Time to get downvoted for having an opinion, here I go:
In my experience, women were the ones constantly telling me I should be positive, I should smile/laugh more, I should not worry or cry or stuff like that (even lovingly telling me to shush), male friends were MUCH more accepting when it came to my emotional problems (both were equally useless tho). BUT I don't blame women nor the patriarchy, I blame toxic positivity, as most of us weren't taught how to deal with emotions and came from toxic/broken homes so forcing a positive take on everything and shunning anything that could weaken that bubble was (and still is) the norm and that is genderless, assholery is a human thing, not a male vs female thing.
I have a very different friend group. Yeah people still like to project success and their kids whatever at the moment. But even that's only my local friends. Many of us love to talk shit about the state of the country/world and try to take care of each other through mental and emotional issues.
It's funny, I generally prefer to talk to a woman professionally, but I'd rather talk to a man friend about specific emotional problems. Of course I'm lucky to have a wife I would talk about most of these things with, but not everyone has a good partner.
Not the person you replied to, but just listening and allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard goes a long way. Getting it all out to someone and not being bottled up inside your own head can be a huge relief, even if the problem itself remains the same.
The instinctual reaction is to want to offer fixes. However, whatever the hearer thought of in five seconds, the sufferer probably also already thought of, and spent days/months/years attempting to make it work and it just didn't, and now the listening session gets diverted into kind of an argument where the suffered has to justify they have already put in sufficient effort to the fix the listener is pushing that it's not worth continuing on that road.
You'll have to be more specific with your question because... if I'm pointing out a toxic positivity attitude and you tell me you don't know what a more desirable reaction would be, it concerns me... a lot.
OK, be concerned. Now, please tell me how to be better. I am the first to admit that I suck at inter-personal things.
Let's say you are hanging out with a good friend, it is late in the evening, and they tell you about some fucked up shit happening to them.
"That sucks, man hang in there," doesn't quite cut it, as someone else pointed out, no solution you can up with in five minutes is going to help them, and just awkward silence is awkward to both of you.
I do nothing.
I just sit there and listen to them, curse with them and let them blow as much steam as they need, you'd be surprised but most of the time people already know what to do, all they need is to be allowed to embrace whatever they are feeling at the time, to be heard and some empathy.
If you are afraid of an awkward silence then don't be, sometimes just sitting in silence with someone can go a long way. Sometimes just little questions about it can help them open and show that you care.
Not everyone wants help, not everything has a fix, not everything has to be fixed on the spot, forcing someone will only make them double-down or close themselves and that can get worse because they'll stop looking for help.
Obviously... this is in general what I used to do, everyone is different so each person requires a different approach,
Just because one claims that their own views align with feminism, doesn’t mean that it is, by definition- feminism. By this, I aim to mean that there will always be bad apples in any group of people.
So how about maybe not judging the whole of a thing on those that claim to align with it- yet show no similarities to it.
I won't get into the rest of the stuff in this thread, but I'll disagree with your first point.
Feminism is a word. An English word. And that means it's definition is driven by common usage not a book. If the common usage shifts to a toxic place, the meaning shifts with it.
If you disagree I'd love to hear your gymnastics around the word invcel, it's evolution into incel, and then that further extension to femcel (even though the person who coined invcel was a woman).
There is no such thing as a static definition. You're gonna have a real bad time in life communicating with people if you try to make that be your thing.
However since my whole message was about flexibility of definitions and you called my example whataboutism...I'm thinking you already have challenges communicating with people.
I am not going to get distracted arguing about things like the semantics of definitions. The purpose of anyone doing this is almost always to disrupt the discussion and derail the topic.
Feminism is what it is defined as, which is a socio-political movement and a set of ideas that advocate for equal rights and freedoms for all genders.
Your attempt to whatabout using incels as an example to compare the evolution of a word to prove that feminism has a different meaning is just bad faith nonsense. It’s a false equivalency, and it didn’t work.
feminism is for everyone. patriarchy is both against and enforced by everyone
Time to get downvoted for having an opinion, here I go:
In my experience, women were the ones constantly telling me I should be positive, I should smile/laugh more, I should not worry or cry or stuff like that (even lovingly telling me to shush), male friends were MUCH more accepting when it came to my emotional problems (both were equally useless tho).
BUT I don't blame women nor the patriarchy, I blame toxic positivity, as most of us weren't taught how to deal with emotions and came from toxic/broken homes so forcing a positive take on everything and shunning anything that could weaken that bubble was (and still is) the norm and that is genderless, assholery is a human thing, not a male vs female thing.
I have a very different friend group. Yeah people still like to project success and their kids whatever at the moment. But even that's only my local friends. Many of us love to talk shit about the state of the country/world and try to take care of each other through mental and emotional issues.
It's funny, I generally prefer to talk to a woman professionally, but I'd rather talk to a man friend about specific emotional problems. Of course I'm lucky to have a wife I would talk about most of these things with, but not everyone has a good partner.
Genuine question, how would you wish a good friend/partner would react?
Not the person you replied to, but just listening and allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard goes a long way. Getting it all out to someone and not being bottled up inside your own head can be a huge relief, even if the problem itself remains the same.
The instinctual reaction is to want to offer fixes. However, whatever the hearer thought of in five seconds, the sufferer probably also already thought of, and spent days/months/years attempting to make it work and it just didn't, and now the listening session gets diverted into kind of an argument where the suffered has to justify they have already put in sufficient effort to the fix the listener is pushing that it's not worth continuing on that road.
You'll have to be more specific with your question because... if I'm pointing out a toxic positivity attitude and you tell me you don't know what a more desirable reaction would be, it concerns me... a lot.
OK, be concerned. Now, please tell me how to be better. I am the first to admit that I suck at inter-personal things.
Let's say you are hanging out with a good friend, it is late in the evening, and they tell you about some fucked up shit happening to them.
"That sucks, man hang in there," doesn't quite cut it, as someone else pointed out, no solution you can up with in five minutes is going to help them, and just awkward silence is awkward to both of you.
What do you do?
I do nothing.
I just sit there and listen to them, curse with them and let them blow as much steam as they need, you'd be surprised but most of the time people already know what to do, all they need is to be allowed to embrace whatever they are feeling at the time, to be heard and some empathy.
If you are afraid of an awkward silence then don't be, sometimes just sitting in silence with someone can go a long way. Sometimes just little questions about it can help them open and show that you care.
Not everyone wants help, not everything has a fix, not everything has to be fixed on the spot, forcing someone will only make them double-down or close themselves and that can get worse because they'll stop looking for help.
Obviously... this is in general what I used to do, everyone is different so each person requires a different approach,
Feminism is explicitly about the social equality of sexes.
Many feminists would not agree with you.
I prefer talking about equality when talking about equality.
Really? Who? Give me some names and citations.
Just because one claims that their own views align with feminism, doesn’t mean that it is, by definition- feminism. By this, I aim to mean that there will always be bad apples in any group of people.
So how about maybe not judging the whole of a thing on those that claim to align with it- yet show no similarities to it.
I won't get into the rest of the stuff in this thread, but I'll disagree with your first point.
Feminism is a word. An English word. And that means it's definition is driven by common usage not a book. If the common usage shifts to a toxic place, the meaning shifts with it.
If you disagree I'd love to hear your gymnastics around the word invcel, it's evolution into incel, and then that further extension to femcel (even though the person who coined invcel was a woman).
Feminism has a static definition. And because of this fact- I disagree wholeheartedly with the entirety of your response.
This is not gymnastics. This is empirical truth. And I’m not getting locked up in attempts to define any whatabout attempts to derail the topic.
There is no such thing as a static definition. You're gonna have a real bad time in life communicating with people if you try to make that be your thing.
However since my whole message was about flexibility of definitions and you called my example whataboutism...I'm thinking you already have challenges communicating with people.
I am not going to get distracted arguing about things like the semantics of definitions. The purpose of anyone doing this is almost always to disrupt the discussion and derail the topic.
Feminism is what it is defined as, which is a socio-political movement and a set of ideas that advocate for equal rights and freedoms for all genders.
Your attempt to whatabout using incels as an example to compare the evolution of a word to prove that feminism has a different meaning is just bad faith nonsense. It’s a false equivalency, and it didn’t work.
Sometimes it even meets that aspiration!
Thou I'd love to hear your thoughts on veganism. Suffice it to say you're wrong this time champ.
Thanks, buddy. A needed statement.