This will be downvoted and poorly received, but the fact is that women despise weak men. If a man is in a poor state, most women will be visibly disgusted by him. A man generally should not expect sympathy from women, because most of the time he'll get scorn instead.
I'd say this is true for all genders and people. Homosexual people also display this tendency just as well as heterosexual males. Heck, even in friendships, it can be hard to enjoy being with a buddy that is going through a deep funk despite all your efforts to rouse them out of it. People want to be with people like themselves. Misery loves company, and vice-versa
It might not be a "strength" you recognize, but attracting a mate/caregiver implies some clear "strength".
The image of a damsel in distress is a common one that invites sympathy. Being seen as someone temporarily down on their luck who, with a quick pep talk, a removal of glasses, and a loosening of hair, will become the perfect date in your teen movie. Men do not benefit from this sympathy but nor do they suffer from its accompanied baggage and condescension.
I can't say that the solution is "just do for men what we do for women" since that sympathy has some real nasty undertones and connotations. Still, you really hit the crux of the problem with "people despise weak men". And I think we could grow a productive solution from there.
But perhaps it is different when it comes to partners.
Maybe some parts of toxic masculinity are perpetuated more by women and the media than other men.
Absolutely. During the Kavanaugh confirmation process I was blown away by how many women spouted off the "boys will be boys" excuse. It was frankly disgusting. In a similar way, the body image problems that so many women have are very much driven by male ideals about beauty.
> I've cried in front of maybe three SOs. In each case, they were very understanding and empathic about it and their sexual attraction toward me started a gradual but inexorable slide to zero.
> I've learned my lesson.
If you're a man and you're with a woman who stops being attracted to you because you've cried in front of her, that's a great thing, because you've dodged a bullet, and found a strong signal that you should find a better girlfriend.
If you want to roll the dice then fine. But some of us are sick of being hurt and seeing others getting hurt.
In fact, I think this is common enough that it contributes in part to the high suicide rates for divorced men as opposed to divorced women [0] - women have friends that they can lean on emotionally during this time while men don't typically cultivate that kind of relationship.
Nothing can ever be a woman’s fault.
This "men don't cry" thing is a point of toxic masculinity. Men and women both perpetuate it. 'Tis silly.
I apologize if that misconstrues your opinion, but I've heard it elsewhere before: that somehow women 'should' be more forgiving of unattractiveness than men are, and that's really weird to me. Women don't owe it to any men to find them desirable, and vice-versa.
Doesn't really work the same way for dudes
Not at all, especially because it's most likely that they can't help it. It'd be like asking me to find ugly girls sexually attractive. Even if I felt it would be the best the to do morally, I couldn't will myself to it: it's out of my control for the most part. And so it is with women: we really shouldn't hate someone for their innate preferences. (and especially we shouldn't hate a whole class of people -- 51% of them in fact!)
I think the primary problem here is that idealists have tried to force beliefs that they think are the "best" beliefs, but many of these don't match up with reality. When I finally learned how women work, I didn't become some bitter incel; rather, I met the woman of my dreams, and we've been happily married for almost 8 years. The relationship with her has been the only really successful relationship I've had, in my opinion. What changed? Well, it's too long to get into all the details here, but I started discarding nearly all of the dating advice I'd gotten from peers, TV, movies, etc.
What seems to have worked in my circles is simply lowering overly high expectations. It is interesting how long some are willing to wait, pining away, for that perfect match when they themselves are ... not exceptionally attractive.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2011...
I think it would have been better received -- and possibly more true -- if you have said that many women seemingly aren't attracted to weak men.