domain:aporiamagazine.com
chooky
3m ago
I completely agree that the general support for abortion stems mostly from both men and women wanting pregnancies to be optional; I think calling this desire an "accountability problem" is a pointlessly obtuse way of framing the issue except that it attempts to build consensus. Fwiw, both of my children were from unexpected pregnancies (birth control ain't got shit on me) that we actively elected to keep, which seems far better than having unexpected pregnancies that we were forced to keep and never got to consider "wanted".
However, I think you dismissing the extremely rare cases too easily. Having your daughter/self forced to carry a child of rape is a completely horrific scenario that you can except essentially no chance of. Having your wife (or worse, mother of your children) die because they were forced to carry a life-threatening pregnancy is another absolute nightmare. These are things that, from my perspective, need to just have a zero probability.
Yes, that is why I was talking about general attitude. In general men may view loneliness as more problematic, for instance according to Pew research 57% of 18-34 men compared to 45% of women want a family. That is why I previously mentioned that men are more likely to see loneliness as a bad thing and approach it from despair, while women may view loneliness as an empowerment and something they want.
I think this goes hand in hand with general trend where men have more societal expectations put on them when it comes to traditional gender roles - strive for high status, provide for and protect your family and your community especially women and children. While for women the gender roles were targets of more attacks, to the extent where some traditional gender duties like motherhood were dropped completely. To even talk about having children as duty for women is viewed as misogyny.
This also informs how the topic is handled - incels are universally reviled as failures of their own character, while femcels are victims of society in general and men in particular at best. But this may also change in the future and men will be more comfortable also dropping the societal expectations - like 40 year old guys just working part time and playing video games completely reneging on social pressure on their behavior, similarly how it is with women now. However I would not see it as cure for loneliness, just more acceptance of shitty situation.
sun_the_second
21m ago
I'd assume in the ancestral environment the young women would be mostly daughters and nieces or otherwise related to the older women. So it wouldn't be competition, it would be trying to spread one's genes more.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24m ago
While conservatives report much higher mental health ratings, asking instead about overall mood eliminated the gap between liberals and conservatives.
Isn't this just a replication of hedonic adaptation? No matter how good you have it, most people feel "average" most of the time.
Mental health isn't really related to how someone's mood. Mental health is a measurement for how well a person can respond appropriately to life's challenges and has a good working model of the world. Even something like a "mood disorder" is one where there is a disconnect between actual life circumstances and the person's state of mind or feeling. If someone was feeling miserable because of actual life circumstances - say they're locked in a basement and getting tortured, no one would consider that a mood disorder. And a mood disorder also covers feelings of elation caused by BPD, feelings of anger, etc.
SSCReader
24m ago
Except men commit suicide more often and are more likely to be conservative. All that counting the number of people who say they have or are in treatment for mental health issues, can tell you is the number of known people, people who seek treatment or talk about it.
Men more often keep it in until they snap. Working class men specifically (who went about 63% for Trump) make up the majority of fatal drug overdoses, alcohol related deaths and suicides it appears. Self-medicating, coping and keeping it inside until you can't is the male strategy basically.
Blues have worse visible mental health is perhaps all we have the data to say. But I think there are enough signs that say that a lot of Red men particularly suffer what Blues would call mental health issues, they just don't talk about it and suffer through it in silence, until they drink/drug themselves to death slowly or kill themselves directly.
The truth may well be that Blue women particularly talk about it too much, and Red men particularly, don't talk about it enough. Which is going to confound any easy way to compare rates of mental health issues.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
27m ago
I've been toying with the idea that anti-abortion is intrasexual competition - menopausal women want to see younger ones saddled with babies, preferably out of wedlock, so they'll be less attractive to 40-something men.
desolation
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
27m ago
Hm. Not been a huge fan of them in the past, but will take a look.
Definitely a different tone and culture than here or even the schism, and a particular focus that can be frustrating at times. A few other Mottezans have made rounds over the years.
I don't think I'm asking the world and the seven seas.
Indeed.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
29m ago
No, I see it as an obvious direct consequence of their decisions. You're the one loading this completely-unobjectionable fact with emotional valence.
It's not a fact - abortion can avoid it, just as technology has allowed us to avoid many "obvious direct consequences" in the past 300 years. Yet only this one you take issue with. I wonder why.
Grant_us_eyes
43m ago
...you just split suicides/suicides attempts into gendered groups, not political. Men tend to be more successful, women tend to attempt it more.
What I had one person point out that's always stuck with me, however, is that an 'attempted suicide' moment for a man is going to be different for a woman. 'Attempted suicide' in that case is going to involve a man taking out a loaded gun, staring at it for an hour, and then quietly putting it away.
The crux of the argument being, 'attempts' in this situation are going to be manifest differently and trying to measure them scientifically is going to be messy and lossy as the result.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
45m ago
Good to have you join us! yeah @naraburns is a gem. There is some genuinely great writing here. I liked your post as well.
"Already old and has grandchildren" is quite the goalpost movement. When I think of the modal "lonely male" it's not someone who already has grandchildren, it's someone who never had children yet, or estranged from them in a divorce.
Grant_us_eyes
58m ago
Having friends - even close ones - is a different experience from having a girlfriend/fiancé/wife you come home to every evening.
There's also the other side of this equation, when some friends get married(and have children) and the rest don't. Even worse if they move away. You're still friends, you still talk alot, but circumstances change when you can only see each other face to face once or twice a year.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
This is the kind of guy they make uplifting youtube videos about. "This man has been picking pineapples for 30 YEARS, this is his story.".
2rafa
1hr ago
I know of zero relationships that ended because the guy went too far right.
I know of one, the man now has a tiny twitter account retweeting BAP and Fuentes, NYU dropout, beautiful girlfriend, handsome and from a good family, started very loudly talking about how slavery was justified at parties, was literally part of the tiki torch march at Charlottesville, now lives in a small town inland in Florida off what most of his friends think is his grandfather’s inheritance. Went to private school in NYC (I didn’t know him then, but I have friends who did). Gained 50+ lbs.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
I've had very similar experience with friends, some from childhood; divorce, asymmetric undercut in unnatural colors, attempts at lesbianism and public online displays of mental health issues. I've had the same thoughts about reaching out but ultimately didn't think I'd be heard in a way that added value.
tend to our own gardens
This is where I am, I like to think of it as being Mary, not Martha.
The opposite side of this we are now beginning to see in the online 'white well-being' posters. Some of this I think is just women being more influenced by their perceived peer groups.
Crowstep
1hr ago
I can't give a definitive answer to your question (which I guess you're not really expecting). It's far too personal, and reasons you've given are valid to consider.
Louise Perry likens pregnancy and giving birth as the female equivalent of going to war. It's dangerous, intoxicating, glorious, painful and rewarding all at once. It's brings you close to death and closer to life. You're going through something that all of your female ancestors went through and coming out the other side having created a new soul.
If you do go ahead and have another baby, you'll be doing something heroic. That's all I can really say.
thejdizzler
1hr ago
One of my problems in general, but certainly when it comes to self improvement/wellness is trying to do too much at once. For example, here is my list of goals for this month:
• Chores spreadsheet
• 400k words read Spanish
• 2 substack posts
• Read 3000 pages total (~100/day, roughly 8-10 books).
• 4 Spanish gramar exercises
• Up 3k spanish Anki cards, 500 italian Anki cards
• 300 minutes of meditation total (average 10 min/day)
• 20 days fap free
• Swim 4 days a week
• Build to 50 miles a week running
• Savings rate of at least 20%
This + goals at work seems to overwhelm me. Are there specific goals in this list that you think I should focus on? Things that I should cut? Is there a better way to approach goal setting in general?
faceh
1hr ago
I went through a version of that.
Not so much the politics, but she ducked out of the relationship, cut many existing ties, gained a bunch of weight, and now she binges anime (I found her myanimelist account last year) and plays around in Role-playing servers.
And I have three different acquaintances that had this happen too, one of whom I mentioned recently.
One wife was a really nice Mormon girl who now is presenting as full on LGBTQ, blue hair, and does roller derby.
I know of zero relationships that ended because the guy went too far right.
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
How's it a sign of virility?
In the most literal sense: it's associated with high levels of male hormones ("Men with androgenic alopecia typically have higher 5α-reductase, higher total testosterone, higher unbound/free testosterone, and higher free androgens, including DHT"). TMU it's a completely different phenomenon from hair loss in the elderly. In many young men's case, balding at the apex of the skull occurs concurrently with facial hair and body hair growth - in a very real sense it's another side of the same coin. The fact that we've come to associate it with old age and feebleness is just one of those things where cultural beauty standards have diverged from the biological reality of the human phenotype, like women having body hair, and I just think it's a bit silly in principle.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
1hr ago
I think the biggest difference is male aggression toward women is usually physical while female aggression towards men is usually social, most notably attempted social ostracization. Women attack men's social bonds in ways that men don't attack women's, thus leading to this asymmetry.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1hr ago
This makes me appreciate, even more tangibly, how sane the countries I've lived in are. I mean sure, Indian politics involves a fair share of riots, gunfire and vote-rigging, but it's almost never this personal. UK politics just puts me to sleep.
I've never had the displeasure of cutting ties, or having them cut, because of politics. It's borderline unthinkable. There might be some bickering, then everyone goes out for tea and forgets it. I even had two uncles stand for (and win) elections for diametrically opposing parties, and they lived together.
Honestly, it's a testament to the stability of US institutions that there's this much rage and disdain circulating in the water, and yet the amount of political violence is, in objective terms, nigh non-existent.
2rafa
1hr ago
Sure, but then this cuts both ways. In that sense MGTOw man who regularly goes to pub with his colleagues or who plays D&D with his friends or who organizes grill party for his nieces and nephews or who volunteers for summer camps for children is not lonely either.
Sure, I don’t think this guy is necessarily lonely, unless he does really want a romantic relationship in which case he might be. But there are plenty of widowed older men who have similar large social circles, even if it’s less common than for widowed women.
2rafa
1hr ago
Male friendship can be as close, but my impression has always been that male friendship is abandoned for a romantic relationship in a way that female friendship isn’t always.
thejdizzler
1hr ago
I think dating is a big part of it. There is no motivation for me to grind or hustle or finish my PhD fast because I don't see girlfriend/wife opportunities coming very easily.
Interesting perspective.
Everybody attaches their hobby horse to this problem: “it’s modernity, it’s lack of religion, urbanization, female education, not-enough state support, the wrong kind of state support, the housing crisis, devalued motherhood, it’s feminism, it’s not enough feminism...”. Men accuse omen and women accuse men, rightists accuse leftists and vice versa and so on and so forth.
You: “Women just dislike the pain and physical damage”. Everyone: “D’oh!”.
In my defense, I thought the problem was pretty much relegated to the past outside of some minor exceptions, but yeah if I look around irl the physical and psychological issues associated with pregnancy are still very common.
I guess we increase the painkillers/meds and supercharge the research into artificial wombs. Drip in, and baby out, asap.
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