Lot of emotions right now. Been lonely all my life. Been ostracized, made fun of. Suffered through my parents’ brutal divorce, my father making me feel like a weakling and my mother, as my therapist said, emotionally abusing me. But she’s a good mother now, that’s what he said; that makes it alright. I was then essentially raised by my mother and sister. I was hooked onto movies with romance and the guy getting the girl and living happily ever after and built my childhood on the metric the movies provided: get a girlfriend by high school, like everyone else, lose your virginity about that time, maybe in college (men are shamed everyday in media depictions for being virgins. YES, this matters. In all fairness, women may also be equally shamed in some respects). You would find a girl, you’d fall in love, and it would be great. Meanwhile, I’d also attend a four-year university like my older sister; I had felt inferior to her in terms of brains and felt like I had to compensate for that.
Every time I see a woman or specifically a feminist comment in agreement with a grievance from a man, I feel intense anger: we (men) have been made to feel overwhelming loneliness our entire lives: cultural depictions, patriarchal society, men having to be “masculine” to earn a woman’s attention and their complacence and annoying ambivalence to men’s rigid gender identity (but then again, a woman can be as feminine as possible and it would be called a “strength”). Women are definitely complacent in objectifying men as protectors, job-getters, and sometimes punishing them for it; I sometimes wonder if that’s what happened with my parents’ marriage. The “liberation of women” where they seek higher-performing better-looking men, does not reverse how men are objectified for their power. So to get to the point, personally, I think I have had it with the inconsistency of women and their higher horse, and have no interest ever in a woman joining the men’s rights movement. “I didn’t know how bad it was for a man.” Tragic.
Men and women have worked to program men sexually to go after women online and in person through advertizing and, yes, movies and tv shows. Women forget that they, as fellow coworkers and executives, are partly responsible for the development of the masculine identity. That women have only relatively recently been allowed in top decisions for businesses and governments (more and more since the '60s, I believe) does not change how things were happened. Those who say this was just a patriarchal agenda to keep men and women in line in reality suggest a harsher crime committed by women: KNOWING that they were advertising and controlling men to be hypersexual was wrong, not just for women but for men and doing it anyway.
For me, my animus has gotten to the point that all gender clashes or differences I treat VERY seriously. There was a comedic video posted on reddit where a couple argues about what the problem is–she has a nail in her head. She then criticizes him for “explaining” the problem and not empathizing with her. Maybe a better man would find humor in that, but it filled me with rage. Men are always blamed. Always blamed. If the video is any testament to reality, women are AWFUL communicators. They variously laugh at, mock you, belittle you, scream at you, curse at you, pretend to be the victim. (No, by the way, I am not discounting actual experiences where women have been abused, raped, or murdered)
There are other sides too. My father more-or-leas embezzlement from his company, cheated on my mother with MULTIPLE women, and emotionally abused her. My uncle was seriously in debt due to bad spending habits, one of if not the critical factor in my aunt and uncle’s divorce. Another one of my uncles sometimes gave me the creeps. My grandfather, who raised my mother on a farm, apparently could be quite nasty to his children and still will be to my grandmother. At least my mother doesn’t tolerate that. Their bad behavior doesn’t justify my mother’s behavior nor the lack of male support in my life; my mother never let me explain ANY of my emotions. In any event, every male figure in my life has been compromised or had their image tarnished. Living with my mother, I knew a life of emotional abuse, neglect, guilt-tripping, complaining about my father, inconsistent behavior (she’s definitely ADHD or OCD, not to shame anyone who is), toxic perfectionism (the vacuum sweeping always had to be PERFECT).
Oh, and the tone deafness of women who tell men to get friends when they face extreme loneliness. Funny, a woman’s sexual adventures are always framed as empowering. I can’t speak for all men, but I HAVE been trying for YEARS to get friends, not including my unsuccessful attempts in primary school. Not a whole lot of success. I meet a couple people I talked to, even got a phone number from one male friend. Nothing long, long lasting. I resorted to an old friend from school not long ago but we aren’t great friends. Yet the gaping hole in my soul remains. “Get friends”–ladies, you pushed us to be masculine the way we pushed you to be feminine.
For me personally, I don’t think politics affects my situation much. I doubt overwhelmingly liberal women are being disinterested in me because they’re too depressed about the state of the country. I am liberal (don’t hate me), so I don’t think it’s some kind of backlash where women where divorcing their husband’s after the last election. Then again, the town I live in my slightly veer towards conservative.
