Recently on this blog I posted a piece about the game Duke Nukem Forever, and it’s fair to say a lot of people had trouble understanding it. Thanks to the kindness and effort of my fellow contributors it’s now been fixed, for which I am extremely grateful.
The problem is, it shouldn’t have happened, if I’d just been a little less stubborn and admitted I needed help right away then they never would have had to put themselves out like that, and the good readers of this blog would have been spared my grammatical and spelling errors.
I’ve always been this way, no matter how open-minded and non-normative I think I am, there’s this part of me — a distinctly masculine part I suppose — that sees asking for help as a sign of weakness. A fear that I’ll be looked down upon and treated differently from everyone else. Yes, it’s irrational, and in the past it has caused me more grief than it would have to just own up and admit something was wrong, or that I needed help with something.
The “just pretend like nothing’s wrong and maybe no one will notice” approach might work for some guys, but for me it just doesn’t, and I wonder how many other men out there are suffering under the weight of expectation placed on them to shoulder all the responsibility by themselves. I can tell you from experience it makes for a very isolating existence sometimes.
You’re rad for taking a difficult experience and putting it out there for others to learn from. I would also like to add that one of the benefits of writing in a group context is the constructive criticism and other help folks can give. Writing alone about complex issues can be hard on a person–having a community to help out (sometimes simply by being around at all!) is a big deal.
Trinity. Complaining about problems one faces takes time and energy and attention. Afterwards, the problem still exists. Better put the energy to solving the problem. Then you don’t have the problem. Considering how men are brought up and connecting that to the suicide rate in the 15-24 age group doesn’t quite fit. They’re not old enough to have absorbed enough conditioning to make them prefer to off themselves. Just not enough time. Or, to put it in another situation, they may be facing problems they don’t think, possibly correctly, can be ameliorated by complaining. But, in that age group, the… Read more »
“[Men aged 15 to 24] are not old enough to have absorbed enough conditioning to make them prefer to off themselves.” That seems pretty counterintuitive. Citation plz.
“They’re not old enough to have absorbed enough conditioning to make them prefer to off themselves” Hi. Psychologist. Specifically specialized in (alliteration apparently) behaviour analysis, which deals with conditioning/learning as its most basic, fundamental subject matter. This is, quite simply, wrong. How many experiences do you have in a single day? You might not think it, but every one of those impacts upon your behaviour and thinking. And more than that, any impact on your behaviour can result in indirect learning via language processes, meaning that one experience can impact your behaviour in many different ways in differing contexts. Or,… Read more »
I was recently introduced to the concept that men are brought up to not complain about the problems they face. Although it makes complete sense (the stereotypical refusal to stop and ask for directions, refusal to go see a doctor when something is clearly wrong, etc) I had never put two and two together before to think that this is an actual thing that is socially conditioned into men. Thanks for talking about it marc!
Yes, it’s an actual thing and a very serious one; I think this is a large part of why the suicide rate for males age 15-24 is 600% of that of females in the same age group.
In this vein, we’ve added a resources page with links to various sources of help. It’s still quite a small list at the moment and a little disorganised but I hope it will grow into something useful.
Trinity, yes. It’s the inverse of “privilege”. Have you ever wondered why cats sneak off when they are sick or injured? It’s because they are basically solitary animals and don’t expect help. When you are in that condition and get attention, it is never, ever benign. Vulnerabilites are liabilities. This is especially true in competitive environments. Competitive environments are the norm in nature, and they are the norm in societies too. For instance in corporate life health issues are kept very secret because they influence other people’s assessments of your capabilities, and that impacts their appraisals of the desirability of… Read more »
noah. Missed again. My personal experience allows me to know when somebody is trying to put me on, or otherwise jerking my chain. Call that “trump” if you like. No big deal to me. Now, if you actually, actively “fear” asking for help, you need to get help. The professional kind. You don’t have to fear asking them. They generally advertise. I believe they need the business. And not being welcome on a feminist space. I know of one where challenging the proprietor on matters of fact makes it a Very Bad Thing,since it’s supposed to be a fem-friendly space.… Read more »
noah. Glad you’re not afraid to ask for help. Point is, “fear” is used to discredit opinions that somebody doesn’t like. It’s misused. I may not like something, but that doesn’t mean I “fear” it. I may think something has a negative impact. I don’t necessarily “fear” it. But if the other person can haul the concept of “fear” into the discussion, my reasons for not liking whatever it is are discredited. See how that works, now “mumbled machismo”. Well, as Satchmo said when asked to define jazz, “Cat gotta ask ain’t never gonna know.” BTW, “machismo” as a dismissive… Read more »
So, yes. You are saying that your personal experience literally trumps other people’s. I’m not sure you’ve got the intellectual wherewithal to know that’s what you’re doing, or why that’s objectionable, but that is what you are doing.
You, specifically, are why men have traditionally been dubiously-welcome at best in feminist spaces. And what’s sad is you probably don’t even understand what you’re doing on anything more than the most rudimentary stimulus-response level.
“fear” Way overused. Used to discredit an opinion someone else has. “fear” does not equal planning on figuring out how to do this thing myself. It does not equal thinking I’ll have it in just a second. It does not equal making myself take care of this thing because, by God, I can. Or that I should do it myself so I can do it myself better and faster next time, when perhaps help isn’t available.
Lose “fear”.
…sorry, are you saying that your description of your own experience is somehow prescriptive for other people’s experience?
I must be misreading, right? You couldn’t possibly be saying that other people’s experience needs to be edited to fit your own personal narrative.
Help me out; I’m struggling to find any other reading of that paragraph of mumbled machismo I’m replying to, and I just can’t.
Well, I don’t know what you are talking about. I felt your two posts about sexism in video games were rather decently written. And for any disagreement that we may have had, I never dismiss an argument based on grammatical points because I find such dismissals intellectually dishonest.
Well that’s cool of you to say Clarence but the thing is there are certain standards one expects from a blog like this. I want to be able to make a good contribution to this site and not bring it down in terms of quality of writing, because there are people who will dismiss it on things like that.
Marc, you are making a great contribution to the site. We just kind of have to copyedit it first. 🙂
As the person who originally posted the note about the typos in the Duke Nukem post, I just wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, to Clarence: I somewhat resent what you seem to be implying here. I agree that it’s not fair to dismiss an argument because it is ungrammatical. But ensuring that your writing is copy edited isn’t just about pleasing the snooty people who would otherwise look down on you. It’s about clarity. Careful writing is unambiguous and easy to understand; it effectively shepherds the reader from one point to the next, guides them smoothly… Read more »
You have nothing to apologise for, you gave me the opportunity to really say something I’ve been wanting to say for a while but never had the chance too, so thank you : )
marc, I also know that feeling all too well, and I respect the hell out of you for posting this. I definitely got that message from my family, that asking for help wasn’t what you should do…you should work harder to try to fix or yourself and not bother anyone with your requests, and for heaven’s sake don’t call attention to your problems! It took a long time for me to get over that awful feeling that I was bothering people or showing my deficiencies when I needed a helping hand. A good friend who helped me out at a… Read more »
This is a really goo dpoint. It may be more blessed to give than to receive, but it can take a hell of a lot more grace to receive than to give. Giving cna be, and often develops into, an exercise in pride, while recieving requires humility.
Whoa man, do I know how this feels. To ask for help is to admit that something is beyond you, to admit to being too weak to handle something, to admit to losing. And if you’re too weak or you lose, ever, even once, that makes you a weak loser. I absorbed that lesson quite well by junior high school. I ought to have; it was repeated enough times. One day I might be deprogrammed from that shit, but I’m nowhere close right now, and I can’t even think of how much damage I’ve suffered from not being able to… Read more »
Thanks Noah from the confident and knowledgeable tone of your posts I never would have guessed you felt this way to.
It’s awful the way this negative thinking can affect us I really do hope one day you manage to free yourself completely, I can’t wait to see what you write then.