You’re mostly right. With a lot of people, yes, you can be open and honest and you’ll be met with love and understanding. But it’s a minority in my experience.
With the majority, you get a “men should be socially aware and emotionally available” but then the second you bring up your own feelings and problems, you’re ignored. Possibly even get your admission of “weakness” mocked.
The assumption is that as a man you have it good, are set for life, and so you don’t get to complain. Any problems you have must be minor and should be easy to deal with, how dare you try enlist help from others. Suck it up and man up!
It’s popular to virtue-signal about how society thinks about men, so it might seem like things are better. And they are. But there is STILL a double-standard that is making it very difficult to discuss with most people.
When meeting people one on one, the toxic masculinity is alive and well. No-one mocks me to my face at a party. But one on one? All the time.
I think, and hope, that is your personal opinion.
Could be the specific society you live in.
Maybe I’m lucky that way.
Sorry it isn’t a thing of the past for you, it is never OK to mock someone and I or the peole I know will never accept this.
And neither should you.
I don’t consider it just an opinion. I’ve heard of similar experiences from too many others.
I want to stress that I do know a ton people who are past this type of thinking, but it feels like I have to sift through a hundred persons to find one worth knowing.
If I stay within my known-good circle, it’s fine. Great, even. But the moment I try to meet new people, men and women, I instantly get slapped in the face with how things really are.
As for whether it’s a thing in the local culture, maybe. I’m finnish. We’re progressive in a ton of ways but this isn’t one of them.
Finnish might be a reason.
The very few I met were pretty closed and reserved.
Like Katri, a girl who came for studies.
We called her the ice queen, so that says a lot.
Took some time to get trough the ice.
We are extremely social, with a big initial wall. We don’t do small talk or other forms of disingenuine pleasantries. I consider that stuff completely normal and not a problem.
In fact I like it. And I’m not talking about how people act to maintain that initial wall. I’m more than used to that stuff, being finnish myself. No decent person does it by saying things they don’t believe, or by treating you like crap.
I’m talking about what people actually think on a cultural level. Stuff they say and do without meaning to do harm. Even after you get to know them. The expectations you are faced with as a man, when you start a relationship or start working with new people.
When I say men are mocked for showing weakness, I mean people who do it because it doesn’t do anything to the man in question. As if his mental state and confidence is unshakable by default, making their words just harmless fun. Becayse he’s a man. He can take it.
It really isn’t.
You’re mostly right. With a lot of people, yes, you can be open and honest and you’ll be met with love and understanding. But it’s a minority in my experience.
With the majority, you get a “men should be socially aware and emotionally available” but then the second you bring up your own feelings and problems, you’re ignored. Possibly even get your admission of “weakness” mocked.
The assumption is that as a man you have it good, are set for life, and so you don’t get to complain. Any problems you have must be minor and should be easy to deal with, how dare you try enlist help from others. Suck it up and man up!
It’s popular to virtue-signal about how society thinks about men, so it might seem like things are better. And they are. But there is STILL a double-standard that is making it very difficult to discuss with most people.
When meeting people one on one, the toxic masculinity is alive and well. No-one mocks me to my face at a party. But one on one? All the time.
I think, and hope, that is your personal opinion.
Could be the specific society you live in.
Maybe I’m lucky that way.
Sorry it isn’t a thing of the past for you, it is never OK to mock someone and I or the peole I know will never accept this.
And neither should you.
I don’t consider it just an opinion. I’ve heard of similar experiences from too many others.
I want to stress that I do know a ton people who are past this type of thinking, but it feels like I have to sift through a hundred persons to find one worth knowing.
If I stay within my known-good circle, it’s fine. Great, even. But the moment I try to meet new people, men and women, I instantly get slapped in the face with how things really are.
As for whether it’s a thing in the local culture, maybe. I’m finnish. We’re progressive in a ton of ways but this isn’t one of them.
Finnish might be a reason.
The very few I met were pretty closed and reserved.
Like Katri, a girl who came for studies.
We called her the ice queen, so that says a lot.
Took some time to get trough the ice.
Unrelated.
We are extremely social, with a big initial wall. We don’t do small talk or other forms of disingenuine pleasantries. I consider that stuff completely normal and not a problem.
In fact I like it. And I’m not talking about how people act to maintain that initial wall. I’m more than used to that stuff, being finnish myself. No decent person does it by saying things they don’t believe, or by treating you like crap.
I’m talking about what people actually think on a cultural level. Stuff they say and do without meaning to do harm. Even after you get to know them. The expectations you are faced with as a man, when you start a relationship or start working with new people.
When I say men are mocked for showing weakness, I mean people who do it because it doesn’t do anything to the man in question. As if his mental state and confidence is unshakable by default, making their words just harmless fun. Becayse he’s a man. He can take it.
I guess we need more empathy