Multitudes

Like straight men are capable of maybe a quarter of the indepth emotional labor and support women do for each other. Like men can literally have one friend named Bob that they go fishing with once a year and still be content for life. Then they think it’s cute and girlish that their wives have these long term, integrated, emotionally intense relationships with women but like…LOL, it’s not because men don’t need those kinds of relationships, it’s just that they get it all from their wives while offering peanuts in return. PEANUTS.

I’ve read articles and personal stories about and by men, talking about experiences they’ve had that have shown them how painfully out of touch they are with their own emotions and their own ability to open up and connect with people, including themselves.

They throw all their eggs in one basket with a significant other, or at times a parent, and when problems arise in that relationship, because they have no other relationships to speak of, they quickly turn to destruction.

This is why I often give out advice that people need to expand on their relationships. You literally CAN’T have it all hinge on a single person, it is a horrific idea and it will destroy you and the things and people you love. You HAVE to have relationships with other people.

Anyone with any mental health issue can tell you that the inability to talk it out, the lack of having someone to turn to, makes things go careening downhill, faster than we can catch them back.

Somehow this is considered an acceptable way of being for men, and their lashing out is “just how men are”. It’s more masculine to shoot yourself than to take medication. It’s more masculine to beat your partners than to have a conversation with them. It’s more masculine to bottle everything up until it erupts and people die, than it is to simply ask for help.

And people want to blame women and feminism for it, for “making men afraid”, or simply try to list the likelihood of surviving suicide and avoiding drug abuse as “female privilege” or something that is a nature-given trick of “biological sex”, rather than address the very serious issue of toxic masculinity and extreme, self-destructive hatred of being perceived as anything like women.

But tell me, how does it help a suicidal male to tell them that the problem is actually “toxic masculinity” and that when it comes down to it, the issue is that men are shitty.

I guarantee you they know that already.

There is simply no safe space for them to discuss it.

Because toxic males won’t make one. And female safe spaces are more invested in reminding everyone of that than making one.

The fear you mentioned comes from that.

If you grew up as female you have no true concept of growing up as a male, just like someone growing up as male has no true concept of growing up female.

You don’t understand that there IS no one to ask for help.

Me? I grew up male. And I grew up in toxic environment after toxic environment.

But I’m not male. Closeted, yes, but trans.

And when I asked close female friends for help, explained about the disgust I feel when I picture my body?

I was told I had no idea what real body issues were because I was male.

Those people didn’t know at that time that I was trans. (That’s how being closeted works)

But that should not matter.

Firstly, because noone should be forced to out themselves just to receive the support they need to even feel safe enough to out themselves.

Secondly because a suicidal male (even just a horribly hurting male) victim of the “toxic masculinity” you so hate, should not have to answer for the thing they are the victim of.

You think we don’t know that we were raised in toxic environments?

Should it fall on the victims to create a safe space for those people?

Perhaps. But you are better equipped to do so.

You wouldn’t tell a suicidal teen girl suffering from the emotional abuse and social ostracism that inspires such films as mean girls and heathers that the real problem is Toxic Femininity.

What a disgusting term.

Let’s be frank here, the idea that closeted people relinquish the right to be hurt by remarks made to them under the protection of “well how could I have known they were (insert)” is fucking disgusting.

The idea that being closeted is a privilege is disgusting AND illogical.

If being closeted was anything but ruiniously harrowing?

And you are telling me that closeted people should be disregarded because its too hard to assess a situation individually rather than categorise it due to your bullshit blanket creed?