More Toxicity

Instapundit responds to an article on how toxic manhood means that women are worn out from doing all the 'emotional labor' in their relationships. "ANYONE WHO THINKS THAT WOMEN DO ALL THE “EMOTIONAL LABOR” has never been married to an actual woman."

Boy, that's the truth. No woman who's been married for any length of time is likely even to take offense at the suggestion. We all know how much weight we've had to put on our partners at times.

There's less to this issue than it seems even where it bears weight. It's definitely true that I'm not always in touch with my feelings, and that my upbringing is partly responsible for that. The major inflictors of 'you should be less sensitive; you should not be emotional' were women, in especial my schoolteachers. I'm not even mad about it. Sometimes the best we can do in life still involves hurting other people. Life is like that. Sometimes, we have to hurt them a little to help them in other ways.

This is one of those cases. Frankly, emotional children are more work, and these ladies had 27 kids to handle and try to teach something too. It was in their interests to suppress emotions in whatever way they could, and for that matter it was in our interests that they should succeed. Otherwise, we wouldn't learn as much -- possibly nearly nothing, if they were unable to convince any of the 27 little heathens they were saddled with to please just let it go, sit down, shut up, and pay attention.

Nor is it all bad to be able to do that. Just to give one clear example, the day my father died I sat right next to him while he died. Half an hour later I needed to drive my mother, my wife, and a child through rush hour traffic in Atlanta. I could do that safely because of this very capacity to suppress emotions. Not only their safety depended on it, but the safety of everyone driving a car around the one I was driving.

In any case, the article may be right that men have fewer friends than they used to do; I think of "Bowling Alone" as a model of that. But it's not true for me; I have some very good friends. Some of them are even men, so those men have at least one good male friend too.

10 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I worry about men not having friends. I have a few good ones, and my oldest son lives nearby and is likely my best friend at this point.

I organise beer night once a week, variable evening and setting. Very few men come. Nevertheless, I persist.

I thought the author of the article was irritating and ahem, "not in touch with her personality." There are issues to be discussed here, but she isn't the one to lead the discussion.

ymarsakar said...

https://lonerwolf.com/divine-masculine/

For those that thought Ymar couldn't go farther than the Beyond... I went beyond the Beyond.

If people say I can't do something, I tend to do it just to show them it can be done. If people think I can't do something, I'll just keep doing it.

ymarsakar said...

We have all of entity, our allies and divine families. You humans merely have a few generations of memory to do your missions in. There is quite a difference in scale between those who know their immortal and eternal/divine plan vs those who think their life plan starts and ends with retirement (while still paying IRS taxes).

Our Kingdom is not of the Earth and our King is not in the White House.

Humans need labels to put things neatly into as the Unknown is mysterious and frightening. An American, a christian, a muslim, a whatever, are all just labels.

Grim said...

"Our Kingdom is not of the Earth and our King is not in the White House."

That's the truth.

"I organise beer night once a week, variable evening and setting. Very few men come."

Really? You can't get them with beer? I'd come for beer and good conversation. Maybe they don't like the conversation. If that's it, they're not good candidates for friends.

I don't try for weekly gatherings. If we get together twice a year, that's a fair friendship. I do try for meaningful experiences. We do strongman stuff, or we go on multiple day hikes in wild country, or we go on motorcycle rides. Or we just come together to sit by the fire and drink, for a few days, and talk about philosophy. Which is everything, after all, but in a serious way.

On the other hand, I don't have your virtue of worrying about others. It's a vice of mine that I care only about the people I care about. I try, as a principled matter, to extend my concern to others. I know that philosophy should encourage me to universal concern. But I'm not, I confess, truly inclined to it. I like the people I like, and I don't really care what happens to the rest of them. That's a flaw, but it's a flaw I find deeply embedded in myself. On the other hand, I'm very strong in looking after the ones I do care for.

I'm not sure if that's a virtue, or a deepening of the vice; but ultimately, I've given up on trying to sort that out. This is one I just pray about: if it's a virtue, I hope to do it well; and if it's a vice, I hope to be forgiven for it. But I'm definitely gonna do it, and the God I've been told loves me will hopefully forgive me. I guess I lean on the confidence in forgiveness more and more as I get older. But that confidence is a sort of faith, after all.

ymarsakar said...

It's a vice of mine that I care only about the people I care about.

The human creation program was created with dualistic and mutually destructive or conflicting energies. Masculine vs Feminine. Yang vs Yin. Light vs Darkness. It was engendered in order to create free will choice. There is no free will choice when there are no choices. Thus humanity was designed (yes designed) in order to produce certain evolutionary impulses that people see today as quantum DNA, epigenetics, and GMOs.

This has created a dual realm where there is the animal man and then there is the Divine man. Those two things are not mutually harmonious.

Thus the tribal animal man for the sake of genetic survival and propagation has Stranger Danger and only cares about his Tribe.

The Divine Man once awakened to his awful condition and the truth of the forgotten past, begins to realize that everybody on Earth is connected from a single family. Although that doesn't mean we are all the same or think the same due to soul groupings. Even in a large clan, there are cliques and factions.

The natural man is the Enemy of the Divine. But if it was not so in the Garden of Eden, then the Divine could not learn and progress, thus the Enemy is merely just another multiplayer OPFOR. A necessary ingredient.

In other words, the State sponsored doctrine of the religious teaching that Original Sin from Adam is... erroneous.

raven said...

"the day my father died I sat right next to him while he died. Half an hour later I needed to drive my mother, my wife, and a child through rush hour traffic in Atlanta. I could do that safely because of this very capacity to suppress emotions."

Good example. Sometimes you have to do what needs to be done, right then. Grieving will wait if necessary, while wounds are bound. Sometimes it is as simple as getting up and going to work, to earn a living so others may grieve in peace.

MikeD said...

I honestly wonder if the same women who believe that they "do all the emotional labor" and are upset that their husbands "don't have friends" are the same kinds of wives who don't want their husband going out with his friends without her, or going over to a buddy's house to watch the game, or similar controlling behavior that if it were done by a man to a woman would be labeled as "controlling" and "toxic masculinity".

Thankfully, I've never had that issue. But I know guys who have. One comes to mind that basically was forced to quit all of his hobbies because his wife didn't approve of them. It wasn't that he was engaged in vices, just things she didn't like and thought were "childish". Now, is she the type of wife that will later wonder why her husband doesn't have friends?

raven said...

" Now, is she the type of wife that will later wonder why her husband doesn't have friends?"

Or the type who wonders why she does not have a husband.

J Melcher said...

Management by nagging:

How is the project coming along for a warning label with the logo / emblem / patch for "toxic masculinity" ?

Grim said...

Management by nagging:

There's a way to avoid being charged with "toxic masculinity."

How is the project coming along...?

It has stalled a bit, I confess. I'm working it with Jim Hanson, formerly Uncle Jimbo of BlackFive. There's a few other things going on at the moment, but we do still intend to get to it, certainly in time for 2020 domestic politics.