I’ve been hearing from many women their views that the primary reasons boys and men experience suffering is because they are reticent to talk about their feelings, have a tendency to bottle things up, and are either unwilling or unable to communicate their deeper needs and emotions. The prescribed solution then is for males to learn to open up more and share their pains in order to return to health.
That males do suffer greatly is undeniable: suicide is the leading cause of death for young men. Teen-male suicide rates in Australia, for example, have tripled in the past 40 years; and males universally kill themselves at vastly higher rates than do females. I’m sure that we can all agree that rarely does the impetus to take one’s life arise out of conditions of optimism, contentment and fulfillment; but rather, from hopelessness, anguish and despair.
Why it is that so many males should experience such inner-turmoil and be driven to successfully kill themselves is a question almost never posed in wider-society, and one yet to be satisfactorily answered by the so-called ‘experts’ on the topic. Despite a lack of consensus in opinion by those who actually bother investigating the problems that boys and men face, Feminists have stepped into the breach and offered their own ready-made and neatly-packaged diagnosis of all male-suffering: We can’t express our feelings...
As much as I may appreciate the gesture I feel that it is way off the mark. Once again the blame for all problems is shifted back onto men.
Now, the root-causes are deflected away from and it's not that men are suffering because they are unappreciated or vilified; or exist in a society that has no regard for them; or that they are exposed to over 80% of media-output that is hostile to masculinity; or that their entire experience of education as children is to a system that is inimical to their preferences and predilections; or that they can never expect to be thanked or experience gratitude from the women they sacrifice their well-being and lives for...
NO, IT IS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CAN'T EXPRESS THEMSELVES. LIKE...SERIOUSLY!?
And then I also disagree with the notion that men are deficit in expressing themselves. Men express themselves perfectly well...just not in the ways in which women do. And herein lies the problem.
What women want is for men to communicate like they do; and when men do it in other ways most women simply can't even register that communication is occurring. Because they refuse to actually listen, really listen, to men!
Take me, for example, I am perfectly articulate and have an excellent conduit between my emotions and my verbosity. And I express my emotions constantly...
I express my bitterness that suicide rates for young-males are brushed under the carpet in lieu of further exposes of the plight of women;
I express the rage I feel that Feminist-fundamentalists have re-engineered all of society to reflect a man-hating agenda;
I express my dissatisfaction with the fact that many women simply swallow hook, line, and sinker the brainwashing they've received at the hands of these Feminists;
I express my ire at being blocked from voicing my insights and intellectual-agility in a paradigm that rewards mediocrity more than it does merit;
I express the frustration I feel from constantly having to reiterate the same arguments over and over to the wilfully ignorant of both sexes;
And, I express my sheer surprise and shock that one-half of the population on this planet can't seem to accept any accountability or responsibility for any of the world's problems - choosing instead to conveniently scapegoat men and resort to some paranoid-delusion about a male-led conspiracy to oppress women collectively since the dawn of humanity.
I have been expressing all of these 'feelings' and 'emotions' really, really well. But whenever I do...very few women seem to appreciate my communication of ‘feeling’.
So, no, the problems that men experience have little to do with a supposed inability to voice their hurts - they result from the fact that the gender they are expressing these hurts to refuses to listen.
I personally find offensive the attempt to reduce the plight of boys and young men to an inability on their part to express their feelings. This easy description of deep-seated issues is as simplistic an explanation as dismissing the problems that girls and young women experience to challenges in reading maps, playing chess, or peeing in an arc.
Generally speaking, boys will never be as articulate in expressing their feelings as girls because they are males. They are simply not hardwired to possess this as a forte in the same way as their female counterparts.
Admittedly, it may be possible to engineer a generation of boys who will have a similar facility if we hack off their testes at birth and then dose them up on estrogen and other female-hormones for the rest of their lives...
In effect, if we turn them into girls. And this betrays the intention behind the reiteration of this lie...
See, the truer reasons that boys and young men suffer so is because they are denied access to a healthy-identity.
Males require certain conditions in order to access their deeper masculinity: such as identification with fathers and father figures who are esteemed by a culture; positive messages in society about men's distinctive contributions; rites-of-passage administered by elder males which take them away from the world of women and initiate them into a male-only realm; and an educational environment that allows them freedom to vent their more-dynamic energies and to move more freely.
We provide our boys none of these. So, they suffer unnecessarily.
We then ignore all of these conditions and deflect away from actual causes to posit a solution along the lines of ‘talk-therapy’. Furthermore, we present an impossible ideal to our boys: "Only once you can talk about your feelings like us girls do will you be free of problems."
Impossible ideals serve the function of promoting perpetual deniability.
And this is why Feminists resort to this cliche to explain away the sufferings of our males: in order to justify further re-engineering of society to cater exclusively to females.
But if men are suffering because they are denied access to a healthy male-identity then further depriving them of this is hardly going to relieve their suffering. Makes sense right?
Men are now dogs in our society. And if somebody gets off on mistreating a dog it matters little to its plight whether it whines or yelps or barks. Expressing its 'feelings' is not going to save it - unless somebody begins to actually care for it!
You make many great points but you have fallen into the divide and conquer trap, which leads you to make stupid generalisations about women that will alienate most women from your message. I understand that it is frustration that causes your flippancy towards women, but the result is just more fuel for the divide and conquer trap. You blame women for only looking from a female perspective, yet you commit the same sin.
Teaching methods in schools favour girly girls but a good proportion of girls are not girly girls, so it isn't just boys whose learning experience is hampered.
If men are the dogs of society then what are ageing women? Women are seen as over-the-hill (low status) at 30. So, modern society does not value physical strength or wisdom, just empty headed young girls that can't read maps and you apply this standard to all women? You think that most woman can identify with media images of what a woman should be? Most young people these days suffer because they are denied access to healthy role-models. So, more young men kill themselves and more young women self-harm and starve themselves-same shit different day.
If you want all women to take responsibility for the world's problems along with all men, because some ignorant women blame all the problems on men, doesn't that make you just as ignorant as those women? Don't you know by now that all the problems are caused by the 1%, who bribe and blackmail and divide and rule?
@cathi-xx Thank you for replying. I've been delving deeply into male/female issues for a decade now, and I have developed some theories of my own, which tend to go against the grain of conventional thinking. I'm not sure how much of what I say will be accessible to you or anybody else, as I'm writing an entire book with the intention of carrying my readers on an intellectual journey to perceive the hidden. But I will address some of the points you've raised:
It's not divide and conquer if one group refuses to even acknowledge the plight of another; it's raising awareness. Men die from the top 15 causes of death at vastly greater numbers than do women, including violence. 9/10ths of all workplace deaths are male. Yet, from my interactions with 10s of 1000s of women throughout the course of my life virtually NONE were aware of this disparity. Either they are not bothering to google-click and spend the 2 minutes it would take them to discover this fact or they choose to accept the propaganda that they are, in fact, the 'oppressed'. But men can't be the 'oppressors' and women the 'oppressed' because the DEAD can't be doing the oppressing. THEY'RE DEAD!
Furthermore, death-rates are the golden standard of both oppression and suffering. So, given that men are the death-sex in comparison with women, it goes without saying that the burden of suffering weighs far more heavily on men than it does women. THIS FACT IS NEVER, EVER ACKNOWLEDGED...YET ALONE ADDRESSED. Tossing in ageing women and anorexics still doesn't come close to tipping the scales as far as the oppression which leads directly to death! Oh...and for the record, men also die far, far earlier than do women. So, you're right, ageing may not be as much of an issue for males, SINCE THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD!
There is a wealth of evidence which supports gender-specific styles of education, even accounting for the anomalies who are not girly girls. As it stands now, boys are marginalised by the current style of education which obviously favours females given that females now outgraduate males in higher education. The brightest boys now tend to be targeted by scam ADHD and ADD campaigns, which sees 4 out of 5 diagnoses attached to boys - for the sole crime of being males and despising an educational system that does not understand their sex...or understands but deliberately works against it.
The 1% who bribe and blackmail and rule use Feminist-ideology as a means to do so. It turns the women against the men, and creates conditions which lead to male suffering and death. And brilliantly, succeeds in doing so without the population caring at all about the plight of their boys and men, because they've been brainwashed to regard males as the enemy.
There is a also a wealth to evidence to support the theory that self-harm and anorexia and bulimia in females has a lot to do with fatherlesness in society. In fact, depriving children of access to biological fathers increases their chances of succumbing to virtually every known ill. Now, this may not always be the fault of anybody but the father, but Feminist's teaching that all men are scum and fathers are superfluous and unnecessary certainly contributes.
Unfortunately, it's not just 'some' women. Feminism is the most dominant and all-pervasive ideology on the planet now; it shapes institutions and policies, it promotes hatred of all things masculine via all forms of media and education - Feminism is the air that we now all breathe. Waking people up to this fact, especially women, is NOT playing into the divide and conquer game - IT'S REVEALING TO PEOPLE JUST HOW BRAINWASHED THEY ARE!. And there's no acknowledging the brainwashing until you begin to take responsibility for its effects.
To finish off, one of the aims of this post of mine was to reveal a technique of diversion, distraction and white-washing employed by Feminists. We don't do this when we discuss problems girls and women experience - which was what I sarcastically intended to convey when I wrote about reducing the plight of girls to being unable to pee in an arc. We take very seriously the problems that females experience.
Something which I have noted, which I have come across other cultural analysts and sociologists comment on also, is that if the reverse were true, if it WERE FEMALES WHO WERE KILLING THEMSELVES AT VASTLY HIGHER RATES, then all of society would be at a standstill, and women would flock the streets demanding an explanation and a cease to this 'crime against their gender'.
The fact that it is happening to boys and men, instead, elicits no reaction, no pity, no compassion, no investigation, nothing at all. JUST COVER-UP LIES! And that's disgusting.
You are preaching to the converted but I'm sorry: you are playing the divide and conquer game and whether it's 'some' women or 'most' women is just semantics: the point is that it's not 'all' women. I doubt that you are educating any women but rather alienating those who already agree with you and "becoming the one you hate." I like what you are saying, just not how you are saying it but I do think that you say it wonderfully with your poetry.
You can add to your 3rd point that girls who grow up with adult males other than their father, start puberty earlier.
Thank you, and I'll take your advice on board. But in my defense I am very specific with what I am claiming: I never said ALL women; I said those women that buy into the Feminist programming and sweep male issues under the carpet by resorting to the cliche that that all male suffering can be explained away by them not being able to express their feelings! It's a rhetorical device.
In fact, out of the 1000 plus words in my piece which delve deeply into the 'actual' causes of male-suffering I only generalize in one paragraph: "And, I express my sheer surprise and shock that one-half of the population on this planet can't seem to accept any accountability or responsibility for any of the world's problems - choosing instead to conveniently scapegoat men and resort to some paranoid-delusion about a male-led conspiracy to oppress women collectively since the dawn of humanity." Why would you get hung up on that tiny section?
Nevertheless, I stand by my claim in this paragraph, because the women that DO NOT resort to explaining away all of history as a vast conspiracy by males to oppress and subjugate all of woman-kind are literally one in a million. But, by all means, please prove me wrong: I would love to hear the 'converted' raise their voices and speak out against this seemingly universal paranoid-delusion ;)
Because there does exist a disparity here; the women that DO hate men and all things masculine are very vocal and very active and very persuasive - and they do wreak tremendous damage upon relations between males and females and on the male-psyche. It's no accident, after all, that teen-male suicide rates have tripled in conjunction with a Feminist-led anti-male agenda. Propaganda kills!
So...if there are women out there who DO care about males, and who might take slight at the fact that I include them in my polemic against the damage wrought to boys and men, this then, begs a question, most pertinent it is, WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY SO SILENT???
I don't care about alienating those who are all feigned concern and no action, my attitude is "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" The women that get off on hurting males, or who are silently complicit in the hurting of males, are well and truly in the majority. Just take a look around...it's blatantly obvious given all the policies and institutions that are anti-masculine.
In Australia, where I am from, we actually have awarded as Australian of the Year a woman who tours the country and openly demonizes and vilifies males. She spews forth hatred at every turn and is poisoning the minds of our future generations with her psycho-babble. Not a single female voice has been raised to oppose her! Why not??? After all, the little boys that this woman is damaging with her hate-speech all emerged out of the bodies of women...why aren't these mothers saying or doing anything???
We now have an advertising campaign in Australia that targets the play of boys by claiming that their childhood exuberance and dynamic expressiveness results in violence against women once adults. It is total bullshit! But the men here are cowed and broken, and the women that supposedly are 'converts' and know better say nothing. Why not??? These are their sons after all...
Hmm, good final point of yours, and I am aware of it. They kick into puberty earlier in order to attract the male attention that they are missing . FATHER-HUNGER! No two words better sum up the current human condition.
It certainly sounds like things are f*ed up down under and incredibly frustrating. It sounds like these women are power crazy sociopaths and the majority of ordinary women/men are too busy earning a living and raising their families to give them a second thought, unless they are having a meaningless argument down the pub, which polarises the sexes into repeating meaningless drivel that does not reflect how they live their lives day-to-day.
I personally do not know any women who hate men. I'm in the UK, 45 and I hang out with ordinary people. The media talks a lot of shit and does not represent the views of anyone I know: we think that the original feminists were stupid for denigrating women's traditional roles while they were fighting for the vote and equal opportunities.
Here's a true story. I just remembered a time when I was 29 and I was a little bit overweight, especially in the face, having had a c-section 6 months months earlier and I was in a queue at the gym vending machine and a group of lads just pushed straight in front of me. That was the first time in my life that any man had treated me like that and they looked kinda surprised when I said, "err, excuse me, I'm next," and pushed straight back in front of them. They clearly weren't expecting the "chubby, low-self esteem girl" to say anything but, "chubby girl" wasn't my self-image and I knew the extra weight was temporary. Also, far more women were being friendly to me for the first time in my life and I finally understood, after the vending machine incident, why so many women were hostile, for no damn reason, before I became chubby. Don't get me wrong: I still think that women who are vile to other women for the way they look are silly cows but I think that men who treat chubby, myopic girls like dirt are complete tossers.
I blame modern life for making so many people shallow and credulous: it's definitely not inherent in men or women and like I said above: ordinary people tend to repeat a lot of old crap that they are fed by the media, that doesn't even reflect how they live their lives day to day!
Sadly, some kids lack quality parental support and I guess other adults in the neighbourhood are too busy with the daily grind. In the past, people used to look out for each others kids, but that's gone now that most mothers have to go out to work, so that a family can make ends meet. I agree with you: feminists suck.
@cathi-xx Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. It's refreshing to have these kinds of conversations with those who are both attuned and insightful, and I always feels more optimistic in the midst of these dark times after such exchanges with my fellow humans. Means that things can't be all that bad :)
Cathi, his post was about men and boys, not all-encompassing to also include the issues that women face which are as you say. Sometimes we need to look at one issue at a time and think about it on its own.
Of course most women, just as you say, are not the stereotypical standard that we see in the media. The problem is the media pushes stories that portray the opinions of a small select group of women towards men -- in this case, as per the topic, that men and boys are mainly suffering from not sharing their feelings -- rather than a full range of opinions, which won't sell as well. The same goes for opinions on women and on pretty much everything.
For young boys, I'm honestly lost as to whom nowadays they are supposed to look up to. I remember thinking Batman was a hero, watching westerns with good male characters, and so forth. Nowadays boys play video games which have no role models as it's just yourself as a character (girls do too). Boys without fathers or men they respect in real life are pretty much screwed as, lets face it, they won't find them in the mainstream media.
@saiku I appreciate you offering your own perspectives and experiences as a male; that's the deficit that prompted me to begin researching and writing and speaking on this issue: I realized that men had no voices in society.
Feminists have succeeded in re-engineering all of society to what amounts to an unparalleled social and historical experiment whose repercussions we've not bothered to assess. If we did, then the damage that it does to boys and men - and given the truth of a symbiotic relationship, to girls and women also - would be exposed.
But in ignoring the damage to those who face the brunt of this damage - males - and then by strategically teaching women to reflexively blame all of their as well as all other problems on men, then the nature of the experiment is never questioned. And this hideous engineering which is destroying lives and the fabric of relationships can continue uncontested.
I agree with Camille Paglia that men must be urged to speak about the effects that they are experiencing, not about their 'feelings' but about what's being done to them and what they regard as wrong and unjust. "Men must speak, and speak in their own voices, not voices coerced by feminist moralists. "
I don't think this is the work of "feminists" necessarily but the degradation of society in general. True feminists were the women who despite ridicule marched endlessly for the right to vote. Remember Andrea Dworkin who dedicated her life to feminism and wrote numerous books about her hatred of men and of pornography? Now those were feminists but they have little to do with what's going on right now. They would cringe at what currently is labelled as "feminism".
They were very far removed from the current "feminists" who post selfies on social media with self-serving comments and the 20 year old bloggers who eat up and paraphrase the garbage their professors taught them in Social Whatever 101. Everyone must always bow to their ideals (never mind they have no idea what those are yet). There doesn't seem to be any room for men who wish to choose how they act and interact in the interconnected world.
Haha...very true, there is NO room for men in this modern, interconnected world - precisely because this modern world was not designed with men in mind at all, and it is in every respect wholly inimical to men's deep preferences and needs.
Fortunately, there are men who are aware of this, and who are both sharing and living out solutions to this dilemma. There are enclaves of men on this planet who see through the bs, who've carved out niches to defy the madness, and who are reaching out to others to show them the way out. Whether this forum is the place for such men to express their insights I am uncertain of...
Yes, I read it but when boys and girls are facing similar issues and you say, "and this effects girls too" as an aside, more people will listen to you and some might even open their minds. His writing mirrors feminist writing exactly in its style. His poetry on the other hand is mighty powerful.
The only people that think "Women are seen as over-the-hill (low status) at 30" are other women. A 30 yr old single guy does not see that as low status. I think it might have been a little projection on your part with that statement.
Except that last week I was I.D buying alcohol! Ironically, I have a baby, cutesy, chipmunk kind of face. Experience of job agents actually, who never met me but could work out my age due to dates on my cv, which experience is backed up by very well respected OU research and BTW men are over the hill at 45!
I'm pleased to hear that ordinary, thinking men value maturity but I was talking more about the media which brainwashes and corrupts the youth, some of whom then become job agents that bin CVs of men over 45 and women over 30.
i still think it is women that are the ones projecting this idea that women of 30+ are of lesser value. myself as a male in his 30's would prefer an intelligent female my age. not a little kid no matter how much the media or other women tell me that 30+ is a lesser value.
gave upvote and am now following.
wow, just wow. crazy respect.
If this comment was intended for me, @skeptic, I am thankful.
no thank you for writing this in a way i could never type out. i am following and cant wait to read more. xD
Cheers! :)
I totally resonate with this post and the issues at hand cause me pain, as well. I have taken a stance that we are all souls in a borrowed meatsuit. I and my fiance have completely let go of gender assigned roles in life and feel so very free. I treat him and he treats me like a fellow soul and it is pure bliss. If only the other 99% of the population would get that the abuse will stop. Because it is abuse. "You're a boy so you should act like, or you're a girl so you should act like. " Until we wake up, we don't see how much damage we are causing with all of this programming. We need to encourage others to see each other as souls. Think outside the box they put us in. Realize as individuals regardless of gender, we are all beautiful and unique each in our own way. The sad part is, humans cannot feel unconditional love outside of these awful programs until they peel of the layers and love their true selves. Blessings to you for your work in addressing an issue that lies near my own heart!
P.S. forgive any errors in spelling and punctuation today. I've been up for 20 hours, traveled home from New Mexico yesterday. Currently in a different dimension in my headspace haha!