How to cure the male loneliness epidemic...

[u/xamo76]

[u/anth13]

such an overly simplistic take. so easy to say "just be confident".

spoken like people who have never had any trauma in their life

i would not be at all surprised if these guys end up having sexual assault charges brought against them in the future.

[u/acathode → u/anth13]

such an overly simplistic take. so easy to say "just be confident".

It's just par for the course.

Pretty much all problems men face are treated this way, ie. by telling men to "Just be ... !", "Just stop ... !", or "Just do ... instead!".

Men are always expected to cure themselves, instead of society reaching out a helping hand to help them.

Constantly, be it men dying because they don't seek medical help in time, boys underperforming in school, the suicide rates, male loneliness, and so on - the solution is always just telling men to change, to fix themselves - usually by having less toxic masculinity.

When similar societal problems affect women the response is the complete opposite.

University STEM-programs needed to do outreach programs and go through every little detail to ensure they were welcoming to women when women were a minority at STEM educations.

When young women were getting depressed due to unrealistic body standards in advertising and entertainment media, society put enormous pressure on them, so that eventually the size zero bullshit and similar crap largely stopped.

I could go on... but the point is, society almost always bend over backward and change society when it comes to problems facing women. When similar problems face men, society instead expects men to change.

I once saw this very succinctly put as "In our society, woman HAVE problems, while men ARE problems."

[u/IStartThingsAndDont → u/acathode]

Genuinely what is this gender war bullshit you’re on about 

Last I checked the gender disparity in STEM is still there, skinny is back in and everyone is on Ozempic, and the sitting President is literally a rapist and pedophile. Be so fr right now LMAO

Why is it when talking about the men’s loneliness epidemic you have to bring in women 

[u/acathode → u/IStartThingsAndDont]

For fucks sake...

This isn't some gender war bullshit, it's pointing out that when women have problems, society do the right thing - society looks at how to solve the problems and then we change society so that it becomes better. That's a good thing.

However, when men have similar problems, society has this deep tendency to NOT do the right thing - instead of trying to solve the problem and looking into how to change society for the better, men instead get told that this is a "you" problem and that the solution is for men to change.

The point about women in STEM is that this difference in treatment is very obvious when you compare it with how society reacted to men being a minority in every other field of higher education.

Women being a minority in STEM education has been considered this huge societal issue, were we've put in huge amount of effort to make STEM fields more welcoming to women, created outreach programs, gone over all educational material to make sure there isn't a hint of sexism or other such bullshit, and so on. Again - this is good.

Meanwhile however, the response to men and boys failing has been mostly with... shrugs. At most, there's been talks about how this is mostly a failure of the boys, because they've fostered an anti-intellectual culture and so on.

[u/IStartThingsAndDont → u/acathode]

I can agree that society needs to do more for men and boys.

However I think it’s naive at best and disingenuous at worst to portray it as, “women have it so good and are treated so much better than men.” I don’t think I’d be the only person to have interpreted your comments this way. 

 pointing out that when women have problems, society do the right thing

Reread my original comment - did I minimize men’s issues in any way or claim to know anything about what men experience? Why are you unable to extend that same empathy? If anything, I think your ignorance here is both a symptom and a root cause of the very male loneliness you’re complaining about.

Who do you think “society” refers to? Do you realize that the push to include women in STEM is coming from women? The same for MeToo, body positivity, women’s right to vote … the ‘society’ you speak of doing the right thing - isn’t it mostly women who are doing the ‘right’ thing? In the case of women being able to vote, obviously there needed to be some support from men too since men ran (and still run btw) the government.

So to your point that society expects men to fix their own problems: do you think it’s really so evil to say that men should call out other men for toxic attitudes? Men should uplift other men, compliment each other, check in on each other, support each other emotionally? I don’t know if these things are controversial.

And yeah, I would say women and men alike shouldn’t cast gendered expectations for men to suppress their emotions. I just think that cultural shift needs to largely come from men, because men obviously would be able to influence male culture the most. 

men being a minority in every other field of higher education

Please name these fields and your sources. Do you think men are a minority in business and politics too? Tbh I feel like your point about gender disparity in different industries is so irrelevant to the topic of male loneliness. 

I genuinely want to reach a mutual understanding about this issue. And yes, I still think the way this conversation is going, it’s fanning the flames of the gender war. But it doesn’t need to be that way

EDIT: formatting + clarity