• Hegar@fedia.io
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    28 days ago

    A patient I dealt with had schizophrenia and dementia, “but I’m a man, not a little girl with panties” was his counterargument to everything.

    You can only have one cigarette at a time because otherwise you lose them all and run out. “But I’m a man.”

    You know the doctor says your food needs to be cut up. “Do I look like a little girl to you?”

    That’s the communal cheese bowl, this is your plate. You can’t eat from the communal cheese bowl with a fork. “Do you see me wearing panties?”

    Whenever I hear people making these kind of gender essentialist arguments, they just sound pitiably out of touch with reality to me.

  • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    28 days ago

    I’m stumped at the simple task of trying to imagine what does imply to “feel like a man”.

    • Nightwatch Admin@feddit.nl
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      28 days ago

      100% guy here, real man feel is when others can rely on me, when I can help, that kind of stuff. Not “big car hurr durr bbq male superyorr” and the likes.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      28 days ago

      A lot of it is centered around achievement and feeling useful, so building or fixing something, physical activity, being seen as a provider etc.

      It’s why men with families etc take being made redundant quite badly, not being able to provide for your family can really make you feel like a failure.

      • Kaboom@reddthat.com
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        28 days ago

        Well that and not being able to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

        It’s not about feelings at that point, even if they still exist.

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      I agree with some of the other answers you’ve received, but I want to add one.

      I think there’s a kind of impulsive confidence, and unmitigated determination that lets me put on shorts when it’s 20 degrees Fahrenheit out, then tells me to stay the course, and accept that I have entirely become cold, rather than merely passing by it.

      As for what other people can do to help me feel that feeling, I have no idea. I do those things because of the way that I am. People have already tried encouraging or discouraging me, and it hasn’t changed how I prefer to dress (for example).

  • 4grams@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    I’ve always thought the least manly quality you can have is caring about how manly you are.

  • Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
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    27 days ago

    Just waiting for the day when someone can explain to me what makes a man a man without describing skills, qualities, and actions that anyone can do regardless of gender.

    And don’t tell me it’s “have a penis”, because if that were true then effeminate men wouldn’t be insulted all the time for not being “real” men, and there wouldn’t be toxic masculinity.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      27 days ago

      Gender is a social construct that is, gladly, starting to fail.

      I hope that in some years people would stop refering to having any gender, and they’ll just have the social behavior they’d like best when they like it best. And will only discuss their sex when it’s medically relevant.

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      Idk, but i feel like it’s just being who you are and respecting yourself.
      Same as a woman being a woman.
      Anyone that’s confident in who they are isn’t going to care or announce it.

      All the blustering either way is just yelling “im a grown ass man/woman!” outside of a grocery store at 1 am.

    • Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      Yeah because no one ever picks an online username that doesn’t perfectly represent their irl personality 1:1

      You have no idea how this person behaves offline, you’re just reacting to their username

  • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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    27 days ago

    Is this a real thing? I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered this. I suspect they’re actually being demeaning to men in general, or men who don’t fit their idea of masculinity. I’ve encountered people like that. Though the opposite is more common (men, and women, demeaning women who don’t fit their idea of what a woman should be like, or just demeaning women in general).

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    That’s the perfect answer, IMHO.

    More in general, it’s not up to others to change the way they act to feed somebody else’s self-delusions of having some kind of quality they do not have.

    I’ve actually had to deal with something somewhat parallel to this when I moved from The Netherlands (whose people are known for being blunt) to Britain (were everything is sugarcoated and people are evasive, the higher the social class the worst it gets) and then proceeded to go around unknowingly insulting just about every insecure person I met in that place by giving them my blunt opinion on what they cared about, without evasiveness or sugarcoating.

    The balance I found was to stop giving my opinion unless asked and if asked by somebody who didn’t know my ways yet, give them a notice (“I used to live in The Netherlands so just point out ways in which things can be improved, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re bad”) and then proceed to give them my blunt opinion.

  • AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Just don’t cast shit on a man that’s had enough of it from his work or society. Sometimes we just want to feel human.

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    27 days ago

    This whole “like a man” thing sounds to me like an extension of the toxic cultural BS where “men” are not just humans with emotions and needs like every other human. It reeks of men who are too scared or ignorant to be self-aware and figure out what life really means to them, and thus they need the people around them (especially the partners) to play along in their power/masculinity fantasy.

    What a man needs is to realize he’s just another human, and that for humans happiness and fulfillment can ultimately only come from within. Relationships with others are crucial, and you might even need some medication to get your brain chemistry unfucked, but neither of those are independently going to make you happy with yourself and “feel like a man.”

    “A man” can refer to roughly half the adult population. It’s not exactly an exclusive club. Why not leave gender out if it and try to be “a good person” and see where that gets you?

    Having the people around you walking on eggshells to keep your manly ego intact, whether it’s out of fear or pity, is the exact opposite of what a good person should strive for. What if the people around you instead trust you, feel safe with you, laugh with you, and are better off with you in their lives?

    Source: Am man. Went through some stuff. Figured some things out. Made some things better. Have wife and child who enjoy life.

  • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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    27 days ago

    I’ve never heard anyone say that phrase, is it possible that people use that expression to mean “a man likes to feel like a man… not a machine”? Ie he has thoughts, emotions, and priorities. He is not a commodity, his worth is more than just profit he can produce.

    Not that women don’t also have those attributes, just that “man” is being used as an outdated shorthand for humanity.

    • abysmalpoptart@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      I’m not sure how i feel about the post altogether. I mean, i understand that toxic masculinity is bad, but this post needs some assumptions and context to make me want to side with it. For example, if I saw some guy just kinda minding his business doing silly guy stuff and the context was he wants to “feel like a man,” i don’t think i would be offended or concerned?

      r/justguysbeingdudes comes to mind

  • doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works
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    28 days ago

    But maybe you could still pretend I am a strong man every once in a while anyway? As a treat?
    no… oh… okay…

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    27 days ago

    As a biological male and someone who identifies as a man, it’s pretty weak, IMO, to need someone else to make you feel a particular way.

    Are you in control of your feelings, or do you constantly need someone else to reinforce, or induce a feeling in you?

    Personally, I’m in control of my feelings, and bluntly, nobody else has control over me. Neither for how I feel, or what I think/do; with the only exception to what I do being governed in part by legality. Eg. If I know a thing isn’t legal to do, then I won’t do that thing. Beyond the rule of law, I do, think, say, and feel, whatever, and however I want.

    To me, having that much control over my own self is what makes me a person living in a free country. Anyone who does not have the ability, like I do, to think, feel, do, and love, whomever and, whatever they want, is someone who I want to support in gaining that right.

    • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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      27 days ago

      The idea of controlling your feelings seems laughable. If you have control they aren’t feelings, just thoughts. You cant really control thoughts either, just control what you do with them. Except we know that humans in general don’t have great control of our actions either. We just have to live in this comfortable little lie where we have control over ourselves despite all evidence to the contrary in order to maintain a remotely reasonable society, but it’s not real any more than your belief that you control your feelings.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        27 days ago

        There’s a saying that stuck with me: “feelings are never wrong”.

        Your feelings are a fact of your continued human existence. Unless you’re a psychopath or sociopath (or whatever) and you literally don’t feel, your feelings simply are.

        From there I determined that feelings can be inspired incorrectly from a given happenstance. While you may initially feel offended by something that is said, it’s neither necessary to continue being offended, nor is it necessary to always have that reaction to that given happenstance. Accepting yourself as you are is vitally important in restructuring who you want to be.

        This is all borderline cognitive behavioural therapy. Training yourself to be the best version of you that you can be. I’ve been dabbling in CBT techniques for most of my life. I wasn’t aware that it was CBT when I started working on myself in this capacity, but I’ve recently learned that a lot of the techniques I’ve been using to better myself, and increase my agency and control over my own mind and emotions, is used in CBT.

        I would agree that some thoughts are not controllable. We all get intrusive thoughts and impulses that we choose whether we want to act on them. Whether that action is to open your mouth and speak those thoughts aloud, or type them out, or to take action based on those thoughts.

        The thoughts and actions you describe I understand to be system 1 thinking. Aka, thinking fast. There’s a great book on this called “thinking: fast and slow” which covers the ideas. Basically system 1 is your “fast” thinking, heuristic/instinctual/“muscle memory” systems. It’s your “knee jerk” reactions and your first thought on something. System 2 is your contemplative and analytical systems, aka, “thinking slow”. System 2 can educate system 1, which is how we form habits and “muscle memory”

        System 1, we have little immediate control over since the majority of our sapience is fully embedded in system 2.

        I would agree that there’s a nontrivial number of people going around under only the learned behaviors from system 1, and doing very little analysis of what’s happening by utilizing system 2.