To find it hard to care about men's issues

[Parsleyforme]

Men's cancer, diseases and suicide I do care about, but I am really struggling to care about the other modern problems of modern men.

My brother says that the modern men of today are very confused about who they should be and how they should act and that is giving them all identity crises and/or midlife crises, depending on their ages. Things like they get told that men as a whole are bad, they don't know who they are as a man anymore, they don't know how much they should show their feelings, they feel guilt even if they're a good man, they don't know what they're supposed to bring to relationships anymore etc. etc.

I'm finding it quite hard work enough to be a woman without having to worry about or really hear about men's issues as well. And I'm actually quite frustrated that I'm being expected to provide a understanding and sympathetic ear. I went to a girl's school and when I left Barbieland I had to pretty quickly catch on that lotss of men are creeps and women aren't actually at the top of any industry or even their own relationships. It actually angers me a bit that I'm expected to feel something for the men who are feeling unsettled when all we've really managed is to get them to stop wolf-whistling at us or sacking us if we get pregnant.

AIBU to feel like this? WIBU to say I don't really have the bandwidth (read:patience) for this and maybe he should talk to some men who can empathise rather than a woman?

No I really don’t to be honest and I don’t say that to be facetious, I just know I am a woman.

But yes the lit reviews and studies that sre due to be published over the kect 2 years will probabky conclude this. It seems that way from individual research. The pppr expectations and low opinion of boys affects how they are parented, especially when compared to their opposite sex siblings. We know that parents treat babies differently once they are aware of their sex. So often from the womb they already change their language.

What all western women ? 🙄

Yes there are pretty clear line divides. Western women prefer girls.

If I can go on a tangent for a second, one thing I have been thinking about recently is this: why do men tend to bottle up emotion and push it down back inside? Whereas women - so the revived wisdom tells us - are much better at letting it out, talking about it and dealing with it.

We tend to see this summarised as 'women handle their emotions better' or 'women are more emotionally mature' or whatever.

So the thing I am wondering is - are men this way because of their higher innate tendency towards anger and violence? What I mean is - for men, emotion is dangerous. Excess emotion and letting those emotions out can lead to very dark things. They have learned that in order to function in the world, they HAVE to repress their emotions because to men, releasing emotions doesn't mean crying or breaking down, it means violence and anger.

Just putting my thoughts down here really. I myself have never felt any real urge towards violence, and I've never actually committed any. I think it's clear that men do feel that and therefore to them, emotions are best repressed.

Because men are often cited as whining or unmanly for admitting vulnurability.

As long as you don't have an expectation that men should care about any womens issues, then you aren't being hypocritical at least.

Personally, I feel the only way forward for humanity is to stop splintering off into seperate tribes and to start caring about every human being's issues as a whole. Because mens issues affect women and vice versa. And looking at a small part of a larger problem will never lead to a solution.

As far as I can see, this tribal approach has not helped a single movement that has adopted it. Racism, lgbtq issues, feminism, can you honestly say these have been getting any better since this combative approach was adopted in the late 2000s?

Exactly. As a mother of boys I obviously care for them, but also if I had daughters I wouldn’t choose for them a world where the narrative around what it is to be a man is so negative. Don’t know what the answer is except all keep trying to do our best! I talk to my boys about feminist issues and also try to be sensitive to understanding what it means to be a boy these days

Plenty of evidence-but you chose a piece of fluff.

One thing I don’t think men consider is that th patriarchy is as damaging to men as it is to women.

Not all western women of course, but no one ever posts on mumsnet because they’re upset about having a baby girl, only a baby boy. I don’t think that’s about man-hating though. I think it’s just feeling worried that they won’t be as close to a boy and that they will lose their son to a potential daughter in law’s family.

Your brother has a point. It is very hard to men in some ways. They are human beings too, not an alien species.

Men don’t repress their emotions at all. They simply channel them in more unhealthy ways. They are much MORE likely to act on emotion. This is evidenced by the far higher incidences of crimes bourne out of emotion.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It comes from channelling emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, humiliation, loss of control, grief, loneliness etc etc and having fewer ways of expressing those emotions in a healthy way or seeking support from social networks in the way women do.

This is why women do much better when they live alone than men as living alone does not amount to ‘loneliness’.

Do you want me to pull out all the research or do you want to go and find it yourself so you are actually part of your own education? How do you think you will feel when I pull it out and it is as I said? You seeking it gives you the chance to pull out contradictory evidence.

The benefits outweigh the damage. All men benefit from the behaviour of bad men never forget that.

Yes, we do want you to pull out the research.
Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to discredit it before we’re aware as to what actual research you think you are in possession of
I take it that you’re not in any sort of profession That requires research, Otherwise, you would know you have to present the argument first for it to be refuted 🥴

Its only as simple as that if you read one article that confirms your bias and ignore all other research into the reasons some women want a sane sex child.

Gosh I think if you posted on mumsnet about being disappointed a baby wasn’t a boy you’d get flamed by alot of the posters here.

Well OK but I'm assuming you're a woman and we don't really know what it's like to have a man's tendency towards violence.

I'm trying to put myself in his shoes - what would it be like to be quick to anger, and to have to deal with an immediate response to put my fist through a wall (or someone's face) when things don't go my way.

I don't really know what you mean by 'secondary emotion'. For women maybe yes, but what I've seen in men (those who haven't learned to repress their responses) is that anger and violence is very much a primary emotion for them - it's the first thing they experience in the moment, not the second.

No ive read a lot of research about it over 5 years. Its all online. Western women dont want boy babies.

How so? Everyone in society, men and women, suffers massively from the behaviour of the worst 30%,10%, 2%. Those worst people are overwhelmingly men. But I don’t see wow the median man (or the ‘good’ man, if you don’t want to classify the median man as good) benefits from sharing society with those highly destructive, costly, corrosive people at the bottom.

It's not that I don't care about men's issues. I just cannot stand this expectation that women will fix mens issues for them.

I see a lot of men complain that mens problems are ignored because women have more social and support groups and men don't have that. Maybe men need to get off their bums and create their own groups instead of expecting women to do everything.

Ah, the crystal ball approach to research. Will wait a couple of years for that then.
Meanwhile, how does this new trend of baby boy hating tie in with issues impacting adult men today?
Because the men facing issues now were born and raised before this apparant trend came about.

The worst people are overwhelmingly men? That’s discrimination tbf. Imagine if someone said that about women?

The research is up and if you have access to academic databases, you can see prepublications.