In case you were unaware, yesterday was International Men’s Day.
If you use Google, you would not have known this because they didn’t have a doodle for it the way they did for International Women’s Day.
The powers that be that posted on Twitter decided that the most important thing about International Men’s Day was to elevate men being allies.
Happy #InternationalMensDay to all the male allies around the world who support women, defy gender roles, fight gender-based violence & stand up for equality. @UN_Women invites everyone, everywhere, to support #GenerationEquality. https://t.co/9DkJpsxvFB pic.twitter.com/9ZrbYcMSN9
— United Nations (@UN) November 19, 2020
They support women,
fight gender-based violence,
defy gender roles,
disrupt toxic masculinity,
and stand up for equality.Happy #InternationalMensDay to all the male allies around the world!#orangetheworld #GenerationEquality pic.twitter.com/Zo0xiR1rUT
— UN Women (@UN_Women) November 19, 2020
Then there was shit like this:
Boys & young men are told to conceal their emotions as “boys don’t cry”, to “man up” when they face difficulties, to avoid affection because “no homo”
Let’s build a kinder world where the young people of tomorrow are free from harmful gender stereotypes #InternationalMensDay
— TIE (@tiecampaign) November 19, 2020
And lots of people reposted this image:
Men need to stop being lectured about how to be men by Woke scolds or actives who are not or were not raised by men.
“Men are not allowed to show emotion” or “men are only allowed to show anger” is the sort of think that is the punchline of shitty comedy, not an understanding of what men really are like.
I went through a rough patch when I was unemployed. I saw a therapist. She was not helpful.
I am a man, I am a husband and a father. My duty is to my family. What gets me out of bet in the morning is that I have people that depend on me.
What I needed was a job. I needed a job commensurate with my intelligence, skills, and qualifications. My therapist didn’t seem to understand that need that existed. Without the ability to adequate provide for my family I was nothing.
When you read about helping veterans with PTSD, one of the most important things that can be done is for male veterans is to get a productive job. It’s also recommended that they get a pet, especially a dog, someone who they can take care of.
Simply talking really doesn’t help men. Men are doers.
I agree with the principle of helping men, and addressing the issues of drug abuse, over dose deaths, and suicide in men.
According to the Woke internet, that is done by fighting the patriarchy and gender stereotypes about men.
They are less interested in what men actually need and more interested in telling men they should be less like men.
It’s no coincidence that alcoholism, drug abuse, overdosed, and suicide follow unemployment and exist in much higher rates in places where the economy is in the shitter.
Productive men, men who have families that they take care of, are much better off. The pressure of supporting a loving family rarely breaks men. Being made redundant and being unable to support a family is much more damaging.
The focus on men should be on helping them rebuild their place in society as a respected breadwinner, not talking it out with a government paid-for therapist.
These people don’t want to help men as men, they want to make men into not men.
If you don’t understand what men really are, and just assume they are the stereotype of a bad sitcom or a women’s studies professor’s lecture, you are not helping and you need to shut the fuck up.
Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a twelve volume work outlining his own personal philosophy (the original Greek title loosely translates as “note to self”) that has become the cornerstone of the entire Stoicism philosophy. Aurelius writes about three main themes:
• It is perfectly fine to show emotion, but you must not allow your emotions to overrule your rational thoughts;
• The dignity and nobility of doing a day’s work;
• Finding one’s place in the universe and sees that everything came from nature, and so everything shall return to it in due time.
I’ve been saying for years that all of Western Civilization would be better off if we made every university freshman sit through a PHIL 101 survey on Stoicism than the currently required Gender Studies class.
The VERY SHORT version (144 pages) ordered… I am due a book like that
Well, bear in mind that the “twelve volumes” were just different handwritten diaries he amassed over his long life; So the 144 page version is probably a complete collection… Aurelius wasn’t writing in Proust length prose.
I have no doubts that you’ll enjoy it though. Aurelius changed my life for the better.
Got it! Read it…a long time ago. Need to break it out and read it again…
Precisely.
How many times have we posted things on this site that we admit are so beautiful they bring us to tears.
Reading classical epics, the male heroes always showed emotion.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the most fleshed out emotional character in English literature.
For men, the principle was to never be governed by emotion, not to not have them. Men were expected to have emotion but control them so they could still fulfill their duties.
There is plenty of time to cry when the work is done.
Note as well that often times in the literature of the classical and antiquity eras, the start of most tragedies is when a character’s pathos overides their logos: Paris kidnapping of Helen, the rage of Ajax, Achilles in his tent, Odysseus and Circe, Lancelot and Guinevere, Hamlet and Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet, Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy…
Why, it’s almost like these old morality tales were meant as comments on morality!
“…take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them…”
“For men, the principle was to never be governed by emotion, not to not have them. Men were expected to have emotion but control them so they could still fulfill their duties.”
THIS. A generation, or two, ago, my partner and I had a run on a house fire. The firefighters handed us one kid, in cardiac arrest, and then handed us another. This on a two medic ambulance. I invited a couple of firefighters to join us, and we ran to the Big City Pediatric Specialty Hospital.
That ER crew worked on both of those kids, and lost them. Probably, they had died even before we got there, or else en route.
I orchestrated the firefighters’ chest compressions, and I ventilated those children, all the way in. Gave report, took the cot back out to the truck.
And sat on our back bumper, and bawled. Once the ER had them, I wept for the loss of their precious little lives, for the loss their family would yet discover.
Only once care had been turned over.
I invite any one of these sanctimonious pisswillies to join me in a code. AND be productive.
(spit)
Interesting. I’ve been reading St. Augustine recently (late 4th, early 5th). He’s very interested in rightly ordered desire. The ancients thought about these things in a quite different way than we do.
Ordered; arriving (in paper form) Monday. Yet another book in the queue….
This might be the first time I’ve heard of International Men’s Day. If it isn’t, then my only thought is still the same: Every day is Men’s Day.
All the nice talk you listed above is just that: talk. Actions speak louder, and you’re right, men are doers.
In the end, all the ‘negative’ traits are still needed to face off against a cold, uncaring world. And men, being doers, are most suited to do so.
Side note: the best therapy I’ve ever had is casual drinking in a men’s only club. There’s no emotional outpouring, but a simple willingness to listen has been all I ever needed. A “I feel for you, bud” means more to me than tears.
https://pics.me.me/thumb_disho-try-group-therapy-formy-issues-best-advice-my-di-19621488.png
Men are do’ers is correct. A job tends to make us feel better, more like a man, or a human. I have been unemployed 3 times in my life, the first two each lasting about 8 months and let me tell you it hurt. It hurt my pride and made me feel like shit. After a few month I stopped most interactions with people because I was embarrassed that I was not working. You start to feel bad, worthless and who knows what else. You start getting chippy with the wife and kids and that isn’t fair to them either.
I am going thru this right now, and having known what happened the first two times isn’t really making this one easier. Its only been 6 weeks but I feel like I am going crazy and am a bum. I am making great work in not taking anything out on my wife or family, but it still hurts. Actually got a call about a potential job yesterday and just that call made me feel better. Interview after Thanksgiving. Just help men get jobs, take care of family, and we’ll be OK.
It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man. –Marcus Aurelius, Medications (VIII)
I’ve lost jobs more than a half-dozen times in my life, mostly in my late teens and early twenties as I bounced from one failing retail chain to another (WaldenBooks, Babbage’s, CompUSA, Blockbuster Video…). I was rarely unemployed for more than a month and never really felt bad about losing those jobs.
It was when I lost the job that I thought I was going to turn into my career at age 28 and then couldn’t find work of any kind for the next three years that I ever really felt truly low. I started the Obama Administration with a wife, owned a house, one kid and another on the way, a university degree (and another on the way), and a wonderful job in a law office making more money than I ever had before. Before his first term was up, I was separated from my family, living in a 6’ x 10’ rented room, and getting turned down for cashier jobs at McDonald’s.
I’ve clawed my way back. My family is together again, I’ve found decent employment (although it has zero relationship to anything from my higher education), and I’m on track to get a much better job soon-ish (fingers crossed).
There’s something about honest work that welfare checks just cannot match. I’d rather earn $5 from mopping a floor at 7-11 than take $10 from unemployment.
Good luck, Ish, and more power to you!
The day that broke me was when we were doing our usual grocery run. I was pinching pennies on unemployment. My son, who is six, asked for a $2 toy and I lost my shit. How at 36 years old and with three degrees was I on unemployment unable to budget for my son to have a $2 toy. It was that I couldn’t give my son a little treat that hurt so much I couldn’t contain it any more.
There’s much to ponder in this thread.
I’ll just toss this out: some women – the high-testosterone, interesting, relatable ones, that’d be – have the masculine imperatives. With the right sort of upbringing, they learn how to deal with it. With the wrong sort of upbringing, they can end up kinda messed up.
These days, though, any kid (especially any girl) who doesn’t conform to the assigned stereotypical gender role may be diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” and pressured to have irreversible medical intervention, so expect strong women (personally strong, not politically noisy) and sensitive men (personally sensitive, not politically whiny) to be in short supply in the future.
… I need to re-read Brave New World.