I’ve had a bad couple days, so I’ve decided that there’s exactly one solution: find an idiot on the Internet and call them stupid until I feel better. Today’s idiot comes to us courtesy of the PJ Lifestyle, offering up 7 Mistakes Women Make With Men.
Do you want to know what the mistakes are? A lot of them boil down to “treating him like a human being!”
I’m puzzled listening to my female friends tell me they don’t understand men. This is like a rocket scientist telling you she can’t figure out how a flush toilet works.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to date a man.
Seriously, men are fully capable of every bit of “I love you but I’m not in love with you,” “I totally want to date you but I’m still not over my ex, wait, you took that seriously, of course I don’t want to date you,” “if we have casual sex that means you’re in love with me, right?”, “I want to be poly, wait, no, I just found my One True Love and now we’re monogamous!” confusing-ass self-contradictory bullcrap that women are.
You see, occasional incomprehensibility is not limited to one gender or another, but is a universal trait of all human beings in a romantic context. I’m pansexual. We know these things.
There’s actually no wrong answer [about when to have sex] per se. If the guy is really clicking well enough with you, he’s probably going to stick around regardless of whether it happens on the first date or your wedding day.
If there is not a wrong answer, then it is not a mistake, PJ Lifestyle! I mean, yes, it IS a mistake to have sex with people on the fourth date if you only want to have sex within a committed relationship, but that is not a mistake women make about men, that is a mistake people make about people. (See my earlier statement re: men being complicated.)
Now with men, if you study cultures around the world, contrary to what you hear about gender being a “social construct,” you’ll find that “masculinity” revolves around the same basic traits everywhere.
It does. Really. So, um, the Wodaabe? And Aristophanes arguing that gay men are the manliest because they love masculine things?
A) Being productive or having a lot of resources
B) Being capable of fighting
C) Being courageous and tough
D) Being able to attract women
E) Having status
Success myth, men as violent, men as violent, men as hypersexual, success myth. Don’t you just love it when people validate your theories?
Speaking of empirical validation, I just told a dude that he was incapable of fighting and lacking in productive resources, and he said that since he wasn’t playing Civilization at the moment that all seemed rather immaterial. Which just shows you that insulting people properly takes empathy– you have to find the bits that they, personally, are insecure about, not the bits everyone called “he” is insecure about. Are men more likely than women to be insecure about their toughness or their status? Probably. But it isn’t universal.
Bitter, man-hating women aren’t any more attractive to the opposite sex than angry misogynistic men are to women.
Dude. As a feminist, I must say, I have never compared men to motherfucking flush toilets.
Men are not as comfortable with their emotions as women. Typically, we don’t use our emotions as often or as fully as women, we don’t get in as many emotional situations, and we feel extremely uncomfortable with the idea of crying or getting choked up.
So is this one of those universal non-gender-construct things? Because let me inform you that there is a fuckton of manly weeping in the Iliad.
Again, this is probably true throughout our culture: men will tend to be less likely to cry and be in contact with their emotions than women. But is this because men have manly-man man feelings, or because many men get very early negative conditioning that if they cry people will make fun of them or punch them? Rhetorical.
Depending on their mental state, there are a lot of women who can break into tears if a waiter brings them the wrong kind of salad dressing. But to a man, a woman crying over something he did means that he FAILED as a man to protect her and worse yet, he did the opposite and inflicted pain on someone he cares about.
Okay, look, if you’re breaking into tears because a waiter brings you the wrong kind of salad dressing, that’s not “lol women are so overemotional lol hysteria lol,” that’s a sign that something is seriously wrong. Could be depression, could be grief, could be severe PMS, could be stress, could be an eating disorder, but the one thing it is not is normal. And when your partner is going through something seriously wrong, the right answer is not “RARRRGH I AM MANLY MAN I BEAT UP THE MAMMOTH OF YOUR FEEEEEEELINGS“, the answer is to listen and provide support and maybe recommend a therapist.
Also the title of the section is “manipulate his emotions,” but as far as I can tell this entire section is about how you shouldn’t have emotions yourself.
It’s also why men tend to do something else that women really hate: just disappearing instead of ending a relationship properly.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU THINK ONLY MEN DO THAT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wipes tears* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Even if it doesn’t SEEM tough and they do make a lot of changes, don’t be surprised if the man eventually feels emasculated and backslides.
…Or, you know, people are really quite happy that they don’t have parents anymore and are annoyed to suddenly find their partners fulfilling that role. That works too.
Many women will just discount [nice men] right off the bat because they think they’re weak, boring, fake, etc.
You know, it is possible to be nice AND weak, boring, and fake. They’re not mutually contradictory. I always get pissed off when people say “Oh, you should date someone nice,” because I spent my first three boyfriends dating people who were nice and whom I wasn’t attracted to or interested in as people. You know what? Being nice is not sufficient for a relationship. They deserved better than someone who felt obligated to date them.
Things that are SCREAMINGLY OBVIOUS for a woman may blow past a man like a frisbee in a hurricane.
Once again, I’m the one that hates men?
Honestly, I’m not sure if men or women come off worse in the next paragraph. Men, for instance, can’t remember their girlfriends’ eye colors and aren’t interested in what their girlfriends are concerned about; meanwhile, women are only concerned with fashion and their paranoia that their boyfriends will leave them.
You’ll probably never see a man write off a woman as not even worth having a conversation with because she had scuffed shoes or because she doesn’t have a lot of money.
Look, dudes, I want you to think for five minutes here. Do you really want people who are shallow enough that they don’t want to date you because you have scuffed shoes to actually date you? If they’re filtering themselves out of your dating pool, that is a good thing!
As I hate to leave everyone with negativity, I would like to replace these 7 Mistakes Men Make About Women with 7 Mistakes People Make About People. Now with 100% less fail!
1) Sleep with someone before you feel comfortable.
2) Act insensitively around things they feel insecure about.
3) Hate people of any gender.
4) Not support your partners when they’re going through a hard time.
5) Try to change people.
6) Believe that no good partners of the appropriate gender exist.
7) Overanalyze, be unable to take interest in your partner’s life, or not remember basic details about your partner.
@Dana Reid: “I am extremely dubious about this – if only because of the pat yet vague explanation about men dropping everything to fight etc. If the simplest explanation is usually correct it rings more true to me that this is socialised (and very powerful in most societies) than the idea of male humans evolving such specific psychological responses.” I also doubt the explanation, but the experiment was done with toddlers to reduce the possibility of it being socialization. As for evolving specific psychological responses, there is precedent for such when it comes to empathy triggered by built-in distress signals… Read more »
“I saw somewhere an article about men having lower tolerance for drama than women, for example much higher stress levels when in the presence of a crying baby. Evolutionary explanation being that men are supposed to drop whatever they were doing and go fight off whatever is making the baby / wife cry, immediately.” I am extremely dubious about this – if only because of the pat yet vague explanation about men dropping everything to fight etc. If the simplest explanation is usually correct it rings more true to me that this is socialised (and very powerful in most societies)… Read more »
@Hosstale:
I think the answer to that was given in the frst paragraph: I’ve had a bad couple days, so I’ve decided that there’s exactly one solution: find an idiot on the Internet and call them stupid until I feel better.
Hosstale: You might want to take up boxing, or some other vigorous physical activity to work off your more aggressive impulses.
Isn’t that the whole purpose of blogging?
Amen.
So, do you feel better after beating up on some blogger you never met?
Does merely ‘translating’ what the other guy wrote into ‘non-gendered’ language really make all that much difference?
You might want to take up boxing, or some other vigorous physical activity to work off your more aggressive impulses.
i feel like the main question remains unanswerd, are you cheered up after this ozy or is there something that could make you feel better and as a reader can be done for you?
and you got me on the BUWAHAHA part as it just happend to me a while back with somone playing a vanishing act only to reappear a month later with wedding plans and me telling her to find some support.
It would also explain why men don’t want other men crying in their presence. Empathy hurts, and as men’s natural reflex is to make it stop any way they can, so if they can’t fix the problem, they’d want to at least make the crying STOP.
I saw somewhere an article about men having lower tolerance for drama than women, for example much higher stress levels when in the presence of a crying baby. Evolutionary explanation being that men are supposed to drop whatever they were doing and go fight off whatever is making the baby / wife cry, immediately. In more modern times, some women (who have higher tolerance for this kind of emotional stress) use emotional abuse to get what they want from men, the same way some men would use physical abuse (which men are better at) to get what they want from… Read more »
So, if a woman rips on a guy for not having money, being a wimp, being a coward, not being able to get women or please her in bed, or if she suggests he’s a nobody — expect it to be a BIG HAIRY DEAL. It’s the equivalent of telling a woman that she’s a hideously ugly whore who’s a terrible mother to her children. If you do have to bring up this stuff, you need to handle it with the sensitivity of a surgeon removing a blockage from his wife’s heart. Ha ha! Men’s emotional sensitivity about certain issues… Read more »
@laksjdhfg – I didn’t take it as being snarky. Here are some links: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/news/june98/nr4.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/fashion/thursdaystyles/13crying.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all Also see Psychology and Emotion (2006) by Niedenthal and Kruth-Gruber @Schala I have no idea why the medical community uses metrics. I also don’t know enough about your specific condition to comment. But hormones are rather broad spectrum, and no two people are going to have the exact same symptoms. I assume that there were specific reasons why your doctor gave you this Rx, and is monitoring you adequately. My main point in posting this was that testosterone cannot be blamed for men’s bad behavior… Read more »
@Tomio Thank you for this comment. I just happened to run across this blog post (found it through The Good Men Project, which a friend of mine sometimes posts articles from), and found it interesting as well as the other comments, but yours especially was very helpful and informative. So instead of just anonymously reading and moving on, I wanted to say thanks for sharing! 🙂
“In addition, men have been shown to be better able to hide facial expressions of emotion better than women (except for anger) – so men are as emotional as women, they just don’t show it.” And here is where it gets interesting and nerdy. http://www.cracked.com/article_19372_5-ways-your-bad-habits-might-just-save-your-life.html Check out number three, about how botox in muscles responsible for making faces associated with depression actually alleviates depression. Basically, hiding facial expressions, we can alter the way we actually feel. The article goes into the reasons (and links to some cool sources). My personal theory is that the nerve responsible for controlling facial espressions… Read more »
However, testosterone deficiencies in women are evidenced by loss of libido, loss of bone density and mass, fatigue, loss of muscle mass and/or tone, and loss of body hair (particularly on the scalp). The same can be seen in men. Due to cyproterone acetate, my T levels are 0.0, always. Loss of libido was not experienced, from before with 20.0 nmol/L to now with 0.0 nmol/L (and I have no idea how to translate nano grams into nano mols, sorry – I find it weird that the US use nano grams anyways. Both because it’s the metric system (which the… Read more »
Reading this I was alternatively sobbing inside my head (PJ Lifestyle’s bits) and going ‘yes! yes! That’s awesome! (Ozy’s bits) I tried to read the original article but I just…couldn’t. I got as far as the writer telling us that women are complicated enigmas while men are simple beasts, which is incredibly sexist and such a sad cliche. Had to stop there. I really liked the part where you addressed the crying in a restaurant thing. It’s strange that this guy seems to think it’s men who are childishly simple and then assumes that if a woman cried in the… Read more »
this sounds interesting. Do you have any links to that emotional intensity study? If you have lost it, it’s still ok, I understand, I don’t keep a bibliography of everything I have ever read, either. [oh man, it’;s so hard to not sound ironic in text. I am sincerely honest here.]
This kind of stuff (in the original article) makes me sad, because it actively hurts the people who spout it, and because it feeds the negative stereotypes of both sexes that our culture seems determined to force everyone into. Just because I can’t think of a better place to do it, let me provide a bit of information I’ve learned about testosterone since starting testosterone replacement therapy. The idea of doing this is to show that “teh testosterone” isn’t what everyone seems to believe it is. Testosterone is found in both men and women. Women produce testosterone in their ovaries… Read more »
“Are men more likely than women to be insecure about their toughness or their status? Probably. But it isn’t universal.” While this is true, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that one should be more careful around these issues and insults with men, just like one should be more careful about insulting women’s appearance or crap like “get back in the kitchen.” Ideally, these things wouldn’t be a big deal, but it is just a fact that they are. Insulting a woman’s appearance is essentially saying that you buy into the beauty myth and that the recipient of the… Read more »
Wow, I was previously unaware of the existence of that blog. After read two articles on there and skimming through some comments, I will attempt to return to the blissful happiness of that ignorant state.
Ozy, your reply here is much more graceful and rational than I would have managed. Kudos!
“You’ll probably never see a man write off a woman as not even worth having a conversation with because she had scuffed shoes or because she doesn’t have a lot of money.”
Maybe not, but in Stereotypeland, where this guy obviously lives, you will see men write off women for weighing more than is deemed socially acceptable or for not having large enough breasts. Does the author really want to get into this kind of shallow-off?
@ no more mr nice guy I think that’s why the : “Spoken like someone who has never tried to date a man.” I never really expect much sympathy from guys, anyway, the script says we don’t have any. Just to prove myself wrong, though, I’ll have a little sympathy for this guy and defend him some. “Dude. As a feminist, I must say, I have never compared men to motherfucking flush toilets.” A metaphor is as a metaphor does. To Quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus: ” Right, Your Majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss.” “What?” “I, um,… Read more »
It’s a guy who wrote the advice on PJ lifestyle.
“Again, this is probably true throughout our culture: men will tend to be less likely to cry and be in contact with their emotions than women. But is this because men have manly-man man feelings, or because many men get very early negative conditioning that if they cry people will make fun of them or punch them? Rhetorical.” Ask trans men and trans women: Emotions ARE affected by hormones. And hormones have a different distribution depending on sex assigned at birth (at least it usually corresponds). For example, I cry and tear up WAY more easily now than before. And… Read more »
there are some interesting things trans people getting on and getting off testosterone can tell about how the intensity/hide-ability of feelings can change… if hormones can make us feel different before menstruation, I think it IS possible that having a different balance of them your whole life can have an effect on these things. This doesn’t mean 1. an alibi to be a jerk 2. value judgement, for any of the mainstream genders being better than the other…. and these things being practically impossible to measure without the culture getting in the way, me might never know… but I wasn’t… Read more »
Awesome x 1000.
OP: “You know what? Being nice is not sufficient for a relationship. They deserved better than someone who felt obligated to date them.” This is so my problem! I cannot shake this “obligated to date people who show interest in me” thing.
OP: “It’s also why men tend to do something else that women really hate: just disappearing instead of ending a relationship properly.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU THINK ONLY MEN DO THAT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wipes tears* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”
…so me. *cough* I’m so conflict avoidant it’s not even funny.
Excellent post Ozy!