I think the idea is that men don’t want to admit they have feelings and are lonely because that’s a weakness.
And US society reinforces that behavior by shaming men for being vulnerable or showing weakness and teaching others that a crying or otherwise emotionally vulnerable man is something deserving of shame and contempt.
A great example is online advice articles about handling relationship issues: so much advises that stoicism is the only option, otherwise your girlfriend/wife will lose their respect and attraction for you.
I had an ex-girlfriend mock me for crying during our breakup and know many men who have encountered similar shaming treatment from other men and women. It’s brutal.
Women absolutely have a role to play in toxic masculinity. Not to take accountability away from the social conditions that men ultimately created and propagated.
Stoicism teaches us to focus on what’s in our control by either reframing or accepting our emotions based on rational judgment. The goal is emotional resilience, not emotional suppression. Pop culture has redefined it as you describe.
Yeah from what I’ve seen its basically “I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas”.
These guys who read about alpha beta sigma crap, are sexist, misogynistic, completely clueless are then shocked that women don’t want to be around them. It requires introspection, which I don’t think many of them have.
Because male loneliness appears to be more destabilizing to society.
Nah. It’s cause we live in a patriarchal society and everything is about men.
Society expects men to be “tough” and not show too many emotions. So men are less likely to have someone they can emotionally lean on and with whom they can talk about their feelings, even if they have many friends. Obviously it doesn’t mean that women can’t feel lonely. You wouldn’t go into a discussion about femicides and be like “Don’t men get murdered too? Wtf?”, right?
Because women are socialized (and possibly genetically predisposed) to be better at building community and having many close relationships, often more physically intimate as well (touching, hugs etc). So men are less equipped to live alone.
It’s not biological. It’s social learning.
Men have just as much ability to form social bonds.Men have the same amount of emotions. Same emotional responses.
There is a ton of research on this.
It’s our society and gender roles that keep men from having cooperative friendships.
They are told as children they have to one up each other and never cooperate. Never show sadness to other boys/men.
But they still have those feelings. And hiding them actually just creates mental health problems and behavior problems.
I don’t know about many, but I can tell you I went ten miles out of my way today to see a friend I haven’t seen in a hot minute and get a hug.
Basically men are not equipped for drama
Aside from your dismissive comment. Perhaps the reason todays men are not equipped, is because of “traditional” or post war roles conditioned against emotional relationships with peers.
Here’s an Article on the survey I’ve been seeing referenced lately that shows among the population surveyed, men and women are reporting similar rates of loneliness.
As to why it’s being called the male loneliness epidemic, well, I have personal opinions on that. Mostly that problems affecting men are far more likely to get sympathy, attention, and funding. How many times are issues affecting primarily women just hand-waved away as less important?
Mostly that problems affecting men are far more likely to get sympathy, attention, and funding.
What gave you this impression?
Short Answer
imo the rise of loneliness effects both women & men about equally in terms of scope.
the push to strongly gender the ‘epidemic’ one way or the other is classic ragebait.
Longer Answer
Yes society currently seems to project an emotionally stunted image onto the male identity. but it’s important to note this is a sickness in current society rather than anything inherently “male”.
and it’s causing alot more suffering for all genders than just ‘loneliness’. calling it The male loneliness epidemic is just loaded with so many hooks, it’s just classic bait.
men vs women is “powerful” for ragebait because it’s literally half the population vs the other half.
Agree that there’s a ragebaiting, ‘us vs them’ component - however, I think how we’re socialised to handle our feelings also plays a big role here. There’s a disparity in suicide rates between men and women worldwide, but the gap is generally larger in western countries, 4:1 in Europe compared to world averages of 1.7:1. Of course, that isn’t necessarily attributable to loneliness, there’s many reasons someone chooses to take their own life.
In my life it seems like women generally have a more supportive relationship and support network with their friends than men do. I’ve had a pretty dark year due to a range of medical stuff… and it’s not a struggle I’ve shared with my friends, men or women. If I’ve brought it up, it’s just like I have here, ‘ah yeah, just some medical stuff, but things are shaping up,’ I don’t have close friends like that. I do, however, have supportive parents, siblings, cousins - I honestly don’t know what my headspace would be like if I didn’t have them. It’s very easy to feel broken.
honestly surprised to see so many downvotes.
I’ve been trying to compact my writing lately, and perhaps failed to communicate clearly. because i really felt like i’d already pre-agreed with everything you wrote when i said
society currently seems to project an emotionally stunted image onto the male identity. but it’s important to note this is a sickness in current society rather than anything inherently “male”.
obviously i didn’t communicate properly, because imo that’s in perfect agreement with what you said here
how we’re socialised to handle our feelings also plays a big role
this is what i meant about society projecting an ‘incomplete’ image onto the male identity. i want to stress here, this isn’t a statement about any man, or even men as a group. imo it has nothing to do with “maleness” and everything to do with an impossibly hamstrung identity being thrust onto people. by impossible i mean it’s literally impossible for any human to exist as an emotional shadow like that. no human can do it & we’re expecting 50% of the population to magically achieve it. whatcouldgowrong.jpg
i’ve spent quite some time trying to work out exactly where it comes from, i’m still not sure but i feel like a big dose of victorian era repression sure didn’t help, plus perhaps alot of unprocessed trauma from the men who went to WW1 and experienced an entirely unprecedented form of PTSD en masse (what at the time was called shellshock) those men who came home brought it into their families and became our fathers fathers fathers etc etc. it’s definitely intergenerational imo.
i also think as society progresses technologically, there is less need for ‘male brute force’ to ‘provide’, so it will naturally create a bit of a vacuum in the perceived “male role”. i can easily imagine an alternate history where something positive and strong had filled this vacuum instead of the poisoned version we got.
i personally deeply do not believe it is something inherent in men, and i think this is supported by the stats you raise which shows a disparity in the distribution vs world average.
rather i very much see this as a deep flaw in our current society, men are emotionally hamstrung and have dangerously impossible emotional expectations placed on them (again, this isn’t the fault of any one gender or group, it is society at large to blame here). (and of course equally insane but different expectations are thrust onto all genders)
a huge part of the problem imo is when boys are taught not to cry - actually wait, it’s even worse, they’re taught “boys don’t cry”, this is an unbelievable absurdity. crying is natural, normal & healthy. not only denying boys & men this natural emotional outlet, but tangling it up with the idea that “boys don’t do it” therefore if one does, some part of their supposed identity is under threat. it’s quite simply unbelievably toxic, it’s literally poison. and. it. hurts. everyone. i could go on but was trying to avoid a rant which is why i tried to keep my original comment briefer than it perhaps should’ve been in retrospect.
but that’s fundamentally why i think calling it ‘The male loneliness epidemic’ is hurtful to everyone. alongside all the usual ragebait hooks, there’s the sleight of hand of reducing a monumental issue to a fragment of the actual scale of the problem.
Who uses that term tho?
I think it’s used by progressives. So they might be blind to loneliness of women?Cause Incel logic…
