Venting I hate living as a man

[Codename_Joryu]

But it's always the same story, a man writes a post complaining about men problems, and then the same 2 or 3 folks (specially one) rants about how women have it much worse (when nobody says women have it easy, it's just about men and their own subset of problems).

Then someone will enter a discussion with these folks, as they're very irritating, and the thread will end up locked, taking away the OP possibility to have a safe space and discuss

Exactly that.

 

[martyrdom]

That's not what i'm reading BTW.

Great, now read these:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322307001989;
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1509654112 ;
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6400866/ ;

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47747-9;

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/04/04/123729.full.pdf;

The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic: Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes

Hippocampal atrophy is found in many psychiatric disorders that are more prevalent in women. Sex differences in memory and spatial skills further sugg…

www.sciencedirect.com

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x;

https://www.fastcompany.com/90630371/brain-sex-isnt-a-thing-the-latest-research-debunks-the-myth-again;

https://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/news/massive-study-led-by-rosalind-franklin-university-neuroscientists-reveals-few-differences-between-men-and-women-s-brains/;

The gist of the above papers is: there are physiological differences in the brains of males and females (sexed cells, just like in the entire body, size differences due to skull size, etc) yet they have no impact on cognitive performance or reasonable dimorphism or difference in brain functioning. One of these papers also attempts to study the epigenetic impact of the social concept of gender, which is to say: environmentally instilled epigenetics that correlate to our social perspectives of gender, and how it may create brain differences due to neuroplasticity, ie. behavioral differences between men and women are attributed to socialization rather than biology.

I think that's exactly what you were implying, and your overly long and extreme responses to these kind of posts prove this. I checked your postings on this site and it's safe to say that you are part of the problem, and not the solution, I mean, you literally called yourself a " local extreme feminist raging man criticizer". You called me hopeless simply for trying to make a safe space for men to talk about their gender related issues, you forcefully throw your feminist agenda at every man who dares to talk about their problems, said that "Incels deserve absolutely no sympathy from anyone" (Incel and mysoginist are two different terms btw.). And you do all this on a site where majority of people are one bad day away from taking their own life.

You just acknowledged these are not gender related issues, and now you are claiming they are gender related issues, so which is it?
Does it not make you wonder at all why I as a man who is supposedly part of the target audience on your post am urging you to think differently?

Those are problems that affect men more than women and I base this on what I saw and still see in real life, not just on social media. The whole point of this post was to make safe space for guys to talk about their gender related issues, because there's a lot more to this than just being called a pussy because they were seen crying. Like I said, I know my post was very generalizing and it's a mistake on my part, but if you really got so offended by it, I'd say it only proves my point even more.

Has it never occurred to you that it may appear to you that these issues affect men more than women because you are a man and don't know what life is like for a woman? Also, would it not be comforting to realize that you are not doomed by the narrative for being a man, and that there are so many women out there who can relate to exactly what you're expressing because they suffer the same way?

(when nobody says women have it easy, it's just about men and their own subset of problems)

He just said these issues affect men more than women. The entire thread has also welcomed him in talking about these issues and several people have come up to help him, we are just pointing out that they are not male exclusive or worse for men.

 

[rs929]

Great, now read these:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322307001989;
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1509654112 ;
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6400866/ ;

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47747-9;

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/04/04/123729.full.pdf;

The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic: Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes

Hippocampal atrophy is found in many psychiatric disorders that are more prevalent in women. Sex differences in memory and spatial skills further sugg…

www.sciencedirect.com

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x;

https://www.fastcompany.com/90630371/brain-sex-isnt-a-thing-the-latest-research-debunks-the-myth-again;

https://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/news/massive-study-led-by-rosalind-franklin-university-neuroscientists-reveals-few-differences-between-men-and-women-s-brains/;

The gist of the above papers is: there are physiological differences in the brains of males and females (sexed cells, just like in the entire body, size differences due to skull size, etc) yet they have no impact on cognitive performance or reasonable dimorphism or difference in brain functioning. One of these papers also attempts to study the epigenetic impact of the social concept of gender, which is to say: environmentally instilled epigenetics that correlate to our social perspectives of gender, and how it may create brain differences due to neuroplasticity, ie. behavioral differences between men and women are attributed to socialization rather than biology.


You just acknowledged these are not gender related issues, and now you are claiming they are gender related issues, so which is it?
Does it not make you wonder at all why I as a man who is supposedly part of the target audience on your post am urging you to think differently?


Has it never occurred to you that it may appear to you that these issues affect men more than women because you are a man and don't know what life is like for a woman? Also, would it not be comforting to realize that you are not doomed by the narrative for being a man, and that there are so many women out there who can relate to exactly what you're expressing because they suffer the same way?


He just said these issues affect men more than women. The entire thread has also welcomed him in talking about these issues and several people have come up to help him, we are just pointing out that they are not male exclusive or worse for men.

Just let go.

 

[webb&flow]

Mentally ill people can't make logical decisions, they run purely on satisfying their urges no matter how bad it may be for them.

In bad states of mind, logical decisions can be immensely difficult, sometimes it can be impossible to step forward, and rest and inaction becomes an almost forced period of break for the person in pain or exhaustion.

But beliefs and choices—anything where an actual action is taken or a perspective is developed—these are undeniably influenced by how a person sees the world. Are they to be blamed for having that perspective in the first place, and should they be blamed for all the suffering they endure as a result of their beliefs, to the extreme degree of "all their problems are their fault, because they chose to think that"? Absolutely not.

Not all problems are our fault. But everyone is susceptible to being coaxed or lured into beliefs that seem like good ideas in the moment, but can cause harm later on.

For more info (and one hell of a practical example) of what our deep-seated "default mode"—the way we fall back to thinking, our instinctual reaction and emotional mode we so often engage—usually results in, I encourage you to look to David Foster Wallace's phenomenal This Is Water commencement address. He himself dealt with depression and suicide as well; so he's not some motivational speaker who's credentials might be squinted at, but someone who truly has genuine things to say on the subject. (His personal life was unfortunately not as conscientious as his works; but the ideas here in This Is Water are quite instrumental nonetheless.)

This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)

David Foster Wallace's remarkable 2005 commencement speech, This is Water, is a timeless trove of wisdom for living a meaningful life. Here is a full transcript along with audio.

fs.blog

You're dealing with a lot of shit right now; I'm truly very sorry to hear that. I hope this video is at least interesting and perhaps even enjoyable, at the very least. I think there's a lot in it that's memorable. Hope it helps. Thank you for your time.

 

[rainwillneverstop]

As promised by my earlier post.
Sad that somebody can't vent their struggles without people using it as a place to fight.

Keep it non invalidating, don't make it a competition. Have thread banned certain people, and will try to keep thread unlocked again.

 

[webb&flow]

It's just the way the male brain is wired.

I think culture influences how that brain is wired, though. The way you're raised, societal expectations; these have a big effect on behaviour—I don't believe that the entire phenomenon is tabula rasa at all, I think there are a lot of external causes that influence as well, too. The "nurture" component is a big big factor.

Understanding this can help us understand our own emotions and courses of lives better. Our minds and behaviours are more than what we were born with: it's also how we were born and raised.

Luckily, if we understand what specifically we have been taught and told and how and why, we gain opportunities to reconstruct the narrative in our heads, and get a chance to rewrite the social programming that we run constantly. That social programming influences us so much that it even writes into our own internal cognitive programming too, and it changes how we interact with ourselves. How it is inside our heads. Our ears are open all our lives: What others tell us rings around inside our ear canal and eventually echoes inside our brain. And then we hear those echoes and our internal cognitive dialogue picks up on it, and soon it is a cognitive voice speaking in our heads; this is how we go from someone telling us something (or merely even implying) it, to us ending up believing a certain thing—and making it part of what we tell ourselves daily, and what we consider to know and regard as true. I do this too. Understanding how this happens helps us to be a bit less held back by what society imposes on us with certain beliefs: many of which are actively harmful to us, ourselves, and those we value and care about, and ultimately poisonous to the lives we want most, and the things we want most; such as peace of mind and security.

Hope this helps. We listen to what we tell ourselves. Knowing this; we can understand more why we think what we think; and hopefully feel less enslaved to what our minds tell us.

As the old cliché goes:

The mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master.

 

[violetforever]

We talk all the time about men who manipulate vulnerable women and how despicable it is for a man to knowingly take advantage of a woman and exploit her... but when is the shoe on the other foot? Should men be less into OnlyFans? Sure. I've never even visited that site, no interest in it from me... but there are a lot of women on there, and many of them are making good money for themselves... and while I see a lot of people blaming men for buying subscriptions to OnlyFans... I only ever see women getting sympathy for "having" to do an OnlyFans page. I don't think I've ever seen anyone bring up the exploitation of vulnerable men that is going on where women pretend to care and have virtual "relationships" with men to entice them to pay higher fees to get personalized emails and such, that are often written by employees of the women and not the women themselves.

what it took for men to take up a problem with the industry they created and uphold to exploit women is that the same industry is now being used by the exploited women to exploit men too. that's nice. how sad that men can no longer just blissfully consume their beloved depraved content. just how vulnerable do you see men who view and use women as sexual objects for their pleasure?

 

[WhatCouldHaveBeen32]

other men do it too, and they actually do this a lot more often.

Men making men's life harder? I never could've guessed.

I won't add more to this thread but I just wanted to point this out as I've not seen anyone say it. Hopefully nobody sees themselves generalized here.

p.m.o.

 

[Codename_Joker]

what it took for men to take up a problem with the industry they created and uphold to exploit women is that the same industry is now being used by the exploited women to exploit men too. that's nice. how sad that men can no longer just blissfully consume their beloved depraved content. just how vulnerable do you see men who view and use women as sexual objects for their pleasure?

I don't really understand why men always supposedly see women as sexual objects just because they consume pornography like almost everyone else on this planet. I mean I could look at a video of Sasha Grey but that's because I've seen her in other contexts I can't really see her as an object. Heck I can't even do that with women I haven't seen in anything other than porn because objects don't have expressions like humans and usually it's just uncanny if it's something like those robots from Japan. As for vulnerability I'd say that would only play in if you're being a sugar daddy or simp and you believe women are going to like you just because you throw more money at them in that case I'd say some of them are really vulnerable especially when they're handing out ten grand in hopes it will make them like you more. I just know if lusting after women is wrong then I don't wanna be right.

As for exploitation in the sex industry you can say that about any industry. For example I'll never hear about how children in Congo mine cobalt for the Chinese so they can make processors for our electronics because most people don't know or care at the end of the day but we single the sex industry out for whatever reason. I've personally seen escorts and the only one who really feels exploited is me. I crave intimacy but I know I cannot have it so I end up settling for pseudo intimacy. The only women who has shown interest in the past decade is a woman I met online who ghosted me over a decade ago and now is just deciding to get in contact with me again. Yes I really appreciate being spat on *sarcasm*.


As for my experience with escorts here we follow the Nordic model so the client assumes pretty much all of the risk. Other than paying for it which is pretty much like paying someone a six figure salary by the hour it comes with risks like getting scammed all the way to getting arrested if it's a sting. Oh and any escort worth her salt will expect screening meaning your government issued photo id. If I've learned anything it's never enough. There's always something else you need to do as a man and that applies to more than just getting woman to like you. Personally I'm tired of trying.

 

[FaultyCepheus]

This thread is a mess. Both genders have it tough, everyone does i get the point of your post was to create a thread to talk about issues that come with being a man but it didnt exactly come off that way which is why people responded like they did. And porn is inherently evil the amount of jt that comes from trafficking is disgusting and it shouldnt exist. You might just wanna rephrase this post cause it was concerning to read through all of this (you have a class of 09 pfp i believe - it came off like jeffery was talking if you get what i mean)

 

[Dejected 55]

For what it's worth... the "ignore" feature on this site can be helpful when you see some folks that just keep popping up to stir the pot. I know my sanity is preserved a bit more once I learned to use that feature so I don't see whatever havoc they are wreaking in a thread.

Meanwhile... regarding the brains of men and women. I suppose there can be some differences there, it would make sense with the other physical differences in men and women... but I sometimes think the brain chemistry differences might be overrated.

I am a thinker, an over thinker... and I can be driven by emotions sometimes over logic. These are characteristics typically assigned to women. In fact, many of the things I see attributed to "the way women think" are exactly how my inner monologue works. From the sounds of things, I'm not as alone as I always thought I was... because while most men are better at masking their inner monologue than I have ever been... you dig a little and find out men have a lot of internal things going on that society says they shouldn't talk about or admit.

Curiously, we encourage women to be vulnerable and open while discouraging the same in men. Even men and women who say they want honest, open, vulnerable men to feel safe... those men who do decide to talk more openly about struggles and feelings are often chastised.

Women talk about problems and generally men and women are more accepting and willing to listen and offer help. Men talk about problems and more often than not are told to "be a man" and "suck it up" and so forth. This is pretty consistent from both men and women to reject suffering men more often than suffering women.

To be fair... women's problems aren't often addressed either, though. I mean the patriarchy is more real than a lot of men want to admit... but at least women get to talk about it. Men don't get that same thing in society, and it comes from how both men and women react to the vulnerable man. The vulnerable man is generally considered to have far less value to society and, as such, really isn't worth rescuing.

But... be that as it may... men and women have a LOT of common issues in society... an each has some specifically unique to them issues as well. We aren't helping each other out by continually dividing along gender lines and fighting over that nonsense. It really only encourages BOTH sides to "shut up and take it" because you feel like nobody cares or wants to even hear you.

 

[troonbeau]

i feel you. even after transitioning i find that all the people you know will subconsciously treat you like they did before. like sure they'll use my pronouns, whatever, but they'll be uncomfortable when im emotional. i guess i thought transitioning would help in that emotional regard but it doesnt seem like it does.

 

[Alpacachino]

It's the usual suspects in this thread causing trouble. If you don't agree with someone's views, just move on. There are a lot of people I don't agree with, but I don't bother getting heated over It.

 

[Codename_Joker]

This thread is a mess. Both genders have it tough, everyone does i get the point of your post was to create a thread to talk about issues that come with being a man but it didnt exactly come off that way which is why people responded like they did. And porn is inherently evil the amount of jt that comes from trafficking is disgusting and it shouldnt exist. You might just wanna rephrase this post cause it was concerning to read through all of this (you have a class of 09 pfp i believe - it came off like jeffery was talking if you get what i mean)

He would just be censoring himself then and then whats the point of coming here if it's like every other platform? That being said this thread has a focus on men and their hardships. While I don't entirely agree with him I understand on some level. In fact I'm willing to bet if the roles were reversed and this was a woman talking about how they hate living as a woman there probably wouldn't be as much push back to what he said which partially proves what he saying. I've personally had a fortune of being to express emotions including sorrow but maybe it's because I'm not American. I also had decent parents so I can really blame them when I just happen to be a failure. As for porn being inherently evil I disagree but I don't intend to convince you otherwise.

 

[violetforever]

I just know if lusting after women is wrong then I don't wanna be right.

this was all you needed to say to get your point across, thanks.

 

[Codename_Joker]

this was all you needed to say to get your point across, thanks.

Weird way of saying you hate men but ok.

 

[Dante_]

Locking thread.