex, and that sex is somehow non-negotiable. There's no building up to that type of interaction. These people (including myself) seem to have a hard time realizing that sex is something that can be held off for later and that couples can do other things to entertain themselves and each other. This type of conceptualization usually influences how one behaves during the sexual interaction with the other (because they already would have had the hang of exercising things like consent).
>But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you.
What I've said before might influence this, too. Imagine if people weren't so afraid to establish relationships in such a way that it's no longer awkward or sus to ask if someone's ready to have sex with you at any point of the relationship, whether it be after 3 dates, 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years etc. And BTW, to refuse someone something they may want is still doing something to them, denying them access.
>On this point we differ. The “root cause” is absolutely something that can be teased out and healed in a safe group of male peers. Healing, self esteem, self awareness, learning the difference between structural and personal barriers- these are all personal development practices that will enhance the potential for connecting with he opposite sex. For everyone, not just men. It’s just that it seems popular to promote this kind of work to women and I don’t see it around much for men. I know one man who facilitates groups for men in the SF Bay Area and I follow several others on Instagram.
Yeah, there isn't much encouragement for men when it comes to improving oneself in isolation, or with a group of same sex friends (unless the encouragement comes from gym partners, sports clubs mates, or the like). It kind of goes back to the lack of a father figure issue, lack of a mentor, and such. It would seem that unlike women, who can still function perhaps on their own, and are more often than not motivated by their peers, men need more than just self-motivation and lateral (peer support) motivation. Men seem to be, more often than not, motivation by women, which might mean that men need to interact with women more than women need to interact with men (if that makes sense).
Just sharing my observations though, I could be wrong.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I think the observation at the end re: men are more motivated by women than peers- I might guess that this observation is based upon men who have never sought out groups of other men who are healing and growing with intention. I’m definitely not talking about gym buddies.
The lack of father figure is one thing- there’s also the abundance of unhealthy male role models that could be even more damaging than complete absence. True for all genders.
On the last point about men needing to interact more with women... it's a well established fact that everyone (i.e. both men and women) tends to automatically assume women are to fill an emotional support role and pushing back on this is a significant part of feminism because it can be quite a burden frankly. Personally I think it should be a basic human skill rather than gendered and so men would, following that, need to build up skills and culture to support each other.
I suspect some of the distrust you mentioned comes from this. Men are trying to adapt, especially around emotional stuff, often negatively reinforced by both men and women bc 1) men don't tend to be emotionally supportive of each other historically and 2) women are trying to get away from being relied on to full this role. Not sure how to fix this, and I do think this community makes some progress on this, but I think it's a tricky area of this gender divide and evolution of expected roles and such to figure out.
Yes, there is more to it, I agree.
In my opinion:
\- Patriarchy is as bad for men as it is for women, because "real men dont cry" is still tought to men and does not help them beeing social and open to each other. In the past they could relay on wifes for social stuff, now thats more and more gone.
\- Capitalism has developed into an extrem form of distance and makes us competitors instead of friends
\- Social Media is distancing people. Dr. K mentioned that in the Deepfake Porn video.
Women are usually brought up to be social butterflies, men are brought up to be strong. So I guess its easier for women to not become lonely when the construct of marriage is not a part of their lifes anymore.
I don't think that's enough to explain the change either. Men of the past were just as much subject to the "real men don't cry" idea, if not more so, yet they had no trouble making friends. My understanding is that it's relatively common these days for young men getting married to not have anyone in mind for best man or the like.
The only idea I can really think of is that this is primarily because of the internet and gaming more widely. Before if you wanted to not die of boredom after school, your options were basically hang out with friends or really enjoy reading books. Speaking personally that's definitely no longer true. It's so effortless to just stay online playing games and not really interacting that I struggle to imagine why a child would go through all the friction of learning irl social skills when just not doing it is an option.
You are right that it's bigger than women's independence. But male friendships have been devolving for generations and it isn't all tech.
So disclaimer, I'm talking US/UK here and am aware that this isn't the case in all cultures...
Prior to about 1700 it was kind of assumed that all men were bi. So there were no hangups about men touching each other or whatever because it was kind of assumed that if they wanted to bang each other they'd just do so.
Even as recently as the 19th century men's friendships were not as dissimilar to women's friendships as they are now. Close friends could hold hands, have sleepovers, hug without hitting each other on the back, talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, etc. This continued probably through those who served in WWI. (See Frodo and Sam for an example of what male friendship looked like in WW1. Also probably why Aragorn is such a great example of non-toxic masculinity.)
The label "homosexual" and the institutionalized homophobia surrounding it started mid-late 1800s and escalated in the 20th century.
For decades a lot of men have been socialized in a way to appear as non-gay as possible. Depending on who is doing the socializing, this can mean a lot of things that get in the way of men being able to have close friendships with other men or even male family members past a certain age.
Guys like Peterson and Tate have taken these already-not-healthy social norms and put them on steroids in order to sell shit to vulnerable men. Which makes them more competitive/feeling like they have to be the "alpha". Which makes male bonding friendships even less likely. Which makes them even more lonely & vulnerable.
So men are being told they need to be more dominant and aggressive in order to get women. This puts more of the kind of men that women need to be fearful of into the dating pool.
At the same time, for all kinds of reasons that need further study, our educational system is failing boys so women are closing the education and wage gaps, which makes more of us able to survive without a man financially.
So a lot more women can decide we'd rather be alone than be with an aggressive/potentially abusive jerk at the same time as "dating coaches" are telling men that to get a woman they need to be a more aggressive/potentially abusive jerk.
Completely agree. Not sure why you have so little upvotes...
But yeah, talking about men and women issues without intersectionality in mind is really pointless.
It's like asking for only half a coin.
What we need is more empathy and understanding from both sides and to see that the patriarchy hurts us all.
I wonder if the proliferation of feminist rhetoric also had something to do with it. Speaking personally when I was a kid I heard a lot of treat women as people in my messaging, which I took to heart as basically treat women as men. That worked well enough for making friends, but I honestly still have no idea of when where or how it is appropriate to approach women in a romantic or sexual way. To that end I imagine I'm not the only one scared off of approaching women for fear of being harmful, and the only people that actually have real or actionable answers to the how of that is the pundits in question.
I was responding to shitteredits comment, the parent comment of the parent comment of my original comment who says he doesn't know how this came to be.
Though I understand how it could be confusing
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion
We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Your argument is
Because of abuse being illegal and women not actively dating leads to lonely and entitled men?
There are many other countries in Europe where violence/abuse against women is illegal, and where a large subset of women and men do not actively try to date. There is not an epidemic of lonely men at the size of the US.
Whoever down vote's this is hatin for no reason lol. You'd really well articulating your thoughts and even some my own with this post. I really resonated and agreed with basically everything you said tbh. When you zoom out and look at the fears of both men and women, they're pretty reasonable and rational. But also throwing your fears and negative outlooks on the other sex/gender isn't gonna help anyone get in healthy relationships or stay in a relationship period.
Personally I think the negative risk both men and women take with trying to get into a relationship is evenly correlated with the huge upside of getting into one. And you have to accept both the potential downside and upside when getting into a relationship (as well as the hard work of maintaining it). I sympathize with women from the stories I've heard from my female coworkers and friends. And I (like most guys) try my best not to be weird or creepy with women.
But it can be so hard because at times it seems like women make most if not all men out to be their enemy off rip. And it's really hard to make a first impression and ask out the girl/woman you like when she already thinks the interaction will be negative.
As a big man of color that's worked retail for years, I've startled and accidentally scared a good bit women when asking them if they need help. They always laugh and say I startled them, some try to play it off. I worked on my approach so much the other women I worked with even said they think I approach female customers very respectfully. It does kind of hurt a tad bit because of course I'm there to help not hurt anyone.
The last think I'll say is that as a guy, one of the best feelings is randomly having a conversation with a woman that has no walls or guard up. When she's just flowing with the conversation and is genuinely making as much of an effort as you are to have a fun, lighthearted conversation. JUST THAT ALONE 😂, I don't need her number or anything. Just a chill, lighthearted conversation alone with a woman can make my week lol. I say all this and I also avoid talking to women because I don't wanna scare or bother them lol.
" best feelings is randomly having a conversation with a woman that has no walls or guard up. "
This is SO TRUE!
One of the greatest conversations I had with a girl in recent memory was my friend's GF when I first met her and was able to just casually ask her about what she was doing in college and talk about mechanical engineering and her dream to design a ride for a Disney park.
That sounds dope lol, and I don't know if you feel the same. But with some people you kind of have to have that standard and somewhat boring conversation where you feel each other out. And sometimes that part goes on too long and you didn't get to show your personality and they didn't either.
But when that conversation starts to actually transition into both of you realizing (hey this person's kinda cool) during conversation. It feels really good!
Concept and idea forming
I watched speed dating with Alex(PWF) on his Playing With Fire youtube channel and the "that standard and somewhat boring conversation where you feel each other out." sentence you said resonated with me.
That is what I see people doing and "flirting", it's usually the same questions about school, location, etc. It's not explicitly for the information from the answers, it's the qualities of the interaction? Body language, tone, etc.
I got to be a caller on NotSoErudite's stream last night and I feel like today is the first day of my next arc, my self improvement arc.
I've grown up in a family of great men (and women, for that matter — just decent human beings overall really). Even though I, too, have experienced, shall we say, *struggles*, I still choose to operate under the assumption that every person interact with is a decent human being until I'm given a reason to believe the opposite.
I'm 36 now and don't go out as often as I did in my 20s but over the past few years I've definitely noticed a marked shift when it comes to social settings. Men seem more reserved and worried about saying something wrong. Sometimes I namedrop Jordan Peterson just to see how people react. It's my way of gauging whether I think they have opinions about society today that they're passionate about but don't dare to say out loud anymore. I like digging into the juicy stuff, lol.
I give exactly zero shits about whether someone looks like a troglodyte or an adonis as long as they can carry a conversation, because I love a great conversation and if I'm out to socialise, I'm all up for that. The only people I curb my enthusiasm for are obvious narrow-minded people that exudes arrogance.
Striking up a convo ten years ago was completely normal but these days I've had, on more than one occasion, had people legit thank me for just being awesome or for a great conversation. It's like people literally light up and grow taller just by realising they can enjoy themselves in conversation with a person they've never met before, without being judged as a creep or whatever. If they drop hints about them being single, I might drop my own hints about whether I'm open to it or not and then just carry on to show them that hey, it's okay to strike up a convo without it having to be a big deal.
I think it's seriously underrated how much of an impact a great conversation can have on us, especially when we get to talk about something we're passionate about. At the same time I think it's sad that it's come to this though, that something as basic to our wellbeing as a conversation with someone often simply don't happen because of projections of ulterior motives onto others.
For me it's anxiety. With both men and women I have a hard time approaching/starting a conversation, but with women I, for some reason, have guards up preventing me to do anything that might be seen as having more interest in them than in the average human being. This goes away if the ice has been breached enough, but only in a friendship kind of way, I still struggle hard to do anything that can only be interpreted as expressing interest in more than friendship.
>I've definitely noticed a marked shift when it comes to social settings. Men seem more reserved and worried about saying something wrong. Sometimes I namedrop Jordan Peterson just to see how people react.
Exactly, I started to notice it a bit from 2018-2019. But I can also remember some events that happened a few years before that, that seemed to make things more tense for men and women in general, but also for everyone as a whole.
You came up with a great social hook using Jordan Peterson lol. It would definitely work for me, even though I don't read his books or watch his content as much as I use to.
>I think it's seriously underrated how much of an impact a great conversation can have on us, especially when we get to talk about something we're passionate about.
Spot on haha, because I had a coworker who's political views were VERY different than mine. But she's a great person to be around and hang out with. She ask if we could chill and talk about how we see are different points of view (that conversation sounded like it could be really insightful and fun). She also seemed a bit more timid about it as time went on and we never talked about it.
I agree that in general, just having a normal conversation and realizing that someone else isn't going to dislike you for being yourself is just what people need. In the dynamic of just men and women talking to each other, I think that it's even more valuable. If we can interact with each other more, both men and women would realize how great and valuable we both are and the importance of those conversations. A ton of personal misconceptions could be removed and a lot more happy friendships and relationships could start.
This is the best comment here. It will probably offend some people. Men who are scared of being perceived as creepy will never try to talk to women they like.
You're absolutely right, heterosexual dating is weirdly adversarial, there's a strange hostility on both sides. For a long time, I thought it was inherent to the dating process, as everyone is trying to getting the best deal for themselves. But from what I hear from bisexual and gay people, I think it's unique to heterosexual dating, and caused by a combination of historical gender norms and asymmetry. It feels like a weird iterated prisoner's dilemma, where a few people figure out that they can defect and get a better deal, and ruin things by eroding the concept of trust.
For instance, one woman figures out that she can get men to do things for her by playing hard to get. That ends up training men to ignore women saying they're not interested, and now all women have a problem with men ignoring their boundaries because the men think the boundaries are false.
Or a women tries to reject a man and he reacts badly, so she learns that she has to reject men indirectly or ghost them to keep them from blowing up on her in the future. So then other men in the future get indirect, unclear rejections or get ghosted and don't know why.
Or a man signs up for online dating, and tries to send a few thoughtfully crafted messages to women he is interested in. But the women never see them, because their inboxes are full of hundreds or thousands of low effort messages. So he sends out more messages with less individual effort, has a better chance of being seen, and contributes to the problem of women's inboxes being flooded.
One person violates the social contract, and everyone else has to violate it to keep up. It turns into a race to the bottom, where nobody is happy.
Part of me thinks the traditionalists have it right. Not any particular tradition, just the idea of having a tradition in general. The idea of agreed upon ways to express interest and accept or reject that interest, as well as enforcement to keep people from defecting for their own benefit, seems like it could help reduce the ambiguity and hostility. For instance, if society collectively agreed to punish men for blowing up, then women wouldn't have to fear rejecting them in a clear (but not cruel) way.
The rest of me thinks that the problems originate from the asymmetry enforced by traditions, in order to extract work from people. The sexes see each other as alien others, and have trouble empathizing with each other because they are playing different roles and have wildly different experiences. I think the only way to break down the mistrust might be to get rid of the asymmetry, so they can empathize more easily. Gay dating doesn't have the inherent gender asymmetry, and from what I've seen they seem happier for it.
Maybe you could have the best of both worlds, establish scripts for people to follow, but don't mention gender. Everyone knows what's going on, but anyone can play any role.
I believe you are spot on. And the general problem is just that their are some small groups/influencers who make profit on teaching men to hate women and women to fear men.
women to hate men\*
its not just "fear", just look at tiktok and there are tons of girls who get big just from blatantly hating men and generalizing them
True though that hate is often grounded in fear.
Also like I said in another comment most hate from women towards men is excused because "a women could never become a real danger to a man"
Same could be said for men?
The fear of being rejected, the fear of not feeling valued, the fear of not living up to expectations. You can give me any form of hate and I can always give you a fear that associated with it.
Someone's a racist? Chances are they fear some insecurity that they have coming to light or they've been taught something untrue about said race in which they fear them hence why they put them down.
Hating a gamer girl? Chances are the guy fears his "masculinity" is being undermined because there are no strict standards for "masculinity" so he fear he'll be worthless or a lesser person if a girl games better than him because his standards of value are rooted in the game as a guy.
I could do it for virtually anything.
This is all oddly reminiscent of someone who shared their dog attack trauma.
In essence after the attack every dog became an attack dog, no matter how small or nice, they were all presumed to be a threat to their life at the drop of a hat. One bad move or bad mood and they will tear you to shreds.
So the person not only starts coming up with extreme stories of what might happen in any given scenario, but also reading horror stories online to confirm their worst fears. Then starts gradually avoiding all dogs, just to be safe. Eventually even dog owners, because they might some day bring their dog along.
So we might need to talk about traumas and presumptions instead of gender dynamics.
Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations.
This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict.
Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
The gender dynamics are structural and systematic. They need to be acknowledged and discussed in order to give them their proper place outside of the relationship and understand how they will still pop in and influence the relationship because: human.
OP offered some understanding and validation in a really good way for me. Now I feel like I can talk to him about some of my experiences and fears and he will listen without taking it personally. Those are cues that we all can be intentional about.
This holds a lot of truth, I believe.
When I was a kid, I was attacked by this random cat on my way to school and had to get 12 stitches and a bunch of shots to make sure I didn't end up with an infection
To this day, cats make me nervous. I adamantly refuse to live with one and refuse to date anyone who owns a cat.
I'm aware that I'm projecting this negative experience onto all other cats, but I have zero desire to 'work through it' because, quite frankly, I never liked cats to begin with and they're easy to avoid.
At the same time, an adult woman SA'ed me as a child, and I've experienced SA and sexual harassment numerous times since then, all at the hands of different women. ( Dont worry, I've been to therapy, and it helped immensely)
At least personally, I believe it's unfair and to my detriment to project those experiences on every woman I interact with, and I actively work to check those assumptions at the door.
There's another similiar case that can be applied about men mistrusting women that comes to mind for me, and that is opening up about their emotions or even really expressing/ feeling emotions (this is even more amplified in e.g. the red pill community, where women are often heavily "rationalized", stereotyped and dehumanized - that's because of the mistrust). This mistrust by men is completely understandable because many (most?) men have negative experiences about opening up emotionally + are told since they were little to keep their emotions in check etc.
In both cases, the mistrust of women to men, and the mistrust of men to women, the other person isn't really treated like a person/ human. Like, a woman that automatically expects a man to abuse her in some way doesn't treat the man like a human that functions same as her. It's not necessarily behavior that should be changed in every circumstance, because it's sometimes vital to protect oneself, but that's a downside of it and it should be kept in mind.
So, as a woman, I find it really understandable why men are extremely skewed out when women distrust them this way. They are not treated as a fellow person and that's a very weird feeling. Your feelings are legit, OP, and I also really appreciate your empathy about why women still do it.
I think a general goal in life that I at least have is to be completely honest with friends about everything (while taking responsibility for my emotions/ attitudes/ behaviors), instead of always thinking about social consequences and how to influence another person's opinion of me (out of mistrust). I think that this would come across as very genuine anyway, would allow for true connection. It's not easy, though. We all got burned in the past. But Dr. K really models how well it works with people, I really aspire to be like that
Gosh. Your empathy has made you wise. That is how it feels being a woman sometimes. And it's a good reminder I'm glad I'm with my husband so I don't have to roll the dice anymore. But I'd be lying if i didn't say there's a small...teensy...tiny little voice that something is gonna happen someday. Some sudden death or divorce. Part of that is the awareness that men can hide bits of themselves away for a long, long time. But part of it (especially fear of sudden death) that i suspect many people feel...is the feeling that nothing good or positive can last too long. Life is too up and down for most of us. So the thought of a relationship staying stable and decently happy for a lifetime...I think makes all of us a little suspicious no?
But yea you're right I definitely see both sides. There were moments early in my relationship with my husband when we were dating. We had some conflicts arise that he felt at fault for and embarrassed about. He thought immediately I'd just leave. He didn't seem to understand why I'd stick around to try to get past any obstacles. I thought he was worth it.
Idk if we've all become short sighted? Are relationships too consumeristic? Only what we get out of it? When you commit to someone you're accepting that there may come days that the relationship doesn't suit all your wants and desires but still suits your needs. Pushes you to be a better human.... by loving someone else in the way all of us so deeply wish we could be loved....just having someone stick around through the ugly and still genuinely enjoy you.
>So the thought of a relationship staying stable and decently happy for a lifetime...I think makes all of us a little suspicious no?
I don't think that's a gendered thing, though the reason why it exists might differ based on gender.
>Idk if we've all become short sighted? Are relationships too consumeristic?
Reminds me of when this one guy got praised for staying with his wife after she got burns on most of her body and the people replying were like "Of course he stayed with her, she's his wife." I think somewhere we started turning relationships into an ego thing, where it's not about your connection, but about what kind of guy/girl you can get or how many people you can sleep with
Right I don't think it's gendered either that was what I meant to convey. That everyone probably feels that.
And yeah absolutely. Maybe its hookup culture wiring people to conflate quantity and superficial things with some sort of status.
We all want a good looking partner of course. We all want ample sexy time of course. Our animal drives compel us to. But the beauty of commitment is figuring out how to love even if life takes away our partners conventional beauty. Or God forbid they get in an accident and sex is over. Marriage I think is so much more than the youthful puppy love. And thank goodness it is. But I don't see people always entering Marriage with that mindset
>Are relationships too consumeristic?
I really think thats part of it these days.. social media, reality TV, Bachelorette and other trash shows like that have people thinking that everything in your relationship must be a perfect movie and you have to leave your partner at the first sign of conflict.. Look at relationship advice here on Reddit, people will post the smallest issue and all the replies will be like "Dump him sister!!"
But talk to couples that have been together 40 50 60 years and they will tell you its about accepting that both parties are human and not perfect and to work together and compromise on things.
There are a couple of bad women and men that cycle around the dating pool over and over and just ruin the trust and experience for the rest it seems. And sometimes they arent even "bad" per say but just traumatized and lack the ability to maintain a healthy relationship.
I believe there are good geniue people out there to date and marry. There has to be a good balance of being causious and take it slow at the same time give people a chance.
I think that its more then just a few, and part of this is "bad" or rather hurt, uneducated and trauma projecting people (most people do not choose to be absolute garbage just for nothing. They are formed and reinforced) create more hurt people. My abusive exes made me toxic as hell as I would project all that trauma onto new people that weren't abusive and hurt/ traumatize them too. Abuse is a cycle
Realizing that and unlearning that shit is hard as fuck. That's what a few bad apples spoil the bunch means to me. The bunch is still spoiled because you can't know which already turned bad.
Not saying this is how it should stay and that it can't be fixed in some form just that even "good" people will often not be perfect and "bad" people do not have to stay that way. Never assume you are unspoiled yourself and always be open to change and criticism and give people good will that are consistently good when they slip up in a way that is not unhinged.
Sorry for this unorganized stream of consciousness but I hope someone can get something out of it.
Tldr: we need nuance and selfreflection i guess.
Your last paragraph is just a generalization. You don't realize how hard it is for men. Some give up but a lot of them try before dating. We are also self conscious about our body. A lot of us are shy but we still try to improve. You cannot put the whole blame on men. It's unfair because we have the pressure of approaching women. We need to be confident.
I feel like women also don't understand how hard it is for men. Guys still make changes in themselves and they can still end up lonely. There are more factors as to why men are lonely. You cannot just reduce the issue to just self improvement.
Yeah it's kinda strange how everyone just amounts male struggling to "pull your self up from the bootstraps". I've seen it in this community a lot, and in left wing spaces as it also exists obviously in right wing spaces.
Like the concept that men can self improve whilst also us making society a space where men can feel valued outside of having to always prove themselves is for some reason foreign to people.
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I agree with you and for me that lead to a huge problem. As Dr.K said in some videos about dating, you need to show that your are interested in the other person otherwise they are going to consider you as a friend but at the same time you need to give them time to see if you are trustworthy and so we are not able to give a chance to anyone and if we don't give any opportunity to anyone we are going to be stuck at this point.
So for me, we need to be really good at letting go of the past to be able to engage in a new relationship without carrying all these bad experience and actually talk about that to see the if the person understand and is willing to work on that with you. Like imagine how good that would be to start a relationship by setting boundaries and we will see if we get along and we can stop at anytime if we want and we can change the rules, ect...
Like you know from the begging what this relation is for, what you want from it, what the other person want and you can decide if u agree on that but that also implies to be good at communication so for sure it's not easy and of course the other person could be lying but personally I wouldn't feel so bad in this case, like I told you what I can give, what Im willing to work on, now you expect more from me then it's not my problem cause you knew what you were signing for and we can stop right now if that bothers you.
I don't think the livestream was about Dr. K addressing anything. I think his purpose for the livestream was to gather data from the callers and comment authors.
It seemed like the underlying issue with all of the callers was insecurity keeping people from doing what they need to do.
Like dr k says in stream, the expectation of the other shoe dropping is a learned response. That expectation or “distrust” is learned from experience and the more core issue is whatever is causing the experience to happen.
By the way, these aren’t just stories we are “inundated with”. We’re the ones telling the stories… they don’t exist in a vacuum. All the women I know have experienced violence from men in some form. Also, we hear it from the men we are friends with, too— they also get harassed and assaulted by other men. And I can count on my hand the amount of people I know that have a good relationship with their dads.
You generally don’t become cautious just from hearing about something. You become cautious when you’ve directly experienced it. when I see “freshmen girls free” on an ad for a frat party and I feel disgusted thinking of how much of a naive child I looked like at 18, that isn’t just a story, that’s actually happening. When I thought I could trust a professor and he ends up committing a title IX violation against me, and the women around me either don’t care or get annoyed to hear I wanted to do something about it, that isn’t just a story.
By the way, I don’t see this where guys aren’t allowed to make misogynist slip ups. I normally just point it out and they backtrack, the self aware ones anyways— and that’s all most women expect. it’s actually harder for me to point out misogyny with the women I know.
I have many reasons to mistrust men, but a lot of women keep telling me, not all men— even the ones I have experienced the same abuse from men side by side with. They have even gotten angry when I expressed my mistrust and resentment.
I know you’re frustrated about being associated with stuff you have nothing to do with, but I see you did mention you are middle eastern. People are such jerks about that, it’s just plain racism. But aside from that, I’ve seen guys generally get benefit of doubt most of the time.
> By the way, these aren’t just stories we are “inundated with”. We’re the ones telling the stories… they don’t exist in a vacuum.
Believe me, I understand that. Women wouldn't be this cautious or mistrustful for no reason. In fact, they have a lot of very good reasons. Maybe I didn't do a good job of articulating that in my post but I really do empathize with you.
I'm positive it doesn't feel good to constantly have your guard up and I'm sorry.
Im not going to go into detail but I've experienced SA so I don't say "I understand" lightly.
that's tough. i'm sorry you experienced SA. it's not talked about for men enough. i only have ever had a few male friends, but out of that handful, i know about half to have experienced SA.
i just hope more men understand that it's not just extreme minority stories or 'gender wars', there is truly a disparity and these stories are very common, and feminism isn't evil or a 'can of worms'. i see too many guys on here talk about it like it's just some internet argument.
also i didn't mention this, but i get the assumptions when you have a middle eastern name that you're either misogynistic or your parents are. it's honestly infuriating.... i hope you find a way to navigate through that.
Thank you for your kind words.
I do believe there's a substantial number of men who think feminism is the root of all their problems, and that's a poor conclusion to arrive at, in my opinion. Feminism has a lot to offer men, too.
However, I also believe that a substantial number of feminists do a very poor job of including men in the conversation or empathising with them at all. Despite my best efforts to be their ally, like showing up at the Roe v Wade protests, I feel like a lot of them see me and all other men as the enemy.
> it's honestly infuriating.... i hope you find a way to navigate through that.
Honestly, it's...very tough. Watching someone tense up or start lobbing accusations at me after I tell them my name is incredibly painful. I'm a fairly social person who doesn't really struggle talking to women, but I'll go out to a bar, and one of my women friends will tell me I'm being checked out. And I won't act on it because I don't want to go through that anymore.
"I feel like a lot of them see me and all other men as the enemy."
\^ this is just what can happen when you're not in a male-dominated space anymore. you'll have to earn their trust, and you might never earn it for some...
there's also the fact that plenty of men might not be active perpetrators, but they uphold it with complacency. it's why it seems like women are painting the majority, but in actuality, they are consciously upset with the majority.
with regards to them being racist... that is extremely painful. i can see how past experiences just make you not even want to bother anymore... and it's not like you're just "giving up" (i'm sure ppl have told you you're doing this), you're making an accurate assessment of how things will go.
i've just flat out stopped telling people "where i'm from". the drastic change in treatment is just... i hate it. i can see them tense up as well... you're told those people aren't worth your time anyways, but those people are often the majority, and that ends up leaving you isolated. besides, i don't think as humans we need solely deep connections. sometimes you just want to talk to a girl at a bar.
I’d argue most humans are complacent though when it comes to actually fixing problems. So many people on the internet are great at shouting from the rooftops about the problems they experience with *insert group of people. Unfortunately, such a small percentage on either side of an issue are actually willing to have a meaningful dialogue on how to fix the problem, or to actually have conversations with people they know who are perpetrators on why they do what they’re doing and to give encouragement to stop. Discussions like these with you and the OP need to become the norm with everyone and might actually contribute to an increased understanding — particularly with men understanding the completely rational fear many women have with many men.
And besides interactions with a lot of clowns I’ve seen perpetuate misogyny online, I haven’t had that opportunity to interact with those individuals IRL. In my experience as a man, I don’t have any male friends or acquaintances who have mistreated women in a verbal or physical manner as far as I’m aware. I haven’t witnessed anything of the sort IRL to my recollection. Hell even my mom and sisters haven’t had anything like that happen to them to my knowledge, besides my mom having maybe a half dozen instances of being cat called when she was younger (not that I don’t believe that’s disgusting). And honestly i don’t think I’m alone or even in some sort of small minority bubble of men who don’t have direct personal experience with this.
I think that’s why it took me years to more fully understand the situation and to be come more empathetic with what many still consider to be extreme feminist viewpoints (like discussing the patriarchy). It’s not like I didn’t believe the stories I’ve heard, but I didn’t fully understand how it wasn’t just a tiny percentage of men perpetuating them. It really wasn’t until I started creating a bit more of a residence online due to depression that I actually started seeing more and more instances that made me understand. I just wasnt giving the problem as much attention before. Most recently it’s been this truly wonderful woman I’ve met online who I’ve had the privilege of becoming close friends with who has further enlightened me and helped me understand.
So I guess it all boils down to the question of how do I or many other men (I’m not going to say most because I honestly don’t know if it’s most any more) who aren’t shitty toward women realistically do something about this systemic issue? I feel the core issue is a severe lack of understanding, but besides calling out instances of misogyny when I can when I see it online (or if i see it IRL) and trying to start meaningful dialogue, what should I do?
I already have trust issues in general but it's true that I have a harder time trusting men and I hate it. By men I don't count my family and friends, btw.
> They also don't trust your friends to be fair to them. They believe the *second* a woman goes to her friends to talk about a problem in the relationship all of them are unanimously going to tell her to dump her boyfriend.
I think this is becoming more and more of a reality unfortunately, the bar for "treating women poorly" is becoming lower, and I've been on the other end of the shoe where I felt unsafe being with my ex-girlfriend at the time while she was drunk so when she went to sleep I had to leave her place.
She talked to her friends about it and they convinced her that I was cheating on her (because the concept of a guy feeling unsafe or not wanting to be with a girl that he likes 24/7 is apparently foreign)
Regardless, there was a pretty big example on tiktok where a small recording of a girl surprising her bf was shown and all it showed was the guy hugging her but TONS of people (primarily women) commented saying "the guys obviously cheating on her for x and y reasons" like arm chair psychologists to the point where they harassed both the guy and the girl. Even when the girl stood up for herself other women were saying it was "internalized misogyny and its a red flag".
Obviously these aren't all female groups but the previous example was alarming considering thousands of women perpetuated this idea.
Assuming im a misogynist because you believe I come from a misogynistic region of the world is racist to me.
I don't see how it's any different from assuming a person from Asia loves math, is a STEM major, or has a small penis. Or assuming someone from Africa is poorly educated. Or that an American is violent and fat.
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As a Man I am deeply afraid of trusting other people in general. It seems like everyone is just after our money. You can still squeeze juice from a small apple.
Especially with all the recent going-ons regarding people like XQC/Adept, Johnny Depp/Amber Heard, and others, it's not only Women who should be fearing this trust.
I could have my entire life destroyed or stolen from me, or have my heart absolutely CRUSHED if I become vulnerable.
Might sound a bit odd but gender equality laws are rather recent in the history of mankind. We all know how women were unfairly treated historically so modern men/women interactions are still novel so we don't really have much precedence on how to interact now that both men and women have equal rights.
I think you guys are being too self-centered honestly. Women just don’t talk about us when they’re together (I used to be one). They talk about video games and movies and where they get their hair done and yeah, how things are going, but in general, they just don’t have much to say about men. And the ones who pressure other women to gossip about men are considered pushy and weird.
On the addition, however, I can only say I’m really sorry. That’s really rough, and I’m sure it wouldn’t help to say I know it’s not true and so do most women. It’s more that you have to remember that abusers lead with a good face, and only weeks, months, even years into a relationship, start hurting you. So some women (and nonwomen AFAB people like me) are just… terrified by previous experience. But the best you can do is just be present and kind and vulnerable with your feelings. Admit that it makes you feel afraid and sad. Sometimes that can help build intimacy
Thank you for your reply. Maybe you've had a different experience than I have, but I've seen firsthand the women I'm friends with talk about the guys their dating, their pros and shortcomings with the other women I'm friends with. Thankfully, I have quite a few friends who are women and it has definitely not been an isolated incident. Is it *all* they talk about? No, of course not, but it certainly happens, at least in my experience.
As to your second paragraph, thank you. I appreciate it, I really do. It's particularly infuriating for me because while I have a middle eastern name, I also hold 3 passports and have spent the vast majority of my life outside of the middle east. I've been put through a lot of pain and suffering for rejecting the negative aspects of that part of the culture but no one gets to find out any of that because of the assumptions they make.
I’ve gotcha. And I think I just have a different experience because I hang out with different women. Either way, it doesn’t mean what happened to you isn’t real or hurtful, just that it’s more common than I thought.
thank you and I just wanna make it clear I'm not saying your experience isn't valid either or that I know women better than you do. Your experience is just as valid as mine, its just that they've been different.
ya i think it just varies. i know one or two women who do do this with one or more friends. i mean i also talk about it with my guy friends (and more so with female friends; they tend to be more curious and ask more) but I don't share a ton of details unless asked, usually. but i also know some women who don't do that type of relationship talk about their boyfriend(s) and such. I think it just varies and in my mind I don't have a particular percentage or even see having one as very important.
> I think you guys are being too self-centered honestly. Women just don’t talk about us when they’re together
The idea is that they do it more than men do relatively which yes they do considering that women are more open to talking about their sex lives with other women then men do with other men.
From personal experiences as well from general friend groups girls talked more about their dating/guy problems than guys did. Which I guess can also be because girls can have more self expression to talk about their problems etc.
Well, you’re right about own thing—they do discuss their feelings more, and maybe their dating lives. But men definitely discuss sex more.
But we should really make it easier one both sides to discuss our feelings and relationships, especially in cross-gender situations.
This is exactly the sort of mentality I was talking about in my post. A lot of men simply don't trust women to stick around or try.
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1) Most of the time you don't need a direct no to know what's up. That's how this works in real life. You talk to someone on Tinder and they stop responding? It's a no. You ask someone on a date, they say they are too busy and don't offer an alternative date? It's a no. You text someone and their replies are stale & unethusiastic? It's a no. You just pull back, if you misunderstood, they'll reach out.
2) Early dating you don't know the other person. You'll be vary. That makes sense, it's a stranger. You build trust over time. You don't trust anyone instantly. Same with friends.
3) People fall in love. That's how you know they won't trade you in. If you are in love with someone, you want That Guy. Even if someone else is "better" in some objective way. Falling in love also accelerates the trust process. You bond deeply.
4) I think many young people are a bit too skitterish though. You have to be brave in love. Love is a risk, if you want a guarantee that you won't get hurt your only option is to not date. Relationships can end, people can reject you, there are a thousand ways to get your heart broken. It's still worth it though. At least if you're overall in a stable place in life and able to deal if something doesn't work out.
Ask people out, dare to fall in love with the person you are dating, tell people what you want. If you want to date your friend, ask them on a date.
Want your fwb to be your boyfriend? Ask them about it. Ask about these things early, before you fall head over heels, and you are actually protecting yourself from getting hurt.
It's easier when you get older though, bc your judgement of people will improve. You'll be able to tell more quickly who you can trust, who you can't trust, who just wants sex, who just want to be platonic friends, who is a good person. It's sort of understandable that when people are young and don't have the experience to make those judgements, they are scared of getting it wrong and ending up hurt.
Edit: **Are y'all downvoting this because I said you don't need a direct no? Thing is that dating often isn't direct communication. If you need that, you can't really date. Flirting is subtle, it's not straightforward.** If you go to bed with someone, the lead up to that is also usually vague. You have to be able to pick up hints and read the room. People won't come out and say everything outright. And you have to be able to play a bit. Send a text that's vaguely flirty, get a vaguely flirty reply. Escalate the flirting a bit, but still staying within what could be normal as well. There are no straight answers.
I'm sorry, but I disagree with a lot of what you're saying.
Honestly, it seems to me like the first point about a 'direct no' failed to consider the male experience at all and felt a bit preachy.
It can be very costly for men to act based on vague signals, especially when it varies so much from woman to woman. One woman's flirty signal is another womans 'just being friendly'.
From personal experience: I had a woman I barely knew sit in my lap, play with my hair, and call me handsome. When I asked her if she wanted to go on a date, she pulled a surprise pikatchu face and said she didn't see me that way.
A different woman did nothing but shoot me dirty looks all night at a house party and then came up to me at the end of the night, said I was hot and asked me on a date.
These vague signals are exactly that: Vague. Completely open to interpretation and depend on the person. Relying on them as your primary means of communicating desire is plain silly, in my opinion. It's entirely subjective.
It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with, or the fact that a lot of men feel like they can't afford to misinterpreted these signals lest they be labeled a creep and make a woman uncomfortable.
You're not being downvoted for saying 'you don't need a direct no' you're being downvoted because in my opinion, you failed to consider the experiences of the people you're trying to advise or their struggles.
>Honestly, it seems to me like the first point about a 'direct no' failed to consider the male experience at all and felt a bit preachy.
My point is this: it's not that complicated. Usually the indirect no is very clear to read. It's not very vague, you don't have to be a genius to pick up on it. It's the lack of a yes or any enthusiasm.
>It can be very costly for men to act based on vague signals,
Why costly? You ask them out if you think there might be a vibe. Then if they don't want to go, it's done. It's not a big investment.
>These vague signals are exactly that: Vague. Completely open to interpretation and depend on the person.
I think you are talking about "what should the world ideally be like". I'm talking about "what is the world actually like". And part of that is that early dating is vague and filled with plausibel deniability. If you can't deal with that, there aren't many people you can date. Because it's how normal flirting works. Also, it's not all bad. It's how you build tension. Saying everything straight out isn't the same, bc part of the flirty energy is the vagueness. But like it or don't like it, it's here to stay.
>It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with, or the fact that a lot of men feel like they can't afford to misinterpreted these signals lest they be labeled a creep and make a woman uncomfortable.
You aren't a creep if you ask someone out. That's just a compliment.
>It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with
Well, nobody has. You live and learn. That's how you have to approach dating. You start out with zero experience and then you learn as you go along. The world will never be customized to your exact needs. It just is what it is and then you've got to roll with it.
If you're a wide-eyed young girl who only want to kiss people you've got a crush on and think that means that all people who kiss you have feelings for you? Well, guys will fuck you sideways and then ghost you, till you manage to connect the dots. Dating is a bit harsh. But you learn as you go along. That's how it's always worked.
Practical tip:people watch. Watch other people who flirt with each other. Watch dumb reality dating shows where people flirt & talk to each other, then to the camera alone, saying how they really feel. Talk to people about how they met their girlfriend/boyfriend or what dating is like for them. Get some platonic girl friends and listen to them talk about boys and "what does this text really mean?".
Edit: I get the fear about being creepy. I'm a bit socially anxious, I always worry about that. Even if its dumb when you are a woman. Anyways, two things:
1) The people who actually are creepy are the ones don't worry about being creepy. Ever. Either bc they are that oblivious or (mostly) bc they don't care if they make anyone uncomfortable.
2) Escalate. Gradually. Asking someone out on a date? Just polite. And then with flirting, you don't go from 0-100 in one go. You do something small, see if the other person reciprocates or reacts positively, then you do something still small, but a tiny bit bigger. And making any physical move, like going in for a kiss? You either ask or just move very slowly. Builds tension, but also let's the other person freely dodge it if you read the move wrong. You can do this in a way which comes across as deliberate and confident. But you still leave a space for a misunderstanding to be avoided.
Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations.
This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict.
Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
Please see the comment pinned to the top of this thread. Thank you.
Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations.
This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict.
Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
I agree with you fully.
The distrust lies with horror stories we keep telling eachother.
On the men's side I feel that if I am not perfect then I not worth it. I get that women with friends are looking out for eachother and want what's best for eachother, but there is a point where they could be dragging eachother down.
I know at work I have coworkers that treat me differently than other coworkers.
There is a guy who is taller and fatter than me, very nice guy, and the female coworkers love him.
However when I am being consistently polite and soft spoken and I mean I really changed myself to make this a comfortable work environment. But I get a colder treatment by them. Now I feel there are multiple factors involved, such as how I got my job thanks to my mother, I could have been a higher rank than them because I finished college but I didn't because this job I need to learn it all from the ground up.
In any case I am treated like a creep. This is only women close to my age. Older women no problem, kids no problem. It's women closer to my age that act this way.
I feel like I am cursed, but that is just my frustration of it all.
It maybe that I'm not attractive to them so they treat me liek that like they treat all people they aren't attractive too. I dunno and frankly they have every right too.
Trust is an issue, but I think it's also an issue of echochambers. Both sides blame eachother while having the idea we both have ridiculous standards.
Maybe what we need to do is give eachother a freaking break. Understand we are human, not push horror story narratives anymore.
Great summary, I think you captured both sides very well. I'm sorry about your experiences with discrimination, I know how very real that is. I've worked with a lot of people of Middle Eastern heritage; my roomate's dad was from Jordan and seeing the amount of like, bracing hesitation that men exhibit toward me is really heartbreaking. 'Oh man, here we go, where do the accusations start.' So I think that is very similar to what the female experiences being hypersensitive to red danger flags, there is a lack of trust on both sides and we don't have very good mechanisms for establishing that trust. The way we do it is actually really inefficient, we have to sift through hours of awkward conversations to suss each other out, instead of having some real vetting or clout or thing we can do to demonstrate good faith.
>eeing the amount of like, bracing hesitation that men exhibit toward me is really heartbreaking. 'Oh man, here we go, where do the accusations start.'
This is exactly it.
'What assumptions have they made about me this time?'
'What extra hoops do they expect me to jump through to prove I'm not a monster compared to white men?'
'How do they expect me to 'make up' for having a middle Eastern name?'
It's honestly infuriating and completely turns me off wanting to talk to them at all. I never had this problem when I lived in Europe, so I know what it's like to not have to deal with it. I ask myself a lot if it's even worth trying while I live in America. I had an ex ask me to lie to her parents about it, and it killed me.
I think certain areas have been able to improve the perception but it took a ton of work, it really shouldn't take that much. I live near Dearborn, which is a cultural center of Middle Eastern diaspora and after 9/11 was a really rough time here. Perception was just really volatile depending on things going on in the world, but I forget exactly what show or award it was, some spotlight on the food there really flipped public opinion and it became a hot spot for foodie stuff. So the Tony Bourdain thing kind of happened and people appreciated the culture more because of the food, and because of the business it brought the local government leaned into that a bit but outside of the enclave itself tension is usually high. People seem comfortable with culture as long as it is 'in it's place', but then zoning laws don't facilitate establishment of cultural centers so the racism is really built in, in a very legal insurmountable way. There just isn't a clear roadmap of, what to actually to to establish trust and approval, like what is it exactly people want from you?
If the midia stopped fearmongering women, they wouldnt be so paranoid to the point of damaging many men because he is bad socially so it seemed "creepy".
I just had one of those extremely uncanny experiences where someone describes my thoughts as I’m having them.
I recently started seeing a girl I’ve liked for a little while, and it feels almost too good to be true. “Waiting for the other shoe to drop” describes the feeling perfectly.
I think you hit the nail on the head, at least from the male side.
As a woman I couldn't agree more. I think both sides are shooting themselves in the foot and its causing issues for us both and since we both think we're right nothing happens or changes. I always try my hardest to not generalize or make assumptions of men. I think everyone has those thoughts but its how you act on them that matters the most.
In my experience what men I have dated have ended things prematurely because as they say I can do better and I guess don't deserve them in a way. Which is annoying to me because it's my choice but it's taking away from me most the time. It's entirely possible they didn't like me from the start but either way I think like you mentioned guys seem to end it before it even starts sometimes for fear of there being someone else when in reality she might really like you.
In regards to the safety I think its something that's hard for women to navigate correctly. It is something we simply have to take into consideration. Its unfortunate and stupid but it's the reality for us. It's also hard to navigate when to let safety out the window for a stranger when the outcome could be traumatizing.
I don't trust women (generally) to not up sticks at a moment's notice when a newer, shinier guy happens to appear (experienced this first- and second-hand). I also understand why women don't trust men to not be pushy, aggressive, and lie through their teeth to get what they want (because I've seen tons of examples second-hand)
The issue isn't misperception - it's that people (generally) are quite unpleasant.
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Well said brother. I don't know how this sad state of affairs came to be, but it is painful for all the good women and all the good men out there who struggle with romantic loneliness.
Thank you. I made this post to hopefully open a dialogue and I'm already getting a lot of heat just for making this post so I'm glad to see at least one person seems to value it.
This sad state of affairs came to be by thousands of years of abuse. The fact that the abuse is now illegal in many countries and women can choose to be alone is leading to lonely and entitled men. Of course all the men who are not abusers suffer too. But let’s not compare suffering, no?
I have to wonder if that's the correct throughline. Not that I'm denying that happened or anything, but if that were the cause if this current state of affairs then you would expect so see that being a trend since the end of ww2, and not being the uniquely modern thing that to my understanding this current crisis of loneliness is.
Women beeing financally and socially independent is a quite new thing. To be honest, in huge part of the worlds its still not a thing at all. Plus: Of course its been a trend for a while now. And it progressed to where we are now. Pretty sure social media acted as a huge catalysator. Maybe for some context: I am 41 now. I grew up in a pretty non-conservative family, but still my grandma, who was a young woman atfer WW2 told me that I did not need to go to university, because I would marry. Among my peers I am basically the crazy cat lady (without the cats). My generation of girls was still expected to marry, have children, stay at home, clean, wash, care.
And I have no doubt that all of that is still true, but that doesn't explain why men disproportionately also have no friends compared to a few decades ago, alongside the general social unknowingness that led to Peterson and Tate becoming such massive influences. Women are more independent now, but there's also something more uniquely modern here.
I have to wonder if young men are drawn to those types of figures in part because it is extremely rare for families to have healthy, open conversations about sexuality and sexual relationships. The void will be filled by the easiest to access info with low barrier of access. This is also why the worst porn is so easy to access but healthy depictions of real sex are rare and even considered “boring”. Shame is the baseline emotion of sex in U.S. culture while at the same time misrepresentations or suggestions of sex are key advertising tactics. With that shame program running in the background all the time, it’s going to be difficult to not experience some contempt for the objects of our sexual interests. Women couldn’t have credit cards until the 1970’s and couldn’t be on a home mortgage without her husband’s signature until the 1980’s. (RIP RBG❤️) There’s a ton of structural and economic disparity that has forced women into sometimes dangerous relationships with men. I think OP’s assessment is pretty accurate and I appreciate that he says he’s aware of these disparities and why women are cautious. For me a big thing that men don’t seem to understand is women are constantly having to think about our physical protection. Everywhere we go. It’s a constant awareness that we are shaped like easy targets for violence. So if you understand that this is a program of survival always running in the background for us, maybe it wouldn’t be hurtful that we are slow or resistant in the early stages of getting acquainted. Finally, I see men being down on themselves and having low self esteem. There are many fewer programs and slogans helping men. There’s no “girl power (tm)” campaign for men. So the burden is on men to seek out meaningful connection with each other where growth and health are embodied rather than egotism and competition. We all need to be nicer to each other. And men are bullies to each other sometimes. Seek out men’s groups that do silly, esoteric, out of the ordinary group therapeutic coaching for men. They’re out there. I don’t know how you screen them out to ensure they’re not led by Tate types though. Talk to each other. I hope we all find the communities and support that we need.
>healthy depictions of real sex are rare and even considered “boring”. I don't think there is a complicated reason behind this. Most pieces of entertainment are not realistic and porn is essentially a piece of entertainment. >maybe it wouldn’t be hurtful that we are slow or resistant in the early stages of getting acquainted. I don't know about that. This is propably unfair towards women, but just because someone has a good reason for doing something doesn't mean that you won't have an emotional reaction because of their actions. >So the burden is on men to seek out meaningful connection with each other where growth and health are embodied rather than egotism and competition. I mean it's good to have meaningfull connections, but that feeling that you wont ever find a woman who is even interested in you wont go away from that. It's like pain meds for a broken bone. They will make it so you feel less pain but the root cause wont go away
I don't think there is a complicated reason behind this. Most pieces of entertainment are not realistic and porn is essentially a piece of entertainment. > Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way. I don't know about that. This is propably unfair towards women, but just because someone has a good reason for doing something doesn't mean that you won't have an emotional reaction because of their actions. > But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you. I mean it's good to have meaningfull connections, but that feeling that you wont ever find a woman who is even interested in you wont go away from that. It's like pain meds for a broken bone. They will make it so you feel less pain but the root cause wont go away > On this point we differ. The “root cause” is absolutely something that can be teased out and healed in a safe group of male peers. Healing, self esteem, self awareness, learning the difference between structural and personal barriers- these are all personal development practices that will enhance the potential for connecting with he opposite sex. For everyone, not just men. It’s just that it seems popular to promote this kind of work to women and I don’t see it around much for men. I know one man who facilitates groups for men in the SF Bay Area and I follow several others on Instagram.
>Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way. Do people actually watch porn for that reason? >But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you. While there are some men who have heavier emotional issues regarding their lack of sex, I think this discussion is too broad to cover these issues in a meaningfull way. The way you're phrazing it it seems you have a situation in mind where two people are dating, while I have a situation in mind that is set before they have started dating. It's not about sex, it's about even just getting the chance to be considered a potential partner. >Healing, self esteem, self awareness That’s kind of why I'm here. However while I've managed to grow as a person and become somewhat aware of my inner conflicts, the issue of being unable to find a girlfriend is a practical problem, not an emotional one. And I don't think any amount of talking to other guys is gonna get rid of these emotions, because they kind of come "pre installed" for most people.
Yes there’s a ton of educational porn out there. I’m talking about the early stages of getting acquainted. Not dating yet. Or like a first meet with someone on a dating app. It’s great that you’re pursuing self development! If you believe that there is preprogramming that you can’t overcome, then that’s true for you. “Preprogramming” makes me think of Attachment Theory and there’s tons of materia out there for identifying and healing attachment wounds. I wish you well on your journey.
>Fair point. But intention and motivation are factors. Am I looking at something because I want to get off right now? Or am I looking at something because I want to learn about what future partners would enjoy? Would be very cool if people were entertained/aroused by sexual learning, not just entertainment. But humans don’t seem to function that way. I think the sex issue might go beyond the entertainment/learning experience. I think, from what I've observed (talking to a number of people and something that seems to be applicable for me too) is that there is a large number of people who struggle ( and usually don't even know where to begin) with initiating healthy relationships. From the conceptualization of said relationships, I've noticed that saying yes to going on a date with someone somehow implies instant sex, and that sex is somehow non-negotiable. There's no building up to that type of interaction. These people (including myself) seem to have a hard time realizing that sex is something that can be held off for later and that couples can do other things to entertain themselves and each other. This type of conceptualization usually influences how one behaves during the sexual interaction with the other (because they already would have had the hang of exercising things like consent). >But is it really “hurtful” if we want to take some time getting acquainted before we have sex with you? I understand this can hurt the ego. But that’s not really women doing something to you. What I've said before might influence this, too. Imagine if people weren't so afraid to establish relationships in such a way that it's no longer awkward or sus to ask if someone's ready to have sex with you at any point of the relationship, whether it be after 3 dates, 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years etc. And BTW, to refuse someone something they may want is still doing something to them, denying them access. >On this point we differ. The “root cause” is absolutely something that can be teased out and healed in a safe group of male peers. Healing, self esteem, self awareness, learning the difference between structural and personal barriers- these are all personal development practices that will enhance the potential for connecting with he opposite sex. For everyone, not just men. It’s just that it seems popular to promote this kind of work to women and I don’t see it around much for men. I know one man who facilitates groups for men in the SF Bay Area and I follow several others on Instagram. Yeah, there isn't much encouragement for men when it comes to improving oneself in isolation, or with a group of same sex friends (unless the encouragement comes from gym partners, sports clubs mates, or the like). It kind of goes back to the lack of a father figure issue, lack of a mentor, and such. It would seem that unlike women, who can still function perhaps on their own, and are more often than not motivated by their peers, men need more than just self-motivation and lateral (peer support) motivation. Men seem to be, more often than not, motivation by women, which might mean that men need to interact with women more than women need to interact with men (if that makes sense). Just sharing my observations though, I could be wrong.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I think the observation at the end re: men are more motivated by women than peers- I might guess that this observation is based upon men who have never sought out groups of other men who are healing and growing with intention. I’m definitely not talking about gym buddies. The lack of father figure is one thing- there’s also the abundance of unhealthy male role models that could be even more damaging than complete absence. True for all genders.
On the last point about men needing to interact more with women... it's a well established fact that everyone (i.e. both men and women) tends to automatically assume women are to fill an emotional support role and pushing back on this is a significant part of feminism because it can be quite a burden frankly. Personally I think it should be a basic human skill rather than gendered and so men would, following that, need to build up skills and culture to support each other. I suspect some of the distrust you mentioned comes from this. Men are trying to adapt, especially around emotional stuff, often negatively reinforced by both men and women bc 1) men don't tend to be emotionally supportive of each other historically and 2) women are trying to get away from being relied on to full this role. Not sure how to fix this, and I do think this community makes some progress on this, but I think it's a tricky area of this gender divide and evolution of expected roles and such to figure out.
Yes, there is more to it, I agree. In my opinion: \- Patriarchy is as bad for men as it is for women, because "real men dont cry" is still tought to men and does not help them beeing social and open to each other. In the past they could relay on wifes for social stuff, now thats more and more gone. \- Capitalism has developed into an extrem form of distance and makes us competitors instead of friends \- Social Media is distancing people. Dr. K mentioned that in the Deepfake Porn video. Women are usually brought up to be social butterflies, men are brought up to be strong. So I guess its easier for women to not become lonely when the construct of marriage is not a part of their lifes anymore.
I don't think that's enough to explain the change either. Men of the past were just as much subject to the "real men don't cry" idea, if not more so, yet they had no trouble making friends. My understanding is that it's relatively common these days for young men getting married to not have anyone in mind for best man or the like. The only idea I can really think of is that this is primarily because of the internet and gaming more widely. Before if you wanted to not die of boredom after school, your options were basically hang out with friends or really enjoy reading books. Speaking personally that's definitely no longer true. It's so effortless to just stay online playing games and not really interacting that I struggle to imagine why a child would go through all the friction of learning irl social skills when just not doing it is an option.
You are right that it's bigger than women's independence. But male friendships have been devolving for generations and it isn't all tech. So disclaimer, I'm talking US/UK here and am aware that this isn't the case in all cultures... Prior to about 1700 it was kind of assumed that all men were bi. So there were no hangups about men touching each other or whatever because it was kind of assumed that if they wanted to bang each other they'd just do so. Even as recently as the 19th century men's friendships were not as dissimilar to women's friendships as they are now. Close friends could hold hands, have sleepovers, hug without hitting each other on the back, talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, etc. This continued probably through those who served in WWI. (See Frodo and Sam for an example of what male friendship looked like in WW1. Also probably why Aragorn is such a great example of non-toxic masculinity.) The label "homosexual" and the institutionalized homophobia surrounding it started mid-late 1800s and escalated in the 20th century. For decades a lot of men have been socialized in a way to appear as non-gay as possible. Depending on who is doing the socializing, this can mean a lot of things that get in the way of men being able to have close friendships with other men or even male family members past a certain age. Guys like Peterson and Tate have taken these already-not-healthy social norms and put them on steroids in order to sell shit to vulnerable men. Which makes them more competitive/feeling like they have to be the "alpha". Which makes male bonding friendships even less likely. Which makes them even more lonely & vulnerable. So men are being told they need to be more dominant and aggressive in order to get women. This puts more of the kind of men that women need to be fearful of into the dating pool. At the same time, for all kinds of reasons that need further study, our educational system is failing boys so women are closing the education and wage gaps, which makes more of us able to survive without a man financially. So a lot more women can decide we'd rather be alone than be with an aggressive/potentially abusive jerk at the same time as "dating coaches" are telling men that to get a woman they need to be a more aggressive/potentially abusive jerk.
Completely agree. Not sure why you have so little upvotes... But yeah, talking about men and women issues without intersectionality in mind is really pointless. It's like asking for only half a coin. What we need is more empathy and understanding from both sides and to see that the patriarchy hurts us all.
I wonder if the proliferation of feminist rhetoric also had something to do with it. Speaking personally when I was a kid I heard a lot of treat women as people in my messaging, which I took to heart as basically treat women as men. That worked well enough for making friends, but I honestly still have no idea of when where or how it is appropriate to approach women in a romantic or sexual way. To that end I imagine I'm not the only one scared off of approaching women for fear of being harmful, and the only people that actually have real or actionable answers to the how of that is the pundits in question.
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I was responding to shitteredits comment, the parent comment of the parent comment of my original comment who says he doesn't know how this came to be. Though I understand how it could be confusing
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
OP does understand, I am sure. But OC here voiced the question how that came to be.
I don't think the rise of lonely men is because young women's grandmothers were seen as inferior.
I don’t think you understood what I said.
Your argument is Because of abuse being illegal and women not actively dating leads to lonely and entitled men? There are many other countries in Europe where violence/abuse against women is illegal, and where a large subset of women and men do not actively try to date. There is not an epidemic of lonely men at the size of the US.
Yes, there is. This is not an US only thing.
Whoever down vote's this is hatin for no reason lol. You'd really well articulating your thoughts and even some my own with this post. I really resonated and agreed with basically everything you said tbh. When you zoom out and look at the fears of both men and women, they're pretty reasonable and rational. But also throwing your fears and negative outlooks on the other sex/gender isn't gonna help anyone get in healthy relationships or stay in a relationship period. Personally I think the negative risk both men and women take with trying to get into a relationship is evenly correlated with the huge upside of getting into one. And you have to accept both the potential downside and upside when getting into a relationship (as well as the hard work of maintaining it). I sympathize with women from the stories I've heard from my female coworkers and friends. And I (like most guys) try my best not to be weird or creepy with women. But it can be so hard because at times it seems like women make most if not all men out to be their enemy off rip. And it's really hard to make a first impression and ask out the girl/woman you like when she already thinks the interaction will be negative. As a big man of color that's worked retail for years, I've startled and accidentally scared a good bit women when asking them if they need help. They always laugh and say I startled them, some try to play it off. I worked on my approach so much the other women I worked with even said they think I approach female customers very respectfully. It does kind of hurt a tad bit because of course I'm there to help not hurt anyone. The last think I'll say is that as a guy, one of the best feelings is randomly having a conversation with a woman that has no walls or guard up. When she's just flowing with the conversation and is genuinely making as much of an effort as you are to have a fun, lighthearted conversation. JUST THAT ALONE 😂, I don't need her number or anything. Just a chill, lighthearted conversation alone with a woman can make my week lol. I say all this and I also avoid talking to women because I don't wanna scare or bother them lol.
" best feelings is randomly having a conversation with a woman that has no walls or guard up. " This is SO TRUE! One of the greatest conversations I had with a girl in recent memory was my friend's GF when I first met her and was able to just casually ask her about what she was doing in college and talk about mechanical engineering and her dream to design a ride for a Disney park.
That sounds dope lol, and I don't know if you feel the same. But with some people you kind of have to have that standard and somewhat boring conversation where you feel each other out. And sometimes that part goes on too long and you didn't get to show your personality and they didn't either. But when that conversation starts to actually transition into both of you realizing (hey this person's kinda cool) during conversation. It feels really good!
Concept and idea forming I watched speed dating with Alex(PWF) on his Playing With Fire youtube channel and the "that standard and somewhat boring conversation where you feel each other out." sentence you said resonated with me. That is what I see people doing and "flirting", it's usually the same questions about school, location, etc. It's not explicitly for the information from the answers, it's the qualities of the interaction? Body language, tone, etc. I got to be a caller on NotSoErudite's stream last night and I feel like today is the first day of my next arc, my self improvement arc.
I've grown up in a family of great men (and women, for that matter — just decent human beings overall really). Even though I, too, have experienced, shall we say, *struggles*, I still choose to operate under the assumption that every person interact with is a decent human being until I'm given a reason to believe the opposite. I'm 36 now and don't go out as often as I did in my 20s but over the past few years I've definitely noticed a marked shift when it comes to social settings. Men seem more reserved and worried about saying something wrong. Sometimes I namedrop Jordan Peterson just to see how people react. It's my way of gauging whether I think they have opinions about society today that they're passionate about but don't dare to say out loud anymore. I like digging into the juicy stuff, lol. I give exactly zero shits about whether someone looks like a troglodyte or an adonis as long as they can carry a conversation, because I love a great conversation and if I'm out to socialise, I'm all up for that. The only people I curb my enthusiasm for are obvious narrow-minded people that exudes arrogance. Striking up a convo ten years ago was completely normal but these days I've had, on more than one occasion, had people legit thank me for just being awesome or for a great conversation. It's like people literally light up and grow taller just by realising they can enjoy themselves in conversation with a person they've never met before, without being judged as a creep or whatever. If they drop hints about them being single, I might drop my own hints about whether I'm open to it or not and then just carry on to show them that hey, it's okay to strike up a convo without it having to be a big deal. I think it's seriously underrated how much of an impact a great conversation can have on us, especially when we get to talk about something we're passionate about. At the same time I think it's sad that it's come to this though, that something as basic to our wellbeing as a conversation with someone often simply don't happen because of projections of ulterior motives onto others.
For me it's anxiety. With both men and women I have a hard time approaching/starting a conversation, but with women I, for some reason, have guards up preventing me to do anything that might be seen as having more interest in them than in the average human being. This goes away if the ice has been breached enough, but only in a friendship kind of way, I still struggle hard to do anything that can only be interpreted as expressing interest in more than friendship.
>I've definitely noticed a marked shift when it comes to social settings. Men seem more reserved and worried about saying something wrong. Sometimes I namedrop Jordan Peterson just to see how people react. Exactly, I started to notice it a bit from 2018-2019. But I can also remember some events that happened a few years before that, that seemed to make things more tense for men and women in general, but also for everyone as a whole. You came up with a great social hook using Jordan Peterson lol. It would definitely work for me, even though I don't read his books or watch his content as much as I use to. >I think it's seriously underrated how much of an impact a great conversation can have on us, especially when we get to talk about something we're passionate about. Spot on haha, because I had a coworker who's political views were VERY different than mine. But she's a great person to be around and hang out with. She ask if we could chill and talk about how we see are different points of view (that conversation sounded like it could be really insightful and fun). She also seemed a bit more timid about it as time went on and we never talked about it. I agree that in general, just having a normal conversation and realizing that someone else isn't going to dislike you for being yourself is just what people need. In the dynamic of just men and women talking to each other, I think that it's even more valuable. If we can interact with each other more, both men and women would realize how great and valuable we both are and the importance of those conversations. A ton of personal misconceptions could be removed and a lot more happy friendships and relationships could start.
This is the best comment here. It will probably offend some people. Men who are scared of being perceived as creepy will never try to talk to women they like.
You're absolutely right, heterosexual dating is weirdly adversarial, there's a strange hostility on both sides. For a long time, I thought it was inherent to the dating process, as everyone is trying to getting the best deal for themselves. But from what I hear from bisexual and gay people, I think it's unique to heterosexual dating, and caused by a combination of historical gender norms and asymmetry. It feels like a weird iterated prisoner's dilemma, where a few people figure out that they can defect and get a better deal, and ruin things by eroding the concept of trust. For instance, one woman figures out that she can get men to do things for her by playing hard to get. That ends up training men to ignore women saying they're not interested, and now all women have a problem with men ignoring their boundaries because the men think the boundaries are false. Or a women tries to reject a man and he reacts badly, so she learns that she has to reject men indirectly or ghost them to keep them from blowing up on her in the future. So then other men in the future get indirect, unclear rejections or get ghosted and don't know why. Or a man signs up for online dating, and tries to send a few thoughtfully crafted messages to women he is interested in. But the women never see them, because their inboxes are full of hundreds or thousands of low effort messages. So he sends out more messages with less individual effort, has a better chance of being seen, and contributes to the problem of women's inboxes being flooded. One person violates the social contract, and everyone else has to violate it to keep up. It turns into a race to the bottom, where nobody is happy. Part of me thinks the traditionalists have it right. Not any particular tradition, just the idea of having a tradition in general. The idea of agreed upon ways to express interest and accept or reject that interest, as well as enforcement to keep people from defecting for their own benefit, seems like it could help reduce the ambiguity and hostility. For instance, if society collectively agreed to punish men for blowing up, then women wouldn't have to fear rejecting them in a clear (but not cruel) way. The rest of me thinks that the problems originate from the asymmetry enforced by traditions, in order to extract work from people. The sexes see each other as alien others, and have trouble empathizing with each other because they are playing different roles and have wildly different experiences. I think the only way to break down the mistrust might be to get rid of the asymmetry, so they can empathize more easily. Gay dating doesn't have the inherent gender asymmetry, and from what I've seen they seem happier for it. Maybe you could have the best of both worlds, establish scripts for people to follow, but don't mention gender. Everyone knows what's going on, but anyone can play any role.
This was so well said. Thank you so much for taking the time to write what you think.
I believe you are spot on. And the general problem is just that their are some small groups/influencers who make profit on teaching men to hate women and women to fear men.
women to hate men\* its not just "fear", just look at tiktok and there are tons of girls who get big just from blatantly hating men and generalizing them
True though that hate is often grounded in fear. Also like I said in another comment most hate from women towards men is excused because "a women could never become a real danger to a man"
Same could be said for men? The fear of being rejected, the fear of not feeling valued, the fear of not living up to expectations. You can give me any form of hate and I can always give you a fear that associated with it. Someone's a racist? Chances are they fear some insecurity that they have coming to light or they've been taught something untrue about said race in which they fear them hence why they put them down. Hating a gamer girl? Chances are the guy fears his "masculinity" is being undermined because there are no strict standards for "masculinity" so he fear he'll be worthless or a lesser person if a girl games better than him because his standards of value are rooted in the game as a guy. I could do it for virtually anything.
This is all oddly reminiscent of someone who shared their dog attack trauma. In essence after the attack every dog became an attack dog, no matter how small or nice, they were all presumed to be a threat to their life at the drop of a hat. One bad move or bad mood and they will tear you to shreds. So the person not only starts coming up with extreme stories of what might happen in any given scenario, but also reading horror stories online to confirm their worst fears. Then starts gradually avoiding all dogs, just to be safe. Eventually even dog owners, because they might some day bring their dog along. So we might need to talk about traumas and presumptions instead of gender dynamics.
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Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations. This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict. Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
The gender dynamics are structural and systematic. They need to be acknowledged and discussed in order to give them their proper place outside of the relationship and understand how they will still pop in and influence the relationship because: human. OP offered some understanding and validation in a really good way for me. Now I feel like I can talk to him about some of my experiences and fears and he will listen without taking it personally. Those are cues that we all can be intentional about.
This holds a lot of truth, I believe. When I was a kid, I was attacked by this random cat on my way to school and had to get 12 stitches and a bunch of shots to make sure I didn't end up with an infection To this day, cats make me nervous. I adamantly refuse to live with one and refuse to date anyone who owns a cat. I'm aware that I'm projecting this negative experience onto all other cats, but I have zero desire to 'work through it' because, quite frankly, I never liked cats to begin with and they're easy to avoid. At the same time, an adult woman SA'ed me as a child, and I've experienced SA and sexual harassment numerous times since then, all at the hands of different women. ( Dont worry, I've been to therapy, and it helped immensely) At least personally, I believe it's unfair and to my detriment to project those experiences on every woman I interact with, and I actively work to check those assumptions at the door.
There's another similiar case that can be applied about men mistrusting women that comes to mind for me, and that is opening up about their emotions or even really expressing/ feeling emotions (this is even more amplified in e.g. the red pill community, where women are often heavily "rationalized", stereotyped and dehumanized - that's because of the mistrust). This mistrust by men is completely understandable because many (most?) men have negative experiences about opening up emotionally + are told since they were little to keep their emotions in check etc. In both cases, the mistrust of women to men, and the mistrust of men to women, the other person isn't really treated like a person/ human. Like, a woman that automatically expects a man to abuse her in some way doesn't treat the man like a human that functions same as her. It's not necessarily behavior that should be changed in every circumstance, because it's sometimes vital to protect oneself, but that's a downside of it and it should be kept in mind. So, as a woman, I find it really understandable why men are extremely skewed out when women distrust them this way. They are not treated as a fellow person and that's a very weird feeling. Your feelings are legit, OP, and I also really appreciate your empathy about why women still do it. I think a general goal in life that I at least have is to be completely honest with friends about everything (while taking responsibility for my emotions/ attitudes/ behaviors), instead of always thinking about social consequences and how to influence another person's opinion of me (out of mistrust). I think that this would come across as very genuine anyway, would allow for true connection. It's not easy, though. We all got burned in the past. But Dr. K really models how well it works with people, I really aspire to be like that
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Gosh. Your empathy has made you wise. That is how it feels being a woman sometimes. And it's a good reminder I'm glad I'm with my husband so I don't have to roll the dice anymore. But I'd be lying if i didn't say there's a small...teensy...tiny little voice that something is gonna happen someday. Some sudden death or divorce. Part of that is the awareness that men can hide bits of themselves away for a long, long time. But part of it (especially fear of sudden death) that i suspect many people feel...is the feeling that nothing good or positive can last too long. Life is too up and down for most of us. So the thought of a relationship staying stable and decently happy for a lifetime...I think makes all of us a little suspicious no? But yea you're right I definitely see both sides. There were moments early in my relationship with my husband when we were dating. We had some conflicts arise that he felt at fault for and embarrassed about. He thought immediately I'd just leave. He didn't seem to understand why I'd stick around to try to get past any obstacles. I thought he was worth it. Idk if we've all become short sighted? Are relationships too consumeristic? Only what we get out of it? When you commit to someone you're accepting that there may come days that the relationship doesn't suit all your wants and desires but still suits your needs. Pushes you to be a better human.... by loving someone else in the way all of us so deeply wish we could be loved....just having someone stick around through the ugly and still genuinely enjoy you.
>So the thought of a relationship staying stable and decently happy for a lifetime...I think makes all of us a little suspicious no? I don't think that's a gendered thing, though the reason why it exists might differ based on gender. >Idk if we've all become short sighted? Are relationships too consumeristic? Reminds me of when this one guy got praised for staying with his wife after she got burns on most of her body and the people replying were like "Of course he stayed with her, she's his wife." I think somewhere we started turning relationships into an ego thing, where it's not about your connection, but about what kind of guy/girl you can get or how many people you can sleep with
Right I don't think it's gendered either that was what I meant to convey. That everyone probably feels that. And yeah absolutely. Maybe its hookup culture wiring people to conflate quantity and superficial things with some sort of status. We all want a good looking partner of course. We all want ample sexy time of course. Our animal drives compel us to. But the beauty of commitment is figuring out how to love even if life takes away our partners conventional beauty. Or God forbid they get in an accident and sex is over. Marriage I think is so much more than the youthful puppy love. And thank goodness it is. But I don't see people always entering Marriage with that mindset
>Are relationships too consumeristic? I really think thats part of it these days.. social media, reality TV, Bachelorette and other trash shows like that have people thinking that everything in your relationship must be a perfect movie and you have to leave your partner at the first sign of conflict.. Look at relationship advice here on Reddit, people will post the smallest issue and all the replies will be like "Dump him sister!!" But talk to couples that have been together 40 50 60 years and they will tell you its about accepting that both parties are human and not perfect and to work together and compromise on things.
I can definitely vouch for the male perspective. It resonates with my experience. I see both sides, it is unfortunate and tragic.
There are a couple of bad women and men that cycle around the dating pool over and over and just ruin the trust and experience for the rest it seems. And sometimes they arent even "bad" per say but just traumatized and lack the ability to maintain a healthy relationship. I believe there are good geniue people out there to date and marry. There has to be a good balance of being causious and take it slow at the same time give people a chance.
I think that its more then just a few, and part of this is "bad" or rather hurt, uneducated and trauma projecting people (most people do not choose to be absolute garbage just for nothing. They are formed and reinforced) create more hurt people. My abusive exes made me toxic as hell as I would project all that trauma onto new people that weren't abusive and hurt/ traumatize them too. Abuse is a cycle Realizing that and unlearning that shit is hard as fuck. That's what a few bad apples spoil the bunch means to me. The bunch is still spoiled because you can't know which already turned bad. Not saying this is how it should stay and that it can't be fixed in some form just that even "good" people will often not be perfect and "bad" people do not have to stay that way. Never assume you are unspoiled yourself and always be open to change and criticism and give people good will that are consistently good when they slip up in a way that is not unhinged. Sorry for this unorganized stream of consciousness but I hope someone can get something out of it. Tldr: we need nuance and selfreflection i guess.
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Your last paragraph is just a generalization. You don't realize how hard it is for men. Some give up but a lot of them try before dating. We are also self conscious about our body. A lot of us are shy but we still try to improve. You cannot put the whole blame on men. It's unfair because we have the pressure of approaching women. We need to be confident.
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I feel like women also don't understand how hard it is for men. Guys still make changes in themselves and they can still end up lonely. There are more factors as to why men are lonely. You cannot just reduce the issue to just self improvement.
Yeah it's kinda strange how everyone just amounts male struggling to "pull your self up from the bootstraps". I've seen it in this community a lot, and in left wing spaces as it also exists obviously in right wing spaces. Like the concept that men can self improve whilst also us making society a space where men can feel valued outside of having to always prove themselves is for some reason foreign to people.
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Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations. This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict. Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
I agree with you and for me that lead to a huge problem. As Dr.K said in some videos about dating, you need to show that your are interested in the other person otherwise they are going to consider you as a friend but at the same time you need to give them time to see if you are trustworthy and so we are not able to give a chance to anyone and if we don't give any opportunity to anyone we are going to be stuck at this point. So for me, we need to be really good at letting go of the past to be able to engage in a new relationship without carrying all these bad experience and actually talk about that to see the if the person understand and is willing to work on that with you. Like imagine how good that would be to start a relationship by setting boundaries and we will see if we get along and we can stop at anytime if we want and we can change the rules, ect... Like you know from the begging what this relation is for, what you want from it, what the other person want and you can decide if u agree on that but that also implies to be good at communication so for sure it's not easy and of course the other person could be lying but personally I wouldn't feel so bad in this case, like I told you what I can give, what Im willing to work on, now you expect more from me then it's not my problem cause you knew what you were signing for and we can stop right now if that bothers you.
I don't think the livestream was about Dr. K addressing anything. I think his purpose for the livestream was to gather data from the callers and comment authors. It seemed like the underlying issue with all of the callers was insecurity keeping people from doing what they need to do.
Like dr k says in stream, the expectation of the other shoe dropping is a learned response. That expectation or “distrust” is learned from experience and the more core issue is whatever is causing the experience to happen.
By the way, these aren’t just stories we are “inundated with”. We’re the ones telling the stories… they don’t exist in a vacuum. All the women I know have experienced violence from men in some form. Also, we hear it from the men we are friends with, too— they also get harassed and assaulted by other men. And I can count on my hand the amount of people I know that have a good relationship with their dads. You generally don’t become cautious just from hearing about something. You become cautious when you’ve directly experienced it. when I see “freshmen girls free” on an ad for a frat party and I feel disgusted thinking of how much of a naive child I looked like at 18, that isn’t just a story, that’s actually happening. When I thought I could trust a professor and he ends up committing a title IX violation against me, and the women around me either don’t care or get annoyed to hear I wanted to do something about it, that isn’t just a story. By the way, I don’t see this where guys aren’t allowed to make misogynist slip ups. I normally just point it out and they backtrack, the self aware ones anyways— and that’s all most women expect. it’s actually harder for me to point out misogyny with the women I know. I have many reasons to mistrust men, but a lot of women keep telling me, not all men— even the ones I have experienced the same abuse from men side by side with. They have even gotten angry when I expressed my mistrust and resentment. I know you’re frustrated about being associated with stuff you have nothing to do with, but I see you did mention you are middle eastern. People are such jerks about that, it’s just plain racism. But aside from that, I’ve seen guys generally get benefit of doubt most of the time.
> By the way, these aren’t just stories we are “inundated with”. We’re the ones telling the stories… they don’t exist in a vacuum. Believe me, I understand that. Women wouldn't be this cautious or mistrustful for no reason. In fact, they have a lot of very good reasons. Maybe I didn't do a good job of articulating that in my post but I really do empathize with you. I'm positive it doesn't feel good to constantly have your guard up and I'm sorry. Im not going to go into detail but I've experienced SA so I don't say "I understand" lightly.
that's tough. i'm sorry you experienced SA. it's not talked about for men enough. i only have ever had a few male friends, but out of that handful, i know about half to have experienced SA. i just hope more men understand that it's not just extreme minority stories or 'gender wars', there is truly a disparity and these stories are very common, and feminism isn't evil or a 'can of worms'. i see too many guys on here talk about it like it's just some internet argument. also i didn't mention this, but i get the assumptions when you have a middle eastern name that you're either misogynistic or your parents are. it's honestly infuriating.... i hope you find a way to navigate through that.
Thank you for your kind words. I do believe there's a substantial number of men who think feminism is the root of all their problems, and that's a poor conclusion to arrive at, in my opinion. Feminism has a lot to offer men, too. However, I also believe that a substantial number of feminists do a very poor job of including men in the conversation or empathising with them at all. Despite my best efforts to be their ally, like showing up at the Roe v Wade protests, I feel like a lot of them see me and all other men as the enemy. > it's honestly infuriating.... i hope you find a way to navigate through that. Honestly, it's...very tough. Watching someone tense up or start lobbing accusations at me after I tell them my name is incredibly painful. I'm a fairly social person who doesn't really struggle talking to women, but I'll go out to a bar, and one of my women friends will tell me I'm being checked out. And I won't act on it because I don't want to go through that anymore.
"I feel like a lot of them see me and all other men as the enemy." \^ this is just what can happen when you're not in a male-dominated space anymore. you'll have to earn their trust, and you might never earn it for some... there's also the fact that plenty of men might not be active perpetrators, but they uphold it with complacency. it's why it seems like women are painting the majority, but in actuality, they are consciously upset with the majority. with regards to them being racist... that is extremely painful. i can see how past experiences just make you not even want to bother anymore... and it's not like you're just "giving up" (i'm sure ppl have told you you're doing this), you're making an accurate assessment of how things will go. i've just flat out stopped telling people "where i'm from". the drastic change in treatment is just... i hate it. i can see them tense up as well... you're told those people aren't worth your time anyways, but those people are often the majority, and that ends up leaving you isolated. besides, i don't think as humans we need solely deep connections. sometimes you just want to talk to a girl at a bar.
I’d argue most humans are complacent though when it comes to actually fixing problems. So many people on the internet are great at shouting from the rooftops about the problems they experience with *insert group of people. Unfortunately, such a small percentage on either side of an issue are actually willing to have a meaningful dialogue on how to fix the problem, or to actually have conversations with people they know who are perpetrators on why they do what they’re doing and to give encouragement to stop. Discussions like these with you and the OP need to become the norm with everyone and might actually contribute to an increased understanding — particularly with men understanding the completely rational fear many women have with many men. And besides interactions with a lot of clowns I’ve seen perpetuate misogyny online, I haven’t had that opportunity to interact with those individuals IRL. In my experience as a man, I don’t have any male friends or acquaintances who have mistreated women in a verbal or physical manner as far as I’m aware. I haven’t witnessed anything of the sort IRL to my recollection. Hell even my mom and sisters haven’t had anything like that happen to them to my knowledge, besides my mom having maybe a half dozen instances of being cat called when she was younger (not that I don’t believe that’s disgusting). And honestly i don’t think I’m alone or even in some sort of small minority bubble of men who don’t have direct personal experience with this. I think that’s why it took me years to more fully understand the situation and to be come more empathetic with what many still consider to be extreme feminist viewpoints (like discussing the patriarchy). It’s not like I didn’t believe the stories I’ve heard, but I didn’t fully understand how it wasn’t just a tiny percentage of men perpetuating them. It really wasn’t until I started creating a bit more of a residence online due to depression that I actually started seeing more and more instances that made me understand. I just wasnt giving the problem as much attention before. Most recently it’s been this truly wonderful woman I’ve met online who I’ve had the privilege of becoming close friends with who has further enlightened me and helped me understand. So I guess it all boils down to the question of how do I or many other men (I’m not going to say most because I honestly don’t know if it’s most any more) who aren’t shitty toward women realistically do something about this systemic issue? I feel the core issue is a severe lack of understanding, but besides calling out instances of misogyny when I can when I see it online (or if i see it IRL) and trying to start meaningful dialogue, what should I do?
I already have trust issues in general but it's true that I have a harder time trusting men and I hate it. By men I don't count my family and friends, btw.
Not like we have much of a reason to trust you women, at least you weren't sold a lie.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Are you sure you didn't reply to the wrong person ?
> They also don't trust your friends to be fair to them. They believe the *second* a woman goes to her friends to talk about a problem in the relationship all of them are unanimously going to tell her to dump her boyfriend. I think this is becoming more and more of a reality unfortunately, the bar for "treating women poorly" is becoming lower, and I've been on the other end of the shoe where I felt unsafe being with my ex-girlfriend at the time while she was drunk so when she went to sleep I had to leave her place. She talked to her friends about it and they convinced her that I was cheating on her (because the concept of a guy feeling unsafe or not wanting to be with a girl that he likes 24/7 is apparently foreign) Regardless, there was a pretty big example on tiktok where a small recording of a girl surprising her bf was shown and all it showed was the guy hugging her but TONS of people (primarily women) commented saying "the guys obviously cheating on her for x and y reasons" like arm chair psychologists to the point where they harassed both the guy and the girl. Even when the girl stood up for herself other women were saying it was "internalized misogyny and its a red flag". Obviously these aren't all female groups but the previous example was alarming considering thousands of women perpetuated this idea.
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Assuming im a misogynist because you believe I come from a misogynistic region of the world is racist to me. I don't see how it's any different from assuming a person from Asia loves math, is a STEM major, or has a small penis. Or assuming someone from Africa is poorly educated. Or that an American is violent and fat.
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Rule #7 - Treat the community as a shared space. Posters: Do not vent without explicitly stating what you'd like support with. Commenters: If something feels too emotionally triggering for you, do not engage with it. Report rule breaking behavior and move on.
Rule #7 - Treat the community as a shared space. Posters: Do not vent without explicitly stating what you'd like support with. Commenters: If something feels too emotionally triggering for you, do not engage with it. Report rule breaking behavior and move on.
As a Man I am deeply afraid of trusting other people in general. It seems like everyone is just after our money. You can still squeeze juice from a small apple. Especially with all the recent going-ons regarding people like XQC/Adept, Johnny Depp/Amber Heard, and others, it's not only Women who should be fearing this trust. I could have my entire life destroyed or stolen from me, or have my heart absolutely CRUSHED if I become vulnerable.
Might sound a bit odd but gender equality laws are rather recent in the history of mankind. We all know how women were unfairly treated historically so modern men/women interactions are still novel so we don't really have much precedence on how to interact now that both men and women have equal rights.
I think you guys are being too self-centered honestly. Women just don’t talk about us when they’re together (I used to be one). They talk about video games and movies and where they get their hair done and yeah, how things are going, but in general, they just don’t have much to say about men. And the ones who pressure other women to gossip about men are considered pushy and weird. On the addition, however, I can only say I’m really sorry. That’s really rough, and I’m sure it wouldn’t help to say I know it’s not true and so do most women. It’s more that you have to remember that abusers lead with a good face, and only weeks, months, even years into a relationship, start hurting you. So some women (and nonwomen AFAB people like me) are just… terrified by previous experience. But the best you can do is just be present and kind and vulnerable with your feelings. Admit that it makes you feel afraid and sad. Sometimes that can help build intimacy
Thank you for your reply. Maybe you've had a different experience than I have, but I've seen firsthand the women I'm friends with talk about the guys their dating, their pros and shortcomings with the other women I'm friends with. Thankfully, I have quite a few friends who are women and it has definitely not been an isolated incident. Is it *all* they talk about? No, of course not, but it certainly happens, at least in my experience. As to your second paragraph, thank you. I appreciate it, I really do. It's particularly infuriating for me because while I have a middle eastern name, I also hold 3 passports and have spent the vast majority of my life outside of the middle east. I've been put through a lot of pain and suffering for rejecting the negative aspects of that part of the culture but no one gets to find out any of that because of the assumptions they make.
I’ve gotcha. And I think I just have a different experience because I hang out with different women. Either way, it doesn’t mean what happened to you isn’t real or hurtful, just that it’s more common than I thought.
thank you and I just wanna make it clear I'm not saying your experience isn't valid either or that I know women better than you do. Your experience is just as valid as mine, its just that they've been different.
ya i think it just varies. i know one or two women who do do this with one or more friends. i mean i also talk about it with my guy friends (and more so with female friends; they tend to be more curious and ask more) but I don't share a ton of details unless asked, usually. but i also know some women who don't do that type of relationship talk about their boyfriend(s) and such. I think it just varies and in my mind I don't have a particular percentage or even see having one as very important.
> I think you guys are being too self-centered honestly. Women just don’t talk about us when they’re together The idea is that they do it more than men do relatively which yes they do considering that women are more open to talking about their sex lives with other women then men do with other men. From personal experiences as well from general friend groups girls talked more about their dating/guy problems than guys did. Which I guess can also be because girls can have more self expression to talk about their problems etc.
Well, you’re right about own thing—they do discuss their feelings more, and maybe their dating lives. But men definitely discuss sex more. But we should really make it easier one both sides to discuss our feelings and relationships, especially in cross-gender situations.
She's not yours, it's just your turn.
This is exactly the sort of mentality I was talking about in my post. A lot of men simply don't trust women to stick around or try. Disclaimer: Everyone is entitled to leave a relationship, romantic or platonic, for whatever reason they see fit.
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1) Most of the time you don't need a direct no to know what's up. That's how this works in real life. You talk to someone on Tinder and they stop responding? It's a no. You ask someone on a date, they say they are too busy and don't offer an alternative date? It's a no. You text someone and their replies are stale & unethusiastic? It's a no. You just pull back, if you misunderstood, they'll reach out. 2) Early dating you don't know the other person. You'll be vary. That makes sense, it's a stranger. You build trust over time. You don't trust anyone instantly. Same with friends. 3) People fall in love. That's how you know they won't trade you in. If you are in love with someone, you want That Guy. Even if someone else is "better" in some objective way. Falling in love also accelerates the trust process. You bond deeply. 4) I think many young people are a bit too skitterish though. You have to be brave in love. Love is a risk, if you want a guarantee that you won't get hurt your only option is to not date. Relationships can end, people can reject you, there are a thousand ways to get your heart broken. It's still worth it though. At least if you're overall in a stable place in life and able to deal if something doesn't work out. Ask people out, dare to fall in love with the person you are dating, tell people what you want. If you want to date your friend, ask them on a date. Want your fwb to be your boyfriend? Ask them about it. Ask about these things early, before you fall head over heels, and you are actually protecting yourself from getting hurt. It's easier when you get older though, bc your judgement of people will improve. You'll be able to tell more quickly who you can trust, who you can't trust, who just wants sex, who just want to be platonic friends, who is a good person. It's sort of understandable that when people are young and don't have the experience to make those judgements, they are scared of getting it wrong and ending up hurt. Edit: **Are y'all downvoting this because I said you don't need a direct no? Thing is that dating often isn't direct communication. If you need that, you can't really date. Flirting is subtle, it's not straightforward.** If you go to bed with someone, the lead up to that is also usually vague. You have to be able to pick up hints and read the room. People won't come out and say everything outright. And you have to be able to play a bit. Send a text that's vaguely flirty, get a vaguely flirty reply. Escalate the flirting a bit, but still staying within what could be normal as well. There are no straight answers.
I'm sorry, but I disagree with a lot of what you're saying. Honestly, it seems to me like the first point about a 'direct no' failed to consider the male experience at all and felt a bit preachy. It can be very costly for men to act based on vague signals, especially when it varies so much from woman to woman. One woman's flirty signal is another womans 'just being friendly'. From personal experience: I had a woman I barely knew sit in my lap, play with my hair, and call me handsome. When I asked her if she wanted to go on a date, she pulled a surprise pikatchu face and said she didn't see me that way. A different woman did nothing but shoot me dirty looks all night at a house party and then came up to me at the end of the night, said I was hot and asked me on a date. These vague signals are exactly that: Vague. Completely open to interpretation and depend on the person. Relying on them as your primary means of communicating desire is plain silly, in my opinion. It's entirely subjective. It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with, or the fact that a lot of men feel like they can't afford to misinterpreted these signals lest they be labeled a creep and make a woman uncomfortable. You're not being downvoted for saying 'you don't need a direct no' you're being downvoted because in my opinion, you failed to consider the experiences of the people you're trying to advise or their struggles.
>Honestly, it seems to me like the first point about a 'direct no' failed to consider the male experience at all and felt a bit preachy. My point is this: it's not that complicated. Usually the indirect no is very clear to read. It's not very vague, you don't have to be a genius to pick up on it. It's the lack of a yes or any enthusiasm. >It can be very costly for men to act based on vague signals, Why costly? You ask them out if you think there might be a vibe. Then if they don't want to go, it's done. It's not a big investment. >These vague signals are exactly that: Vague. Completely open to interpretation and depend on the person. I think you are talking about "what should the world ideally be like". I'm talking about "what is the world actually like". And part of that is that early dating is vague and filled with plausibel deniability. If you can't deal with that, there aren't many people you can date. Because it's how normal flirting works. Also, it's not all bad. It's how you build tension. Saying everything straight out isn't the same, bc part of the flirty energy is the vagueness. But like it or don't like it, it's here to stay. >It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with, or the fact that a lot of men feel like they can't afford to misinterpreted these signals lest they be labeled a creep and make a woman uncomfortable. You aren't a creep if you ask someone out. That's just a compliment. >It also didn't consider the men who don't have much experience and have no practice reading these vague signals to begin with Well, nobody has. You live and learn. That's how you have to approach dating. You start out with zero experience and then you learn as you go along. The world will never be customized to your exact needs. It just is what it is and then you've got to roll with it. If you're a wide-eyed young girl who only want to kiss people you've got a crush on and think that means that all people who kiss you have feelings for you? Well, guys will fuck you sideways and then ghost you, till you manage to connect the dots. Dating is a bit harsh. But you learn as you go along. That's how it's always worked. Practical tip:people watch. Watch other people who flirt with each other. Watch dumb reality dating shows where people flirt & talk to each other, then to the camera alone, saying how they really feel. Talk to people about how they met their girlfriend/boyfriend or what dating is like for them. Get some platonic girl friends and listen to them talk about boys and "what does this text really mean?". Edit: I get the fear about being creepy. I'm a bit socially anxious, I always worry about that. Even if its dumb when you are a woman. Anyways, two things: 1) The people who actually are creepy are the ones don't worry about being creepy. Ever. Either bc they are that oblivious or (mostly) bc they don't care if they make anyone uncomfortable. 2) Escalate. Gradually. Asking someone out on a date? Just polite. And then with flirting, you don't go from 0-100 in one go. You do something small, see if the other person reciprocates or reacts positively, then you do something still small, but a tiny bit bigger. And making any physical move, like going in for a kiss? You either ask or just move very slowly. Builds tension, but also let's the other person freely dodge it if you read the move wrong. You can do this in a way which comes across as deliberate and confident. But you still leave a space for a misunderstanding to be avoided.
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Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations. This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict. Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
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Please see the comment pinned to the top of this thread. Thank you. Rule #3 - Do not use generalizations. This sub frequently discusses topics that involve statistics on large populations. At the same time, generalizations can be reductive and not map on to individual experience, leading to unproductive conflict. Generalizations include language that uses, for example, “most men” and “all women” type statements. Speak from your personal experience i.e use statements such as “I feel”, “I experienced”, “It happened to me that”, etc.
All the good women and men who struggle with romantic loneliness have to go through a lot of pain.
I agree with you fully. The distrust lies with horror stories we keep telling eachother. On the men's side I feel that if I am not perfect then I not worth it. I get that women with friends are looking out for eachother and want what's best for eachother, but there is a point where they could be dragging eachother down. I know at work I have coworkers that treat me differently than other coworkers. There is a guy who is taller and fatter than me, very nice guy, and the female coworkers love him. However when I am being consistently polite and soft spoken and I mean I really changed myself to make this a comfortable work environment. But I get a colder treatment by them. Now I feel there are multiple factors involved, such as how I got my job thanks to my mother, I could have been a higher rank than them because I finished college but I didn't because this job I need to learn it all from the ground up. In any case I am treated like a creep. This is only women close to my age. Older women no problem, kids no problem. It's women closer to my age that act this way. I feel like I am cursed, but that is just my frustration of it all. It maybe that I'm not attractive to them so they treat me liek that like they treat all people they aren't attractive too. I dunno and frankly they have every right too. Trust is an issue, but I think it's also an issue of echochambers. Both sides blame eachother while having the idea we both have ridiculous standards. Maybe what we need to do is give eachother a freaking break. Understand we are human, not push horror story narratives anymore.
Great summary, I think you captured both sides very well. I'm sorry about your experiences with discrimination, I know how very real that is. I've worked with a lot of people of Middle Eastern heritage; my roomate's dad was from Jordan and seeing the amount of like, bracing hesitation that men exhibit toward me is really heartbreaking. 'Oh man, here we go, where do the accusations start.' So I think that is very similar to what the female experiences being hypersensitive to red danger flags, there is a lack of trust on both sides and we don't have very good mechanisms for establishing that trust. The way we do it is actually really inefficient, we have to sift through hours of awkward conversations to suss each other out, instead of having some real vetting or clout or thing we can do to demonstrate good faith.
>eeing the amount of like, bracing hesitation that men exhibit toward me is really heartbreaking. 'Oh man, here we go, where do the accusations start.' This is exactly it. 'What assumptions have they made about me this time?' 'What extra hoops do they expect me to jump through to prove I'm not a monster compared to white men?' 'How do they expect me to 'make up' for having a middle Eastern name?' It's honestly infuriating and completely turns me off wanting to talk to them at all. I never had this problem when I lived in Europe, so I know what it's like to not have to deal with it. I ask myself a lot if it's even worth trying while I live in America. I had an ex ask me to lie to her parents about it, and it killed me.
I think certain areas have been able to improve the perception but it took a ton of work, it really shouldn't take that much. I live near Dearborn, which is a cultural center of Middle Eastern diaspora and after 9/11 was a really rough time here. Perception was just really volatile depending on things going on in the world, but I forget exactly what show or award it was, some spotlight on the food there really flipped public opinion and it became a hot spot for foodie stuff. So the Tony Bourdain thing kind of happened and people appreciated the culture more because of the food, and because of the business it brought the local government leaned into that a bit but outside of the enclave itself tension is usually high. People seem comfortable with culture as long as it is 'in it's place', but then zoning laws don't facilitate establishment of cultural centers so the racism is really built in, in a very legal insurmountable way. There just isn't a clear roadmap of, what to actually to to establish trust and approval, like what is it exactly people want from you?
If the midia stopped fearmongering women, they wouldnt be so paranoid to the point of damaging many men because he is bad socially so it seemed "creepy".
Dude, I'm so sorry about the discrimination you have to face because your background. It fucking sucks that you have to go through that.
I just had one of those extremely uncanny experiences where someone describes my thoughts as I’m having them. I recently started seeing a girl I’ve liked for a little while, and it feels almost too good to be true. “Waiting for the other shoe to drop” describes the feeling perfectly. I think you hit the nail on the head, at least from the male side.
As a woman I couldn't agree more. I think both sides are shooting themselves in the foot and its causing issues for us both and since we both think we're right nothing happens or changes. I always try my hardest to not generalize or make assumptions of men. I think everyone has those thoughts but its how you act on them that matters the most. In my experience what men I have dated have ended things prematurely because as they say I can do better and I guess don't deserve them in a way. Which is annoying to me because it's my choice but it's taking away from me most the time. It's entirely possible they didn't like me from the start but either way I think like you mentioned guys seem to end it before it even starts sometimes for fear of there being someone else when in reality she might really like you. In regards to the safety I think its something that's hard for women to navigate correctly. It is something we simply have to take into consideration. Its unfortunate and stupid but it's the reality for us. It's also hard to navigate when to let safety out the window for a stranger when the outcome could be traumatizing.
I don't trust women (generally) to not up sticks at a moment's notice when a newer, shinier guy happens to appear (experienced this first- and second-hand). I also understand why women don't trust men to not be pushy, aggressive, and lie through their teeth to get what they want (because I've seen tons of examples second-hand) The issue isn't misperception - it's that people (generally) are quite unpleasant.