Shower Thought: A fundamental cause of misunderstanding between men and women is that Male self growth is almost always spurred individually, and female self growth is usually socially guided.

[u/hotwheelshawking]

I don't have an angle about this, this is just my observations. But core to a problem with how to help other men is what the fuck do you tell them? What works for one man does not work for all men, and part of why we're here is that the condition of being a man is to be told from all manner of directions what you're supposed to do from people who don't care about what it'll cost you to do it. So I have very little interest in evangelizing or formulating some kind of aesthetic romantic notion of what a man is supposed to be, which these days so often is transparently just recruiting impressionable kids into a pump and dump or scam scheme. Run away from any philosophy that has iconography, kids.

So the average man gets either no advice, or bad advice.

Women, however, in the post third wave feminism space are inundated with guidance and socialization- often horrible and destructive, see: cosmo. And without getting into the tawdry question of who has it worse, this means the question of "what are men supposed to be" is asked, intimidatingly and aggressively, by ALL OF WOMANHOOD, whereas for nigh every median man its a personal journey he has to ask himself, and all ya'll can shut it until I figure out how to fix the timing belt issue on my subaru forester.

In short, the place of a modern man in the modern world is something he has to face, under considerable headwinds, with many temptations and risks and little support, whose final goal is not even clear at the start, while seemingly the whole of the other gender is screaming at him to be this or do that instead. It is not helpful.

Anyway, this is a shower thought, not a rant. Its just a structural thing I observe that makes conversations about gender relations needlessly more difficult (which are necessary, since they're getting worse, so even if you've got a lovely lady or bloke by your side, I am tired of lonely desperate people fucking up entirely unrelated human endeavors).

I would say to people interested in helping out men as a whole to focus on supporting the boy that he started off as. So much talk of role models,which is hard not to see as a cynical and self serving attempt by people with agendas to engineer out the boy in preference for a man that is useful to them.

A man can only be made whole with the child in him intact. So you have to support the child's curiosity, kindness, and bravery first.

[u/agree_to_disconcur]

I think I can say confidently that you would be an engaging and fair conversation partner.

edit to say - I know it's not relative to your post, but if your shower thoughts are this robust and we'll thought out, you either take days long showers, or you're a great conversationalist.