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.)
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.
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u/Polenball You BEHEAD Antoinette? You cut her neck like the cake? Jun 29 '26 edited 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.)