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Comment by goldfeld | Hacker News Reader

It's simple, generally it's more common in men that they don't ask for help, don't reconcile with their own true feelings, don't allow for their own full self expression, don't hug, don't cry, don't share emotions with naked confidentiality, and macho culture preys on any signs of weakness, to their own detriment. This carries on to the kinds of hobbies, interests and all that puts men further away from a simple emotional comfort than women. It took me two decades before it didn't feel awkward hugging my brother in earnest, and I consider myself a very sensitive person, so take that for what you will. Maybe it just takes longer for boys to become emotionally mature men. It varies culturally a lot for men and women by city and country, of course.

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When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for men, its men and male culture fault.

When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for women, its men and male culture fault.

It must be that it is very convenient to blame men and male culture, but honestly I have a hard time seeing any truth in that. Suicide is connected with depression, culture and unemployment. We know from studies that men are more often misdiagnosed when it comes to depression, with experiments where doctors rate identical profiles more correctly if the name is that of a woman. We also know that culture has a major impact on suicide rates with a strong link to gender expectations, the same gender expectation that researcher suggest is causing misdiagnoses for depression in men. We also know there is a strong correlation for increased suicide rates for men when unemployment goes up but not for women, again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit.

If we ignore that, at least make a study and look if men who do not express emotions is a valid predictor for suicide. I expect it is not but it would make for a interesting validation to read.

Statistical disadvantages are almost always on women's side on a variety of societal issues, yet women cope and mostly aren't loud complainers on a day-to-day (when they get together to do so male culture calls them out). It's easy to blame (some) men because older sexist men call the shots pretty much everywhere (even areas where most effective practitioners tend to be women, like cooking.) In this way women get used to coping, with injustice, unfairness, offense, from early age and in the presence of other women in their family. This may help explain further the learned ability to commiserate, so to say.

I don't know, maybe men who don't express feelings like being tough dudes and won't consider suicide, maybe the ones who suicide are the ones who do have and express lots of feeling, but misplace the venting somehow, or can't control well, who knows.

"(even areas where most effective practitioners tend to be women, like cooking.)"

Source?

I don't mean "most efficient" or anything to that end, which is a moral judgement I'm not inclined to consider, but that effectively most practitioners (you know, at home, in small business et al) are women. The phrasing was a bit bad.

Perhaps it's a regional thing, but professional cooks seem to be more often male when I notice them. In particular, I'm thinking of small husband/wife shops where the wife is likely to be the waiter/cashier/etc. (All of those roles rolled into one job.) Perhaps I don't notice the other combination?

I of course agree that traditionally the woman is more likely to cook at home.

> again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit

Well, that's exactly right.

In general, I wish we would move away from oversimplified "patriarchy"-based language of "aggressor" vs "victim" (which discourages male victims from coming forward and encouraged a culture of collective victim-hood we are in now, where to really leverage speaking power one must first prove that they, too, are a victim, an ultimately disabling attitude) and move towards couching all of this in the very inclusive and in no way "feminine" term like "gender expectations."

Straight men would feel personally attacked less and open to talking about unfair expectations of them more. They won't feel that any conversation about lack of fairness in cultural norms excludes them by default.

Women (and people who overall dislike the gender binary) would still be able to voice their opposition to expectations, too.

The parent wrote "macho culture" aka sexism, and yet you read it as "male culture".

Care to define what "male culture" is?

Men don't ask for help because nobody cares about them and they can't get good help. They don't expressed their feelings because they get shunned for doing so and are perceived as being weak. And it's not always men who are forcing this gender role upon men -sometimes it's women.

You sounds like an alien that learned about human men from sitcoms and insurance commercials.

I learned a lot working at tech companies, though I've since moved on to other line work where I tend to be the only man in the room.

This isn't why. This is what feminism tells men, that their problems stem from them not being able to handle and process their emotions correctly. That's propaganda. The real reason is more along of the lines of their being less of a safety net for men, less people willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and no attraction from women for men in the bottom 10%.

Any data to support those assertions?

FWIW I think the reasons you point to are just as plausible contributing factors as the ones GP mentions, but there's no reason it can't be both. And dismissing the effects of machismo/toxic masculinity as simply "feminist propaganda" is just not realistic.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180304005047/https://theblog.o...

> no attraction from women for men in the bottom 10%.

That's what misogyny tells men.

Is this what listening to men looks like?

If so I can see why many men don't talk about their issues....

> Is this what listening to men looks like?

Interpreting this as charitably as possible (though I suspect it might be a lost cause): yes, that is exactly what it is.

GP didn't suggest that GGP was wrong, stupid, harmful, evil, or any of the above. They understood what GGP wrote, and suggested that it might be based in an opinion formed due to a skewed cultural influence, with the implication that re-examination of said opinion might be in order.

That's understanding a claim, thinking about it, and issuing compassionate criticism. Whether you think it's correct or not is up to you, but it certainly isn't a failure to listen.

> That's understanding a claim, thinking about it, and issuing compassionate criticism. Whether you think it's correct or not is up to you, but it certainly isn't a failure to listen.

So is it listening or criticising? I'm not even making an argument that the claims either way are wrong or right but when people say listen these days, it's usually implied that you aren't supposed to turn around and criticise them, thats at best giving constructive feedback.

I'm just pointing out how men are being told to speak up, but often when they speak up they are spoken down to by the current culture for holding "wrong" views. Considering we are talking about people committing suicide it seems like this isn't exactly helping the situation.

No, these are feelings that men actually have, without anyone telling them anything. And this is a perfect example of how people are often completely unsympathetic with men when we do complain about our problems.

I'm not even close to the bottom 10% of men, and I don't feel like I get much attraction from women. It takes a lot of work and failures to even get a single date sometimes. This is a really shitty feeling and is one of the biggest causes of me feeling down. It can really make one feel like a worthless person sometimes.

Men talking about their problems are seen as "whiners" and have various other insults heaped upon them. So they choose to live a life of "quiet desperation" which leads to suicide.

I'm sorry you are having those problems. I was responding to someone who was blaming their problems on feminism without even bothering to google what it meant first. I have no patience for those people.

> I don't feel like I get much attraction from women

Well I am no expert on that myself, so I can't help you a lot there. I can tell you that the way you phrased it is worrying. Attention (any kind, not just the female one) is not something that is "owed to you". It's not a "right".

There are other ways you can look at it: as mutual thing - if you want attention from women, maybe consider paying them attention first. Like, learning what their problems are, and what feminism means. Or see it as a resource, finite and limited. They can only think about so many men in a day. So it is an optimization problem. What would make you stand out?

And yes, the physical thing helps in standing out, and so does being rich. Those are not the only levers available though (by all means, do some exercise. It is great for you in any case). Being empathetic helps. Being kind helps. Being assertive helps. Being socially active helps. Those things can be learned if they don't come naturally to you. Heck, just being around women more often than other guys will help (provided that you are not an asshole).

Try changing one thing every 15 days, and see what sticks. The worst that can happen is that you live a better life. Don't just complain over the internet without changing anything.

In case it helps: I have been married for 7 years and have a child, the "urge" to get attention from women went away in the 3rd or 4th year. I found it quite ... liberating, to be honest. I can't say whether it was due to the fact that I was married or due to reaching certain age (37-ish) though.

What I crave these days is free time. Families are like gasses, they expand to occupy all space available.

He wasn't blaming his problems on feminism, he was saying he disagreed with them.

I know you are trying to be helpful with your post, but I honestly found it offensive. All I said was that lack of attention from women does actually negatively affect men (contrary to what you were asserting). And from that it seems you decided I fit some selfish, misogynistic stereotype. You assume that I don't listen to women or sympathize with their feelings. You assume that I think attention is a right or something owed to me, when I never said anything even hinting at that. I didn't blame women, or imply that they are doing anything wrong.

I wasn't "complaining on the internet", I was trying to inform you and others about how people actually feel because obviously even men don't all get it.

And I didn't really get the point about how being married reduced your urge for attention. It's almost tautological. Once you have the attention of a woman, attention stops being a concern.

>This is what feminism tells men, that their problems stem from them not being able to handle and process their emotions correctly.

What "feminism" would probably say is that masculine culture doesn't allow men to display emotions as openly as women, especially when those emotions betray a sense of physical or emotional vulnerability.

The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really means that masculinity can be toxic, and can manifest in negative ways, such as an inability to express one's emotions for fear of being seen as weak, effeminate or possibly gay.

This isn't propaganda, it's an obvious and self-evident sociological and cultural phenomenon, a flaw in society, not in men themselves.

>and no attraction from women for men in the bottom 10%.

Oh. I see you've fallen down the rabbithole.

It's unfortunate that the lunatic fringe of redpillers and incels seem to taken over and undermined any legitimate credibility the mens' rights movement might have. Women aren't evil, and feminists aren't entirely wrong, and no, aren't driving men to mass suicide because they don't find them attractive.

>>The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really means that masculinity can be toxic, and can manifest in negative ways

And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women. You want to talk about obviousness and self evidence? Look at evolutionary pressure. Look at our closest related primates (and most mammals) and how much more agressive males tend to be, and how with, for example, gorillas, few males will mate with many females, while less dominant males go mateless. Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind).

Instead, you deny biology, hand waving away all discrepancies and differences with words like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy." You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty.

You cannot fix society by ignoring biology, and you are only alienating these men, who are human beings like you and me, by slandering them as incels for having the same desires for companionship and affirmation unfulfilled while simultaneously blaming them for the problems in society.

Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world. Yes, there was plenty of bad along the way, but one cannot ignore all of the good that has resulted from these drives, and in truth, modern society cannot exist without them. Nor should it.

>And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women.

Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist. Ancient cultures considered sex between men to be a perfectly reasonable thing for a masculine man to do, since the concepts of "hetero" and "homo" sexuality didn't really exist at the time. Men in Elizabethan times were far more free to express emotions than now - consider that many of Shakespeare's sonnets, including the famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") were addressed to a man.

>Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind).

Also, innate predisposition doesn't justify all expressions of those dispositions. One may say that men are predisposed towards physical aggression due to their increased musculature relative to women and testosterone, but that doesn't mean every act of violence is healthy. Females may be attracted to dominance, but that doesn't mean all means of dominating women are justifiable.

We may be apes, but that doesn't mean we get to rape any female we find attractive and murder the offspring of rival males because, you know, we're trying to have a civilization here.

>You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty.

Plenty of unattractive, facially asymmetrical and socially awkward men are able to meet with women, date, have sex, all over the world, every day. Believe me, if women didn't have low standards in that regard, our species would probably have died out long ago.

>Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world.

You see... I literally said that wasn't what "toxic masculinity" meant and that people automatically confuse the term for an attack on masculinity itself... you literally quoted the part of my comment where I said that and then you went and did exactly that.

At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.

> At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.

Maybe this is why men don't feel like speaking up so often. If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".

>If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".

The concept that masculinity can have negative effects while not itself being negative isn't something that should take a great deal of effort to comprehend. There are entire male created social complexes like "gentlemanly behavior" and "chivalry" built around the pretense that inherent male traits have both positive and negative aspects.

The problem here is not that "feminist sociologists" are talking down to men and making them quail in fear -- men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism. The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. The feminism they oppose mostly doesn't even exist, or at best they're attacking the fringe and not the mainstream.

If you have a problem with the concept of toxic masculinity, for example, all I and the "feminist sociological agenda" (or whatever) ask is that you bother to find out what the term actually refers to. Cribbing from Wikipedia:

    stereotypically masculine gender roles that restrict the kinds of emotions 
    allowable for boys and men to express, including social expectations that 
    men seek to be dominant (the "alpha male") and limit their emotional range
    primarily to expressions of anger.

...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.

The concept that masculinity can itself be positive shouldn't be too hard to comprehend either but here we are.

> men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism

You haven't spent much time in democratic party meetings then.

> The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all.

And at which point do the "real feminists" stop and agree that it's just a fringe group of feminists that have an axe to grind against men?

> ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.

Um, it is?

Just look at the framing, claiming that TM "restricts" males. Why is the assumption always that freedom to express is always what people need and will always be a positive outcome?

Humans need structure in life, some more than others. When you try to deconstruct every social norm around a culture you will have a large amount of men who will find themselves lost in a landscape that is actively discouraging them from fitting within the beaten path laid before them.

Maybe the reason men are killing themselves isn't because they don't cry more to their mates but because they are thrown into this modern world that is actively trying to push them towards transcendence of the human condition.

Toxic masculinity get judged based on the meaning it express as words. Languages in the end is all about expressing meaning.

If we talk about toxic Muslims, we could define it to only be about terrorists or other narrow defined subgroup of criminals, but if you use those words then the meaning being expressed is a generalization that invoke a expression of racisms and hate. Lumping together all Muslims, only to then say "technically, I only meant this small subgroup" don't work. Does not work for racism, and it does not work for sexism either. The term toxic masculinity will always seem like veiled hatred against men, and no amount of "wait, I only mean ..." will change that.

> Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist.

Having plasticity in societal expectations does not change the characteristics of 'typical male behavior' in those societies. All it does is require us to further abstract what constitutes 'male behavior'.

Studies on the effects of testosterone mainly show that it encourages men to display behaviors that gain them social status. In a violent society, this would be violence. In a peaceful society, this would be shows of benevolence. Either way, pursuing status-ful behavior is undoubtedly associated with testosterone. Violence, surprisingly, is not associated at all.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/testostero...

You might have misread that study. It doesn't encourage behaviors that gain social status, but rather maintain existing levels of social status. As the study showed, gaining status increase hormone secretion, which can be seen as a method to regulate how much effort and individual should be spending in protecting what has already been gained.

The conclusion is still the same. In a violent society individuals will defend their social status with violence. In a peaceful society status will be defended through benevolence. A individual seeking to stay at the top of a social ladder will undoubtedly have hormone secretion increased as a matter of biological effect.

There are a lot of videos from Robert Sapolsky on youtube that might give you a better understanding of biology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky

If anything Robert Sapolsky is heavily "red pill". There's a video of him on youtube saying that up to 10% of children are secretly illegitimate.

Nobody denies that masculine traits like aggression aren't natural tendencies in males. But, the notion that its natural isn't contradictory with the notion that it can be the driver of highly selfish and oppressive behaviors.

Slandering people as incels because they're ugly or unpopular is not a commonly held view. Calling them out for aggressively blaming women for their problems and encouraging sexual violence as a justified way to satisfy natural needs is common. The term incel is typically self-assigned.

Your last argument is a good example of the main fallacy here. Nobody says that drives for achievement and competition are bad. But its not an excuse to be an asshole. Maybe men are predisposed to certain behaviors that make them assholes. Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. Can't help it? Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. The drive against toxic behaviors is really simple. Don't do them.

You have to understand most of the above poster(s) are either:

1. Too far gone from reality such that they actually believe this made up drivel they repeat constantly.

2. are of the type who are so privileged to say to these downtrodden men: "Let them eat cake"

I'm going to go with #2 as that is what most of these "feminists" are. They might even write an ironic article calling higher suicide rate amongst men a problem of patriarchy. Reading these comments you realize they have no self awareness.

Most of those biology claims have been found to be mostly or completely false by researchers observing primates and disproving theories of hard wired behavior.

For example, the theory that the most aggressive male primates get most children has been generally disproved since longer term studies show that those males at top generally get dethroned, injured and kill at much faster rate. A secondary issue is that primate females mate not just with the pack leader which means that paternity becomes a statistical probability, which get worse as you go up the hierarchy.

Similar aggression is only a effective strategy if and only if aggression get rewarded. Relative recent trend in primatology is to talk about culture, and it has been observed that it has a massive impact in regard to aggression. All those "hard wired" behavior which people took for certain in primates changed if a troop has a cultural change, which happens occasionally.

A unintended experiment is when a bunch of young specimens of a species is transfer to a new environment (often creating a invasive species but thats beyond the point). Behavior which researcher thought was innate and hard wired is then often found to have disappeared when no initial adult member is there to transfer existing cultural behavior, a fact that holds true multiple generations later.

Instead of looking for biological causes, let ask following questions. What does our culture define as attributes that women should look for in men, and men in women. What behavior defines social status for men and for women, and how do inter-sex competition work men and for women. Feminists who look to blame male behavior (with terms like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy") ignores half of the picture that defines gender roles and gender expectations, while also making negative generalization. It is very likely a contributing reason for increased suicide rates and polarization between women and men.

> a flaw in society

All societies have flaws. The issue with the word 'toxic masculinity' is that it is ultimately lop-sided. When did you last hear the word 'toxic femininity'. I'd argue that it's more a propos to our day than ever. For example, anti-vaxxers are overwhelmingly women. My wife is about to give birth, and the number of mom's groups that act as if it is a personal failure on behalf of a woman to have a C-Section is astounding. Better yet, they blame men for the very existence of C-sections! Having lost our last baby, the last thing we need is more pressure on my wife. Where is the condemnation of this female 'macho' culture? It's nowhere. Feminists are completely absent on a major issue affecting women. If anything, men are still blamed for all these things, despite men being basically non-existent in the professions surrounding birth. How ridiculous.

> means that masculinity can be toxic

Almost anything can be toxic. The issue is when that label becomes a cultural meme that then gets used in ways it is not intended.

> persons like yourself to mean

Not the OP, but ad hominem attacks are considered poor form.

Finally,

> that masculine culture doesn't allow men to display emotions as openly as women, especially when those emotions betray a sense of physical or emotional vulnerability.

Feminism can sing this tune all day long, but it does not match my experience as a man. Went to an all boys high school too. Lots of male friends, I wouldn't say any of them bottle things up. They've cried on my shoulder. Told me their inner thoughts. I dunno what to tell you, other than that this is just a cultural meme that does nothing to actually help people.

What makes the least physically attractive men less appealing than the least physically attractive women?

In general, women have way more power than men when it comes to choosing who they mate with, so women are always more appealing than men at the same level of attractiveness.

Try an experiment where you sign up an online dating profile for a woman, and see how much action you get as compared to a similar man profile.

Or go to a coffee shop and count how many times a woman is being approached by men over an hour, and how many times a man is being approached by a woman (hint: 0)

A contrary view/hypothesis: women have higher average levels of social anxiety (as measurable by prescriptions for anxiety meds, and also on demographic studies of the Big-5 personality traits of agreeableness+neuroticism.)

And people with social anxiety don't want to take risks that could result in increased happiness/relief from suffering, but which also have the potential for greatly decreasing their social status.

Examples of such actions: romantically initiating (see "Lesbian sheep syndrome"), asserting one's worth in interviews (= a non-negligible part of the wage gap, after materity effects are removed), "saying no" to unwanted advances, and... committing suicide.

(Fun corollary hypothesis: anti-depressants like SSRIs increase suicidality precisely by removing the inhibitory effect of social-anxiety upon this class of positive-utility-but-disapproved-of actions.)

Antidepressants increase suicidality because their mechanism of action relies on rapid up-regulation and then gradual down-regulation of autoreceptors. For some people, the initial result is a paradoxically anxiety-ridden and dysphoric state.

> It's simple,

No it isn't.

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