@thor @shibao @evelyn @FailForward
I get that they are radicalised by others with the same views. I guess we need to identify early warnings signs or someone does.
Over here in the UK we have prevent, staff in a school HAVE to report children for playing if they are during that pretending to be a suicide bomber for example (or from the way I see it, kids just copy and try and make sense, through play of the world around them). Or i got that impression a few years ago, we need to be alert to any signs of kids with extreme views.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
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@zleap @thor @shibao @evelyn @FailForward
i think men have a very specific mental health problematic.
you are on one hand expected to "just deal with it". nobody wants to hear those issues (aside from a really close friend). on the other hand, society shoves the "mEn aRe sUpPosEd tO bE wEaK nOw" agenda in your face.
you have to be manly man and wimp at the same time, which is a hell on it's own.
telling someone to "be soft, show your feelings" is saying "haha, i _know_ you are a weak loser, you might even just show it".
the reason it is bullshit isn't that men aren't supposed to show their feelings. the reason is that it is expected of men to show their feelings _in the same way_ as women to.
which makes no fucking sense for men!
i'll just take literature as an example, because i think it can quite well convey this: nearly every classic epic has _cameradry_ in it. be it something from ancient greece or LotR. this is a quite specific behavior of men.
if you have problems, you can tell your trusted friends in private. _by the gods_ you will be hard to outsiders, because it is essential for the "survival" of the group.
what is now expected of men is to show their feelings of self-doubt, sadness etc. to the world. men probably just can't do that without further damaging their self-image, and i think it's to a large part biological.
you don't have to be an unemotional asshole caring about no one to be a masculine, quite the contrary. a good man _is_ caring about others, explicitly also other men. the classic strong pat on the back (which women hate) is affection - hey, i have your back! girlfriend quit you? let's get hammered together! close relative died? shit, can i help you with something?
this doesn't mean that there isn't a plethora of shitty behavior which men may have, but i think in the end it might very well be out of a dynamic in which they _don't_ have someone to talk about their feelings and no one watching their back.
i think men take strength out of _doing_ things together, while women tighten their bonds by talking about their feelings. neither one is better than the other. taking away these mechanisms is harmful.
which is exactly what our societies do. there are no goals for groups-of-men anymore, except in sports and activism. the thing most of men have to spend their time on is work, which by now is a completely egoistical environment. you have no unifiying cause, the cause is making money for the man.
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@bonifartius This was a very good take on this topic. Thanks a lot! Especially this bit:
> i think men take strength out of _doing_ things together, while women tighten their bonds by talking about their feelings.
a long, ranty and incoherent post
@FailForward @zleap @thor @shibao @evelyn
i think the real issue is that our societies are so complex that the mentioned "doing together" isn't easy to do. where ever it is done (sports) is purely artificial. problematic for mental health may be that as i've written i think men require more personal trust in whomever they tell their problems about. i'm not sure how to fix this or what this means for a mens heath blog because there aren't many opportunities for real teamwork in a capitalist system essentially based on concurrence.
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I'd say it strongly depends on the country/culture/social bubble you are in. There are segments of western societies where participation in hobby clubs/extracurricular
activities is a thing. These are often long-term projects with a strong sense of teamwork. And also, professional work activities can serve this well - as far as one has a level of control and agency in them, which is again a function of the local culture and perhaps also the level of affluence in the given context.
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@FailForward @zleap @thor @shibao @evelyn
sure there are some activities, but they aren't always catering for everyone. some people just don't like most sports, if you are already depressive you don't really want to participate in something with a focus on competition (at least from my own experience). compate playing something PvP like dota or league of legends vs. playing PvE like deep rock galactic or left for dead. the pvp communities tend to be quite "competitive" (as in assholes ;)
i never really liked work activities because it always felt a bit "forced". you are there for getting money, after all.
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Taking it a bit farther back to the original observation that most psych advice out there targets women, your observation would explain why it actually is so. So what would be the equivalent of a mental health advice magazine column for men? Perhaps your local DIY store ? 😄
@bonifartius @zleap @thor @shibao @evelyn