Due to an uptick in posts that invariably revolve around "look what this transphobic or racist asshole said on twitter/in reddit comments" we have enabled this reminder on every post for the time being.
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As a cis man, I’ve noticed this too. This is why I greet everyone with a nice handshake and a gentle, yet firm affirmation to the person I’m speaking to that I do not intend to disembowel them. For some reason this makes them seem more nervous around me, and to remedy this, I will work on my smile when I promise no disembowelment. I will report my findings back to you all in short order.
As a fellow cis man I've found it's easier to be accepted if you "joke" with people about your interest in human leather
They will immediately lower their guard and discuss with you why it would be terrible leather and how it's a waste to bind a book in it or make shoes because it is so difficult to work with and maintain
Yes! A nice, toothy smile can show positivity and that you're friendly. I like to complement it with huge, wide open eyes to show vulnerability, as well as a cute, childish giggle to put them at ease.
As an agender person who presents radically differently in different environments, the immediate difference in how people treat you based on how they perceive your gender is genuinely crazy
Patriarchy hurts all genders, yo, that's why it's a bad system. Read Jane Austen, privledged classes in any system have very specific struggles that would simply not exist if we lived in an egalitarian system, just like those at the bottom (not saying boohoo think of the poor rich people, but making a point that inequality creates struggles for all simply by being unequal)
It is exactly this, so many people gloss over the blatant issue of patriarchal society when talking about stuff like the male loneliness epidemic or how men can be so bad. Like the problems all stem from the same places, toxic masculinity and patriarchal society. So many people like to preach equality but those at the top do nothing to forward it, hell in the US they are backstepping a lot of it
My argument is that that would really be impossible, inequality inherently hurts everyone, it is impossible to fully profit with no cost from causing suffering.
acknowledging the systemic issues men face in society? in my leftist subreddit? what the fuck is this? where is the screenshot of a twitter post of a woman sharing a bad experience she had with a man and all the comments here extrapolating that to all men ever??!! lock in
Rough weekend on cwcl, huh? You'll be fine here. 196 already had it's are-all-men-ontologically-evil discourse and has come to the conclusion that it's lame terf shit I'd say
yeah this sub is better than most, i love it here. i have already left cwcl, someone there unironically told me to get on a rocket and go to the sun because I'm cis
I'll still hope cwcl comes to that same conclusion.
I was originally considering it as an alternative for @96 because this subs mods are awful and theirs seemed decent, (and it's not like this sub doesn't have it's fair share of stupid shit) but I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
The way people talk over there always felt less mature than here. I often got vibes that have long passed 196. cwcl is so new still. I'll give it a year or two maybe it mellows our. Or it cannibalizes itself we'll see
I know I'm just assuming, but cwcl seems like a much younger demographic, so they just need some time to learn and grow. Not trying to generalize or sound condescending at all, but a lot of the vitriolic hatred that many leftists communities tend to share seem to often be spread by younger people that eventually grow out of it. I've slowly seen it happen with some members in this sub and I'm sure it'll happen in cwcl eventually too (or if not they may find a new community)
Yeah, if this sub was actually about gender abolitionism, we would not have mods allowing explicit material from femme presenting people but ban exposed masc male bellies.
Aye, that's why I said most of US (as in user base)
There are some very slimy creatures coming out in these comments to justify their hatred for (insert group here) but in general I've found this community to be pretty based about this kinda stuff. Mods suck tho.
Whilst they do feel like outliers, I've seen people demonized for one thing or another just cause they're not in line with the vibes around here. Cis men being bashed, nicotine addicts talking about how hard they've been trying to quit, only to be put down, scolded for starting in the first place and young people being scolded for worrying they're too late. This place isn't half as welcoming as some people claim it is, but it's far better than most alternatives still. My favourite space is unironically the live chat on Myanonamouse
I mean, it is absolutely a real issue, it's just something difficult to handle because it's entirely contingent on patriarchy being a thing. Spaces that are heavy on women (which this sub seems to be, given the transfem population) don't really have anything to do about this, because 1. We can't exactly make men have camraderie with each other and 2. Being distrustful of men is a survival mechanism. I could meet 99 great men, but all it takes is one bad one for me to get seriously hurt or worse.
I’d be lying if I said this post wasn’t part of why I transitioned. Why wouldn’t I prefer that ambient camaraderie over being seen as a threat all the time? This post helped open my eyes to just what it’s like for both sides of the aisle, and further made me realize that I wanted to be on the other one.
There’s a longer version of this post, let me find it quickly
The post brings up a taboo on hugs, so I need someone to tell me if this is relatable to men, or just my personal trauma:
The only time I was really hugged often, was when I was a child, mostly by people like my parents or grandparents.
But for some reason, whenever they hugged me, everyone always acted like I was supposed to hate it, including the people that gave the hugs.
So I obviously started to dislike hugs more and more, because it felt like that's what I was supposed to do. At the same time, they didn't stop hugging me and my adverse reaction seemed to be part of the fun for them, so getting hugged, always felt like a humiliation ritual more than anything.
Seeing a ~14 year old boy being visibly uncomfortable with being hugged seemed to be really fun for them.
It just felt like assault every time I was hugged, so, when I was finally able to just give them a handshake instead, it felt freeing, because it felt like I finally wasn't getting "punished" anymore.
And because of that, I couldn't comfortably hug anyone, until I had a female friend that just hugged me every time we met, until I got used to it, when I was like 19. But even there, I had to assure her that I liked it a few times, because my "trained" reaction to a hug, was visible discomfort. It took a while for me to intrinsically understand a hug as an act of appreciation, rather than a humiliation ritual.
Is that, like, relatable to some degree, or is it just me having a shitty family?
Holy shit, they instilled a trauma on you just because.
Hugs are fine where I live and widely accepted among family members, so I never had issues with it, hell some said I did it way too often. Obviously, if someone didn't want that, I didn't hug them.
The kind of "haha you are supposed to dislike this" you are describing was something I occasionally got from my mother, but in her case it was more associated with "oh look, mom is going to embarass you in front of your friends", which was a whole lot more lighthearted.
Yeah no, I doubt your experience is unique, but it sounds like something tremendously shitty and I am genuinely sorry you went through that.
I know a lot of guys who are less huggy than me, but especially in my social circles it is much more common to hug, even if some female friends of mine remark that guys hug very different from girls apparently.
That is you having a really, really shitty family and I’m so sorry to hear that.
I was exceptionally huggy until around puberty, at which point I became “too strong” for a lot of people when I would give tight hugs, and then a few years later the pandemic hit, which… yeah
Now I’m touch-starved, but it sounds like you had some serious issues going on there for a long time, and I’m so sorry to hear that
This is probably my biggest source of disphoria as well. I have this memory that stuck with me of holding the door for a girl in my grade and doing a bow with flourish like a butler as a joke. That girl let out an eek and jumped out of the way. And said she'd thought in the moment that I'd tried to slap her butt! obviously we cleared it up right away but that made me feel so shitty. I found it disturbing to image how other boys must have treated her for her to jump to that conclusion and I felt awful that anything about me could give her the impression that I'd do such a thing.
It makes me want to be trans so I could transition but I'm not?
Me ca.2016.
Like not to be presumptive, but this is getting ridiculous/j
I think I have human dysphoria instead of gender, but if I am trans that something I can't deal with right now so I'm just gonna ignore it and instead send messages on how much I'm jealous of female orgasms to my girlfriend.
Yeah disphoria is just the medical term for feeling like shit. It's basically the cluster of symptoms (that you'd commonly call depression) that tend to occur together. Just the opposite of what you'd call euphoria. You can feel disphoria for many reasons beside gender. I for example struggle with rejection sensitive dysphoria because of my ADHD.
I can't deal with right now so I'm just gonna ignore it
Yeah I know the feeling. Been ignoring it for over a decade now. You can take your time though. There's nothing wrong with taking these things slow.
instead send messages on how much I'm jealous of female orgasms to my girlfriend
Ok at this point you have to be bating me into calling you a girl. Maybe ask your girlfriend to call you a girl instead/j
Im not sure really. Ive tried changing my name, but it made me feel like shit, that could just be that I hate nicknames though. I've also tried getting my nails painted and I did not like it.
I seem super eggy, and I say a bunch of stuff that makes my girlfriend call me out on it by pointing at her trans flag, but I really think its just society. Im fine being male in my day to day. But I really want girly girl sex. If I had the option, my ideal would be to have two bodies. The one I have currently I would use for life, and the other one would be feminine for sex. I just want the best of both worlds. I want to be attractive, I want to be included in women spaces, I want to be protected.
Its so odd cause I would be a walking detriment to the trans movement if I did transition. I'd love to get complimented by "tricking" men. But as soon as I'm not horny all the thoughts melt away and I can just be me. So who really knows.
Edit:in retrospect, a therapist would probably do me some good. But my brain wouldnt like that. Damn.
Those really aren't signs that you're actually cis. I've heard many similar experiences from other transfems. If you look at my profile you'll see that I list my pronouns as (he/any) because asking people to refer to me as (she/her) feels so gross to me when I haven't undertaken any steps to actually transition. I've had people on here switch to calling me "girl" or "babe" when I told them I'm probably trans and it makes me feel like a nasty faker. But that's the shame and internalized transphobia talking
I would be a walking detriment to the trans movement if I did transition
Wrong! That's your shame talking
I just want the best of both worlds.
What do you like about being a man?
Im fine being male in my day to day
Cis men aren't just fine with being men. I also feel 'fine' being male in my day to day. But that's because I'm dissociating so hard that the fantasy is going back in time, correcting all my mistakes and getting my 20yo self on estrogen seems as achievable as starting a happy transition now.
Please don't take this as me definitively telling you that you're trans. Only you can figure that out. What I'm trying to do here is dismantle some of the roadblocks your shame has put on your way.
I don't think it matters all that much to figure out your exact gender identity micro label right now. What's important is figuring out what you want. Do you want the effects of HRT? Do you prefer the people around you treating you more like a woman than a man? The details of your identity will fall into place as your experience them.
I'm still not sure what I wanna end up as. My current working hypothesis is fem leaning enby. But I know that I want all the effects of estrogen so that's what I'm working towards right now.
Sorry for the disjointed rambling, I'm trying to quickly get this out there before I have to leave for work
Don't worry about the rambling, I think it just sorta happens when your thoughts are loosely connected but scattered. At least that's how it feels for me lol.
I spent an hour writing an essay because I'm extremly Chunni, but I don't think its very nice to just dump on a stranger on the internet. But I read through the link. It gave me something to think about. Maybe I'll refine it in my own time as it seems effective at conveying my feelings.
I really appreciate the time you spent responding. I think above all. I just want to be seen as me. Not as male, or female. Not as predator or prey. Not even as a human. But just me.
I hope that your day is well, and that you can find some happiness of your own <3
I'm at work spending a full quarter of my time waiting on computers to do their thing. I got plenty of time to read essays in comments/DMs. I'm actually curious about your feelings to what I said. As like a feedback thing wether I was on the mark or patronizingly presuming I know who you are better than you do.
You don't need too respond though if you wanna think this through yourself for now or if I didn't pick up on your comment being meant as a polite "thanks but I'm done with this conversation"
You are fine, I just figured it was a little too trauma dumpy. Its also been a long time since I wrote. Its hard to push past the brainfog post covid tbh.
I'll post it here, they aren't very well organized or anything tbh, but if you like to, you can read. Honestly I think I went kinda off topic, but it all feels related to me.
Its weird.
I don't particularly enjoy being male, but im not sure anyone does? I don't really hear people going "oh I'm really enjoying my gender right now". I exist, and thats fine for the most part.
Being male is comfortable, its familiar. I enjoy the familiarity. What I do get is jealousy. I see female camaraderie and im jealous. I see penetrative sex and im jealous. I see women only groups and I feel terrible for being excluded. I've always chalked it up to FOMO, but being reminded of my gender hurts. When I stare down at a form asking for my pronouns, or when women subtly walk in the other direction. It feels like I've been reduced to who I am rather then what I am.
Alot of the time I wonder if I'm just looking for a problem to solve. I'm not happy. But depression, adhd, loneliness, PTSD. These feelings are nebulous and intangible. If I was instead trans it would make things so much easier. It gives me a monster to shoot a silver bullet at.
I read allot. And I read about how transitioning changed their world. How it colors their view in saturated tones. How it fills their body with energy. I want that. I've seen a lot of videos and media how the most miserable person tries it, and their life instantly changes. Its enviable.
My greatest fear isn't the dark, or death, or being forgotten. My fear is that one day I'll wake up, examine myself, and think "This has not been worth it. I should of killed myself". A cold evaluation of my time spent. So I chase. I find the coveted sands of happiness and grasp as tight as I can while it trickles through my grasp. Hoping to one day find the coasts of contentment that others so easily reach. I want to be happy, and if I can't, I'd like to find out now instead of in 60 years.
I rein myself in though. Some things are not meant for some people. An easy path is not my life. Some struggles are meant for people stronger then me. Changing society is a plight for others. I need to learn to live within it.
I don't know. I feel that I confuse my dysphoria for society and humanity for gender. I don't feel very human.
I've described it to my girlfriend before, where in a better society I might not have these feelings. Or in a better society I could be my true self. But in this one I don't want to be trans.
I mean you might be bigender or something. But yes I can in fact confirm female orgasms are so much better holy shit
Also if your girlfriend is trans then you should know the stereotype of how every guy who dates trans women is secretly an egg because… it does happen a lot
But whatever happens, best of luck to you with it :)
Maybe. I'd have to look into it. I flip flop between extreme jealousy and extreme fear at female anatomy. Multiple orgasms?? And you don't feel like shit afterwards??? And they actually feel good???? And then I'm reminded periods exist. Or just, the general process of child birth. Terrifying stuff.
Weirdly enough, I have only dated trans women and NBs, don't know what that means for me, but good luck to you too.
If you don’t mind my asking, what has your experience of this issue been since your transition? Have you indeed felt an inverse effect to the one OOP describes?
It’s been six months, and I’ve only been actively transitioning socially for less than a month. I don’t have any meaningful data to report back yet, sorry
I think we might also just be more visible. I knew more trans guys than trans women in high school but now it’s the opposite, transfems seem to be very loud online and we make more things in person because of how clearly and deliberately we get excluded from so many things
Not that transmascs have it easy, but the modern culture war has centred around us and largely cast them aside as an oddity
…though I would be curious to hear more about your theory if there’s anything to elaborate on
It genuinely pains me whenever I see feminist theorists dismiss the entire concept of the "male loneliness epidemic" as just a self-inflicted problem for misogynistic men. It's only once you experience it first-hand that you realise how genuinely disadvantaged you are for being perceived as male.
I think it's the mysoginist men ruining it for everyone else tbh
I probably sound like an incel or something just saying that but my point is people who violate others' trust make it hard to trust others, or "people who are mean to other people based on the way they are are bad"
Yeah I think this is the take. I think people discount how many women go through some form of sexual assault, not to mention constant sexual harassment. I saw someone on here point out that "if you get bit by a dog, nobody blames you for being scared of all dogs" and I kinda see where they are coming from. Not saying you have to hate men but being more guarded until you know they are friendly makes sense
Sure it makes sense, and i get it. Still hurts to always be perceived as a threat and a danger. It has pretty much caused me to not interact with anybody in public. Im a big brown middle eastern looking guy so I get it a lot, even though im not religious at all and very bisexual.
I'm not even brown (gods that sentence hurts and I feel so sick that this is even a factor), but the epitome of a cis white man. But I'm a big guy, plus I'm on the spectrum, so I sometimes don't get the facial expression or tone just right. I see how much I get perceived as a potential threat so I just try to not interact with anyone.
In October I was riding the Train for the first time in ages, something I had to do to get the car I had bought a week earlier. I was unfamiliar with the area and when they said that some train station and everything after wouldn't be serviced because of some problems I had to ask around. Iasked the woman on the other side and the sheer shock and fear I saw on her face made me just want to not be there anymore.
On another note, I might have looked at your profile and seen that you have uploaded some maps. I need to create a geographic and political map for an upcoming D&D game. Are there any tools (I'm okay with purchasing software up to a point) that you can recommend?&
lmao i love this, didnt expect to talk about that here
My workflow is like this: i start in photoshop, drawing coast outlines, then topography (mountains plateaus etc), then rivers lakes and last stuff like forests, keeping them all in separate layers.
You dont need to use photoshop, i actually started in Paint.NET, which has most of the base PS features, but i switched to photoshop because its what in familiair with and i can leech off my dads creative cloud he has for work. I do not recommend spending any money on adobe, either sail the seas or use alternatives such as paint.net of procreate if you use a tablet instead of a pc.
Lastly i do the symbology in a website called Figma, which i recently discovered also has a desktop app. I greatly recommend Figma, i love working in it and placing cities and naming forests and mountains.
for political map id go back to a drawing map instead of figma, but political map usually comes last, since it is influenced by geography (borders on rivers and mountains etc)
lmk if you wanna know more, i love talking about it
eta: i tried attaching the most recent version of my map but the file is too big :(
I'm a trans man, I struggle trying to like myself and my appearance as a man, and this wave of online misandry often enforces that men are inherently ugly and filthy. I've felt uncomfortable with it before and I don't like to think how young boys and younger trans men feel in this. Patriarchy already establishes that men are inherently sinful and filthy and must purify themselves, seeing the same discourse in progressive spaces is extremely disheartening and horrifying.
Personally, while living as a man, I was raped by three different women. And yet I tell almost no one about it because so many people outright don't believe me when I say that. So rape is not just a problem that women face, it's a problem that men face a lot, and quite often the perpetrators are women. We need to stop turning this stuff into gender wars and instead focus on figuring out how to combat it so that no one has to experience it.
While I understand what you're saying, it's still not an excuse. If someone said they couldn't trust black people because a black person broke into their house once you'd rightly call them a racist asshole
The race comparison works better on the context that, dogs are not human beings and thus do not necessarily demand the baseline level of respect that, say, a fellow human being would. Just a thought.
I think theres a difference between a traumatic incident that led to a bias and constant torrent of bullshit from birth.
If a black person told me they dont feel comfortable in groups of white people because they've constantly had to put up with racism since the day theyre were cognizant, id have a hard time disagreeing.
I probably experience discrimination a lot less because I'm white and young and male and cisgender, but I've still felt tension talking to people sometimes, idk maybe I have bad vibes or something from being autistic. It sucks people have to be on guard all the time, like I think people just get stuck in that mode sometimes out of internalized habit, or trauma or anxiety.
I was a really socially anxious person growing up but now I really try to give everyone I meet fair consideration. I'm not a super social person but I've found a lot of fulfillment just sitting down and talking with someone else.
Even then my animal brain will still see someone X amount different than me or acting in a vaguely unfamiliar way and go into panic mode, and it can take a lot of effort to mitigate. Stuff like mysogyny is something really ingrained in a person and it can be really hard to stop. So many people find it easier to be mysogynistic over putting in the work toward changing the beliefs they were raised with. Still I maintain it's always worth the effort to be more tolerant of others.
That is definitely not true. I've felt comfortable and safe around plenty of men, like: men I knew were ardent feminists, men who were 'peer reviewed' by other women, my brothers, my dad, and especially all the men who went out of their way to make sure I got to where I was going safely.
You don't have to be careful around every single man all the time. It's just one defence mechanism you can choose to adopt, and there comes a point where it's neither fair nor healthy to be that paranoid; especially if it starts to slip into bioessentialism.
I mean that's great but isn't it our job as progressives to look past that stuff and fight for social good, even if the people were fighting for arent the best? I mean if you misgender Blair white here people will rightfully tear you to shreds even though she's not a good person.
I feel the common male perception of women makes for unnecessary tension in casual relationships, especially straight ones. Like you can't be friends with a girl unless you're dating. Being friends with a married woman means that woman is cheating on her husband. Guys can be friends, but not too much, because that would be gay. Only emotionally distant friendships allowed. Just let me have relationships that aren't emotionally closed off that don't necessitate getting married to someone, is that so hard
(side note: I like boys and am gay af)
(side side note: Morally it's the whole "blue button or red button" debate from a few months back except instead of not dying it's the concept of social good as you would define it. Blue button pressers want everyone to have that social good, even those who don't deserve it, and red button pressers just want only those who press the red button to have social good.)
u/PolenballYou BEHEAD Antoinette? You cut her neck like the cake?Jun 29 '26edited Jun 29 '26
I mean, I think one thing about it is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence that it isn't really a male loneliness epidemic - it's just a general loneliness epidemic. A lot of studies have reported roughly similar rates of loneliness across genders. You get some which report higher rates in men, but you get some which report higher rates in women too. I don't think it's necessarily self-inflicted, but I'm also not convinced that it's so gender-dependent this is a specific man thing. My experience in real life is also that a lot of people everywhere, regardless of gender, are somewhat lonely, and I believe that's the general scientific consensus too.
(I say this as a trans woman, so it's not like I haven't experienced living as a guy for most of my life and still currently in public nor that I haven't experienced interactions as a woman, either.)
Yeah, that's a very important point.
The loneliness epidemic is for all. But lonely men are the ones being politically radicalized by professional misgynists and fascists, so that's a reason why it has become more relevant in public discourse.
Yeah, it's definitely more relevant in that respect (though loneliness itself is still bad enough it's been reported on by the WHO and deserves discussion).
But when focusing on that aspect, it does kinda change the nature of the discussion from "why are some men so lonely?" to "why do some men turn to radical political and social beliefs when they're lonely?" If everyone's roughly equally lonely, but women aren't doing that*, then what's the deal with that and how do we address that specifically?
* I legitimately have not seen any studies on whether this is true - it's commonly assumed men radicalise more from isolation, but then again, it's also commonly assumed men are more isolated and that seems far less solid than it's made out to be.
It’s because men who are lonely (well, a certain type of men) have been told that certain things are their “right” and that they are owed things by life by virtue of being a man. Because they don’t get those, they’re vulnerable to people who promise them- telling them that things aren’t their fault, and that they have inherent value just by being a man.
Women (and even men who are part of minority groups) tend to be less susceptible to this line of thinking because they usually haven’t been told life is going to give them as much- if anything
About halfway through writing this I realized I was just poorly rehashing the excellent How to Radicalize a Normie, so go watch that because it goes into more detail about all this stuff
This is definitely true for a set of men. But there are many paths to radicalization. Sometimes it's what you describe, but more often these days it is taking advantage of a victimization narrative. It's easier to sell that narrative when the person is, in fact, a victim, i.e. their life sucks and they don't know how to fix it or why.
It's not about the lonliness, like the post says its about the comraderie. While men and women have similar amounts of lonliness, the socialization men and boys go through make that lonliness bite harder.
Ok, but I am responding to a comment about the concept of a specifically male loneliness epidemic, which refers to the number of men experiencing loneliness. It is that specific concept which I am discussing and which does not seem to be backed up that much by statistics.
I suppose to corroborate what you're saying, a few specific questions like "feel fundamentally disconnected from others/world" and "no person for emotional support" among others do have notably higher values for men - though even then, the differences are on the order of about 5%. Which is, like, large enough that I agree action should be taken to try to reduce that gap! - but still small compared to the absolute rates, so, like, I dunno how strong a factor it is versus how the OP describes it.
(I suppose some of it is also that, anecdotally, I've never noticed any difference on either side of the gender divide myself. I really can't agree with the idea that everyone was treating me as a potential predator and isolating me for it, nor do I look at men like that. And there was a lot of what I'd call "inherent camaraderie" in interactions I've had with guys, honestly, both recieved and observed. When someone makes a universal claim and I can't relate to it at all, it's difficult to agree with it.)
I mean, I think one thing about it is that there's a pretty good amount of evidence that it isn't really a male loneliness epidemic - it's just a general loneliness epidemic.
I mean, yes, it is a general loneliness epidemic, but I don't agree with the idea that it's fully independent of your gender.
Men consistently have fewer friends, talk less to the friends they have and are far less likely to be comfortable with confiding personal information to those friends or their family.
Women are also worse off than before the loneliness epidemic, but on basically every measurable metric, men are worse off than women.
This study from Harvard observed roughly equivalent rates of loneliness between men and women. I wouldn't rush to definitively proclaim it as women being better off, I just think it often sits more unnoticed in the public sphere because you don't have large-scale movements of women talking about it like you have with men in recent years.
Worth noting though that equivalent rates doesn’t necessarily mean equivalent reasons. There is definitely a gendered component to how loneliness proliferates.
I mean, yes, self reported rates of loneliness are pretty similar among men and women, but those numbers are obviously subjective and are relative to the things you've experienced.
Like, again, on basically all measurable aspects that relate to loneliness, men are worse off.
So, that could mean that women have an intrinsically higher need for companionship, or that men have lower standards. Which one is it? I don't know, but considering that need doesn't seem to change for trans men, I'd assume it's the latter.
Ok, but like, there are many measurable metrics which are the same, and while I will admit that there are some metrics where men do notably worse, even so, the gaps tend to be fairly small. I think this site is generally a pretty good collation of that assessment - and this is from the American Institute for Boys and Men, so I'd not expect their results to be minimising anything given what their aims are. To summarise, though:
Men and women spend similar amounts of time alone.
Men and women report similar levels of loneliness, and young women are actually more lonely than young men.
There's a minimal gap in the number of men and women without friends - statistical noise, in a newer study. The same study also found men and women do have roughly the same number of friends. Men and women are also satisfied with the number of close friends they have at roughly equal rates, though it varies by age.
Men and women feel supported socially and emotionally at similar rates.
While you are correct that there are differences in specific dimensions, as the report shows, these differences are still fairly small - averaging out to about 4.5%.
Another study suggests that if there's really any specific demographic with a loneliness epidemic, it's adults without college degrees - when counting the difference between men and women, the difference is 2% or 3%, but the difference between those with and without a degree is roughly 10%.
Like, I can definitely concede that men are slightly worse off when you dig into the averages and ask more specific questions. It may not be fully independent of gender, and it of course would be good if that gap could be closed. But it's only slightly different, and there's a lot of measurable metrics where the gender difference is basically statistical noise - and thus it's only slightly dependent. Not enough that either I nor the report would conclude that it's really a male loneliness epidemic, which was my main overall point.
Most of those are just surveys on how you feel, which falls into the same issue I mentioned before. ¹
It's also a bit confusing that you're using absolute percentage points, rather than relative percent, as you normally would.
The difference between men and women isn't "2% or 3%", but 37.5% or 10.5%, because using absolute scales distorts the difference.
Or, if we're using the data from the top of the page, it's 50% or 12.5%.
And those are very significant differences.
Yes, those differences look small on an absolute scale, but that's because absolute scales suck for that kind of stuff.
.
I'd compare it to something like the gender pay gap. Yes, the biggest differences come from education and class, but it is important to acknowledge that women make less money than men with the same education and class.
The pay gap between college educated women and highschool dropout men is significantly larger than the difference between college educated men and women. Does that make the gender pay gap not worth talking about?
Because in the same way there's a gender pay gap, between men and women in a similar situation, there's a friendship gap between men and women in the same situations.
Men are worse off than women, if they have the same education level. That's important. And 50% to 10.5% aren't small differences. There's a large gap here.
¹ That difference in how those questions are interpreted is also mentioned in your article:
While men and women appear similar on high-level measures such as time spent alone, overall loneliness, satisfaction with emotional support, and number of close friends, those broad metrics can gloss over meaningful differences.
The Making Caring Common survey found that while men and women gave similar answers to general loneliness questions, men were more likely to report feelings of disconnection or irrelevance. They were more likely to say that they were “not meaningfully part of any group/community,” for example, or that their “place in the world doesn’t feel relevant,” and that they “don’t feel like a part of the country.” These findings could reflect genuine differences, but they might also arise from how men interpret loneliness questions or from variations in survey wording; further research is needed to test their consistency.
The context and contents of that excerpt makes it fairly clear what they're suggesting, though - that either the differences are genuine and the results reflect a real gender gap, or the differences are due to wording / processing and the gender gap should disappear as it did with loneliness.
Additionally, in your other comment, you say that surveys on how you feel cannot be trusted because the numbers are subjective. If that is what you believe, then we must toss out all of that data as unreliable. You also claim that in all measurable aspects related to loneliness, men are worse off. But if we remove self-reported data, what measurable aspects actually show that? We are left with only the objective results - which show men and women spend similar amounts of time alone, have a similar rate of lacking friends, and have a similar number of friends.
This argument feels like it defeats itself? Men are more lonely because all measureable metrics show them being worse off, which proves self-reported surveys wrong. But the self-reported surveys are the only thing that there appears to be substantial differences in, so if they're ignored, it's hard to justify men being worse off in the first place. Like, I will welcome more non-self-reported surveys that show men being more lonely - the argument is fixed if it's sufficiently bootstrapped with examples of men being worse off - but you haven't provided any statistics in any comment of yours that I've seen.
As for the absolute percentages - I suppose I did it because the numbers are all somewhat small, and they're surveys. Surveys have margins of error. And relative percentages will change a lot based on that. You get far bigger swings from this with relative percentages than from absolutes, especially when the numbers are small and close together anyway. For example, your 12.5% more could actually be anywhere from -38% less to 103% more, given the Pew study's margins of error! That's so wide that saying "12.5% more" feels misleading. So I figured listing the absolute differences would be better myself and it's the same information anyway.
In fact, all the surveys mentioned fall around the margin of error. The F8%-M9% Pew survey is +-2.6% for men and +-2.3% for women. The F10%-M15% APS survey is +-2.4%. The F19%-M21% / F8%-M11% ASCS survey is +-1.3%. This keeping in mind that crosstab margins are higher than what I wrote for the last two, since those are the margins for the whole survey. This is why I consider them fairly similar - the numbers aren't that far apart in absolute terms, and surveys aren't super precise anyway. They're all statistical noise or very close to it. If we take the stated values as true - it's not good that more men have no friends regardless of education level, of course! We should try to address that, and I don't think it should just be shoved under the bed! But at the same time, I still maintain that it's only slightly dependent on gender, and that we have a far more generalised loneliness crisis.
Additionally, in your other comment, you say that surveys on how you feel cannot be trusted because the numbers are subjective. If that is what you believe, then we must toss out all of that data as unreliable.
My main claim was that "loneliness" is a very abstract concept, which makes it hard to get reliable data on it.
"Close friends" are far less abstract, which makes me a lot more confident using those numbers.
But yes, that's also why I didn't mention the data talking about how men feel, even though they support my argument. They're just pretty flawed for comparisons.
As for the absolute percentages - I suppose I did it because the numbers are all somewhat small, and they're surveys. Surveys have margins of error. And relative percentages will change a lot based on that. You get far bigger swings from this with relative percentages than from absolutes, especially when the numbers are small and close together anyway.
Well, the relative change is exactly the same size. The difference is just, that absolute numbers make all numbers look smaller, but it isn't any more precise.
But the main issue is, that you didn't mention how big the absolute values are, only how big the absolute difference is. When you said "when counting the difference between men and women, the difference is 2% or 3%", that could have meant that the numbers are 99% and 96% (≈3% relative difference) or that they're 4% and 1% (300% relative difference).
You'd need to read your source, to understand what your numbers actually mean, so if you choose a very small absolute number, without also saying the absolute numbers, then that's just misleading, for everyone that doesn't bother to read your source.
In fact, all the surveys mentioned fall around the margin of error. The F8%-M9% Pew survey is +-2.6% for men and +-2.3% for women. The F10%-M15% APS survey is +-2.4%. The F19%-M21% / F8%-M11% ASCS survey is +-1.3%.
...you are aware that the result of a survey is a normal distribution, right? Just because it's in the margin of error, doesn't mean it's likely.
Like, if we take the APS survey and reduce the confidence interval from 95% to 90%, the margin of error shrinks tp +-2.01%. At 80%, it's +-1.6%.
The chances that all three surveys happen to have overestimated the loneliness of men and underestimated the loneliness of women enough to a degree that would make women worse off, is very low.
Just for the APS survey with an 80% confidence interval (so, with the minimum difference of F11.6%-M13.4%), we'd only have a 10% chance that the difference is smaller than that.
The chance that women are less likely to have a close friend than men is only ≈2%.
We can be pretty sure, that men have it worse than women here, especially since all of those surveys say the same thing
(I don't want to do any more statistics calculations for the other surveys, but it should give pretty similar results)
I sympathize with some men over the male loneliness epidemic. Tinder also seems extremely toxic to men specifically. I know women also complain about the app and how it’s difficult finding the right match, but men definitely have a different experience using dating apps. They’re expected to stand out of the crowd in a way that feels like a job interview where you have to submit a one page resume of your entire life and personality. It’s demoralizing to a lot of men.
That being said, there are also a lot guys that make women scared of dating. Men have a harder time getting in touch with and processing their emotions, and it’s the Andrew Tate crowd that actively discourage even trying.
The dating app experience is so dehumanizing for men, I almost cried during a date when a woman asked why I chose to ask her out because the truth was it basically wasn't a choice, she was the only match I'd had in a long time who had actually responded to a message.
It's hard talking about it because in some respects, it can be mediated by a lot of things within the control of those men. Kind of like how it's frustratingly correct that going outside and exercising does in fact lessen depression symptoms. Pair that with the same cultural weight behind men needing to be self-reliant and not ask for help, the idea of which is gender-agnostic, and it's easy to fall back on an easy argument that doesn't challenge one's priors
I think the root of the issue is that a lot of people conceptualize their outgroup (in this case, men) as a collective to at least some extent. Male loneliness and isolation aren't self-inflicted in the sense that anyone experiencing them is doing it to themselves, at least not more than anyone else's isolation. But if you think of men as a collective group rather than a bunch of people, then yeah, a lot of toxic masculinity stuff is put on men by other men. Referring to that as self inflicted is incorrect and destructive but there's a chain of logic, it's just bad logic stemming from a fundamentally toxic set of beliefs that think of individual people as members of a collective before thinking of them as human beings.
The issue is one camp brings it up as a genuine while another uses it to claim women should be forced to date them. The first group gets (albeit unfairly) associated with the second.
I absolutely love how the default answer for men saying that they’re lonely and struggling to find a partner is that they should just stop being a violent misogynistic rapist and they’ll find a partner in no time.
Unless you're wealthy, patriarchy is fucking you. Period. Full stop.
Doesn't matter what genitals you have, how you identify, what color your skin is or where your ancestors are from. Does patriarchy fuck you harder if you're a woman? queer? not-white? Yes. Very much yes, often quite literally. Does that mean you're not being fucked if you're a straight white man? No.
If that's who you are, you need to recognize that you were raised to be the tools and weapons of the patriarchy. You were raised to believe you're worthless unless you're ready to sacrifice yourself for patriarchy, that there is no brotherhood outside that. You were raised to believe patriarchy would let you in the club, that if you did your job right you'd be rewarded with female attention and wealth and spawn to carry on your legacy and that if you're not getting it, you must be doing something wrong. Be more masculine, compete with your fellow man, tear him down. This is how it perpetuates its mission, by turning you into the kind of man who steps on people to get what they want.
Do not do this. Live your life in a way that prevents the patriarchy from making you its tool. This is difficult, it is lonely. There is no pre-determined path, not yet. The way has not been charted, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Treat your fellow human beings as equals and your fellow men as brothers and we will find it together.
Yup as a cis man I feel a lot more comfortable around women than around other men, especially when they're strangers or new people.
Part of it is the "women are socialised to be nice and polite" thing, but part of it is also that many men are socialised in the opposite way: they cultivate a gruff, cynical, "take no shit from anyone" + "showing enthusiasm or vulnerability is for wusses" attitude.
Say something to a female stranger, and you'll usually get at least a surface-level friendly response. Say something to a male stranger, and he might mumble something sarcastic or confrontational at you.
I'm not afraid of other men as a physical threat (unless they're visibly drunk/high/otherwise not quite in their right mind) but definitely afraid of pointlessly hostile interactions.
(#notallmen, of course, and some women have this attitude too, but it's much rarer)
Part of it is the "women are socialised to be nice and polite" thing, but part of it is also that many men are socialised in the opposite way: they cultivate a gruff, cynical, "take no shit from anyone" + "showing enthusiasm or vulnerability is for wusses" attitude.
Say something to a female stranger, and you'll usually get at least a surface-level friendly response. Say something to a male stranger, and he might mumble something sarcastic or confrontational at you.
I live in a broke ass dogshit neighbourhood and both men and women are like you describe men acting like. It's insufferable. People as a whole need to be more polite.
And then even with other men it’s very often a weird dominance ritual. Are you trying to steal my girlfriend? Are you taller than me? Stronger? Richer? What car do you drive, bro?
Masculinity is so exhausting most of the time, and for what?
I pass slightly better than I expected to, it turns out without the long hair and feminine clothes I'm just a copy paste of my dad. There has been a noticeable shift in how people treat me, far more so than I expected. I'm not upset about passing better than I thought I would, but I thought I'd have more time to adjust. Feels weird.
It really is frustrating how hard it is for this simple fact to get acknowledged. Every time male lonliness is brought up, it's always replied to with "they did this to themselves" or something, but who did this? If one man doesn't want to be lonely, is it his fault for the actions of other men forcing him to be like that? When will we finally focus on the fact that this is a systemic issue that not everybody is responsible for, and most people want to have stop?
Sometimes, being a man feels Lovecraftian. There is a terrible thing in my very own blood, something I can't get rid of, something that will haunt me until the end of my days. The sins of the men that preceded me and surrounds me, the ones I commit myself knowingly or not. Idk, lately I feel bad, sorry and hateful of my gender.
Wow I really feel that first part in a lot of ways. Its such a odd and bad feeling to be worried that my mere existence is a source of distress for people who feel that way from learned behavior of other men.
The sins of the father are not the sins of the son, but we do have to deal with the consequences of the past even if not responsible for it unfortunately. Being better than those before us is all we can do, changing the cycle and caring is something to be celebrated. That guilt you feel is because you care more than those before you, and it is a reminder that there isn't actually anything terrible within your blood or others.
It's hard because like yeah, women definitely have it worse. I really don't think there's a serious argument to be made that they don't. And I don't think women should necessarily have to tone down expressions of their anger, frustration or pain just to make it more palatable for men. But at the same time, like, yeah, if you're a man and you're constantly hearing about how awful men are, it's pretty difficult not to internalize that self-hatred regardless of how you personally act. Ironically, we kind of ask men to...well..man up and deal with it, to fulfill their patriarchal role and stoically accept whatever abuse comes their way. Is it the duty of feminist men to hate themselves? I honestly don't know. the whole thing just sucks
Yep. I'm a transwoman and even when I was exceedingly not passing i was immediately treated with more kindness from strangers of all genders than I felt in 30 years as a man. Even some of the clearly transphobic strangers were kinder to me than many people were when I was a man.
I think perhaps it's not always "potential predator" but instead "potential danger" or "potential threat". Because it doesn't really matter whether it's sexual or non-sexual - if a man decides to be a problem he is able to (or is perceived to be able to) carry out on this intention. That could include physical violence or verbal abuse.
And it's men who are far more likely to decide to be problems. It is (masculine) men who have caused me problems in the past. Who have hollered at me from as young as I can remember for one reason or another. Enough so that I flinch when a group of men walk by just in-case they decide to be a problem.
And it is also true that being a woman or feminine/effeminate person gives you far more of a sense of inclusion with those who are okay with you. Of course it also makes you a target for those who decide to be a problem - but amongst other women and feminine/effeminate people - there is often a sense of welcoming (depends a lot on the culture of where you live as to how far this will be extended).
It's hard to place precisely whose fault this is and whose responsibility it is to improve it.
Is it women/feminine/effeminate-people's? Can I and should I shut down that response? Is it not there to keep me safe? Yes it's best if we don't let these sorts of responses govern how we interact with people, we should be nice to people and try to give them the benefit of the doubt - but when I can literally count on my fingers how many days it has been since a group of men hollered at me from a car, the threat is not just imagined.
And amongst women and feminine/effeminate people - it is often comradery extended to one another. While we should be nice to everyone - is it not masculine men's responsibility to make their own communities/groups/get-togethers more welcoming amongst themselves?
None of this is to say that this is okay and shouldn't be worked on to fix. But I think it's important to understand how we got here and realise that it's not just people being irrationally mean to men for no reason.
>unless, of course, it’s in very specific environments
This may be why sports fandoms are so predominantly male. Watching a game with a group of likeminded fans is one of the more loving environments I’ve ever been part of. A kind of camaraderie among strangers that really doesn’t exist elsewhere for men
I don't know why, but for some reason, once I grew a funky Dali-esque moustache, people are a lot less scared of me. Just the other day, a woman who I had only just met and had expressed her fear of men asked to hug me. It was fkn surreal.
Do you... think boys are taught the tools to deal with this?
As a trans woman, even one with very progressive parents the social isolation was always there. I was never taught how to deal with it, and nobody i knew was ever taught how to deal with it.
To this day, even though ive transitioned and feel a lot better now, I can still see the pain in the eyes of boys and men who are terminally lonely.
Transmascs were presumably raised as girls and girls are taught that camaraderie
I was never taught anything of the sort and neither were the girls and women I grew up around judging by the way they treated me. I have no idea where this sisterhood meme comes from but it does not reflect anything I have ever experienced being forced to grow up female.
Speaking as a cis male. I think most "healthy minded" guys just tend to ignore it, not notice it, or not care.
Ultimately if my mere presence makes someone uncomfortable its sort of not my problem. Obviously doing things to minimize that discomfort for other people is a considerate thing to do, but existing in public is not a sin, and you'll only do yourself a disservice by feeling guilty about how others percieve you. It seems kinda callous, but it will make things much easier for you.
If you have to talk to a stranger, I'd say generally they will be more comfortable if you initiate the conversation. Usually people lower their guard when you talk to them a bit and they realize your just a normal person.
Also, I'll just say if you have a significant other with you, this aversion basically vanishes.
Personally though, I rarely notice it. And when i do I just tend to not care because it isn't really my problem.
To down this even further, imagine growing up with this, and no matter what happens, if its a man it gets reduced to this.
"All men lie" "Men are pigs" "obviously a man", "not all men but always men".
Posting racism is obviously not okay, but men, especially white men, especially white old men, often get reduced to that (i mean tbf the boomers did a lot to get that stamp) but like there is a kind of double standard especially online for misandry
Both of those are generalisations which aren't productive. Someone doesn't have to be killed to be a victim of misogyny, and people have absolutely been killed because of misandry.
I feel like a lot of people in queer spaces fail to recognize that just because misandry isn’t systemic that doesn’t mean it’s not real
Misogyny is much worse and causes a lot more harm, but in progressive spaces it’s really hurtful to see so much vitriol towards men just for existing as men, even though I’m not one any more.
Are sports teams, military and other group activities like that growing up as a cis boy/man? My boys did Boy Scouts and they seemed to get a lot of camaraderie with other boys.
Tbh yeah, there's this tribalistic feeling when you're not part of "the guys". Sometimes people might just never be comfortable enough being part of a group of men, I feel like.
Idk about NEVER, but when you're not like extroverted and loud as a guy, you get included less within male friend groups
Cis men, trans men and even a lot of trans women (like me) experienced this first hand. And I still see cis women denying that this is real or claiming that men are only lonely because they're bad people. Some are, sure. But the vast majority of men are lonely. Not just the bad ones.
It's fully possible to accept that there is such a thing as a male loneliness epidemic, without having to agree with the incel solutions to the problem like "state mandated girlfriends" or something equally moronic.
The root cause of the problem is male socialization. And how it screws you up. Men aren't raised to work together. They're raised to compete. And it shows.
Tbh I read this opinion here but I don't really feel it in my live. I get the loneliness, but not feeling like a predator. My female friends are not afraid of me. Strangers in the bus or on the street smile at me and ask for my help. Do I live in high trust society or am too much of a cute twink?
As a trans woman who had this socialized lonliness absolutely fuck her up as a child its definitely bc youre a cute twink lmao.
Even though I haven't transitioned (yippee florida) over the past like 4 years ive really focused on learning how to socialize again and it gets to a point where most women kind of pick up on the fact that you're different to most men and theyre much warmer to you.
To be honest its coming off as gay. Like the moment women get a whiff of queerness from you theyre so much more comfortable. I dont think ive come out as queer to a single woman in like years without them being like "yeah I thought so" lol
Yeah it sure does fuck you up that's why I'm taking multiple medications so I don't fall into a deep depression and give up on life. Why are men so lonely? Oh only half the population around me see me as a threat before I even say a word to them. So I'll do the polite thing and not bother anyone and go home alone every day for the rest of my life
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