• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    The best explanation I’ve heard for it, which also dips into the why, is:

    Once upon a time, there was the patriarchy. For men, this meant they had the purpose of being the breadwinner, for the price of massive mental health issues, since they were never allowed to show weakness.
    Nonetheless, a whole culture and identity evolved surrounding this struggle, with beards and alcohol and it being totally not an expression of missing personal closeness cool to have sex with lots of women.

    Then came along feminism with the ultimate goal of fixing this. It didn’t intend to take anything away from men, but it kind of requires allowing women to also be breadwinners, which slims down the purpose of men.
    Suddenly, it’s potentially not enough to bring home money, you need to help out in the household and not be a complete mental health wreck. You need to be able to show weakness.

    And while this is great for many men, it’s also where a lot of men get kind of left behind. They’ve lost their manly identity or their breadwinner purpose.

    And that’s where the whole mansophere stuff comes in.
    People telling you everything is exactly like 50 years ago, and you should be wearing a beard and drinking alcohol and having sex with lots of women.
    In a weird sense, this is good for men. But the whole community is also massively misogynistic, and blaming feminism rather than appreciating it as a potential proper solution, and of course, you’ve got right-wing “thoughtleaders”, i.e. white dudes with microphones, to round it all of.
    We desperately need better solutions for these men.

    • Elise@beehaw.org
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      2 months ago

      Patriarchy is still screwing everyone over today, including men like it always has.

    • absGeekNZ
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      2 months ago

      Except the beard thing…some of us get a terrible rash if we shave.

      That and the smoothness only lasts an hour or so…what is the fucken point. I wish there was some kind of check box option when entering your teens:

      • [ ] have beard, but if you shave you get itchy and red
      • [x] just can’t grow a beard
      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Oh yeah, I’m not saying anyone who has a beard or drinks alcohol or even has sex with lots of women is immediately participating in that culture.

        That culture is more about celebrating these things on a basis of them supposedly being manly. They will of course mention that beards may look good or that it’s just good to not need to shave every day, for various reasons, but if women could also grow a majestic beard, then this wouldn’t be part of their identity/culture.

        And yeah, I do absolutely agree on that chatbox. In my case, my beard grows so quickly that it’s just tiresome to shave it all the time. But it’s so patchy that it looks awful and it never stops being itchy for me.
        If I could’ve just told my body to not bother with the beard thing, I would have saved about a month of my lifetime that I spent shaving.

      • clif@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m sitting in the backyard after work with my beard, my alcohol, and watching my chickens hunt grasshoppers in the yard… I nearly felt personally attacked.

        If that had said “beard, alcohol, and chickens” then I would’ve been resigned to the stereotype.

        Edit: on the beard, I’m just lazy. It’s just going to grow back anyway plus it’s a time saver. I’m rolling out of bed, into clothes, and into work at 05:30. Ain’t nobody got time for shaving. I gave up on shaving about 40 years ago.