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I find the """man up""" school of thought generally works for me when faced w a tough situation but 97% of the time it's presented as an obnoxious show of bravado. What are better ways to phrase this?

like, if i'm feeling bad but force myself to do something, i usually feel better. how to maintain the usefulness of this advice without presenting it as 'fuck your feelings', in that usual arrogant right wing sort of way

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  • "I have to get over this some time, why not now?"

    ~ Louis Wu, from Ringworld, written by Larry Niven.

    "Because I'm not ready" is also a valid answer, but it gets your brain moving towards the goal I find.

  • The issue is the "man" up aspect. There are ABSOLUTELY times when you have to... Well, man up, nut up... Whatever. That's a fact of life - some situations require you to stop being a child, and instead face it like an adult would.

    We run into issues with it being 'man' or 'nut' - these are gender-loaded terms, which imply that females aren't able to do the same thing. Do I think anyone actually means that when they say one of those things? No. Do I think a lot of reactions to them are overblown? Yes. We should still be cognizant of what the language we choose to use may say subtextually though.

    There's another parallel issue to the advice to man up. That's that a lot of times, the people who get that advice HAVE BEEN manning up, and the advice giver is seeing them in a moment where they've been worn down and just need a quick whinge fest before going back to manning it up. Situations like that imply that having any emotions other than "git er dun" is a bad thing and you should just STFU and work.

    As far as giving others advice goes, generally speaking unless they ask you for advice, don't. If someone's just coming to you with some venting about a thing and you tell them whatever version of "man up" you want, even if it's applicable, it comes across as dismissive. The person may not want advice, they may just want to unload a bit. If you can't do that without offering advice, then it's best to state that.

  • I think instead "be nice to the future you", in the end do we do most things for our future self. It may be hard today but you will be happy you did it tomorrow.

  • I think part of being a man is not caring what other men define your manliness as.

    If you have an idea that "manning up" involves some change in machismo, I think that might be a little toxic. But, if in not caring that your behavior made other men think about, caused friction, and was then interpreted as machismo, that's better in my book.

    If you like the sense of machismo and that phrase helps you as an imaginative aid, then why not. But I think it can be more constructive if you can interpret manliness independent from machismo

  • Man up is a masculinization of a notion that equates to common adulting. It's about taking responsibility, which women are obligated to do as much as men in 21st century society.

    A related term is to pony up meaning to pay a bill which has a lot of intersection (as many responsibilities are financial, especially those associated with manning up) so pony up could be repurposed.

153 comments