Many women and men do not like their SO having friends of the opposite gender, especially if they are alone together. So that means having a female friend that you can privately confide in is not easy to have or maintain if either party is in a relationship.

The "safest" way to have an opposite gendered friend that you can talk to is one that you only talk to at work during work hours, which isn't an option for male dominated fields(e.g. construction) and men in those environments are probably the most in need of a female friend to talk to.

The irony is that the people who don't want their SO having an opposite gendered friend probably need an opposite gendered friend to talk to.

I get where you're coming from but I've witness toxicity regarding masculinity from both men and women. Honestly, it's definitely possible to have healthy relationships with other dudes. All of my best friends are guys and we aren't afraid to talk about anything, like our feelings. So it's really the company you keep that really matters, regardless of gender imo

Same thing with other types of bigotry. The more people you know and/or have to interact with from different ethnicities or backgrounds, the harder it is to blindly hate them. You see this a lot in more diverse places like cities where they tend more progressive and tolerant. And you see the inverse in more remote or rural places that are often more homogenous.

I was married for 35 years. In that whole time, my husband had many female friends. It never bothered me at all., because i wasn’t jealous like that. I was never able to have male friends, though. That was always some kind of threat.

I always got along better with guys than women, so I was always turning down outings and ghosting people in favour of my marriage. Now, since we divorced after 35 years., I have no friends at all. He kept his girlfriends from high school (even marrying one within a year of our divorce) and I’m completely alone.

Seems fair.

Couldn't agree more.

If there's one thing I've observed over the years (mainly in professional environments) is that the whole "sausage fest" environment tends towards dick-wagging contests and other less that healthy macho group behaviours.

That said, one of the most toxic machist environments I've ever been in was a workplace were women were present, due to quotas, and management seemed to have chosen them on looks rather than competence.

I suspect that a healthy environment requires both genders present and without any perceived distinction in importance depending on gender. Specifically from my experience, women de jure or de facto present as a different kind of group member (such as being basically "eye candy") isn't going to do much to suppress unhealthy behaviours (it might hide some of the spoken stuff due to fear of legal/HR consequences but it won't change people's thinking and decisions anchored on that thinking).

I suspect the very same thing applies when genders are swapped - there seem to also be disfunctional group behaviours in all-women environments, just different from the male ones (less macho dickwagging, more intrigue and social cliques).

As someone socialized transfeminine that quote always hit hard. Especially now as I’m older and making closer friends with adult men who are trying to heal from that psychic mutilation I’m seeing all the ways that it runs deep.

And the thing is it’s not a voluntary trade of power for vulnerability. It is backed by violence against those who cannot or will not engage in it. From social isolation to fists this violence keeps those who are uncomfortable in some form of line.

And then we see that men trying to heal from this are often unable or uncomfortable to go to each other for healing and find themselves overburdening their wives and girlfriends for something few of them have the frame of reference to understand. And some of these women have also internalized these ideas of men and push that continued expectation onto them.

Idk that’s at least what I’ve observed of the phenomenon. But I can say that a lot of the damage can be healed and you model a more whole adulthood for your sons.

Pretty much every problem we have in modern society stems from patriarchy and capitalism. It is the wrong tool for the job. Hang on.. let me hammer in this screw real quick. It might damage the porch I'm building, but it'll work I guess.

So you're saying the conditions exist where men in their workaday lives don't have the time or bandwidth to be aware of the positive messages in feminism, meanwhile radical and controversial feminist messages are put on blast so that everyone knows about that?

Brother, you are soooo close.

It seems society has to swing that pendulum as far to either side as possible every time.

Men the best! Women the best, men evil! Women evil, Men the best!

humans are so fucking stupid, collectively. we just repeat patterns over and over and over

Men are also victims of the patriarchy and do not have the ability to magically dismantle it. What do you gain by having this attitude?