something_else

Yes, you should. Vulnerability from a place of strength is hot. Nobody likes people who make all of their problems yours, but if you show insight and self awareness into your own weaknesses and problems without directly putting them onto her to solve, she will appreciate that a lot and probably support you.

There is no point in us discussing this anymore if you aren't capable of giving a mature response to that last point, it shows that you are not capable of the self-awareness required for a healthy debate. I feel I have given my best effort to be fair and open to your POV. All I can say is good luck, and I wish you the best.

The entire family will be together in mornings, evenings, weekends and some weekdays depending on work patterns. It's common for parents to work part time while raising a kid so they get to spend more time together. That's plenty of time to raise a healthy child and create a healthy family dynamic. It’s actually pretty rare for people to say positive things about the other gender as a whole. Humans tend to praise individuals close to them and criticise groups that feel more distant. That’s just how our brains are wired. It’s also convenient to talk about patterns within a group by referring to the whole group, without literally meaning every individual in it. In that sense, something similar might be happening here. You’re treating feminists as a single like-minded group rather than a large collection of individuals with different views. There’s a lot of nuance within feminism, just as there is within men as a group. It might also be worth asking why feminism is such an appealing message to so many women in the first place, even if you ultimately disagree with parts of it. You don't have to change your mind, but creating a steelman of the opposing point of view can be a good way to open your mind and expand your own point of view.

I live in a country with good parental leave, so typically the mother is with the child full-time for the first year regardless. After that, nursery or daycare usually just means a few hours during the day. Mornings, evenings, weekends, and often some weekdays are still spent with the child. Plenty of healthy families make that arrangement work. I’m curious though, how many feminists have you actually spoken to in real life about this? And how did those conversations go? I ask because the claim that feminists never say anything positive about men doesn’t really match my experience of people in the real world. I’ve met some who clearly have a very negative view of men, but they’ve always seemed like a minority. Often when they do feel that way it’s because of very negative experiences they’ve had with men in their lives.

I can understand the point about children benefiting from seeing a healthy relationship at home. That seems pretty widely supported. Where I’m less convinced is the step where feminism necessarily means a mother hates men or can’t sustain a relationship. Plenty of women who would describe themselves as feminists are in long-term marriages, and plenty of non-feminist couples divorce. It sounds like the bigger issue in the situation you’re describing is a parent having a very negative view of men, rather than feminism itself. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I actually grew up with a single mother who also saw herself as strong and independent as well, so I do understand that experience to some extent. That’s partly why I’m unsure about the conclusion though. Lots of people grow up in single-parent households for all sorts of reasons. Why do you see that as specifically a result of feminism rather than just the choices or circumstances of two individuals? Do you think your life would necessarily have been better if your parents had stayed together? In my case, although I was upset about it at the time, in hindsight it probably was the best outcome. I would have had more influence from my dad if they’d stayed married, but the relationship between my parents was unhealthy in other ways, so growing up in that environment might actually have been worse.

I'm not saying you're unhealthy. I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. You clearly feel very strongly about feminism, and when someone has that level of anger toward an ideology it's natural to wonder what experiences led them there. If you're arguing that feminism is a widespread and harmful ideology, that suggests it has had some concrete negative impact on your life or the lives of people around you. I'm simply interested in understanding what those impacts have been. I'm not trying to attack you, just trying to understand where you're coming from.

I will, but I'm also quite curious about your personal reasons as well. It seems to play a very big, almost dramatic ('battle against feminism') role in your life and I'm just curious if there's a deeper reason for that and what that may be, I find it interesting

Out of curiosity, what personal experiences are you drawing upon to create this intense dislike of feminism? Is it based on some intense negative personal experience?

Who hurt you?

For introspection, LSD or DMT. For fun and building connections with other people, MDMA.

There’s also asking questions. A lot of guys have this idea that we need to jump straight to riffing or storytelling, talking all the time, being alpha etc. but you need the basics of conversation locked in first, and asking good and interesting questions is a big part of that. I’ve met a lot of girls who said their worst dates were with guys who were just talking about themselves the whole time and never giving her a chance to say anything.

I think that categorising people into neurotypical and neurodivergent is too black and white. Some people do quite cleanly fall into one of these categories, but most people are somewhere in between. It's a spectrum, or a bell curve. Generally if you want to be a well rounded person you should aim to have elements of both the neurotypical and neurodivergent person. Being too neurotypical is boring, and being too neurodivergent can make your life a living hell because you overthink everything and get stuck in your head. IMO the ideal is for the introverted components of your personality to be neurodivergent and the extroverted components of your personality to be neurotypical. If you are very neurotypical you will benefit from developing more depth and introspection, if you are very neurodivergent you will benefit from developing social skills and learning to be more in the moment.

I've never taken them daily, only on occasion from my friend who also struggled with increased anxiety on them, despite them being prescribed for his ADHD. Although I've met a few people who have described them as life changing and don't seem to experience that anxiety/paranoia. In general I find stimulants as a class of drug pretty enjoyable with limited negative effects mentally, it's depressants like weed that make me incredibly paranoid/anxious.

@Shermaningeorgia You doing alright bro?

If you're going to do loads of drugs anyway, may as well get fucked up on adderall to at least deal with the laziness I kid, but it may genuinely be worth getting tested for ADHD if you can.

There is no one size fits all piece of advice for men's dating beyond perhaps "meet more women". The issue with your advice here of "just be yourself and the sex will come" is that it already assumes you are regularly meeting new women, which most men are not. That is actually the biggest hurdle most men have in dating. In essence your advice only applies once you've already solved the biggest dating problem men have and as such it's kind of... poor advice.

Pickup and looksmaxxing are like fashion trends. Skinny jeans, baggy jeans, quiet luxury, streetwear etc. each of these trends have elements that work. But the people who dive headfirst into every new wave and build their entire identity around it don't usually look stylish or cool, they just look like tryhards. The same thing happens in dating. There are useful ideas in trends like pickup and looksmaxxing, but the people who make these frameworks their whole personality usually come off as forced, tryhard, and honestly just a bit soulless and hollow. Women are attracted to men who are comfortable with expressing who they are, who have a palpable coolness/vibe, and who don't really give a fuck what other people think about said vibe.

I mean there are likely more factors, but that’s a large part. Other factors include girls feeling culturally pressured to say they’re in a relationship while guys are not as much, the age range I factor mentioned before, and the fact that self-report studies surrounding dating are notoriously inaccurate and often fraught with bias

This misses the full picture. The situation reverses once you include older men and older women. In general the gap in this age range is explained in part by the fact that many people finally settle down around 28-32 nowadays (right on the boundary) and women tend to date men who are older by a few years. I think in recent times there have been studies showing this gap has lowered as well. Plus, it's very US-centric.

Feminism does not really operate inherently on negatives. The goal is legal and economic equality between genders, this is not a negative framing. In general women have felt distrust towards men since the dawn of humanity, or at least as far back as records show. Men have always raped and abused women at fairly high rates so it's hardly surprising there is an inherent distrust. Feminism just made it more acceptable to voice this distrust publicly. This is a valid point. However if some men feel excluded, the solution isn’t to roll back women’s autonomy. It’s to ask why certain groups of men are struggling to adapt to new economic and social conditions and figure out a solution to that.

The decline in female happiness you’re referencing is primarily observed in US data from the 1970s onward. It’s not a universal global trend. Even within the US, that data shows correlation, not causation. If you’re suggesting that modern feminism is related to declining happiness, the burden is on you to demonstrate that link. A huge number of structural changes occurred over that period, not just modern feminism. The fact that similar feminist movements occurred across Western countries without a comparable decline in women’s happiness weakens the claim of a direct causal relationship. And even if wellbeing were flat or slightly down, that wouldn’t automatically mean legal and social equality was a net negative.

Most liberal systems have flaws, but they’re all generally better than whatever came before. Nobody argues they’re perfect, just an improvement. Yes modern feminism may make some men’s lives harder but it replaced a system that made the vast majority of women’s lives miserable. The goal is to eventually dial on a system that maximises quality of life for everybody relatively equally. The irony is that everything you wrote after this is itself very egotistical. This whole frame story you’re telling yourself is your ego tricking you into believing whatever survival system it thinks benefits it the most. You’ve essentially convinced yourself that anybody who disagrees with you is just trying to test your frame, which is just about the worst possible position to approach any kind of genuine truth-seeking from.

UK, but they exist in almost every decently sized city in the world.

I mean I have more matches than I know what to do with, ultimately it’s about how good your profile is. If you have an excellent profile you can break the rules and you’ll still probably be fine. But it’s very well established that swiping right on everybody is a game of diminishing returns, this can be learnt from a simple google and looking at other people’s experiences where they often end up shadow banned after doing this consistently. Again, if you have a good profile the effects of this are minimised but it will definitely still hurt you. In real life when it comes to dating if you feel like you need to resort to tricks then you’ve already lost. The same applies to dating apps. Just build a solid profile, like the girls you like and don’t like the girls you don’t and the algorithm will work well for you. Getting super highly invested in dating app mechanics will also fuck with your head and your self esteem over time.