As someone socialized transfeminine that quote always hit hard. Especially now as I’m older and making closer friends with adult men who are trying to heal from that psychic mutilation I’m seeing all the ways that it runs deep.

And the thing is it’s not a voluntary trade of power for vulnerability. It is backed by violence against those who cannot or will not engage in it. From social isolation to fists this violence keeps those who are uncomfortable in some form of line.

And then we see that men trying to heal from this are often unable or uncomfortable to go to each other for healing and find themselves overburdening their wives and girlfriends for something few of them have the frame of reference to understand. And some of these women have also internalized these ideas of men and push that continued expectation onto them.

Idk that’s at least what I’ve observed of the phenomenon. But I can say that a lot of the damage can be healed and you model a more whole adulthood for your sons.

Many women and men do not like their SO having friends of the opposite gender, especially if they are alone together. So that means having a female friend that you can privately confide in is not easy to have or maintain if either party is in a relationship.

The "safest" way to have an opposite gendered friend that you can talk to is one that you only talk to at work during work hours, which isn't an option for male dominated fields(e.g. construction) and men in those environments are probably the most in need of a female friend to talk to.

The irony is that the people who don't want their SO having an opposite gendered friend probably need an opposite gendered friend to talk to.

I get where you're coming from but I've witness toxicity regarding masculinity from both men and women. Honestly, it's definitely possible to have healthy relationships with other dudes. All of my best friends are guys and we aren't afraid to talk about anything, like our feelings. So it's really the company you keep that really matters, regardless of gender imo

I was married for 35 years. In that whole time, my husband had many female friends. It never bothered me at all., because i wasn’t jealous like that. I was never able to have male friends, though. That was always some kind of threat.

I always got along better with guys than women, so I was always turning down outings and ghosting people in favour of my marriage. Now, since we divorced after 35 years., I have no friends at all. He kept his girlfriends from high school (even marrying one within a year of our divorce) and I’m completely alone.

Seems fair.

I agree with you fully. I am a feminist, and I absolutely agree that certain portions of our community has been co-opted by toxicity.

Yes, it sucks to be a woman, especially if you live in a region where you've lost access to your bodily autonomy, because that is the barest of basics for rights. It sucks getting paid less. It sucks having to maintain a job, maintain the household, be the responsible parent for getting kids to/from school/practice/clubs, etc. It sucks being the spouse that's EXPECTED to stay home and forgo their career/dreams if a dual income household doesn't make sense (childcare costs eat up a spousal income). It sucks being the sex that is more likely to end up abused/murdered/raped.

I hear all that. But I do believe that mainstream feminism has DEFINITELY crossed the lines in certain aspects.

I don't think it's necessary to jump all over a man's comment when he says "I've never beat a spouse/I help out around the house" and reply with silly things like "nOt AlL mEn" and shit like that. It makes people feel unheard and undervalued. And if people feel unheard/undervalued, they are going to gravitate to where they do feel valued and heard.

That's how we end up with manosphere bullshit saying things like "A woman's pleasure isn't necessary, but a man can't think straight without it. It's her role to keep you satisfied and fuck anyone else who says otherwise."

"Looksmaxxing" is something that I'm also REALLY fearful of our younger male generations getting into, because it stems from "You wanna get laid? You gotta be hot or a woman will NEVER choose you. This is how you get hot." And then it leads young men to picking themselves (and each other) apart physically to a really harmful level.

Ughhhh, I know I'm saying a lot here, but it's because I do believe that certain traits of current day radical feminism are driving more and more youth to the Andrew Tates of the world, and that makes me terrified for our younger girls growing up alongside them, and how they're going to be treated.

Women couldn't get their own bank accounts in the US until 1970, radical feminism was necessary. But today, we have to make sure men feel comfortable talking to us/being supported by us/delving into their hopes and dreams without being like "Okay but it's worse to be a lady".

We have to support each other.

who does Dad have to turn to when he has problems?

A big part of the slow burning men's mental health crisis is societal expectations of men.

Boys are conditioned at a young age to start cutting off outward expressions of most emotions (big exception for anger though), stifling them and striving towards some kind of emotionless state. So they learn not to seek emotional support when they need it. And to make matters worse, this also sets these boys to grow up to be less dependable as providers of emotional support.

So men start to rely on the women in their life for emotional support, which creates unhealthy dynamics for many men who don't have reliable women in their life, or forces them to depend exclusively on a wife for emotional support. Only having that one person, or zero people, in their lives that can provide emotional support is highly limiting, and can go wrong in all sorts of different ways.

Deep bonds in male friendship are important, but we're raised without the guidance and skills to build and foster those bonds. And those friendships can inform how to have healthy platonic friendships with women, and how to have healthy romantic and sexual relationships with women, too.

That's what toxic masculinity means to me: a societal expectation that men behave a particular way, and the negative consequences directly for those men and indirectly for the other people in their own lives, whether parents, siblings, spouses, friends, or children. We owe the younger men in our lives the opportunity to break that cycle and model what healthy behavior and emotions look like, so that they're not carrying their own baggage into adulthood, middle age, and beyond.

court systems

The maternal advantage in family court is misunderstood. The vast majority of custody agreements are negotiated between the parents. So while there is a societal pressure to favor mothers, this is mostly a phenomena of parents hewing to that norm and not the government imposing it from above.

It may be true that a divorced mother or a lady felon enjoy some benefit from patriarchal ideals and norms. This is far outweighed by the harm patriarchy does to women (and men).

If you look at the "nurturing mother" norm in our legal system holistically, I think you'll find that it burdens mothers with extra duties and responsibilities while stripping them of rights.

Pretty much every problem we have in modern society stems from patriarchy and capitalism. It is the wrong tool for the job. Hang on.. let me hammer in this screw real quick. It might damage the porch I'm building, but it'll work I guess.

So you're saying the conditions exist where men in their workaday lives don't have the time or bandwidth to be aware of the positive messages in feminism, meanwhile radical and controversial feminist messages are put on blast so that everyone knows about that?

Brother, you are soooo close.

Nah. Feminists didn't create the mess that systemically harms men. What actually creates it is systemic patriarchy. If you've never heard of Earl Silverman, give his story a read. He did try to create many of the things you advocate for, and the things that caused their failure was not feminists. It's a tragedy.

That being said, we absolutely still need non toxic spaces where men can heal and be great allies to themselves and others

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Silverman

Some domestic violence center near me got closed down because feminists kept protesting its existence.

Name names. I'd like to know if they were actually closed because of protests or if the supposed protests were unrelated to them closing. Even if there were protests and they closed, those two events don't have to be related.

Men are also victims of the patriarchy and do not have the ability to magically dismantle it. What do you gain by having this attitude?

Think you missed the point of the post.

What is demanded of us is same or more than in non-feminist countries

Why are you being coy about which "demands" you object to? Unless you tell us what they are, they could easily mean things like "having to contribute to cooking, cleaning and child rearing" or "needing consent to help yourself to a woman's body".

I'm not sure if you've peered outside your little bubble lately, but more is demanded of women too. They're expected not only to hold down a full time job but an entire career too. And oh look, they're passed over for jobs, offered less money and forced to work twice as hard for recognition, all because of their gender.

So if you're going to use the rhetoric of a bitter man-child who is upset their grandfathers "I work full time" excuse doesn't work on people who are also working full time, you can at least pretend you're pulling your weight first.

Because your comment isn't just melodramatic, it's outright bullshit.

It's almost as if I'm back browsing Reddit again.

If you've spent almost all of history ahead, equality appears to be an attack.

Rethink what you're saying.

I guess men would perceive "less worth" now, compared to women ... but that's kinda how equality works. What sucks is that there is a "swing to it" that kinda hurts men, on an individual basis. Like custody rulings, or mental health care, for example. Because lo and behold, the patriarchy was never a means to lift men up, but an excuse to limit the power of those "not like them".

The patriarchy is a system that hurts us all, while using women as the scapegoat. It's a tale as old as time; using division to prevent union amongst the majority. (A lot more to that, but we're skimming the footnotes here)

Fuck -ism's.... understand that we're all bitching about the same things, and it all kinda boils down to a class inequality. Be kind, understanding, and unified. There are much greater things to tackle after putting out the small fires. Ya gotta start somewhere, but don't be fooled into division. We all deserve equality and a sense of security