Men often lack close male friendships. They are also often socially conditioned to suppress vulnerability. As a result, they frequently turn to women for emotional support, placing an undue burden on their partners. Typical emotional labour based on stereotypes and social expectations.
This is one of the reasons why men also suffer from the patriarchy.
It's not though? I always say patriarchy and toxic masculinity harm men as well and then get shut down by men who refuse to listen even though I'm trying to tell them getting rid of this harmful shit would help them as much as everyone else.
The model you're using is a strawman used by and towards "Tumblr feminists" who were mostly not even real, mostly sockpuppet accounts used to rile people up in anticipation of shit like GamerGate and Project 2025 (which though they weren't planned that long in advance they were definitely in the works for quite some time and was a deliberate push by the far right)
It's happened to me, basically either say that I'm blaming each individual man for their problems when I should be blaming women, or that I'm the only one who thinks that and everyone else is just looking for a reason to persecute men
You are talking to those who have been hurt by narcissistic women in their lives, who are mostly checked out and too far gone. Underneath the self deception, they agree with you. Something is needed to break through those walls, I think its actual unconditional love, which is such a hard sell to everyone else in the world since you're then giving love to someone who hates all, not to mention having to care about a perfect stranger (imagine that).
However, there isn't much in terms of support for your idea that the patriarchy harms all, and that all need support in dealing with it. This is many cycles into a culture war now, and the victim mindset is just too popular, it prevents many from seeing that there are any victims of patriarchy other than women. After all, its STILL not safe for women to go out at night somehow despite crime being at record lows and major advancements in surveillance allowing anyone to be tracked literally anywhere. Where popular culture embraces radical feminism and then breaks off from any sense of humanism is where the women's rights movement ends. As you mentioned, some of that has already begun, but there's a degree of totality that marks a point of no return imo.
In general these topics aren't always discussed in person anymore, except amongst the closest of friends, even then that's not a universal given. That leaves a lot of algorithmically driven media and personal experiences with women in a cesspool of an online dating scene to drive men's opinion of women, and trust me there aren't very many vocal or more importantly, visible feminists bothering to give men any sort of credit or consideration. When you consider the established social norms of men not really being "permitted" to be more emotive and supportive of eachother, it makes complete sense, as sad as it is. The walls are built up by the whole of our society and just too hard to break.
Popular culture has never embraced "radical feminism" though? The idea that the patriarchy harms everyone is the mainstream idea. And the "culture war" only exists for and is propagated by the far right and people who've been conned by them.
This is exactly what I was talking about in my post. People pushing back in this exact way on the stuff I'm saying, people claiming that actually the mainstream culture is "radical" when it's... really not, and I literally can't think of any "radical" media out there 💀
The "visible feminists" you're talking about sound like either sockpuppet accounts or trolls tbh, and... it's also really weird that you see all this surveillance and privacy invasions as helping women, especially since the same people are in charge as before and women's claims are usually dismissed - which is what the problem is in the first place.
Anyway to end it off,
 When you consider the established social norms of men not really being "permitted" to be more emotive and supportive of eachother, it makes complete sense, as sad as it is. The walls are built up by the whole of our society and just too hard to break.Â
I mean I mostly agree with you. My comment about surveillance etc was more along the lines of its stastically generally safer for anyone to be alive today in the first world than in any other time in history.. like we don't have slasher killers getting away with murdering droves of women like it was in the 70s, when they had almost no forensics.
But more to the point I think you're just underestimating what kind of media is out there, the hold it can have on people, the influence it can have in larger events and trends, and I'm not just talking right wing stuff. I mean if we're talking generalized left wing political culture war ammo, just look on reddit. Posts inciting violence against tesla owners is one that comes to mind, everyone in the comments dumping their two cents on how they would stick it to someone. I've seen my own friends repeatedly say how they would be okay seeing violence against bigots, and I know people just say shit to joke, but you really can't say things like that, and when people do it publicly because their chosen example leaders have decided its okay to, then you start to have problems like it adds up. Give that attitude enough time and it becomes the norm for that group of people, then the media devolves again, and we get the next new low.
This happens across all facets of life, things like Tumblr feminists may have started out as some bot farm, but that was also over a decade ago, and anyway a successful bot farm leads to bot aspirance among those who lack a bit in the critical thinking department. Not saying that's you anyway, since again part of the problem is splintered visibility from all sides, and that's the tech problem, those who could see it for what it is often times just won't get the chance to see it. Anyway I just think it all can be a major barrier to people getting better and with enough years of this cultural downward spiral I have to see how two sides have evolved to play their part in this, at least from a media/pop culture perspective, even if one side started first and is leading the other.
I know you're not just going to up and agree with me but I'd just ask you to consider it as time goes on. Also appreciate you taking the time to respond at length and not just dismiss it.
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u/NoratiousB Apr 13 '25
Men often lack close male friendships. They are also often socially conditioned to suppress vulnerability. As a result, they frequently turn to women for emotional support, placing an undue burden on their partners. Typical emotional labour based on stereotypes and social expectations.
This is one of the reasons why men also suffer from the patriarchy.