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Men
Nov 19, 2020 22:02:30 GMT
Post by harrispilton on Nov 19, 2020 22:02:30 GMT
It’s been established that men are three times more likely than women to commit suicide. As you would expect the reasons for this are complex, family breakdown, decline of male dominated industries and not surprisingly social expectations about masculinity. It's actually changed life expectancy percentages among white men in the US. Don't forget opiod addiction. Yeah there’s certainly an iceberg approaching in the UK in respect of increased use of alcohol by those aged over fifty during lockdown. Isolation plus job insecurity, and general anxiety is a pretty lethal combination. Although judging by the article I read yesterday this is as likely to affect women as men right now.
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Men
Nov 19, 2020 22:19:32 GMT
Post by oh oooh on Nov 19, 2020 22:19:32 GMT
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Men
Nov 19, 2020 22:24:58 GMT
Post by sloopjohnc on Nov 19, 2020 22:24:58 GMT
All this talk just makes me want to get a custom t-shirt, sleeveless, of course that reads "Protect the Patriarchy."
I jest. Men do some fucked up things in the name of patriarchy and masculinity through the world, like trying to kill Afghani girls trying to get an education and mutilating gay guys in Nigeria.
Guys are fucked up. We don't need a day. We've had centuries.
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Men
Nov 19, 2020 22:31:46 GMT
via mobile
Sneelock likes this
Post by fonz on Nov 19, 2020 22:31:46 GMT
I had a can of beer, and fish and chips.
It was a fine day.
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Sneelock
god
Better than Washington...
Posts: 8,564
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Post by Sneelock on Nov 19, 2020 22:34:33 GMT
I don't understand that tweet at all I think you need a special pair of glasses to see all those underlying assumptions.
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~ / % ? *
god
disambiguating goat herder
Posts: 5,532
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Post by ~ / % ? * on Nov 20, 2020 0:10:03 GMT
incel dog whistle
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Post by hippopotamus on Nov 20, 2020 4:04:19 GMT
Am I allowed to comment? (She said, tongue in cheek)
You asked for thoughts and I'll give you mine, such as they are.
My brother lives in a very non-progressive country. He's also very conservative (compared to me, at least). A lot of the time I can't tell if he got his views from a backwards interpretation of my father's life and what kind of a husband/father her was, or where he lives or he's just oblivious to the entire women's rights movement.
His wife is pregnant with their first child and now he's all questions. We're very close and I wanted to share my feelings on being a new parent.
I started telling him about what it means to spend time with your child, and what it means to miss out on things because you have to work; what I've noticed when my husband has been able to spend a month of paternity leave versus working full time.
He then cut me short to tell me that he gets no days of paternity leave and the nature of his job is that he won't get to spend much time with the child.
It made me so so sad. He has accepted this as a fact. And I've been ruminating on it.
As much as I harp on about equal rights, so much of the time this is focused on the female perspective. Equal leave (for example) so that women can be supported in the workplace and at home. I wonder if there's any argument for having so called TRADITIONAL gender roles.
And you know what? I think it's not always about being PROGRESSIVE so much as adapting to the times. Being dependent on two incomes means all things being equal, men should play an equal role in the home.
When society doesn't respect the traditional values of just doing an honest day's work and have that be enough, men are going to find other ways to reach self-fulfillment.
Why not have a man's day to figure out what is the man's role in society?
I don't know that it is discussed enough.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 7:30:22 GMT
via mobile
Post by fonz on Nov 20, 2020 7:30:22 GMT
I got two weeks paternity leave, and I felt very fortunate to get that. The happiest fortnight of my life. I would have loved to have longer. In the UK, the differences between the sexes on stuff like mat/pat leave, and custody issues etc are still quite stark, both culturally, and in legislation.
I just wanna be equal.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:09:55 GMT
fonz likes this
Post by tory on Nov 20, 2020 8:09:55 GMT
I posted that because I thought it was an interesting perspective more than anything else. It made me think.
Me personally - I've no doubt that traditional methods of men dealing with difficult emotional problems doesn't work for lots of them. See my recent posts about my brother-in-law for example, who literally cannot articulate the fear he feels about losing his job and not being able to adapt.
I'm pretty open and candid about things personally. I'm not in hoc to traditional perspectives about a man's role in the world thankfully because I didn't grow up in such a world and very few of my peers adhere to that world view. I took on the primary care role for my son between 0 and 6 and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to spend those years with him. Many men don't get that chance to bond so crucially during that time. Having a life-threatening disease wakes you up in many respects to the fact that you're mortal.
As Hip says, much of this is maybe down to the fact that most of us now accept two working parents as the norm, so equal roles are necessary in many respects.
I found the comment interesting because we assume a progressive arc for this sort of thing. That we'll leave behind older methods of dealing with issues and move towards a "better" method which we assume that women are better at it. In one respect, when looking at suicide for example, then that seems to ring true. In general, rates have been going down since the turn of the 20th century, with outliers for major financial crises. They have been rising since 2007 slowly though.
Men are different to women. Joining a music forum and talking about music on the internet is just an updated form of going down to the local pub and talking to the sphincter-eyed denizens for the evening. Men need participation and community just as women do, it's just that the forms these take are often different and sometimes it is good that they are distinct.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:36:46 GMT
Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 20, 2020 8:36:46 GMT
Increasingly we expect men to be more female as if this is the desirable/preferred route. We expect men to reveal their feelings more, to be in touch with their sensitive side etc. Masculinity has been labelled "toxic" for years now, in "white men" are the oppressors and so on.
Other things factor into this too...the decline of industry and jobs that men traditionally did and which gave them a sense of purpose, identity and community have severely declined.
In short, men are confused and predictably so. Maybe we need to recognise men as being men rather than trying to change them to be more like women which is what the tweet is alluding to.
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Post by daveythefatboy on Nov 20, 2020 8:37:14 GMT
It is just a weird construct to imagine that that the complaints he hears about contemporary male norms somehow carry the implication that “the female ones” are correct. I don’t think that necessarily follows.
Mind you, generalizing about an entire gender is dodgy enough. But you know... there IS a kind of male gestalt that can probably be fairly criticized. But maybe the suggestion isn’t actually being made that we act more female, but rather as better men.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:39:25 GMT
Post by oh oooh on Nov 20, 2020 8:39:25 GMT
Other things factor into this too...the decline of industry and jobs that men traditionally did and which gave them a sense of purpose, identity and community have severely declined. I think this is key. It used to be easier to be 'a man'. Whether that was desirable is another question.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:43:12 GMT
Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 20, 2020 8:43:12 GMT
Other things factor into this too...the decline of industry and jobs that men traditionally did and which gave them a sense of purpose, identity and community have severely declined. I think this is key. It used to be easier to be 'a man'. Whether that was desirable is another question. Why would it not be desirable?
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:46:12 GMT
Post by oh oooh on Nov 20, 2020 8:46:12 GMT
The stereotypical male of 50 years ago? worked down the pit, came home covered in muck and expected his tea to be on the table. Once wolfed down, he'd be off down the pub. That kind of scenario.
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Men
Nov 20, 2020 8:51:29 GMT
Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 20, 2020 8:51:29 GMT
The stereotypical male of 50 years ago? worked down the pit, came home covered in muck and expected his tea to be on the table. Once wolfed down, he'd be off down the pub. That kind of scenario. That's not quite what I mean though. Easier to be "a man" in that the type of jobs enabled them to express their masculinity in satisfying ways. I think a lot of modern jobs don't scratch this itch which is part of the problem. The other stuff is traditional gender roles and attendant behaviour but then my folks were like that and it worked for them...the old man worked, my Mum looked after the house, tea was on the table etc. It's easy to mock more traditional gender roles but they also work for many people too.
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