Claire, you obviously didn’t see I was responding to a quote/highlight, which was about you cutting off your penis, which could be metaphorically since I don’t know if you’re pre/post-op.
You have the ability to read the thread and the whole of the reply. I know you do, but I’m worried because you’re starting to show signs that you can’t. It’s there, go look.
Read Up; There’s so much controversy below
Regarding my own admission of emotion, I didn’t say men don’t have it or experience it, only that it’s not manly to show it. It’s better to compartmentalize and address the many other concerns in life.
I also wasn’t fully acting out of emotion either. I only recognized that I wasn’t entirely devoid of it when responding. It hasn’t been the case henceforth, but should be seen that I was being open and honest.
People that express emotion are displaying it for others — it’s a visual sign that everything is not okay. It’s a call for help. It’s a sign to stay away. For men, it’s a weakness [controversial]. Men know that they should be able to help themselves, to fix their own situation. We are human, we can observe emotion without acting on it. Important: I don’t reduce showing emotion to crying (or the like); showing emotion is more than one body function, it includes attitude.
In more recent history there began an effort to degrade people that did not show their emotions. The drive has been that the world would be better if everyone expressed their emotions. That it’s not healthy to bottle it up. That failing to express it can lead to other more significant psychological damage, etc — the evidence was weak.
Men and women behave in different ways, they respond differently to themes, to colors, it’s partly related to Testosterone, but it’s not only that. We are inherently different and that’s okay.
Over the years in my personal life I have seen people deal with house fires, go to war, deal with drive-bys, lose jobs, suicides etc. I have seen how the different men and boys respond. Boys rush into a solution, they look for immediacy of assistance from others, men clean up the wreckage, they decline offers for help until they know they need it.
In my younger years, after I saw a family decline others that offered assistance in cleaning up debris from their yard; the result of a house fire. I asked one man, ‘why?’ thinking he was headstrong in his ways. He said it was his family’s responsibility and that they needed to deal with the burdens of their circumstances. He needn’t trouble others if they could face it alone.
Some people would think that’s silly or being macho — it wasn’t just him, his wife was out there too. People with minds coming from bad places probably think so many things are wrong with this. As an open mind, with the look on his face, I could see what he meant and what he stood for and the character that he was demonstrating.
The people that I see that are emotional think it’s okay to depend on others first. They see their conditions as lost causes early, that they’re fighting a losing battle, they act as defeatists, and look to others for help. It’s called sucking on the government’s teat, because the government coddles these infants, not men. This is generalized — not everyone is like that, but I’ve noticed certain commonalities.
All this talk of showing emotions and depending on others is grossly simplified and condensed to a few sentences. It is actually much more elaborate. Hopefully this is enough to express the fundamental idea and is not something new that hasn’t been heard before. I just don’t have the time to go into it further.