Even worse idk much about codeswitching.
I can tell friends who are girls “I love you” and they take it as friendly. But guys can’t hear this without thinking he’s laid claim to a romantic and/or sexual feelings?
If I reject a girl asking me out with the attitude of a bubbly girl talking to another bubbly girl at a party, and say “I have a bf. But you’re a babe!, You can get another babe!” She’d totally be friendly back about it… But once I said this to a guy who asked me out, and he proceeded to ask me for my number 4 times in less than 10 seconds.
Shit like this puts me in fight or flight mode. I have very little awareness of how or why I have to codeswitch between men and women. My skin is crawling nearly everytime a friend points out to me in retrospect that a guy was actually flirting with me after my only intention was being friends or a friendly neighbor. Yikes. I want to go back in time and yell “Fuck you stop being a creep!” (Ofc, they’d be too creepy to understand why I would say that.)
That said, I love my bf because his fem side makes him chill and understanding if a girl talks to him like he’s another girl. I’m pretty quiet and mostly talk to him, and I have no guy friends. So I’m not learning codeswitching skills by watching him. How do you codeswitch and why do you codeswitch in the exact way(s) you do? I barely go outside, and I’m angry at guys everyday over this over past events I’m creeped out by.
My theory is it has to do with boys and men being starved of emotional intimacy and left ravenous for validation as a result. All while they are overly praised for shows of power and told that’s just naturally how men are “supposed” to act. And that they then are raised wanting any sign that they are powerful in ways that dominate those around them. And this fucked up system gets passed from older generation to younger generation.
That’s all I have so far.
Also just garden variety patriarchy and sexism. There’s a base programming in the traditional male upbringing that the only reason to talk to a woman is to court her. I’m betting a lot of guys in relationships who could be friends with you just opt out of talking to you because they already have a partner. So you’re mostly getting single horny men talking to you.
As a straight cis male, we’re mostly not worth the effort.
Growing up as a boy, there was a lack of emotional intimacy and “ravenous for validation” was the end result. But even when I was in relationships, it wasn’t enough. I was never going to get validation I wanted as long as my partners viewed me as a man.
That’s p much it. Most guys are desperate for affection. Married or single often makes no difference. We are are often deeply alienated by society as a population
That’s part of it. The other part is that guys think they are entitled to affection, and that women are responsible for men’s emotional well-being. This is something that is ingrained since childhood, both from the way mothers are centered in how our society raises children, how we frame the emotional wants of men and from the way kindness and closeness are discouraged in interactions between boys. I get that people living in a male gender role are frequently alienated, and get shamed for behaviors that would be necessary to form deep emotional connections, and these are real and valid problems. But you can’t stop at that point and say “well, men just need more affection”. Because this centers the man’s demands and wants without looking at who fulfills them and what that entails. So then you have the classic situation where a guy can only be emotionally open with his partner, and then she has to constantly be his entire support system. This is what perpetuates the problem. Because other men are unavailable and because women are supposed to be caretakers, you end up depending on one woman shouldering a man’s entire needs for affection and validation and emotional stabilizing.
Operational terms here being one and woman. When i look at women and nonbinary people in my life, we have our entire friend groups as support networks. When i need to vent or need somebody to show me affection, i can write to several friends if they have the time and energy to do that, or i can go to a server a friend runs and post in a vent channel and see who replies. It’s usually the same people, but it’s more than one person. This is important. Doing emotional support for others and showing them affection is draining, even for somebody like me who absolutely needs to take care of others to feel fulfilled. Also, none of them are partners of mine.
And men need to work on building something like that as well. You can’t rely on women to do that for you. Men need to learn how friendships work, and that is no easy task in a society that does not allow homosocial behavior among men. But it is needed, as more and more women are past the point were they are willing to put up with men as they are right now.
extremely well put.
it’s entitled behavior to make it women’s problem that men aren’t building community with each other. and that’s the issue. i’m not gonna call his mom for him or somehow build safe men’s spaces or set up play dates for adult men to make friends like they are children. we can’t build build any type of communism without community, and some of us are already holding up half of *that *particular sky, thank you very much.
Kinda related side note: Most women do not hold up just half the sky, they hold up a significant extra portion of it during the unpaid second shift.
Damn. This is a great insight and needs to be emphasized:
From this perspective, when a man is turned down by a prospective partner, he is agitated not merely because he is insulted. All of his frustration and unmet desires by society become focused entirely on the one person. That person stands in, not as their personal self, but the abstract embodiment of society. Their rejection or affirmation then becomes that of society. It’s sad yet inexcusable at the same time. But then it is clear how and why incels come about — refusing to participate in the process, but in a confused way which blames women for patriarchy.
Your solution is also spot-on. If the problem is a lack of validation, then men need more validation, not only from partners, but from everyone, particularly but not only other men. The dichotomy between partner and non-partner has to be significantly reduced.
How so lol? Men run the patriarchy, we’re given everything we want and get excuses made for our bad behaviours. The only alienation that occurs is because of capitalism, and of our own making.
men running the patriarchy isn’t a blanket benefit to men and masc presenting people. Who the fuck is we? what a white cishet thing to say.
They might mean to say something more like alienated from human interaction/their own emotions. Which is done by men to themselves and other men but it’s still done.
Yeah, but even stuff like never eating vegetables is patriarchy. So, we don’t know how to mend our clothes our wash our ass. Getting out of doing luandry is not worth it.
i thought that was white people cooking and sensory issues
I dunno, most dudes I met in South America were the same. Big on meat.
And also women, to be fair. We are all products of our social conditioning. Men, women, queer folks, all uphold patriarchy to the extent they are raised by/in it, until they do the work to unlearn in.
We are bound by patriarchy. The number of men that actually enjoy any benefits from it is small. Sure, most men get some benefits from it. However we mostly don’t enjoy them. So the way most men experience patriarchy is by being cut off from out own emotions and then being cut off from any kind of meaninfully bonding with others. Then stuff like being alienated from household chores is actually bad for our emotional development. We’d be better of without it.
The patriarchy runs itself and benefits and hurts all genders.
It is a system of oppression tied to capitalism in order to extract value beyond the walls of the workplace. It also exists without capitalism, but in modern society it has been subsumed by it.
Just like how patriarchy lessens womens freedom (I forgot the word for ‘ability to do stuff/allowance to act’) and forces them into roles as “homemakers” and mothers, it also forces men into specific roles.
When I say it benefits all genders, what do I mean?
Women aren’t taken seriously and are reduced to sexual objects. This also means that women cannot be perpetrators, a perspective we frequently see when a female pedophile gets caught - typically resulting in lower punishments than men.
Likewise due to their designated roles as breeder and child-raisers, women are typically awarded the majority or totality of maternity leave.
For some, I assume, the gig of staying at home was nice, just like some men masochistically enjoy being the breadwinner.
Additionally, since women aren’t taken seriously, they are awarded a much wider range of emotions by society than men are.
Women aren’t expected to be proactive in the romantic sense, they are to be courted. This seems like something of an enviable position according to the guys I know.
Looking at this one could say “Wow BanMeFromPosting is an incel chud who thinks women have it good under patriarchy, they’re an MRA-stupidpol user who has infiltrated hexbear!” If one wanted to be a hostile shithead who assumed the worst of people. Because that is very clearly not what is going on. These “benefits” aren’t really all that good and they are all contingent on further enforcing gender norms. They also lock women into roles of being glorified incubation tubes. But look at how patriarchy “benefits” men and you’ll notice the same issues.
Sorry, that last point was a dumb digression. What I’m trying to say here is that patriarchy is also incredibly hurtful to men. Its not all sunshine and roses. Think back to your own upbringing and think about how society would try to shape you. Think about the gender norms enforced on you.
Once again: That’s not to say that men aren’t perpetrators or beneficiaries of patriarchy, they clearly are. They’re made into a privileged class that gets to do all sorts of stuff that women don’t. Like have bank accounts or walk down the street at night without fear of being SA’ed.
But that’s also not to say that women aren’t participators in patriarchy. They aren’t some divine perfect feminine, they’re people like everyone else, and so exist within and enforce society. Try reading any cooking book from before the '70s. That shit be written by a lady, but it is the most misogynistic shit you’ll read in a good while[1].
Sorry for turning this response into a vent.
Edit: And don’t get me started on the treatment of trans people or enbies.
Now, of course, some dipshit will read this to mean that my best and only example is “very old cookbooks”, rather than take it for the beat anekdote it is, and I will once again get disappointed ↩︎
I appreciate the response.
Thank you
And male socialization kinda explicitly raises you to be interpersonally and emotionally underdeveloped in many ways. If you ever engage in your emotional experience or are too sensitive to others you are punished for it.
Much of the suffering innate to the experience of manhood, and the suffering men subject women to, are a product of the way patriarchy teaches men to cut off and prohibits some parts of their humanity. Just like it does for women who, to my understanding, are also taught that some parts of the human experience are meant to be off limits for them (like autonomy, independence, ambition, etc.)
And so in addition to starving for intimacy, men are also kind of raised in a way that leaves them, unfortunately frequently, kind of interpersonally and emotionally stunted. Does not a make a good combination. And it brings both men and anyone in community with men a lot of distress (that men struggle to identify or understand because that would require abilities to introspect or empathize they’ve been punished for ever practicing when developing as people)
It sucks! 😀 for everyone, in many ways!
FYI, “male socialization” has a very problematic history of being used to exclude trans women from feminist and lesbian spaces, it has basically been turned into a terf dogwhistle by now but unfortunately is still used carelessly in many other contexts. I see it all the time being used especially in progressive circles by people who are not aware of the implications, and these implications do not go away. When you think there is such a thing as male socialization, you are implicitly making the claim that it applies to trans women, and you are also implying a behavorial determinism that mirrors the biodeterminism of classic terf arguments.
I am by no means saying any of this is your intention, but i do not think that the functioning of men under patriarchy can be adequately explained by “people made these childhood experiences as boys and now they are just programmed to be emotionally walled-off, domineering and violent people who objectify women.” As a trans woman, people tried to do that to me and it just didn’t stick. Whatever did get internalized largely crumbled the moment i realized that i never wanted to be seen as a man again. Here’s a primer on the critique of the concept from a transfeminist lens.
From both my own lived experience that includes performing several starkly different gender roles over my lifetime and from extensively studying feminist theory from Butler to Feinberg, i can firmly say that we need to regard the behavior of men not as a biographical artifact, but as a continuous act of constructing gender. When Butler says that gender is performative, they do not just mean that we run a script we learned as kids, the performativity of gender and its social construction are constant and ongoing. This means you have to actively perform masculinity to be seen as a man.
A part of that performance is to use every opportunity to demonstrate heterosexuality, mainly by objectifying women, by being callous and pushy in regards to women’s boundaries and by being extremely persistent in pursuing us. The behavior that OOP vents about is a direct result of men having to constantly prove their masculinity by being shitty to women.
Men are also not emotionally stunted because they did not learn to have feelings as kids. Nobody grows up in a silo where they only learn the gender performance of their AGAB. In fact, we have to know both binary, patriarchal gender roles for the system to function, as patriarchy requires that we police each others’ genders constantly.
Men do not struggle with emotional availability because they never learned it, they struggle because they are constantly punished for showing softness and vulnerability, and they are constantly denied the trust and closeness that women receive from each other because being too nice to a man you do not see in a sexual way carries an extreme risk of that man getting the wrong ideas, and then being extremely shitty about being turned down because our society also very actively punishes women for asserting boundaries too firmly. All of this is part of an ongoing process of constructing and maintaining gender. Once you stop engaging in that and start engaging in constructing and being perceived as another gender, that becomes super fucking obvious.
And this performance is obviously harmful for the men engaging in it, but it also enables them to integrate into existing power structures that require that type of guy. Networking as a man requires that you are dominant in such ways. The better you are at it, the easier it is to socialize with powerful men and to advance in professional settings. You need to be able to engage in and handle the banter, and you can’t come off as a buzzkill when your boss is being a misogynist again. Emphasizing how hard this all is for men is kind of like saying that the Vietnam war was bad because it traumatized or killed so many American G.I.s. Yes, it did, but that does not mean the US and Vietnam were harmed by it equally.
Do you have any other sources than Serano?
I think i’ve written enough effortposts here for today, but could you tell me what’s the problem with citing one the absolute household names in trans feminism as a source? I think she gives a reasonably good overview on the subject.
I asked for any other sources on the topic if you had any is all. I was looking for a wider perspective.
I can’t think of any right now, my brain is also reaching the point where it turns into mush give that i still have no ADHD meds because yay gatekeeping yay failing ableist healthcare system. So, sorry i can’t help you on that front rn.
Okay, no problem
that’s a pretty good summary of bell hooks’ the will to change, honestly
This hits the nail in the head so much. I’m in my late 20s and until recently I haven’t realized I’ve never rejected a girl’s advances at me because of the need for validation (except when in a relationship for exclusivity reasons). I’ve never been the type to hit on a girl at a disco or something, and I always thought it’s just because I’m a chicken, until recently when I introspected and realized I just don’t want to make out with someone I don’t know.
So much of it is this crazy imbalance in expectations, desires, and bullshit created by patriarchy. Thanks for putting it so clearly and well-explained, useful af
Sounds about right