A friend was in a car crash with his daughter in the passenger seat. I asked him how he was doing when I saw him in the pub and he nearly broke down. No-one had asked before and it had been pretty shocking experience.
It’s not just a gender thing, it’s also a family/culture thing. Like I just come from a family where people will talk over each other, but than I have some balkan friends who will talk over me like it’s nothing (no matter the gender). What I try to do is to adjust to the situation - if someone is quieter I will let them speak out, if someone is interrupting I will also join in in a more lively way. In a group setting if I see that someone is getting talked over - I will try to refer the conversation back to them.
I have been reading / listening to Dan Savage for years for my sex and relationship advice. With him being a gay man its interesting to hear his perspective as a man and dating men. Its been wonderful for my development and I highly recommend him to everyone.
That being said it would be interesting to hear from a straight or bi men as well. I often hear things that he says about men in general that I disagree with and wonder if its me, a gay thing or something different. A diversity of voices is always helpful especially if its about kink. Its more interesting as a topic and there are plenty of kinky woman writing now and few kinky men. Which is ironic since there are more kinky identified men than woman as a population overall
The comic is a bit long but is very spot on. I work as a developer and if there’s a girl with us (there’s none) that would be my first instinct to do. Overly helpful and all that. I don’t know why but that’s what I would do.
Zeno Franco, who studies heroism and post-traumatic stress disorder at the Medical College of Wisconsin, thinks that we can turn masculine norms against sexual harassment and assault. “When has it ever been an acceptable norm that men instill fear in women? When has it ever been an acceptable norm that men turn a blind eye when other men harm women?”
absolutely. i always feel leery about making blanket statements about “what it means to be a man”; but without question, for me, it means protecting those who cannot protect themselves, pushing back and speaking out against those who exercise their power on others without regard for their well being. it means interfering in situations where i think someone will be harmed if i don’t, and trusting myself to be able to improve the situation, not just make it worse
sometimes, that means risking my own well being, too. i’m smart about it, not reckless; my own well being matters a lot to me too, especially because there are some people who are just fucked if something happens to me. but there are plenty of times i take that risk too and trust that, if things go wrong, they’ll be alright and they’ll understand
sometimes, there are things i see and need to act on because i couldn’t rightfully call myself a man if i didn’t
i’m trans, though. i don’t really understand the position of (often) cis men who don’t feel like this. maybe they’ve been told their own power is contingent on the system functioning as intended. maybe they’re just afraid, i get that
part of my ability to do this is that i’ve already been through hell. i know that if i mess up and do something to jeopardize my life, i can figure it out and fix it. i’ll survive. and it will have been worth it. maybe they don’t know that, they don’t have that kind of confidence in themselves
i’m also decent in a fight and i’ve spent some time learning communication and de-escalation skills (shoutout nonviolent communication) and i’ve spent over a decade in therapy
but i’ve always thought we should be speaking to men this way - are you really strong if you can’t protect those weaker than you? not to shame them about being weak; sometimes you are and that’s the reality of things. but is it truly strong to hoard power for yourself? how confident can you say you really are, if you’re afraid to use some of it for the benefit of others?
i haven’t lived an easy life, but it’s worth shouldering the burden to help make other people’s lives easier, too. it is what needs to be done, if we want to see a better society than the one we’ve grown up in
(i generalized a lot of this because the abuse of power, while influenced by gender, is not defined by gender)
So I was in a very stereotypically chauvinist situation last week: Two colleagues and I took a customer (all 4 of us men) out for lunch after(/as part of) a sales call. After the waitress left to put in our orders, the customer made a pre-excuse and then joked something like
well that’s definitely putting a rack on a shelf.
I don’t remember how I reacted. I’m also not sure what I wish I had said.
completely understandable, it sounds like it totally came out of the blue. i’ve gotten caught off guard a lot by shit like this too and been unsure of how to react, definitely don’t feel bad about it
if you manage to get your bearings, if something like that happens again, a good way to approach this sort of situation is to ask the person to explain the joke. so, for example:
“well, that’s definitely putting a rack on a shelf”
“haha… yeah uh, what do you mean by that?”
they try to explain it without sounding sexist but sound sexist and feel silly afterwards
honestly though, i would have asked them to explain it anyways. you clearly sensed the intent behind it, so i totally get that it was sexist. but like, wtf does that even mean?? putting a rack on a shelf? huh??? i would have filled in the details more but i genuinely don’t get it 💀💀💀
anyways, i’m sorry you had to hear that kind of shit from a client. it’s tough because i’m sure that’s a situation where you have to be really cognizant of the relationship. fwiw, you don’t need to chase them down or be really mean about the whole thing; usually getting them to realize by themselves that they’re being sexist is enough. you can just be pretty apologetic about not understanding their “joke”
A pretty difficult thing to check by asking someone. assuming they have been good looking all their life, how would even themselves know any different. Pretty obvious though that it helped the model as he’s literally a model 😂 Maybe there are studys to prove otherwise, but what about jealousy? That can be a pretty strong detractor. I have run into many people with small dick syndrome and most of them high up.
I looked for a sampler, but my cousin dislikes most black teas and all the samplers I saw had some. So, I ended up buying 20-teabag boxes of different flavors.
mensliberation
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