Stay strong my bros🫂

Thanks for sharing this. Patriarchy damages men, they're expected to hide their feelings, "man up" and crush emotions inside. It really hurts men and it's totally wrong

A male friend of mine who confides in me was complaining to me about how there are these 'feminists' talking about 'toxic masculinity.' Apparently he viewed some video where a guy was intentionally conflating masculinity with toxic masculinity. I didn't know that at the time, I was just shocked, because he's the biggest victim of toxic masculinity I know. When I said that, he asked me to explain, and I pointed to the fact that his father burned his sketchbooks (this was the 70s) because art is "for girls." Which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
When I explained that toxic masculinity is that, the emphasis to conform to some harmful version of masculinity, he turned on a dime so fast in rage at the asshole who conflated the two.
The thing that hurts my feelings most is when men are taught to forward toxic masculinity that harms them. When they're forged into links in a chain that they would never wield if they knew better.
- It sure is sad.
  I got to say what grinds my gears more than it should is that some people in their fight against mysogyny and patriarchy are really mindless in their wording. Just today when i browsed reddit (my bad i know) i came across a thread that rightfully was upset about bigoted gay men and someone wrote "being gay does not stop some men from being... you know men. Toxic and Misogynistic." And i just felt getting upset and was wondering if it is really so hard to write "Some men, even when gay, still are toxic and mysogonistic", which is probably what they wanted to say anyways. I think that this can push away some men that already feel dismissed or are struggling.
- Art is for girls?? As if art isn't one of the fundamental parts of being human? As if women haven't been barred from art schools and ateliers for thousands of years?
- Yep exactly!
FYI "patriarchy" is a gendered term which comes from the Latin, originally meaning "church government by patriarchs" (1560s) and later evolved to mean "society or government by elder males" (1630s). Historically, it referred to autocratic rule by men. More recently it has been expanded in feminist theory which broadly ascribes a set of toxic behaviours to men as a group. The problem with this word is that men don't have a patent on toxic behaviour. It's often not men telling other men not to cry and to man up, for example. It's often the women in our lives, and especially our romantic partners. Raising "patriarchy" in this discussion is tantamount to blaming men for the issues they experience, and this is not helpful to anyone. No more than suggesting rape victims are also victims of the "matriarchy." If you understand how offensive that might seem to you, you might understand how offensive your comment can be to men.
- FYI,
  Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men.
  [...] Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures. Most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal, unless the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority is applied.
  Partiarchy is not a description of masculinity, toxic or otherwise. Patriarchy is a description of a social heirarchy.
  Patriarchy is in large part to blame for toxic masculinity because historically and currently, men with power enforced social rule by men, and therefore enforced social elevation by their own subjective idea of what masculinity should be.
  Patriarchy is not much different from (and intrinsically linked to) the idea of a King's divine right to rule - if you were in power, you deserved to be in power, and the qualities of the people in power were therefore the qualities of the people who deserved to be in power. Thus, their ideas of masculinity became long-lasting cultural norms.
  Pointing out that the history of patriarchy enforced toxic masculinity is not accusing men themselves of enforcing it on an individual level, or dismissing rhe role that women played in enforcing these gender divisions.
  The same can be said for pointing out that the history of Feudalism enforced horrrible class stratification that still impacts Western culture today. Modern day Knights like the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Sir Elton John would agree with that, because individuals can be distanced from and even directly challenge a system that they benefit from, much like men have a moral right and responsibility to challenge the role that the Patriarchy has played in enforcing these outdated gender divisions.
- managed to make a comment about the damaging aspects of male dominated society into hating women, congrats.

I think the ever growing machismo bullshit in America has subconsciously made me a different (better) person out of spite. I grew my hair super long again, and embrace liking kawaii and other cute and chill cultures, despite being a straight cis white male that wears mostly black and listens to metal.

Wait what’s kawaii? Besides, like, the place
- Japanese kawaii culture.
Same, but with fascists/far-right wingers and their fashion. I'm shaving my head and dressing punkier because I hate this old-money vibe so many are trying to get. Sorry, no, rebellious leftists (and not billionaires) are my inspiration.
Is it ever growing? It seems very much that, on net, it is decreasing.

Men's health month being identical with gay pride month seems rather unfortunate.

It only seems unfortunate because of toxic issues and misunderstandings.
In reality, the goals of the two groups are completely aligned. Mental health, acceptance, being treated fairly, and just wanting to be happy and free. A lot of pride is essentially modern feminism, which also encompasses men's rights in good, healthy ways that are ACTUALLY good for men.
As a flaming neurodivergent queer, I can tell you, that pride and men's health have so many goals in common, that the Venn Diagram is basically just a single circle.
We can absolutely share.
- The toxic issues and misunderstandings are precisely the reason why these months exist in the first place.
  While it's true that they're generally aligned, that doesn't mean that they actually gain from sharing the same month. Even queer people haven't all accepted that this is a fight that needs to be fought together, and many men are afraid to get close to queer movement(s) not even necessarily because they themselves think it's bad, but because they're afraid of what, let's say, less enlightened people will think and do.
  For the record, I'm queer, too.
- Thank you for saying this! This is the bridge building that can make a future worth living
it's just pride month; you don't have to be gay to be queer!
How is it unfortunate?
- I'm specifying "gay" because neonazis are trying to coopt it as white pride month. While I agree that queer would be more general, many people don't like that term and while I've never seen "queer pride" mentioned, I did see "gay pride".
  Both men's health (especially men's mental health) and LGBTQ rights are huge, important and frequently neglected topics, and IMO using the same month diminishes both (especially since there is considerable overlap, which would be fine if we didn't suck so much as a society when it comes to these topics). Though I suppose there's only so many months in a year so it's inevitably going to get crowded if you want to dedicate entire months to topics.
It's due to Father's Day and started as the week leading up to Father's Day.
There's only 12 months in the year. If every issue is going to have a month, there's going to be some overlap.
- I mean, I'm sure vodka appreciation day falls during temperance week. It's why having "Official Concept Day" and especially "Official Concept Month" is such a dumbfuck idea.
It's annoying to have to wonder whether whoever started men's health month did it just to be all "but what about this other issue?" and intentionally move attention away from pride. Issues of men's rights and health are extremely important to me, and I hate how often they're brought up in bad faith by misogynists and other hateful people.
- Totally bad faith. Mental health awareness month is May. It's non-gendered but it's been May since 1949.
  Source: NAMI. The National Alliance on Mental Health. I support them financially.
Honestly, I think they work well together. The two subjects can be quite related. Mental health and love are often intertwined, too.
Yeah I like the idea behind this but the fact that out of the 12 months, this was the month that was chosen for this is fairly eyebrow raising. I'm all for men becoming better people and freeing their minds, having their own liberation movement. But then someone has to come along and specifically choose pride month for this, just making it look bad all over again. It's like men can't be happy unless it involves taking away someone else's happiness.
Yeah, if they start dating men it's only going to get worse. Their mental health.
- If we assume that men who date men were already gay, bi etc. before, surely their mental health would improve compared to being fully in the closet?

One of the best things I did to change my life for the better was to stop caring about what other's think. You can basically laugh off any criticism and the people who will seriously be mean to you about something are not people to keep in your life.

When I go to a bar, I do not need to order a bitter IPA, I'll get whatever sweet cocktail I want. If someone calls me out for it not being manly, I just tell them the manliest thing is doing whatever the hell you want. I've never had someone say something to me like that and be serious about it, but whenever a hear that joke, my response always shuts them up.

Just do whatever you want and stop worrying about others. If people reject you, then get new people.

If anyone needs to talk about their problem 1v1, just send me a DM. I'd be happy to talk to you. I'm white, male, and in my 30s if that makes a difference.

This is the way. Supportive, contributing to community and generally helpful. ❤️

I scrolled past this at first, then went back and man, it brought a smile to my face. I'm going through a stressful time in school (since the education system is ass, especially for neurodivergent students) and this gave me a bunch of hope.

And I gotta say, lots of our feeds are packed with depressing news stories and Lemmy infighting, but where's the feel good content? I've only seen a few of them so far.

Negative feelings do for more engagement. Not really anyones fault but our brains.
- Yeah, is basically why I don't watch tv news anymore, it's always negative stuff that I really didn't need to know.

I have been all of these things at some point in the last 15 years.

Sending out love to all my brothers. Hang in there, things will get better. Even if they get waaaaaaay worse beforehand, which usually happens when you expect it the least.

Just try to stay strong, keep on going and don't you dare go hollow.

Im all these things except the therapy one

Dude here. The therapy one can really help, especially when you find the therapist who's right for you. It doesn't fix everything of course but it can set you down a road where your situation starts improving. It took me a long long time to try it but I'm so glad I've got one now.
You should do the therapy one. It is kind of fun once you realize that you can basically just say whatever the hell you want and won't be judged or interact with the person socially. You also can be assured that it is kept secret (with a few serious exceptions) by law.
It is kind of freeing to just open up about the hardest things to talk about with anyone else.
I'm in a pretty good place mentally, but I still check in with my psych every couple months. Usually just to vent about stuff that I do not want to discuss with people I interact with socially.
Go for it. Not gonna lie to you. It's scary and it's hard but, even if you don't deal with all the shit, just having someone to talk to who can give actually useful advice helps a lot.

2 out of 6 ain't bad

I daily sent my partner a message like that. He has a 5/6 bleu hart score btw.

Yay, thank you!

Appreciating some male positivity

This has literally been my entire life since before 2nd grade. Yay for medication and therapy.

Thank you. 👍

??? Mental Health Awareness Month is May. It's super easy to remember because of the alliteration.

did you misread the hashtag
- Well, no. I make sure to always emphasize men's mental health, and I especially love talking about it in the context of Klingons. But... I can't make every month mental health awareness month.
Maybe this is about general health, like prostate cancer, phimosis, etc.
- There should absolutely be prostate cancer awareness!

🫂

💙💙💙

Those are symbols of the AfD, you're cancelled
(Actually tho)

6/6. Nice knowing there's a men's day, no a whole month lol.

It is a whole month. The bottom of the image says month. It's celebrated June/this month.

Have you been banned from blahaj lemmy yet?

- mods there have historically gone overboard with bans. One person said "dude is a gender neutral word" in a completely different instance and blahaj mods banned them cuz "transphobic" lmfao
  Check out the whole track record on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
  they even had to block this topic because of how frequent it is.
  So it's not out of the question they see this and think one is appropriating pride month
Haven't checked it yet and tbh don't even want to cuz if you would've seen the kind of comments on the same thing i posted on lemmyshitpost(i know, i'm still new to lemmy) even you wouldn't dare to post stuff like that again
And god the number of people that were just offended just by my username🤦