As said above, it's not men, it's Anglo-Protestant culture.  In other places I've been men holding hands or greeting each other with a light kiss on the cheek was normal.


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Quote from: Michelle_P on March 28, 2018, 10:15:58 AM
TL;DR: Male socialization in Western culture teaches men to suppress emotion, repress themselves, and is terribly toxic, informing all manner of nastiness, including odd 'natural law' rationales to justify persecution and marginalization of others.

Women too, will take advantage of other women and men, and they too are capable of competition and nastiness and manipulation. It's really not just a man's game.

As for Western Culture being the devil - have any of you seen the machismo and male sacrifice expected in many other cultures? We pale in comparison to some of these. It's very odd just how demonized Western Society is by Westerners who happen to enjoy living in one of the most free and expressive societies on the planet. It ain't perfect but it's a LOT better than some places you could be standing in right now.

Nobody said it was the devil but you.  We simply stated a single point where this culture differs from others.


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The quote there implies that there are cultures out there not Western where there's no (or much less) nastiness, no persecution, and no marginalization. Where is this wonderful culture?

Nastiness, persecution and marginalization are human traits. Across the board. We've got people from all over the world here attesting to the difficulties of all three in the trans experience (and receiving bad treatment from both sexes). Western culture is one of the kinder cultures to the likes of us. And to men and women as well.

When I keep seeing Western put specifically as a prefix when talking about how terrible culture or masculinity is, it is hard to see where this comes from without drawing my own conclusions, since there are lots of places it's worse to be male than here. Where masculinity alone can earn you a very early death, the life of a child soldier, a slave etc. or a life of continuous vocational obligations that would make the hardest working Westerner think his life's a holiday in comparison. 

Quote from: Kylo on March 28, 2018, 01:48:30 PM
The quote there implies that there are cultures out there not Western where there's no (or much less) nastiness, no persecution, and no marginalization. Where is this wonderful culture?

As far as nastiness goes there are several in North East Asia that I have lived in or visited where people's self worth isn't dependent on being overbearing and insulting ->-bleeped-<-s.  The USA, and particularly one specific demographic, has perfected the art of lying about other people in order to marginalize and put down other people.  The fact that there are worse places on earth does not protect us from criticism nor does it make this type of behavior good, even if it cowers behind a book and calls itself religion.



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Deborah is quite correct.

The existence of worse places does NOT make more subtle forms of marginalization OK.

The USA has perfected marginalization on an industrial scale, devoting entire "news" organizations to targeting and promoting fear of specific groups as a means of focusing political and related fundraising activity.  I have had the displeasure of observing this up close for decades, as the focus is shifted to new groups as targeting of prior groups falls into disfavor and loses effectiveness.


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I never said it was ok.

I expect those places would be good ones to retire to, then? Lots of people migrating to them from here? Then again visiting places is different from living in them as someone born there isn't it.

Thing about East Asia is that yes, people are generally more polite but they are by no means less subject to cultural expectations and obligations that can stifle free expression. Are all the men there free to act other than what their culture deems "manly"? Can they all be more feminine as opposed to masculine if they wanted to? Are the men in general as tactile or emotionally expressive as the women there? (since you've suggested it's our culture that forces men to be this way, rather than other things, these ones shouldn't automatically gravitate away from the feminine?)

I know people in Thailand, Viet and Japan etc who because they've been there and seen the kathoey etc. say that it's a lot more tolerant than here. But is it really? The kathoey and the like are a distinct class within the society. Does the society allow cis men to follow the same lifestyle? The majority of men in these countries are still expected to submit to a standard. In Japan, that haven of politeness, this standard is so rigid and unrewarding that younger generations (particularly men) are often opting out altogether from it but by doing that are failing to have families and kids of their own. That sounds like a bit of a problem to me. Japan can be a nice holiday for a foreigner but by many accounts being Japanese and living in that society is comparatively restrictive. I've known people who felt like they were going stir crazy working over there having to deal with the level of conformity expected.

An American pal of mine just moved to Vietnam permanently. I'll have to ask him how he's getting on. And if it's "freer" than America for a man.