Men don’t “Man Up” because they aren’t foolhardy

If you even moderately pay attention to the pulse of popular commentary today, you cannot escape the torrent of articles lamenting how men are just not what they used to be.  Men are wimpy and afraid of commitment.  They are being beaten by women and do not even deserve to buckle the belts of the older generations manly men.  Interestingly, many of these articles are written by women.  Some write with the air of a conquering general while others write seeking sympathy because they lack of romantic options of the desired caliber.  With the exception of the manosphere, there seems to be a lot of scorn but little empathy.

Why is this the case?  There are many contributing reasons and manosphere bloggers do a good job of categorizing and classifying many species of trees and even draw a few maps, but no one asks why there is a forest now instead of the grasslands of the past.  Male commentators can see many of the attacks made on me, but it is more difficult to judge why these attacks are so effective.  Civilizations have weathered many difficulties before; why are the modern ones so difficult?  Men subconsciously know why, but I don’t think many have consciously realized why they are so vulnerable.

When I saw this article describing how violence against men and women is portrayed in the media different parts of the puzzle began to fall into place for me.  When a woman is hurt, it is an outrage and tragedy.  When a man dies, it is goes by almost unnoticed unless the writers have purposefully built up audience sympathy for him.  A woman automatically has the sympathy of the audience while a man must earn it.  Scores of male extras can be sent to their deaths as background footage for a scene while each and every female death is a tragedy.  Any time a woman is beaten people rush to the microphones to decry violence against women, yet men get shot and killed every day without even a passing comment.

I do not cite the differences in how TV portrays the deaths of men and women to condemn it for social programming.  TV writers write what sells, I do not think they try to offend their audiences sensibilities unless they are pushing for a some social change.  I describe it because the public’s indifference to these portrayals, shows that this is how the populace views men.  A man getting killed, injured or taken advantage of is no big deal unless he has done something to earn your respect and sympathy.  I do not think men are conscious of this double standard, but they take it into account in their internal decision making.

Although in some ways men take more risks than women, in other ways they are more cautious.  Men’s risky behaviors are usually driving cars or motor cycles really fast, sky diving, and other physically dangerous activities.  Help, if any of these activities goes wrong, will be either unnecessary (because you are dead) or can be purchased on the free market.  Women typically engage in different types of risky behaviors such as getting involved with bad boys, getting in too much debt, or becoming single mothers.  If something goes wrong here, it requires community involvement to rescue them.  Men understand that they will have to bear all the consequences for their actions; they realize that people won’t have sympathy for them (although they may point and laugh).  Women expect others to come to their aid out of common courtesy.  These differences in behavior are probably based upon past experiences.

When a man looks at a risky undertaking such as marriage or making a big investment, he realizes (at least subconsciously) that he will have no sympathy if he fails.  People will look at him and say “what an idiot, he should have known that was a stupid decision.”  An onlooker may help but will feel under no obligation to do so.  Your story may even be used in a comedy routine somewhere.

I have observed this personally in how people react to hearing the story of someone’s divorce.  If a woman says her ex-husband was a bad man, abusive, or something else, almost everyone will take it at face value.  If you question her about why she would marry a person such as this, she will brush off the question by saying he wasn’t that way before they were married.  People eat her story up without reserving judgment until there is independent verification or requesting to hear the other side of the story.  If a man is divorced or taken to the cleaners, instead of feeling sympathy for the man, they tend to say that he should have considered more carefully who he would marry.

I believe men are avoiding all the traditional signs of manhood because they are risky.  Young men realize that there is not a high success rate for these enterprises today and if they fail, people will have no sympathy for them.  However, many of these enterprises have always been risky and men used to undertake them.  Why the change?  I believe it is that men do not have the support networks they used to have.

People used to have closer friendships and connections within their community.  Men used to have a network of other men who would have sympathy for him because they had a strong friendship.  My experiences in high school and college have taught me that men are better able to form deep and trusting bonds than women because they do not have the drama and backstabbing which runs rampant in female relationships.  I have read that the love between men in combat units if far deeper and stronger than the love between a man and his wife.

Today large extended families are a thing of the past and people move all over the country which severs relationships and requires integration into a new community.  At a minimum people usually grow up, attend college, and then get a job amongst three entirely different groups of people.  In the past people lived in one place and could count on retaining the same friendships throughout their life barring premature death.

In the past women could rely on protection from society at large and their husbands while men would rely on the protection of their close friends.  In the past when men owned and knew how to use the tools of violence such as spears and guns, this was even more formidable.  Would you mess with a man who had 20 to 30 armed friends more than willing to crack the skulls of anyone who f**ked with him?  I think even most governments would avoid messing with someone like this.