Part 2 of who am I really - Masculinity 1/2
In the process of this journey, I've had to deconstruct certain aspects of how I am with certain people. I ended up on the subject of male vulnerability and men's issues, and how they're perceived by others. My experiences have highlighted a large issue, that there is no space socially for us to talk about our emotions that is truly socially acceptable outside of close friends.
Do a lot of women actually want us to be vulnerable?. In my experience, I've opened up to a partner about my emotions and I could tell afterwards she had lost respect for me like I wasn't a man anymore in her eyes. There are so many experiences like that out there. That is one of the dimensions of "toxic masculinity" that men are oppressed by the standards men have for themselves and that women have for them.
There is a reason I don't talk about this stuff to even some of my male friends, I feel like I'll be judged and shamed by women and sometimes other men. When we talk about male issues it's usually compared to female issues and then looked down upon as a result, or we are only allowed to criticise, people don't seek to actually understand most of the time. We are told one thing by society and then socially we are looked down upon for it. I just realised that today, I'm not comfortable opening up about male issues for these reasons. I feel like I have to package it in a certain way for it to be socially pallettable, but if people want to hear and be ready for actual vulnerability then they need to seek to understand and not judge.
Men are always told in messaging to "do better" or "men need to be better" when most aspects of how we perceive masculinity affect men themselves and come from the female perception of men. My experiences show that society and a lot of women aren't ready for men to "be better" in that way. Our emotions are fetishized, people need to understand that we'll open up when we're ready on individual levels, when we want to and how we want to. I hear women telling men how they should be in terms of vulnerability but they don't understand the male experience, people need to understand this. There's a reason women talk to women about certain things, because they understand where men don't and vice versa. Our ideas and dimensions of vulnerability and how they relate to our social and societal experience are different.
Through these thoughts, I've come to accept that nobody needs to understand my sense of masculinity because while some parts of it are inherent, a lot of it is personal to me. I'm happy to be a man, but I wish I could talk about it to the people in my life without feeling shamed or judged by others.
I'll do another part about what my experience of finding my masculinity has been but I have things to do atm so I'll do it later.
Do a lot of women actually want us to be vulnerable?. In my experience, I've opened up to a partner about my emotions and I could tell afterwards she had lost respect for me like I wasn't a man anymore in her eyes. There are so many experiences like that out there. That is one of the dimensions of "toxic masculinity" that men are oppressed by the standards men have for themselves and that women have for them.
There is a reason I don't talk about this stuff to even some of my male friends, I feel like I'll be judged and shamed by women and sometimes other men. When we talk about male issues it's usually compared to female issues and then looked down upon as a result, or we are only allowed to criticise, people don't seek to actually understand most of the time. We are told one thing by society and then socially we are looked down upon for it. I just realised that today, I'm not comfortable opening up about male issues for these reasons. I feel like I have to package it in a certain way for it to be socially pallettable, but if people want to hear and be ready for actual vulnerability then they need to seek to understand and not judge.
Men are always told in messaging to "do better" or "men need to be better" when most aspects of how we perceive masculinity affect men themselves and come from the female perception of men. My experiences show that society and a lot of women aren't ready for men to "be better" in that way. Our emotions are fetishized, people need to understand that we'll open up when we're ready on individual levels, when we want to and how we want to. I hear women telling men how they should be in terms of vulnerability but they don't understand the male experience, people need to understand this. There's a reason women talk to women about certain things, because they understand where men don't and vice versa. Our ideas and dimensions of vulnerability and how they relate to our social and societal experience are different.
Through these thoughts, I've come to accept that nobody needs to understand my sense of masculinity because while some parts of it are inherent, a lot of it is personal to me. I'm happy to be a man, but I wish I could talk about it to the people in my life without feeling shamed or judged by others.
I'll do another part about what my experience of finding my masculinity has been but I have things to do atm so I'll do it later.
31-35, M
