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How is love even possible under traditional gender roles if men aren't allowed to be vulnerable? (lemmy.world)
submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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Hi! I (23M) am recovering from complex childhood developmental trauma. I've considered myself an outside observer to human society because I was unable to bond with or relate much to other people until this year.

I grew up in an environment with abusive parents where any kind of softness or vulnerability in men was considered "gay". Subsequently, I encountered a lot of male peers in school who had the same attitude. It seemed like the entire world had the same message: wanting to be vulnerable as a man represents a sexual perversion because it is a "feminine" trait. I was bullied for the bits of vulnerability that I showed, echoing my abusive parents punishing my vulnerability. This sent me into a suicidal spiral that I thankfully made it out of.

I had this inexplicable desire to be vulnerable that I couldn't suppress. It made me believe that I was somehow "gay" despite only being attracted to women, and that women who like men could never find me attractive because they were only attracted to "straight" masculinity -- invulnerable, competitive, and dominating -- consigning me to a permanent ontological friendzone. Ultimately, I decided to take the Faustian bargain of trading my sexual potential for the freedom to be soft, releasing me from the internal pressure to conform to patriarchy.

(To clarify, I was confused in a specific way where I thought "straight" = patriarchy and "gay" = anything that challenges patriarchy. I concluded that the latter was morally superior and adopted softness and progressive beliefs on purpose even though I falsely believed at the time that this would lead to my celibacy based on the right-wing echo chamber I grew up in.)

Through healing from my trauma and talking to friends years later, I'm starting to think that this belief was kinda bullshit? How can you avoid being vulnerable when merely existing in the presence of your partner opens you up to their potential judgement? How can you avoid being vulnerable when you ask someone out, knowing they can reject you? It's almost like I actually didn't want to be vulnerable despite thinking otherwise, and refusing to even appear in front of people actually made me the most invulnerable and therefore manliest man who ever manned, or something. Also, accepting my fate of being in the perma-friendzone led to me making a female friend who emphatically told me that I actually could find a girlfriend because I have this adorable charm and clumsiness that seems to make her instinctively want to baby me, which I always thought was the exact opposite of desirable. I'm slowly coming around to believing her after 6 years.

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can't love women, only objectify them? Wouldn't this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude? So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings? If men didn't cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest, shouldn't we see a kind of generational trauma so severe that violent crime is rampant and secure attachment is very scarce?

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[–] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can't love women, only objectify them? Wouldn't this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude?

Yup, basically

So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships

I think that whilst there are some conservative men who "cheat" and allow themselves moments of escaping from their gender roles, there are a lot of miserable people. Like, have you ever noticed how conservative media is just constant ragebait, and makes people just get angry at how shit the world is, then it will make them feel scared and powerless, but then because they don't have the emotional capacity to explore those emotions, they channel it more into rage. I think that you're right on the money when you describe claiming power under the patriarchy as being a "Faustian bargain".

Although you probably feel like you're socially delayed because you're not just now working through all this stuff, speaking as someone who's 29, I have known plenty of people who didn't reach this realisation until they were a fair bit older than you, so from my perspective, you're probably ahead of your peers. Some people may seem like they don't need to work on this stuff, but often it's just that it's less easy to detect until it really becomes an issue later in life. What you discuss is why I vehemently consider it to be an aspect of my duty as a feminist to work to understand how the patriarchy harms men, and restricts masculinity in general.

If you want to explore this more, a book that I would hugely recommend is "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love" by bell hooks. It's an incredible book, and I think we'd live in a far healthier world if every man read this book. It's old enough that you can find it for free on Archive.org

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 hour ago*

    Although you probably feel like you’re socially delayed because you’re not just now working through all this stuff, speaking as someone who’s 29, I have known plenty of people who didn’t reach this realisation until they were a fair bit older than you, so from my perspective, you’re probably ahead of your peers. Some people may seem like they don’t need to work on this stuff, but often it’s just that it’s less easy to detect until it really becomes an issue later in life.

    That just seems so crazy to me. For all my life, I've had a single-minded emotional obsession with (what I now know to be) secure attachment and realized in adolescence that gender roles make the mutuality I desire in relationships impossible. (When do I get to be the vulnerable comforted one? When does she get to be strong for me? When do I get to be pursued? When does she get to be the pursuer? Why can't I be emotional too? Why can't she be assertive too? What if I don't want to treat women like cattle?) From my perspective, I couldn't even try to date women because my brain refused to accept a relationship like this and couldn't see an alternative. It wasn't "less easy to detect" for me because it was the only thing I could think about -- that there's no space for me to be vulnerable and no emotional safety to be found anywhere. I couldn't escape that depressive doom loop until I educated myself and went to therapy. I don't understand how guys can go without that emotional safety and still seem to function perfectly fine without constantly being tormented by it.

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