• @Protoknuckles@lemmy.world
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    1316 months ago

    Strong people build others up. Weak people knock them down to feel big. You want to feel like a strong man? Protect others and be generous with your spirit.

    • @ummthatguy@lemmy.world
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      306 months ago

      Semi-related, as this reminded me of a quote from Cary Grant:

      I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me.

      This was then repurposed on Star Trek Strange New Worlds by chief engineer Pelia (from a species that lives several centuries):

      Most heroes I’ve seen… are just pretending half the time. There’s this one guy I remember, he said to me, ‘I always pretended to be someone I wanted to be, until finally, I became that someone, or he became me.’

  • HexesofVexes
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    1096 months ago

    How to really feel like a man

    1. Ignore gender wars bait, there are way more important things out there.
    2. See step 1
  • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    If Men want to feel like Men then they have ways to deal with their insecurity:

    Redo their own plumbing, twice. Once to change things and again to fix the problem they caused.

    Chop firewood.

    Build a furnace that you’re only going to use like 4 times, ever.

    50 pushups. If not reaching it makes you sad, start skipping numbers.

    • @very_well_lost@lemmy.world
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      406 months ago

      Redo their own plumbing, twice. Once to change things and again to fix the problem they caused.

      I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.

      • Track_ShovelOP
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        106 months ago

        I met a marine mechanic once - he fixed Argos afterwards, which is how I met him. His saying:

        One [nut] for me, one for the bilge.

        • @vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works
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          56 months ago

          Thank you to everyone in this thread who made me feel part of a community of my peers online for the first time, in a long time.

          Every plumbing project (even yesterdays quick upgrade of the kitchen faucet) is at least a 2 tripper. Each time I finish one I swear I’m never moving again. Then, 5 years later, I’m fixing the previous owners mishaps “one last time”.

          To all the people who’ve bought houses I lived in, I’m sorry for all of the " what was that idiot thinking" moments I’ve caused you. Ha

          • @jumperalex@lemmy.world
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            36 months ago

            To all the people who’ve bought houses I lived in, I’m sorry for all of the " what was that idiot thinking" moments I’ve caused you. Ha

            Hmm from what you said it’s more like, “Yup, I can see what shit the last guy had to fix. Thanks friend I’ll never meet.”

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      146 months ago

      If not reaching it makes you sad, start skipping numbers forgive yourself and repeat tomorrow. You’ll feel awesome when you get there.

    • @Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      So a trans person saying that he is a man, is not a real man? Or more adapted to context, a trans person saying that he wants to feel like a man, is not a real man? and doesn’t deserve to feel like a man?

      I don’t agree with that at all. Weird thing to upvote tbh.

      Edit: Today I learned, when I advocate for trans rights, I get up votes. When I apply the same support to cis men, I get down voted.

      I thought this is a supportive space in terms of gender identity. I guess I was wrong. I will continue to support trans people for the same reasons, I support everyone. Human rights.

      • @CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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        16 months ago

        This place can be supportive of trans rights and also downvote bad logic and arguments.

        Trans men don’t “want to feel like a man”. They are trans specifically because they already feel like a man.

        In addition, your comment was a total non sequitur. We were talking about the fragile egos of certain cis men, and you brought up trans men. And did so in a way that makes you look like you’re trying to be offended.

        You seem like a good person. Please keep up the fight, but pick your battles a little more wisely.

        • @Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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          16 months ago

          A trans man feels like a man but before at least social transition, they probably don’t feel like a man, in the sense that we have been talking about it. Which is why they transition.

          It is ridiculous to read this and misunderstand what kind of “feeling like a man” we have been talking about.

          I am Talking about trans men because 1. They are men. We talked about men. 2. It is bs, to act like you understand why a trans man wants to social transition but give shit to any (apparently cis) men when they want to have their gender affirmed.

          Yes there are toxic men who expect ridiculous things from other people to feel affirmed, and often they are toxic. But this whole conversation is generalizations over generalization to toxic stereotypes. I am highlighting how much bs that is. Fucking treat people as individuals. If they want to meet their boys for a beer and discussing how the process of their different projects is going and what they might be able to do, to feel “manly”, then why do you have to be toxic to them? How does that make them insecure? Is my mother insecure when she goes to a girls night?

          People should fucking chill and if they want to judge people, be precise. Could you imagine how much the “immigrants are bad” folks would suffer if they had to be precise and explain to the class how their coworker is a good person and hard worker while being an immigrant, but all immigrants are lazy and criminal.

          I am sick of the left copying right wing rhetoric. People are individuals and most of them are pretty cool.

          So Where was my logic bad? Did we talk about fragile egos? No. We talked about a vague notion of men (not only cis) wanting to feel manly.

  • @Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
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    266 months 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.

    • Flying Squid
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      66 months ago

      I’m a man because I say I’m a man and fuck anyone who tells me otherwise.

      And that applies to anyone with any gender. Because it’s not about anyone but that person.

    • @Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      56 months ago

      Same question for women. Gender is only useful insofar as we decide it is. We have an inherent nature to categorize and differentiate, and in some cases that makes a lot of sense, but outside of strictly biological facts, that distinction between genders is nebulous at best.

      Like religion, gender identity is personal, even if it stems from society. No two people will share the same opinion, it’d probably be weird if they did, and as long as they’re not using their opinion as basis for fact, do whatever you want, man woman or anyone in between, outside, or around the spectrum.

    • @daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      26 months 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.

      • @LwL@lemmy.world
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        36 months ago

        Sadly unlikely because it’s rooted in biological differences (mainly hormones), so on average there will be sex-based differences. I’d love it if people stopped stereotyping because of that but I doubt itll ever happen. Maybe we can at least get rid of the idea of gendered hobbies and such, but even then most people want to identify as part of a group so there will likely always be some association.

      • @ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        16 months ago

        It’s less that the social construct is failing, and more that we’re finally letting it flourish.

        Tying the way you present to the world to one of two options often linked to your gonads is extremely limiting. What you describe isn’t the failure of gender, it’s an explosion of genders.

    • @TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      6 months 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.

  • qyron
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    266 months ago

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

    • partial_accumen
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      126 months ago

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

      I feel like a man when I know I’ve met all of my responsibilities to myself and the ones I care about, and that I’ve moved the world even an infinitesimally small way forward to help the others in it. This means lending a hand or an ear to those that need it either with my labor or my mind (or many time both).

      I hope others have something close to this definition, but realistically I don’t think its common.

      • @Carnelian@lemmy.world
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        66 months ago

        I guess what confuses me about all of this is why these things are in any way manly?

        Like being reliable and following through on your commitments. Is it masculine when someone who isn’t a man is like that?

        Or if I’m told someone is manly, have I now learned that he is in fact dependable?

        I don’t mean to try and excessively pick apart what you’re saying, it’s just something I’ve always really struggled with understanding. People always seem to say things that strike me as being ungendered character traits when they’re asked about their gender.

        • partial_accumen
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          56 months ago

          I guess what confuses me about all of this is why these things are in any way manly?

          I don’t mean to try and excessively pick apart what you’re saying, it’s just something I’ve always really struggled with understanding. People always seem to say things that strike me as being ungendered character traits when they’re asked about their gender.

          I think I see the issue you’re encountering with the perspective you’re communicating.

          You’re looking for things that are exclusively masculine. Besides the role in physical biological reproduction, I don’t think there is anything exclusively masculine by that measure.

          The traits I listed could absolutely apply to people that are not men. However, the phrase “manly” is referring to societal measures not biological reproductive process abilities. If we distill that down further for this conversation, “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”. We could dissect why “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”, but that’s a tangent from your question.

          Ergo, for a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male, and would like to be seeing as being worthy of respect in society, then they should have favorable societal traits and behaviors, in my opinion, such as those I listed.

          • @Carnelian@lemmy.world
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            36 months ago

            We could dissect why “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”, but that’s a tangent from your question.

            I think this pretty much gets to the root of the friction I experience when this topic comes up. I wouldn’t mind digging into it.

            You likely have already guessed that I would think of it this way, but isn’t it just that “good people are worthy of respect”? Because it seems to me like if you try hard to take care of your family and do right by others, you’re a good person deserving of respect.

            You know what I mean? If there’s no need for the trait to be exclusively masculine, then why do we do it? Translate “manly” into “worthy of respect”, that is. Is there some benefit to thinking about it in terms of masculinity rather than just in terms of goodness?

            However, the phrase “manly” is referring to societal measures

            they should have favorable societal traits and behaviors

            Also, I do acknowledge this side of things. I wrote some thoughts about it in a reply to another comment in this thread, if you want to check that out. It’s an important point, and I don’t want you to think i’m just ignoring it. In summary, I think it’s kind of a bummer if in the end, manliness is just a tradition people feel compelled to participate in

            • partial_accumen
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              26 months ago

              You likely have already guessed that I would think of it this way, but isn’t it just that “good people are worthy of respect”? Because it seems to me like if you try hard to take care of your family and do right by others, you’re a good person deserving of respect.

              You know what I mean? If there’s no need for the trait to be exclusively masculine, then why do we do it? Translate “manly” into “worthy of respect”, that is. Is there some benefit to thinking about it in terms of masculinity rather than just in terms of goodness?

              You skipped the OTHER criteria I listed for being “manly” besides just “goodness”, that being: for a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male.

              However, the phrase “manly” is referring to societal measures

              they should have favorable societal traits and behaviors

              Also, I do acknowledge this side of things. I wrote some thoughts about it in a reply to another comment in this thread, if you want to check that out. It’s an important point, and I don’t want you to think i’m just ignoring it. In summary, I think it’s kind of a bummer if in the end, manliness is just a tradition people feel compelled to participate in

              I’m not sure, but I think you’re hearing the “man” in “manly” and assuming the opposite would “woman”, “gay”, or “enby”. Not the case. The opposite to “man” in this case is “boy”.

              We could dissect why “manly” translates to “being worthy of respect”, but that’s a tangent from your question.

              I think this pretty much gets to the root of the friction I experience when this topic comes up. I wouldn’t mind digging into it.

              Its the “man” vs “boy” part, as in, a sign of maturity, of coming of age where you stop being a young and selfish boy and can see where you are in the world and what responsibilities you have to yourself and those around you in society. Society has few expectations of responsibility for a “boy”. Responsibilities with weight go to those with maturity. Mature boys being men. Even the phrase “man up” usually means “to stand up and face the challenge instead of shying away”, or to take responsibility. A boy still be 40 years old if he doesn’t take up his adult responsibilities. At 40 years old he still wouldn’t be “manly”.

              If you are taking exception with these phrases being associated with “man”, then your beef is really with the last 3000 or 4000 so years of history. The concepts of equality across genders and sexual orientation are relatively recent in the last 20-40 years. History doesn’t stop being history simply because we’ve evolved beyond some of our worst parts of it. We carry baggage for awhile as our language evolves to match our new values. Expecting language to change on a dime isn’t very realistic. We’ll need a few generations to die off and take this language with them.

              • @jumperalex@lemmy.world
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                26 months ago

                Its the “man” vs “boy” part, as in, a sign of maturity, of coming of age where you stop being a young and selfish boy and can see where you are in the world and what responsibilities you have to yourself and those around you in society.

                I’m not who you’re replying to, but I feel the same way as them. Take what I quoted from you above and replace man/boy with woman/girl. How is it any different? Maturity isn’t gendered. Taking on adult responsibilities isn’t gendered; heck you acknowledge that when you used the word “adult”, it’s right there in the language you used.

                I’m not taking exception to thousands of years of history, because so many of the traits would still apply to both genders and aren’t about equality. Keep in mind that’s different than discussing gender roles which certainly have relevant history. But “taking care of your family” is a trait and women we expected to do that to. Just with different tasks. Same with being honest / honorable and just about any trait was practically speaking, non-gendered, but with gendered expressions of those traits.

                I’d also say that if we don’t try to change our language, then it will never change. If we don’t immediately question questionable assertions, historically relevant or not, then it will never change. The best day to have questioned a definition of masculinity that isn’t actually gender specific was thousands of years ago, the 2nd best day is today.

                I will say I DO get what you are saying about history. It isn’t lost on me how it has influenced cultural norms and language today. But I’m also saying that, ironically, if you isolate traits from expressions of those traits, even thousands of years ago I could make the same case that the traits weren’t actually gendered if dissected.

                • partial_accumen
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                  26 months ago

                  I’m not who you’re replying to, but I feel the same way as them. Take what I quoted from you above and replace man/boy with woman/girl. How is it any different?

                  You’re doing the same thing they did. You skipped the OTHER criteria I listed for being “manly” besides just “goodness”, that being: for a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male.

                  Maturity isn’t gendered. Taking on adult responsibilities isn’t gendered

                  Agreed it isn’t, but for a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male, there is a specific term for it: “manly”. Where did that come from? History.

                  With my explanation to that other poster, I’m more confused by your doubling down on it.

                  Here’s what I’m saying “With X,Y, and Z it equals ‘manly’”

                  You seem to be saying “Yes but if you remove X and Y, then why does the term ‘manly’ apply?”. I agree with you, it no longer does. You’re talking about something else at that point because you’ve removed characteristics that apply to the word “manly” so it no longer is that word.

                  I’d also say that if we don’t try to change our language, then it will never change. If we don’t immediately question questionable assertions, historically relevant or not, then it will never change.

                  No argument from me there. However it will be up to the very young generations growing up right now to change this. All the rest of us have grown up in a world of old definitions of masculinity. We can reject those and adopt the words, but we can’t erase our knowledge of them. Most of the adult generations alive today will have to eventually die off for these ideas to disappear from our society.

                  I will say I DO get what you are saying about history. It isn’t lost on me how it has influenced cultural norms and language today. But I’m also saying that, ironically, if you isolate traits from expressions of those traits, even thousands of years ago I could make the same case that the traits weren’t actually gendered if dissected.

                  I disagree. One of those specific traits is a person that identifies with the biological reproductive role of a male. If that trait remains, it cannot be ungendered. If you remove that trait, you’re not talking about the word ‘manly’ anymore.

        • @nehal3m@sh.itjust.works
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          46 months ago

          That’s a good question. I think most of the traits described here also apply to women, but as always, we’re talking about overlapping Bell curves here. I think men derive their sense of self worth from things like strength, leadership and independence more so than women do on average. There’s also traditionally feminine traits men derive self worth from, like empathy, affection and devotion. The same is probably true for women; little of column A, little of column B.

          I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, this is just how genders shake out on average, so the implication that a man shouldn’t like feeling like one kind of bothers me.

    • @Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      116 months 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.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        96 months ago

        That’s also because we teach people that romantic relationships cannot be friendships. If your partner is your best friend then you aren’t redundant, you’re a power team.

          • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            46 months ago

            Oh I see, the same point applies though. A friend pumps you up, gets you back out there. What we learn though is the guy is weak and should be left.

          • @itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works
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            26 months ago

            FYI this isn’t a term Americans know. I was super confused when I moved to the UK and kept hearing it mostly because people being made redundant weren’t technically ‘being made redundant’, if anything they were already made redundant (or just no longer needed for some other reason, or no longer affordable) and were now suffering the consequences. Idk, weird phrase, I’m going to go look up the etymology now. To be fair I suppose ‘laid off’ is pretty weird too

    • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      When you take your shirt off, you lift something real heavy, open a beer without a bottlecap opener, and high five somebody and it hurts then you should be activating all the correct masculine endorphin triggers. A lot of it comes as a response from high testosterone hormone levels.

    • @Tahl_eN@lemmy.world
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      26 months ago

      I don’t know if it’s gotten better these days, but back in the 90’s “being a man” was more a definition of absence. Being a man was “not being a woman/girl.” This caused a couple years of real difficulty for me as a high school boy, since women were (finally) allowed to do all the “male” things, which ended up defining the male identity out of existence.

      • @SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        26 months ago

        I feel like this perspective needs a bigger audience, since it explains a whole lot about the incel/alpha backlash, and the gender divide in U.S. politics.

    • @prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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      16 months 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).

      • @jumperalex@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Being a stubborn old fool isn’t just a “man” trait 😜

        But I suppose, being statistically more risk tolerant is a sign of being a man. Not sure if that nature, nurture, or both I’m not going to speculate. But we are where we are however we got here.

        I for one, am amazed I’ve made it this many trips around the sun.

  • @4grams@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

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

  • @Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    6 months 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.

    • @Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
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      46 months 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

  • AgentOrangesicle
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    146 months 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.

    • @RBWells@lemmy.world
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      96 months ago

      I’m not so sure. If I went around standing at doors waiting for them to be opened for me, I think it might get laughed at.

      • @emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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        46 months ago

        Lots of women do this, mostly very young ones with fresh naive boyfriends but its definitely not unheard of for a woman to act that way. Not that that excuses the men who behave like this also.

      • @Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I once got told off by a woman in The Netherlands (to were I had immigrated from my native Portugal) for holding the door open for her and had to explain that it wasn’t for her, it was because it made me feel good to be helpful and I did it for both men and women (if you’ve already gone to the trouble of openning the door, might as well keep it open for somebody who is just behind you).

        I just found it funny how a cultural habit from somewhere else that wasn’t even gender specific got interpreted as macho posturing.

    • @Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Traditionally, societal opionions of how a woman should be involved her making herself appealing to men before married and submissive to her husband afterwards.

      I would even say that “a man needs to feel like a man” and “a woman needs to feel like a woman” are two sides of the same original coin - it’s just that in modern days the latter is frowned upon much more (though, sadly, a lot of people still go around with an interiorized version of it) than the former.

    • @Mango@lemmy.world
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      16 months ago

      Yeah, and they really need extreme effort to cater to. Maybe it just doesn’t come so naturally for me in the spectrum, but it feels like a whole awful game balancing act that exists to let the other person think they’re in charge.

    • @zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, whenever anybody talks like this, I just assume they’re talking about traditional gender roles. So, “a woman needs to feel like a woman” gives me the ick, too.

  • @Mango@lemmy.world
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    136 months ago

    Did the first person just translate “like a man” as “superior to you”? They done failed their own little word game.

    • @unbanshee@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      86 months ago

      Only if you’re completely unwilling to unpack what things like “be a man” and “like a man” generally mean in the anglosphere, and how phrases like that have often been employed to reinforce the worst and most destructive aspects of masculinity.

  • pancakes
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    126 months ago

    I thought “feeling like a man” meant eating a lot of meat and losing money on sports betting.

    Idk I don’t do traditional man things.

    • @Zron@lemmy.world
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      106 months ago

      I do do traditional man things: woodworking, maintenance on the family vehicles, and I’ve been thinking of getting into machining as a hobby because I have a lot of hand-me-down yard equipment that’s showing its age and I might need to start making my own parts because eBay is looking kind of barren.

      Anyway, none of these activities have ever made me feel “manly” I never understood what that means. I feel like myself doing either something I enjoy, or something that needs to be done. My wife always says that she likes that she married such a manly guy who can fix all this stuff and make furniture, but anyone with functioning hands and a brain can do this stuff, it’s not exactly hard. Having a penis doesn’t make you an expert carpenter or mediocre mechanic, working with wood and old engines does that.

    • @Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
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      66 months ago

      I know you’re joking, but I don’t get people who unironically think like this. Like whats preventing a woman from eating lots of meat and losing money on sports betting? Like what physical barrier prevents them from doing that? None.

      So how could that define manhood?

      • @kshade@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        So how could that define manhood?

        Societal expectations. If enough people think it does then it does. Doesn’t mean non-men can’t do it, but they might get ostracized for it, just like men are when they do certain female-coded things. Why is blue for boys and pink for girls? Why are high-heels for women only? Doesn’t have to make any actual sense, it just kinda is right now, even though it wasn’t always the case.

      • @Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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        26 months ago

        It’s all society. Always has been. Always will be. There are some very specific biological differences in the two sexes, and we’ve used those real differences to decide a bunch of fake differences we stick to out of convention. There’s an idea of what a man is in our collective unconscious, an archetypal “man”, and that’s what people refer to, but that archetype is breaking down. Man, woman, gender in general. We’re realizing that those distinctions aren’t useful, and sometimes, maybe even most of the time, are detrimental.

        That all said, humans are social creatures. That pressure, that idea of “man” is all around us. It’s absolutely understandable that people can still generalize what “man” is. The concept doesn’t have to be based on anything tangible to be relevant to our species.

    • Flying Squid
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      26 months ago

      Most ‘man’ things make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Even when I was a kid. Other boys would wrestle and push each other around and stuff and I was like, “yeah, don’t involve me in this.”

      And yet I have never been insecure about my gender. I’m fine being a man who isn’t “traditionally” male.

      I don’t even own one flannel shirt.

  • @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    106 months 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.

    • @blady_blah@lemmy.world
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      136 months ago

      This seems …um… naive. I love my wife and her opinion of me affects my feelings. And the more I care about my wife, the more I love her, the more her opinion of me matters. Humans are social creatures and we look for positive feedback from the people we care most about. To pretend like this doesn’t matter is silly.

      • @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        -26 months ago

        I understand your point here.

        People we care about should be people we care to make happy, and who we want to make us happy.

        I’m speaking more about agency. I use my own agency to limit whose opinion can even move the needle to my emotions. I decide whether their comments are something I should “take to heart” or disregard as an outburst.

        Personally I separate myself from most situations and emotional involvement and look at things from a neutral, logical standpoint before I allow myself and my own feelings to be affected by what may, or may not be said in the moment.

        I don’t need anyone to do anything to make me feel happy, or like a man. I control that. I’m not going to blame anyone for how I feel.

        If you don’t feel happy, or you don’t “feel like a man” (whatever that means to you), the answers to why you feel that way, or how you inspire those feelings in yourself are entirely within your power to control. You have agency over your feelings.

        My SO, when she compliments me, makes me feel good, but I don’t need her to constantly placate me with compliments in order to feel valuable, appreciated, happy, or “like a man”.

        It is emotionally healthy to look inward for happiness and satisfaction. Relying on the acceptance and platitudes from others to feel okay is codependent. I don’t understand why anyone would want to give their agency over their feelings and emotions, wholly and completely over to others.

      • @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        06 months ago

        I agree.

        If I may ask, did you feel the need to post this because you felt that I was portraying the opposite, or are you building on the point?

        I’m hoping it’s the latter, but if it’s the former, please tell me what I said that made you feel that way. I’m always trying to improve my communication.