> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems.
(emphasis is mine)
I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.
> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems.
(emphasis is mine)
I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.
I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...
This is a valid take. But we need to apply it evenly on the entire society.
If we fill up the public discourse with the issues and wants of women and make the issues and wants of men a private matter this will skew the public understanding of the stance of women and men - we see this hardcore these days with boys and men being villainized, made invisible and made suspicious only due to their gender.
From here we have two ways forward: Either make sure that mens issues gain a proportionate part of the public discourse or argue that all issues are a private matter.
Not the commenter, and I 'm not a fan of how normal it has become to do one's dirty laundry in public. But I find it lamentable that the most popular takeaway from the internet's mainstreaming of feminist thought is that men’s issues are necessarily in competition with women's issues for representation.
It's ridiculous since women's issues are only being better represented recently while men have long dominated politics, religion, and pop culture. But more importantly, the social pressures giving men and boys mental health issues come from the very same patriarchal gender roles that women's rights movements are rebelling against. This nuance had been drowned out by all the noise in internet "discourse".
> It's ridiculous since women's issues are only being better represented recently while men have long dominated politics
This statement has more than one issue:
1. First and foremost, it is simply a rewrite of the history. There is a difference between descriptive and substantive representation. And it is true that men have been descriptively better represented. But the thoughtless implication that this leads to better substantive representation is simply wrong.
2. It justifies the idea of "reparations" for previous generations misdoing. Not only does this induce a high level if dissent, it is simply immoral. Even if we would accept reparations, it is still only justified by the rewrite of the history.
I appreciate the call for nuance, but I think the historical framing here deserves scrutiny.
You're right that men have dominated politicly, but it's worth distinguishing between who held power (descriptive representation) and whose interests were served (substantive representation). Most men throughout history had no political power - they were subjects of monarchies, excluded by property requirements, or conscripted into wars they didn't choose. The men making decisions were a tiny elite.
On "women's issues only recently being better represented" -this depends heavily on what we're measuring. If we look at something like life expectancy as a rough proxy for overall life quality (capturing war mortality, occupational deaths, access to resources, healthcare), historical data suggests men and women faced roughly equal burdens pre-industrialization, just distributed differently. Women faced maternal mortality and legal subordination; men faced conscription, dangerous labor, and social expendability. The female longevity advantage only emerges clearly in the modern era.
The point isn't to claim men had it worse - it's that "men have long dominated" obscures that most men were themselves dominated, and bore unique, severe costs within the same system.
I agree completely that rigid gender roles harm everyone. But framing current attention to men's issues as acceptable only because "patriarchal roles harm men too" still treats men's suffering as derivative of women's concerns, requiring feminist justification. Can't men's rising suicide rates, educational struggles, and social isolation warrant direct concern on their own terms?
The discourse does need less competition. But that requires actually taking men's issues seriously, not just when they can be reframed as collateral damage from patriarchy.
We're still working a lot of this out because it's actually a relatively new thing culturally - my grandfathers generation would never have talked about mental health at all - but what is pretty clear is that most people do not talk enough about this, and do not deal with mental health very well.
That does not mean we should all be talking to everybody about it all the time. I take stuff into a therapy session I'm not going to discuss anywhere else, because if I started talking about it at work, or even close relationships, I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
But at the same time, we do need to talk to people about it. And there are some toxic barriers we could do with addressing.
Men are not "meant" to cry or show vulnerability in almost all contexts in almost all cultures. That's sad, because while we don't all want men breaking down in tears when their coffee order isn't quite right, we also know it's healthy for men to acknowledge and process difficult feelings like grief and rejection.
While most people realise it's not OK to tell a woman she'd look prettier if she smiled more, few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident. That causes problems I think we can all call out and name in modern dating culture.
According to some stats I just pulled up for the UK, surveys suggest that more than 75% of men report as having had mental health issues, but only 60% have ever spoken to another human being about it at all, with 40% of men stating it would have to be so bad that they are considering self-harm or suicide to talk to anyone, ever. This is horrible.
So, sure, perhaps we don't need to talk about Freudian analysis down the pub, and nobody at work wants to hear about you reconciling feelings about how you were treated as a child by members of your family, but please:
Most men need to talk to somebody about their mental health. And for many problems, that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
If you're reading this, and think that might be you, please, for your own sake, go talk to a professional.
You might not gel with the first therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist or psychologist you speak to. That's OK, they won't mind if you say you want to try a few different people. You can find people who will help in your town, on video calls, on apps, all over. Just speak to someone.
This is a brilliant comment.
I'd like to elaborate on something you touch on briefly:
> I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
> that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
I think there's an important line to walk here. I think it's important everyone (men and women) are able to talk about their feelings and experiences with their friends - but I don't think the goal needs to be "helping work it out". Just sharing and listening can be liberating, can help ease the road to talking to a professional, and can help others see that others struggle too.
There is a tendency in conversations of any sort to be always searching for a "solution" or an "answer", instead of just listening.
(There's a lot of nuance here in choosing when to share, etc, but I just wanted to talk a bit about it)
There was certainly quite a bit of deep talk about "integrity" and "character" in our grandfathers' generation, that was ultimately relating to issues we would now comprise under so-called 'mental health'. It's not clear to me that this medicalized framing ("...health") is necessarily and consistently better than a more traditional one focused on developing a well-adjusted character.
Integrity and character are about values and how you plan to behave and expect to have others behave towards you. They are not the same as your ability to process emotions that emerge as a result of that behaviour.
Having values is important. Integrity, humility, all of that, absolutely useful.
They are not in themselves sufficient to assure you of good mental health.
We care about the smooth processing of emotions, among other reasons, because when impeded it generally affects how we're going to plan and behave; especially when under some sort of stress. This is not something new to our generation; philosophers have had a clear undestanding of this for millennia, in both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions.
We care about how we plan and behave, because we feel emotions about things that happen. Like you say, nothing new.
Some other old-fashioned-y terms in this context: "strength" and "fortitude".
Men generally process negative emotions in private so others don't worry about them. This has led to the incorrect common viewpoint that men don't process these emotions at all, and attempts to make men process them like women do.
"few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident"
Is that really a thing?
I mean sure there might people doing this, but it is obvious that telling someone they have too little self esteem, that this is a personal and can very well be perceived as an attack (especially by someone with low self esteem).
(Also I think the distinction is a bit weird in general. Isn't confidence sexy in women, too?)
"Trauma" ultimately just means "severe injury" or something like that, doesn't it?
We take it for granted that virtually no one will make it through life without ever sustaining a serious or enduring physical injury. Why is it so implausible to say that practically everyone can expect to eventually have to deal with at least one significant mental injury, too?
I think the reason why mental health is more public these days is because it wasn't talked about and addressed.
To extend you physical injury analogy: yes, people get physically injured. People break legs, and because of the focus and progress on physical injuries, they wear a cast for a few weeks, and then - for all practical intents and purposes - the injury never happened.
Because the same attention wasn't applied to mental health, I think people realised they were surrounded by the equivalent of people dragging themselves around on the ground because of a broken leg a decade ago that never got fixed. Why would anyone do that? Either because they don't know about the treatment, or because they live in an environment where the idea of getting treatment is seen as a bad or weak or shameful thing.
> Why is it so implausible to say that practically everyone can expect to eventually have to deal with at least one significant mental injury, too?
Just like we expect to walk down the street and see the occasional person with a plaster or bandage to handle a physical injury, if you accept we all have mental injuries, why do you expect to see them handled any more privately than physical ones?
Because historically we haven't handled mental injuries as well as the physical ones. I don't completely disagree with your original points. I think depth, nuance, and accuracy of the conversation matters most of all. There is plenty of superficial, influencer-level chatter in both realms.
The word trauma is weighty but has a very broad application. I think most people learn about it in the context of e.g. post-traumatic stress disorder (formerly known as battle fatigue, formerly known as shellshock) and associate it with veterans coming back from the war, but it basically applies to anything that have a lasting effect on people. Could be something like parents being emotionally unavailable, childhood bullying, etc.
I'd say that significant mental injury is _far_ more likely than physical.
No, not at all, the word trauma is predominately used today as the name for a sort of "psychic damage", like that which sometimes occurs when one is severely injured but which can also occur in many other circumstances, often purely social or emotional.
Your view is representing a traditionally more masculine point of view.
A more feminine point of view is that we should shield against experiences that lead to a trauma.
What we want as a society is a democratic process, and it is heavily up for negotiation these years. It is completely fine.
Personally, my core belief is that whatever we ultimately decide on, it counts for all equivalent regardless of their gender.
> A more feminine point of view is that we should shield against experiences that lead to a trauma.
I think that's true both for physical and psychological trauma! We should generally avoid preventable injuries and try to live and work with safety in mind.
All I meant is that the phrase "[almost] everyone has experienced trauma" doesn't seem that radical or extreme to me. It seems like common sense. (And it's not the same thing as "everyone is falling apart" or something like that.)
If obsessing about such injuries was sufficient to heal them, they would all be long solved.
> Too much psychology talk in every day life
I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
In all fairness, the internet is for many people a near 100% part of their life.
Especially for people working remotely without a family.
Well, my nonprofessional opinion about those is, that no amount of therapy can help here, when their problem is isolation and the cure living close to people they like.
(But therapy might help them getting there again. True eremits by heart are rare)
HN is like 70% of my life.
I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(
I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
Have you tried tobacco, indoor firearms and cocaine?
Oh … never mind.
I have always worked remote and been hermitting recently on a difficult set of (work) challenges.
I don’t know what I would do without HN.
I read a lot of science, math and tech news, but am only aware of one place where the discourse around topics that interest me has the quality of HN, which is HN.
> Have you tried tobacco, indoor firearms and cocaine?
I don't do alcohol, drugs, et cetera, because I saw other people who did, and found them disgusting. I don't want to be like that. Though if I could easily get my hands on a weapon, I would have probably shot myself already.
> I read a lot of science, math and tech news, but am only aware of one place where the discourse around topics that interest me has the quality of HN, which is HN.
There is also lobste.rs
I feel that. I wish the same.
It definitely does feel like every American I know "has a therapist", sometimes.
I used to think that therapists were ridiculous. But after having one for six or seven years now, I realize that it’s literally just someone you pay to help you be the happiest and best version of yourself. Maybe everyone doesn’t need that, but I don’t think anyone is inherently always the best version of themselves. What’s the point of not trying to be a little better?
I feel like the world would be a much better place if literally everyone did have a therapist. Having a neutral, trained professional you talk you for 45 minutes twice a month about things that are tough in your life is not something that should alarm people, but being vehemently against it honestly kind of is...
The main issue is that therapy is expensive, and it's very middle-class to have the money to afford one long-term like that. Working class people have had to suck it up, or (preferably) have a good support network themselves.
While I am inclined to agree that most people would benefit from having a professional to talk to, it'd need to be economically viable as well.
But we're seeing this happening in real time; on the one side there's lower cost online councelling available (but whether that's actually certified professionals is debatable), and on the other ChatGPT became the biggest and most popular therapist almost overnight. But again, not sure if it has the necessary certifications, I suppose it's believable enough. I also want to believe OpenAI and all the other AI suppliers have hired professionals to direct the "chatbot as therapist" AI persona, especially now that the lawsuits for people losing their sanity or life after talking to AI are gaining traction.
I have been in therapy on and off through most of my life. There are parts of the process and the profession that are helpful. There are also parts that are paternalistic bordering on abusive. “Literally just someone you pay to the be happiest…” is a small part of the picture. I take issue with this view of therapy, and the idea that it is somehow a universal force for good that will benefit everyone.
I have met some pretty unhinged therapists - both as a client and socially. I won’t even go into the history of psychiatry and clinical care.
One of the questions I like to pose is, what are we doing as a society by sending so many people to therapy? What do these practices do at a large scale? And to all those who decry things like gun violence: if you think our current mental health system would somehow be able to address the larger ills of society if only they had more funding, I have some serious questions about your view of its overarching effectiveness, and the specific effects of these practices.
The digestion juices of individualistic society?
How is it different to having a personal trainer for your physical fitness?
In theory, at one point people will be done with therapy. I think a better analogy is a physical therapist; you go to one because of an injury.
A personal trainer is for boosting your physical health / performance. For mental health, you'd get a coach, training, or read one of many self-help books, not a therapist.
There are multiple kinds of psychological counseling. Some "supportive therapy" really is more of an ongoing thing, like having a personal trainer. Some kinds of psychological therapy always aim to have a terminus, like physical therapy.
Having a personal trainer for your physical fitness is something I'd expect a very low percentage of very wealthy individuals to have access to. Therapy appears to be more prevalent.
By "personal trainer" I just mean someone that you pay for a training session 1-3x per week. It's a comparable expense to therapy (depending on qualifications etc...).
I mean, that’s what they meant too. They’re expensive! Kinda a stereotypical rich thing to have, more so than therapy. One distinction that you might be thinking of without saying between individual sessions and group workouts which are cheaper.
Personal training sessions with experienced staff at my David Lloyds in London are around £50-60 for 45 minutes. That's entry-level cost for therapy, which can easily go north of £100 per hour around here.
I reckon the reason people use therapy is not because it's cheaper, but because they're less confident about how to do "mental exercise" than they are physical exercise.
What do you mean by “has a therapist”? Do they just mention it in passing, or do they bring up takeaways from their sessions in everyday conversation? If it’s the latter, I’m not sure that’s really about mental-health openness. It feels more like a broader social habit, the need to present yourself as someone who’s constantly working on every aspect of your life. That’s a different modern-society quirk altogether.
More the former.
I recall when I first visited the USA and walked into an American bookshop...
... the selves of 'self-help' books I found utterly bizarre. It was very much an eye-opener into the differences of our cultures.
"Self-help" is more like a modern folk religion than anything to do with actual psychology.
Probably not what the parent is referring to, but there is 'therapy speak' and similar phenomena where a pop-sci bowdlerisation of professional practices or scientific theories become absorbed into the culture and change the way we express ourselves.
There is pathologisation which can be whimsical e.g. tidying/organising becomes OCD, studying becomes autistic or exaggerative e.g. sadness becoming depression, a bad experience becoming trauma or in order condemn e.g a political policy becomes sociopathic.
There is the way 'therapy speak' spills over into daily life e.g. your use of the work-kitchen must respect boundaries, leaving the milk out is triggering, the biscuits are my self-care etc.
There is also 'neuroscience speak' where people express their emotions in terms of neurotransmitters e.g. motivation and stimulation becomes 'dopamine', happiness and love become 'serotonin', stress becomes 'cortisol' etc.
It's just the way language and culture works and it now pulls more from science than myth and religion. New language might just be replacing older bowdlerisations e.g. hysteria. In the 'therapy-speak' cases, it's interesting how it often replaces more moralistic language and assertions about values that used be described in terms of manners, civility, respectability etc.
At work, like all the time? Empowerment, values, growth mindset, psychological safety, mindfulness, emotional intelligence...
Half of these aren't people talking about mental health problems, but preconditions for mental health. That's your problem?
Seems like we both agree that psychological language can be common in everyday offline life, such as at work for a large company. I don't have a problem with it, not sure where you got that from.
Agree. Some people have legitimate issues. Many just grab at the easy excuse for not achieving anything. “Suck it up and do the work” is still good advice for them.
Ah yes, the old "out of sight, out of mind"-solution. Only it never solves anything.
I deeply dislike the inherent ideology of psychology. Liberalism, the idea of a health individual does not pay any idea to the shared whole, suffering which may be "noble" for the common good and rights and privileges awarded for suffering in such. I find such a ideologically loaded construct and the inherent biases (idealizations and an inability to talk about the cultural framework and tradeoffs) quite unhelpful for understanding, helping and as a basis for societal meta-communications.
There is not an inherent ideology to psychology, and I'm not sure what you mean by statements such as "the idea of a health individual does not pay any idea to the shared whole" (not even judging; I actually don't know what you mean).
Why?
99% of public human interaction is battles for dominance (ego, status, politics...). Which is gross. When psychology enters the conversation it gets even grosser.
That's right.
I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech".
Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.
In the instance of your simulator, I think this is moreso due to the popular idea that people in tech tend to be autistic and the cultural desire to be part of the ingroup, rather than a snub at autistic people/men.
> I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently.
Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?
Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or treatment or to even acknowledge, instead of outright deny, any mental health challenges, for fear of anything from seeming weak to being ostracized.
From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos?
I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear.
As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries.
Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists.
Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways.
or
Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
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I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.
It’s still definitely a big deal. Note that the CIA and the NSA routinely declare ex-employees that whistleblow or leak as “mentally ill.”
It depends on the company. I worked for fairly “stolid” companies, for most of my career, and I suspect that they would treat mentally-ill people badly.
Mental illness is something that, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with. I have severe mental illness in my family (I deal with it every day), and I spend a significant part of my life, interacting with folks at various stages of recovery from it.
I have been seeing therapists for much of my life. When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with autism, but was never told, so I spent decades, trying to “fix” myself, before finding out. Once I found out that I was “on the spectrum,” I realized that it can’t be “fixed”; only mitigated, and things started improving quickly, at that point.
That said, I think “mentally-ill” means “diagnosed and professionally-treated,” to most folks. It’s my opinion, that there’s a lot of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness out there. Just looking at the threads of interaction, on any Internet community, makes that clear. One “tell,” that I have encountered, is when someone has extremely strong opinions on psychiatry. It’s not something most folks even think about, so it’s unusual, when it’s a big deal to someone.
Mental illness also tends to get worse, as we get older, if untreated. An “eccentric” young man, may become an old hermit, flying around, keeping his piss in canopic jars.
Much of what we call “mental illness,” is actually self-developed coping mechanisms, in response to trauma, or brain-chemistry imbalance. That’s why getting medication doesn’t just “fix” us. We need to seek help in defusing the habits and rituals that were developed to help deal with the problem.
I think the problem with "mental illness" is that I think in many cases it's the environment that is not suitable. In modern times we've created this environment that just doesn't fit all archetypes of people and those who it doesn't fit well with, we declare "mentally ill". There are obviously actual serious issues, but I believe a lot of it has to do with environment. It's not a clear illness like diabetes, etc. For instance I couldn't handle going to school, people can label it ADHD or Autism, but does it make sense in the first place to force me to study specific things that I don't care about as opposed to playing into my interests and strengths. I'm glad I'm grown up now, and can decide to learn what I'm actually interested in and do it 100x more effective per unit of time, as opposed to in school.
I agree with this.
One of the issues I face, with my family member, is that they can’t handle stress, well.
I have found that we only advance, when we are outside our “comfort zone.” As long as everything is copacetic, there’s no need to improve.
But a “comfort zone” is a “fuzzy” quality. Too far out, is “trauma.” Different folks handle discomfort and trauma, in a variety of ways. I do think our families and support systems, can make a huge difference.
For myself, being “on the spectrum” has really been an asset, in many ways. I have always learned technology quickly, but I’m a high school dropout with a GED, and almost all my education has been self-directed. Most of my life has been spent “outside my comfort zone.”
Yeah, that's complicated. I guess from my own experience related to stress and going out of comfort zone what I can speak to is that I have trouble going out of comfort zone when I'm doing something I'm not interested in and when I feel like I have to pretend that I'm someone I'm not. E.g. normal social situations where I have to pretend that I have favourite food, favourite place to go, or I even know places. I zone out on 90%+ topics, and I can't understand why on earth people are talking about these things.
But if I'm passionate about something, I will be excited to present to a large audience, to go through things that you might consider going out of comfort zone, be competitive etc.
Now in school I had so many situations where I had to "be out of comfort zone" in things I wasn't interested in. Social situations I didn't enjoy. I left things to last minute, then stressed, lost confidence, massively. Eventually dropped out of high school.
Luckily managed to get a successful career going where I've been passionately moving forward, and this has massively boosted my confidence too. Now I'm a successful member of society, make quite a bit, pay taxes, etc, and can build the exact life that I want and works out best for me.
Sounds like we share some things in common.
Thanks for sharing.
Yes, not sure if you entered the high school drop out immediately and I missed it or it was edit, but yes, looks very similar! Thanks for sharing too.
Sorry. I tend to "edit and review" for a little while, on my lonform posts. My bad.
Yeah, I have a number of coworkers that have shared with me that they are on psychiatric medications, and have discussed mental health with. It's becoming normalized, and that's a good thing.
I think in many places there's now enough of critical mass where people are understanding enough and call out anyone who uses that information negatively towards the person.
> because I don't know that any of them did
This is telling in itself.
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>huge taboo to have your employer or your fellow co-workers know that you have been institutionalized in the past for mental health problems
Depend if you have the right trendy label that HR is in love with then you will get more and better jobs because if it.
What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.
It’s not a misuse - it’s exactly the intended meaning and it is perfectly common in mainstream usage.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable means you are indeed open to attack. But it is also a large part of emotional connection. The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails.
The very fact that you see vulnerability as “bad” is a perfect example of what that language is intended to highlight.
Is vulnerable about letting people know how you feel or your weaknesses?
What about letting people know how you feel and your weaknesses while not caring if someone judges you for it? Is that being vulnerable or not?
I would say yes. Your weaknesses, if truly shared are weaknesses which can be used against you to hurt you and thereby you are vulnerable to them. Further, even if you don't care about the judgment of others then you can still be harmed by decisions of and social coordination between people who judge you.
We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.
This leads me to a conclusion that someone can only be truly vulnerable around people that you might consider toxic?
It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least.
This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).
Not using a capacity may atrophy it but does not remove it. I haven't cherry picked with git in a very long time but I could if I wanted to. I'm not violent but physics still allows it. Toxicity is not required for people to be vulnerable.
I totally prefer the lift each other up crowd too. They exist, often in the same spaces as everyone else.
IMO, the problem comes down to a current inability to scale social knowing.
However, you seem to want to grind on an axe and I worry I might be getting in the way of that. I suggest you consider what has you activated and whether you can take away it's power to echo through and continue hurting you.
If you are currently a target of DV, reach out; there are lots of people and organizations who want to support you and have tools to do so. This may not apply to you but seemed appropriate place to remind us all.
> However, you seem to want to grind on an axe and I worry I might be getting in the way of that. I suggest you consider what has you activated and whether you can take away it's power to echo through and continue hurting you.
What do you mean by that? What axe?
It seems to me (and clearly I could be wrong) that you really want to express certain sentiments. Another way to say it is that you seem to be engaging in motivated arguing. Said with the more standard idiom, that you have "an axe to grind".
I am honestly just curious what people think, it is an interesting topic. I have heard off and on throughout my life this idea about being vulnerable. I was never fully certain what people meant by that. Even in this thread it seems people think of it differently, but no one really goes into details to clarify.
E.g. what are some concrete examples of what would make a man be vulnerable?
> The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails.
I’m reminded of the concept of siege mentality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_mentality
> In sociology, siege mentality is a shared feeling of victimization and defensiveness—a term derived from the actual experience of military defences of real sieges. It is a collective state of mind in which a group of people believe themselves constantly attacked, oppressed, or isolated in the face of the negative intentions of the rest of the world. Although a group phenomenon, the term describes both the emotions and thoughts of the group as a whole, and as individuals. The result is a state of being overly fearful of surrounding peoples, and an intractably defensive attitude.
> Among the consequences of a siege mentality are black and white thinking, social conformity, and lack of trust, but also a preparedness for the worst and a strong sense of social cohesion.
If you are under attack, vulnerability is bad.
Historic ‘stoic male’ personas existed for a reason. Because in many situations, it works. Despite the complaining.
And being less ‘emotionally connected’ is valuable when people use that connection to exploit or hurt you. A very common experience for many men.
That people (especially women) then complain you won’t open up to them is a riot in those situations because it’s like someone complaining you keep putting on your bullet proof vest - while they keep shooting at you.
Historic male mental health issues also resulted. But notably, folks depending on the stoic persona for their own wellbeing would typically throw you under the bus for those issues too.
“How dare you get mad! You’re a dangerous threat!” says the person constantly harassing the person, or the boss putting you in worse and worse work conditions while pretending they are doing you a favor, etc.
They do that, of course, because mad people actually fight back. But if you need the job or are dependent on the relationship…
As many men have experienced, the only way to ‘win’ is shut off caring about what people say on that front - among other emotions.
> Historic ‘stoic male’ personas existed for a reason.
What are you talking about here. "Historic male persona" differs between periods and places, but anger, friendships and happiness are basically always parts of it.
Odysseus "weeps" and "cries". The whole romantic era was about overly emotional, passionate and sensitive guys.
Homer predates the stoics by several centuries, so that makes sense. Though I do think Homer does make a solid case of traditional male ideals being fairly emotional, and this is something that persists to modern day.
Achilles in particular spends half the Iliad sulking in his tent, and the other half making shish kebabs out of the Trojan army on a tireless revenge-rampage where he's so goddamn angry he picks a fight with a river.
These types of characters are still written today, John Wick is something of a superficial parallel.
Though it could be argued that Achilles lengthy sulking is diva behavior, few would argue Captain Kirk is effeminate because he's more emotionally driven than Spock, who in many ways turns the stoic ideals up to 11. Likely because despite occasionally chewing the scenery with emotional moments, he is still ultimately in control.
(It's also worth noting that neither Achilles or Odysseus were likely intended as ideals, but rather tragic extremes, and Homer's works largely deal with the consequences of their personalities; the pride and rage of Achilles like we just discussed, the pathological distrust and constant scheming of Odysseus protracting his journey and being the true source of many of his countless obstacles)
Notice how I never said what you are disagreeing with, and if you read what I said, your question is answered?
I had no question. You also do not know what historical stoicism as a philosophy and behavior was, but I assumed actual historical stoicism was not the point.
My point was, you made up "historic stoic persona" based on conservative ideology. Not as something that actually characterized historical manhood.
Haha, Marcus Aurelis is very disappointed.
Tell me what I made up, eh?
The point of stoicism is to make your own decisions and be able to chart your own life by following principles you believe are just - in large part by avoiding being controlled by emotional reactivity.
Not to cut out emotions all together, but to not be driven by them. Especially when someone is trying to induce them in you.
This often comes across as ‘stone faced in the face of extreme emotion’ - but doesn’t mean the person isn’t feeling them. Rather that they are not letting themselves be driven by or controlled by them in the moment, if they do not serve a useful purpose for them.
> (especially women)
It's always about that isn't it? Not getting the reaction you want, vilifying your interlocutor, then run crying with fingers in your ears screaming "lalala I didn't want it anyway" and declaring yourself a stoic is really indicative of the type of people who in the present day call themselves stoics.
This whole thread is just a long-winded version of redpill discourse, people who can see past minor adolescent romantic mishaps.
How pathetic is it to still model your whole life after women while pretending to be an isle of self-reliance? Men really are lost.
I didn't see any vilification of women. Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability. It's how they bond with other women, who make up the bulk of their friends. Men's experiences with other men, the bulk of their friends, often make them wary of being emotionally vulnerable. Hence, naturally, a disconnect when a man and a woman are establishing a relationship.
Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability, but typically not from the males in their lives. There is a significant disconnect between average women and genuine male emotions, and males are expected to show emotional resilience and self-control first and foremost precisely to bridge that gap and then allow the 'sharing' to occur unimpeded, though still in a somewhat controlled way.
Are men expected to do so? Male anger is more tolerated then female anger. Also, if you look at men who are popular or get far, they are super emotional - Trump, Musk, Tate heck even Vance and Hengensberg.
Emotions driven males are cultural and political leaders literally now.
It's possible you are hanging around with the wrong women.
OP blamed women for supposedly complaining that men dont open up. Men simultaneously have natural friendships with other men, but it is women fault men do not open up.
Por op, women are at wrong when they want men to talk (which is outrageous ask), but also cause of men not talking. Which includes men not talking to other men, which is also fault of women.
Never did I say such a thing at all.
I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse.
There's a stoic quote I love:
> our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them
- Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
I guess the question is -> why do we need that guard in the first place?
Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
> Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
The things that make you vulnerable change depending on what year and situation you're in. I can very much get behind the idea that you should consider whether your legacy sense of what makes you vulnerable is relevant to your current circumstances. I'm not so much behind the "freely dispense the rope people will use to hang you" version.
There's a lot of abstraction in this thread, but I would like to hear specifics.
What are the exact vulnerabilities that we are talking about?
From my side I guess I can say I frequently feel like impostor type of things or that I'm not doing enough. I won't mention that at work, but I definitely share those feelings to my partner.
I would hate not being able to share something like that to my partner for instance.
I wonder what others are talking about?
When I was at school (and in the 20th century generally) admitting to anything outside traditional masculinity / heterosexuality made you vulnerable to physical / verbal attack. Which remains the case for a lot of people in the 21st century. If they want to be loud and proud then good for them, but I can understand it if they prefer to keep it quiet. Whereas, at least around me, now, I think you can come out as gay without too much concern for your physical safety.
Conversely, at my school you could be as overtly homophobic as you wanted with no consequences, whereas now you should probably be a lot more cautious if you harbour homophobic sentiments.
Talking about partners in particular, I've had partners I felt fairly safe sharing anything (most things anyway) with, and I've also had partners who would mine our conversations for any kind of viable ammunition. Which led to me being a bit more careful what I said. We can perhaps agree the first kind of relationship is better.
Yeah, I think the 2nd type of relationship is much worse than no relationship, I'd say the problem there wouldn't be with someone being vulnerable, it's the problem with the relationship...
Yeah, during school it's difficult since you are forced together with potentially toxic people. As an adult you can choose at least in personal life and to an extent workplace, although sometimes workplace can also be difficult to get right.
I'd 100% rather be alone than around people who might judge or use in someway against me anything about me. It would feel internally disgusting for me to think that someone might be trying to get at my expense and that I'm not around people who are there to try and build each other. What a waste of time.
The thing is, what you want is specifically a relationship where you are not vulnerable. If you're not worried about the consequences of the things you say, there's no actual vulnerability. You're just adapting to a safe situation. In which case good for you and you partner.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to do though, is to build myself such a life that if my internal principles are good, I shouldn't have to worry in most cases about what I'm saying since I want to believe in my principles. I want my interactions with people to be win-win, and I want to surround myself with people who want that too. If someone displays lose-win behavior, I should always naturally have the "moral" upper-hand assuming other people around me are reasonable. And if none of the people around me are reasonable, I should go and find the reasonable people.
People seem to be romanticizing the term "vulnerable" though. I think it would be important to go deeper into this. What does "vulnerability" exactly mean. I have had depression, anxiety diagnosed in the past and addictions and other similar issues, are these vulnerabilities because they may interfere with me acting optimally or are they vulnerabilities because they provide someone a tool to try and get at me if they so wanted because they think there's stigma around those labels to influence others to think worse of me?
> Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
Yes to both.
Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
You really don't need to reach that far. As a man if you are too often vulnerable, too much, for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time you will loose the respect of your partner and soon after there love.
I guess that would depend on the partner? And what do you mean by vulnerability in that context that would make her lose respect?
And what do you mean by wrong times or reasons?
Most people seek emotional support, resilience and trustworthiness from their partner, and being excessively "vulnerable" can definitely hinder you from playing that role effectively. This is what can sometimes be experienced as a loss of respect. What you really want is to show a mere modicum of emotional vulnerability that your partner can then have some opportunity to empathize with, and not view you as overly brittle. But not more than that.
What could be examples of excessive vulnerability?
Why would I seek emotional support from someone so disconnected from their emotions they can't show more than a "modicum" of vulnerability?
How could I trust someone's resilience when they don't show they've been through things that built that resilience, and demonstrate it?
How can I trust someone who so closely monitors how much and what sort of emotions to show to me?
Why are you assuming that someone who sensibly refrains from overly impulsive behavior wrt. showing their emotions (this is what "self-monitoring" ultimately means: we all do it in all sorts of social contexts, and it's a normal part of being a healthy, well-adjusted person) must necessarily be "disconnecting" from them altogether and lacking in emotional resilience?
If you manage to "self-monitor" all the time, and never show more than a modicum of vulnerability, that seems very disconnected to me.
Perhaps 'disconnected' is the wrong word, but what I mean is that emotionally healthy people feel their emotions and express them, not just hold them at arm's length and pick and choose which to feel and express.
Not everyone's partner is that shallow.
Exceptions don't invalidate the rule. Everybody thinks there partner isn't right until they are.
Your experiences don't validate the rule, either.
Right I forgot we are on HN where we even need a scientific paper on "do women like weak vulnerable or strong confident men?" because nobody ever goes outside.
I bet that people who advocate for showing "vulnerability" are modeling this as a facet of strong confidence, and not opposed to it. But the thing is, if you really have reached the level of effortless confidence where that's a realistic prospect, you won't need that advice! You'll just be able to intuitively calibrate how much "vulnerability" to allow others, as a direct outcome of that strong emotional stability. Most people would probably be better off being told to be a little bit more guarded about their emotions.
Was I just described not only as "effortlessly confident" but also "emotionally stable"?
That's new. My crippling depressing and social anxiety will be glad to hear it!
I think you're working too hard to be pithy and are therefore forgetting to actually communicate.
What are some things that make a man seem vulnerable?
Not really, it's just that most of us are adults who have experiences with healthy adult relationships. "Is my partner going to leave me if I display emotional vulnerability" is not really a concern in healthy, adult relationships.
Differences between men and women are down to the situation.
Sometimes the long situation. When a situation has lasted a long time, it sticks, and turns into culture, gender roles.
When a situation has lasted a really long time, it sticks hard, and becomes biology.
But most of the time, it's neither culture or biology which decides what men and women do. It's the immediate situation.
And even if you think it's culture, even if you think it's biology, if you don't like how men are (or how women are) you have to start with changing the immediate situation. The others will follow - eventually.
An actual adult realizes the real world differences between "should not" and "will not".
I'm not sure what this is trying to say? Can you elaborate please?
One is ‘I wish’. The other is ‘won’t happen’.
divorced dad take
Crazy cat lady take. See I can make useless remarks too.
your whole text above is useless for everyone but you, but I understand you can't contain how you feel about woman
I think some concrete examples would be great. I think we need some examples of vulnerability too. Is vulnerability just about showing your actual emotional state? E.g. if you are depressed, anxious or nervous?
My take is you've got the right reasoning but the wrong conclusion, I agree with your contextless definition of vulnerability and with the use of it in this context, vulnerability makes people vulnerable, by definition.
From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, or trying to detect radiation with a Geiger counter behind 20 meters of lead, for some tools to work properly they're required to be in a position where they're 'vulnerable', like eyes.
I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. Which in my opinion is worse than nothing as at least when you're not faking something it's easier to agree that you haven't really tried it.
> I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance.
You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imaginary requirements for affection are not what's sad here.
> You only think it's performative because you think people are signalling
You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference.
I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham.
I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not"
They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture.
It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.
I think you are projecting the sense of the word from computer security onto people. But "vulnerability" always has that second sense in common speech, as in "showing vulnerability". If a person is actually open to being harmed in some way we use the phrasing "they are vulnerable to ...", which has quite a different meaning.
CVEs basically.