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“My Brother Is So Far Gone”: How Male Influencers Turned The Men In These People’s Lives Toxic
(www.buzzfeednews.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Men's Liberation
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Why are men always obsessing about what it means to be a man? I think that was one of the most commonly asked questions on reddit. Never in my life have I asked what it means to be a woman, I find the question nonsensical. I'm a person and I can do whatever I like and being a woman isn't the defining feature of my identity.
Guy here, we're not obsessed. Society is, we are basically told and enforced on since birth that a man does certain things and acts a certain way. And if he doesn't then not only is he not a man, but is also a failure.
I can personally vouch for the fact as well that it's not just "toxic masculinity" but it's partners and friends that are women as well that if you show any amount of "non-men" attributes or emotions they will drop you or ridicule you and tell you to "man up"
Women claim they want men to be more open and exposed among many other things. But I've then seen the exact same women act disgusted by a guy or look down on them for doing exactly that.
Thankfully I didn't get caught in that trash red pill community cause their ideas are awful and won't fix anything, it's all a grift... But to a young guy that doesn't know any better it is frankly very obvious why they would choose to believe in that sort of thing.
Men have no positive support networks that won't have the chance to just put us down anyways. We have no identity besides the trash society brainwashed us with at birth. Unlike women we don't have nearly the same amount of positive reinforcement from anyone to break the traditionalist molds we were born into which also reinforces the ideas that men shouldn't talk about our feelings.
And to top it off we are constantly portraited and made to feel like monsters everywhere we go because of the fearmongering media. Seriously I'm not horribly ugly, about average, but the looks and body language women give me just for walking and passing by them on the sidewalk (if they don't cross the street and walk on the other side) is... Dehumanizing and there's nothing I can do about it.
None of this is isolated to me either, this is a constant throughline of common experience from every guy I've ever meet.
Society needs to be more supportive of men that want to break traditionalist roles as well as stop being dismissive to mens issues. We need more good role models for young men, or else we will continue to see an uptick in this red pill trash. But that won't happen if we keep isolating men and brushing off their issues as is so common.
Since the very beginning, men are told to not to cry or man up and don't talk about feelings, because that is gay, later he notices that he can't express love the same way a woman do, then he learn's people respect him more if he is logical and uncaring.
These are all stereotypes men deal with so they think being a man is being like that. To change they need help from society. So they ask how to be a man is like: how a respectful and flourished man act this day and age?
My personal opinion is to change society, the better behavior need to be motivated. If being a confident asshole is paying off men will be like that.
Everyone is different. There are many millions of non-man-identifying folks trying really hard to figure out what it means to be whatever they are.
Men are no different, just so happens we get pretty toxic when we are unfocused and unsure. Not an excuse, but that's what we're seeing.
Also these articles make it seem like all men struggle with this. Most folks just wake up and get on with their day, much as you describe your experience is.