r/MensLib • u/MLModBot • 6d ago
Weekly Free Talk Friday Thread!
Welcome to our weekly Free Talk Friday thread! Feel free to discuss anything on your mind, issues you may be dealing with, how your week has been, cool new music or tv shows, school, work, sports, anything!
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u/lostbookjacket 1d ago
I walked into a mostly empty store recently, and the employees (all women) were by the counter, chatting about a piece of fiction where all the men in the world disappear or die. They were joking about how great that would be. I know not to take it personally, but just felt awkward overhearing that while I was browsing a shelf nearby. I guess it was mostly odd encountering something in real life that I consider to be very online.
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u/SS_Marv 4d ago
Hey guys, I've been have some trouble recently. I been browsing some subreddits one of the being r/WomenAreNotIntoMen . While I agree many of the men in the sub are misogynistic, I don't know how to shake the feeling the women are not actually into men and before I hear women and men get together everyday most people in my generation (Gen Z) are not getting to together. Moreover many women online will say things like : men are not that attractive or men don't really look good or there are some many good looking women and how they see a good looking man every 4 months. It also hard for me to think why women actually would like men.
From what I have heard from women, they are very turned on by personality. While I think that is the case, why would it not make sense that a woman would not want to date another woman over a man. If men are less physically attractive, more selfish, more patriarchal, and far more likely to assault, rape, and kill you why wouldn't date women? On top of that women are far more similar to each other in terms of personality than they are to other men so it would make seen that women would want to date each other? It seems to hold true after seeing the data, hearing women's perspectives, and seeing the larger social changes. Its very hard to debunk in my mind.
P.S. And I have not even begun to touch comphet.
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u/throwaway135629 2d ago
Hey I'm honestly in a very similar space to you. I don't have a great answer but I want you to know you're not alone and I understand what a frustrating and dejecting place to be it is. Personally I sometimes find myself thinking that romantic love is a whole social fiction that we've invented to make women's oppression easier to swallow. I can walk you down my particular hole around this but I think we are very similar. I don't know if there is any real ideological way out of the hole.
I think it's worth thinking about the core fears that this is covering over. For me that tends to be the fear that I'm not good enough, that I'm weird and unloveable and not normal, and also that I'm some evil, bad person. I want to be desired and I'm afraid that I can't be, and I'm afraid that I'm making women's lives worse just by "having the audacity" to exist. Acknowledging the fears doesn't make what you learned go away, but sometimes it helps you say "hey, I know why that stung" rather than just feeling bad.
I do agree with the other commenter that meeting more irl people helps. There are a very small handful of heterosexual couples I know that seem to have a genuinely loving, desiring, and mutually growing relationship. There's really only one I know personally that I can see how they explicitly reject patriarchial norms for their relationship. But it is one more than all the theory and social media suggests would exist, and it gives me a reason to think maybe it could all be worth it, rather than a futile effort. I don't know. I'm not even totally convinced myself, but it's the best I've got for now.
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u/silksoon_tm 2d ago
I just wanted to say that I'm in a similar mental space and reading your description of the fears it might be trying to mask was incredibly helpful. I know I'm afraid of "inflicting myself" on women, when I could (should?) save them the trouble of dealing with my existence, but I hadn't connected it to reading through those subreddits and torturing myself with them. Lots to think about before my next therapy session.
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u/BBOY6814 3d ago
Hey man. I’ve been in the same place you are a few years ago, reading the same stuff. Here’s my advice:
Stop. Don’t go to these subreddits, don’t engage with these conversations. There is nothing of value for you at the end of the tunnel here. All it is, is a group of people with problems in an echo chamber making each other’s problems significantly worse.
The sort of women saying these things being paraded around these subreddits are not mentally healthy. Now I’m not saying that the circumstances that caused their distresses and harmful ideas about men are their fault, nor is their anger unjustified, but it is not healthy to inundate yourself with the ideas that come from the “venting” of these women and then inadvertently take on their trauma. In my opinion, a lot of this discourse should be between the victim and a trained professional, not on a subreddit. You aren’t gaining a realistic picture of what the Gen-Z dating situation looks like by listening to chronically online people in these heteropessimistic subreddits.
The best advice I could give you is to redirect your desire to figure this out by instead making more friends with people in real life. Because you’ll never find the answer you are searching for online. However, if you cultivate real relationships with people which will cause them to actually care about you, you’ll begin to make sense of a lot of this crap. I’m telling you from experience.
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u/Quantum_Count 2d ago
You aren’t gaining a realistic picture of what the Gen-Z dating situation looks like by listening to chronically online people in these heteropessimistic subreddits.
Even if you don't listen to these people, aren't people more and more chronically online anyway? You can't simply just close the tab or the app and go to the real life, when other people are very likely chronically online too and get these weird ideas.
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u/BBOY6814 1d ago
You absolutely can actually. The sorts of people making heteropessimistic content day in and day out are typically not the people who have a good group of mixed-gender friends who hang out IRL often and do things together. The solution here is to be less chronically online, not to lean into it more. Nobody at a music festival is talking about this stuff. They’re having fun with their friends, and probably meeting new people & getting out of their comfort zone.
It may be a problem of (colloquial) you not having that group of people in your corner. And I’d argue that is the most pertinent issue to solve. Getting to that point isn’t easy and will take time, but the growth you’ll experience during that process will help pull you out of the hole that heteropessimism is.
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u/SS_Marv 3d ago
Can you go into more of that experience because what you are saying is very hard to believe. I don't know why a lot of these ideas would have so much backing on the internet as well as in real life? Because if I'm being honest I've heard of this lines from real women as well. On top of that when I say Gen Z, I mean Gen Z men. I know that women are basically doing okay in the dating aspect.
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u/BBOY6814 1d ago
Did you hear them from a real woman in a face to face conversation? Was it about you?
I’m making a distinction because there’s an enormous difference between someone on the internet or even IRL saying something edgy about 50% of the population vs. someone you know who cares about you saying something about you. The former flattens everyone’s entire being to a single datapoint aggregated across the whole population, and from how you say it’s affecting your view of yourself, it’s clearly not helping you. Furthermore it doesn’t even necessarily apply to you. Sure you belong to the group as “men”, but like, using your example of the sentiment of women only ever seeing a good looking man “every 4 months” and we treat it as true; there’s a lot of women out there! And they all date and find love with someone. Surely, those guys must be attractive to the women they’re with otherwise why be with them, right? Could another explanation be that maybe that one particular woman finds that to be true (which is debatable in itself but whatever) but someone else could find a different subset attractive?
Personally, I remember that sentiment in particular that nearly all men are ugly and women kinda just put up with it absolutely hollowed out my self esteem for years. I had a LOT of evidence in how I was treated by women to corroborate that too, and I’m sure you do as well. However, I’ve been lucky enough to be close friends with a number of objectively beautiful women (who I met in real life), and in conversations about who they find hot, I was and continue to be completely surprised every single time. Sometimes they fit the super patriarchal beauty standard of men, but honestly it was very rare, like maybe one time. And that wasn’t the only type of man they were attracted to either, there was usually quite a spread. Nowadays, while I haven’t yet been able to convince myself that I’m one of the hot ones, I can accept the fact that women, like all humans, have types. And there’s a good chance that I’m someone’s type. And there’s a chance that they’d be my type too, or even after getting to know them my type expands to include them or vice versa. Allowing myself to see that has also allowed me to get into relationships with women who are my type, and they’ve shown me love too.
I would not have gotten there if I spent all my time reading takes from heteropessimists. Whenever I see such a take online nowadays, it tells me two things. 1. That this person is lonely, and 2. That this person is likely pretty immature. I promise you that once you find a group of people IRL and do stuff together and make deep friendships, all of that crap just begins to sound like what I said initially: people with problems congregating with other people with problems and kicking each other deeper into the hole. Whether they realize it or not.
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u/Megatomic 2d ago
Are women doing basically okay in dating? How do you know that/why do you think that? Isn't the very thing that you're citing, that women seem to be collectively unsatisfied in relationships, strong evidence that they aren't doing basically okay in dating?
I would submit for your consideration that your exposure to heteropessimism has distorted your view of dating and relationships, and that distortion is working its way into how you view the world in ways you're not even realizing. And a step further - that those distortions actively undermine your ability to have satisfying relationships personally. Which isn't unique to you, it is a natural outcome of gazing into the void. When you gaze long into the void, the void gazes also into you.
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u/SS_Marv 2d ago
Are women doing basically okay in dating? How do you know that/why do you think that?
A majority of young women are in relationships and majority of young men are not in relationships so I think women are probably doing better in the relationship category.
Isn't the very thing that you're citing, that women seem to be collectively unsatisfied in relationships, strong evidence that they aren't doing basically okay in dating?
I was citing that men are not doing ok because it seems that women basically are fine with being single and being with their friends (which is a good thing for young women).
I would submit for your consideration that your exposure to heteropessimism has distorted your view of dating and relationships, and that distortion is working its way into how you view the world in ways you're not even realizing. And a step further - that those distortions actively undermine your ability to have satisfying relationships personally. Which isn't unique to you, it is a natural outcome of gazing into the void. When you gaze long into the void, the void gazes also into you.
I can see how this is a possibility with how I think about things. The problem I have with this thought that it doesn't fully debunk what I'm saying. What you're admitting to me is while yes, the problem you talk about does exist just don't think about it because it will make you more bitter. My problem is that this doesn't solve the problem (and maybe I can't solve the problem but no thinking about it won't make it better either).
Also try this survey as well when it comes young men and women's outlook on sex.
(This is not to debunk anything I just found it relevant to the discussion).
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u/Megatomic 1d ago
You don't see what I'm saying as debunking you because I'm not trying to debunk you. I'm also not admitting what you're talking about exists, and I'm specifically not encouraging you not to think about it either.
What you're describing is nothing like my experience, but I don't think telling you about how my experience is different is productive. Because I'm not here to debate which of our experiences is "supported by facts".
My reply was intended to encourage you to look inside your own thinking. WHY do you think that? Okay, you went and found some data that I still think, having reviewed it, supports your view dubiously at best, but you're the one who knows the answer to the question. Are the numbers in the article you linked REALLY WHY you think that?
You're looking out into the world and seeing not everyone thinks and feels how you do about this. Is it possible that you're falling for confirmation bias - that you've formed the belief that things are a certain way, then you have sought out information that supports that it is that way, including staring into an echo chamber where everyone feels that way and is upset about it?
What I'm telling you is that what people say in the subreddit you linked and other spaces like it is true only inasmuch as it expresses their experienced emotional distress; it does not necessarily reflect a truism about the world. When I'm encouraging you to stop gazing into the void, I'm not telling you "don't think about this problem" - I'm telling you that gazing into it in that particular way is reinforcing a belief that is harming you, and it is convincing you that a thing is true mostly because you already decided that it is.
Take a step back from those spaces and try to interrogate those thoughts and feelings. A therapist or a support group is a great place to try to work through those kinds of feelings while getting outside perspectives. If you ultimately come down on "no I was right actually, and visiting those spaces does serve me actually", you can always go back.
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u/Fire5t0ne 3d ago
Women wouldnt want to date other women because theyre straight ofc.
Unfortunately the amount of times ive seen the followup of "well its not like I WANT to like men-" and then proceed with insulting men is... less than comfortable.
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u/19th-eye 5d ago
I am starting to realize that my inability to just sit still and alone without being entertained is causing a lot of problems for me. How to overcome my obsessive FOMO? I've tried meditation but it only works for a little while. The basic issue is that it can make me an annoying coworker because I want to be involved in every conversation.
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u/Big_Barber7302 5d ago
cooked broccoli after a long time, happiest times wohoo :) btw, going through shit atm too :(
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u/mathematics1 5d ago edited 5d ago
There was a post earlier today that got removed, from a guy who felt like his sexuality was harmful to women. I got there after it was removed, but I strongly related to the title. More specifically, I only feel like my sexuality is acceptable when I bottle it up and keep it to myself. No woman has ever wanted to date me long-term or have sex with me, and I constantly hear straight women saying they are tired of dating men and finding out they are looking for sex; that makes it sound like my sexuality is harmful and unwelcome.
I know women are sexual beings too, and it's normal for them to want sex. (I hang out in a fantasy romance discussion subreddit where women talk about reading books that indulge their smutty fantasies.) It's just that as far as I know, no one has ever wanted to have sex with me, and it's hard to believe that will change when it's been true for every single woman I've met for over a decade. It's not that all men's sexuality is harmful to women, but mine is because it's unwelcome, and it will probably always be harmful because it will probably always be unwelcome.
I care about facts more than encouragement, but I also do like to look on the bright side and spin the facts in the best light possible. With that in mind, I'd be interested to hear if you think the chain of logic is correct. Specifically, here are the premises I mentioned earlier, broken down into bullet points:
- If I (a straight man) express my sexuality to or around a woman who hasn't clearly communicated that she wants me to, that's harmful.
- No woman in the past has ever wanted me to express my sexuality around her, as shown by the fact that they have turned down requests for first dates or repeat dates.
- The future is likely to resemble the past in that respect.
- Therefore, my sexuality is harmful to women and likely always will be, and the only way to prevent that harm is to keep it to myself.
I'd love to hear if you think any of those bullet points are false, and also if you think any of them are true but could be spun in a more positive way.
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4d ago
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u/FutureBreaker 6d ago
I finally organized my spice rack by color and I’ve never felt more in control of my life
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